Eric The Blue

War in Gaza

Sometimes, I'll turn on the TV, start watching a football game, and, to work up a bit of artificial engagement, try to persuade myself that I like one team more than the other, so that I have a rooting interest, but usually I soon give up and just start vacuuming or something. It's a little like that when I contemplate the war between Hamas and the Israeli Defense Force, only instead of running the vacuum I just wish they'd both stop killing the other side's civilians.

But some people are really determined to have a rooting interest, and in our country, the home team is Israel. Here is right-wing blogger Paul Mirengoff trying to persuade us, or maybe himself, that the civilians of Gaza are not wholly innocent since—it has to do with their responses to public opinion researchers soliciting their view of Hamas. By the same logic, Jewish civilians of Israel aren't innocent, either. Here is the conclusion to an interview Daniella Weiss, a leader of Israel's settler movement, gave journalist Isaac Chotiner:

Chotiner: When Israel pulled out of Gaza, in 2005, it also closed down settlements in the region. This was under the Sharon government. And there's been talk by some settlers since October 7th about the need to repopulate Gaza with settlements. What are your feelings about what should happen with Gaza?

Weiss: Right now, I'm on my way to a TV interview where I'm going to speak about our movement's efforts to return to Gaza, the entire Gaza, and build settlements. 

Chotiner: So you think it was a mistake to pull out of settlements nearly twenty years ago?

Weiss: It was a mistake. The whole world is crying because of that. The whole world suffers from Hamas's rise. Not my problem. It's your problem. No country in the world said they were going to accept even a thousand people from Gaza. The world hates them. It was such a mistake to let them rise. 

Chotiner: Where should the Palestinians in Gaza go?

Weiss: To Sinai, to Egypt, to Turkey.

Chotiner: They're not Egyptian or Turkish, though. Why would they go to Turkey?

Weiss: O.K. The Ukrainians are not French, but when the war started they went to many countries. 

Chotiner: Their country was being bombed, and so many of them fled west.

Weiss: And the Gazan people want to get bombed by us?

Chotiner: Maybe one option, other than bombing them, would be to help try and develop a society for them in Gaza, right?

Weiss: O.K., I wish you luck. Go ahead. Go for it. 

Chotiner: Do you feel that Netanyahu and the people in his government are sympathetic to you and your cause?

Weiss: He's very sympathetic, but he is not as brave as we are. . . .

Chotiner: We saw some horrible images on October 7th of what happened to Israeli children, and now we see some horrible images in Gaza of what is happening to Palestinian children. When you see Palestinian children dying, what's your emotional reaction as a human being?

Weiss: I go by a very basic human law of nature. My children are prior to the children of the enemy, period. They are first. My children are first.

Chotiner: We are talking about children. I don't know if the law of nature is what we need to be looking at here.

Weiss: Yeah. I say my children are first.

In another part of the interview, she refers to "the Jewish nation," causing Chotiner to ask what the boundaries of this nation are. She answers that it extends from the Euphrates River in the northeast to the Nile in the southwest, so I guess it's not just the Gazans who will be relocating. When someone in Hamas says that a Palestinian state should extend "from the river to the sea," meaning from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, he's condemned for endorsing the removal, or even the extermination, of the Jewish people in Palestine. I don't know why Daniella Weiss and her fellow settlers get a pass—if anything, her views are, morally and practically, even more outrageous. And it's not as if she's a crazy outlier. She correctly points out that her preferred candidates are in power in Israel. 

Watching cable news

How much cable news do I watch? Enough to know by heart the practiced speeches of a "former federal prosecutor," now "legal analyst," about SOP in racketeering cases, such as might be pursued against a crime family like the Trumps. But not enough, apparently, ever to hear the interviewer ask my question, which would be something like:

Ok, the rubes at the bottom of the pyramid who heeded Trump's call to come to the Capitol and be "wild" have been prosecuted. Many are in prison. Now, as you describe it, the people toward the top of the pyramid are feeling the heat and taking pleas. But unlike the rubes, they aren't going to prison. No, they are suffering a worse fate, such as being compelled to write letters of apology to "the people of Georgia." I wish I lived in Georgia because it must be deeply affecting to receive a court ordered letter of apology from a gangster with a résumé. Would it violate the Constitution's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment if they had also been forced to write on the chalk board ten times, "I will never again try to overturn the result of a presidential election"?

More like another speech than a question, I know, and it's a Promethean board, I'm dating myself. But, so far, if you're unburdened by a legal education, it looks as if criminals like Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis, and Kenneth Chesebro have traded their status as top mob lieutenants for a get-out- of-jail-free card. Who's higher up the pyramid? Maybe only Meadows, Eastman, Giuliani, and Trump himself, whom the Republicans are going to anoint again. The number of scoundrels who might possibly be held accountable, in any meaningful way, looks to be small and dwindling.  

What do the "legal analysts" think about that?

Mitt Romney assesses the field

The new Speaker of the House: he owes his rise to good timing, right? It just happened that he was the nut whose name had been placed in nomination when non-crazy Republicans realized that the shit-show had to end. The members who voted against Jim Jordan "on principle" should have voted against the new Speaker for the sake of the same principles. But it was always going to be someone nutty, since only the "moderates" would cave in order to draw the curtain on the long-playing farce. The rest are too far gone to recognize a farce.

I'm inclined to think again when I agree with a Republican, but Mitt Romney's assessment of his party's dramatis personae, as reported in a new biography, strikes me as consistently apt, notwithstanding a few quibbles.

According to Romney, Chris Christie is just "another bridge-and-tunnel loudmouth." 

Ted Cruz is "scary," a "demagogue," and "frightening." Personally, I think Cruz is too absurd a figure to deserve such portentous adjectives, but, whatevs. 

Ron DeSantis shares "odious qualities" with Trump. That's why he was such a hot commodity for awhile—as repulsive as The Master. Romney also says DeSantis is "much smarter than Trump," which I guess is meant as a compliment? 

Newt Gingrich is "a smug know-it-all," "smarmy," and "a ridiculous blowhard." According to a journal Romney kept, his wife, Ann, has an even lower opinion of Gingrich. I'm on Ann's side.

Of Mitch McConnell, Romney said he couldn't figure out whether the "authentic" Mitch was the one who privately ridiculed Trump or the one who, in public, did Trump's bidding.

Regarding Trump's vice president: "No one had been more loyal, more willing to smile when he saw absurdities, more willing to ascribe God's will to things that were ungodly, than Mike Pence." 

Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas and Trump cabinet official: A "dimwit." True, but it's hard to understand why Romney saves that one for Perry. 

Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, is "sanctimonious, severe and strange." True, but it's hard to understand why Romney saves those up for Santorum, a relatively obscure weirdo. 

Donald Trump: "He is unquestionably mentally unstable, and he is racist, bigoted, misogynistic, xenophobic, and prone to violence." MAGA America comments, "You say it like these are bad things." Romney doesn't call Trump a "dimwit," but he does say DeSantis is smarter, so maybe that covers it. 

Righteous Victims

 

Benny Morris is a Jewish historian and the author of Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001. I think "righteous victims" is intended as a description of how, in Morris's view, both sides see themselves, and the subtitle indicates the subject matter of virtually all his work. Though a Zionist and an Israeli, he has said that his work as a historian has been motivated by deep curiosity about what actually happened. I don't know in what context he made this remark but it seems likely that he was defending himself against countrymen wondering about how a Jew could write such things. I re-read last night the chapter in Righteous Victims on "what happened" at the time of the formation of the Jewish state, beginning with the vote on the UN partition of Palestine in November, 1947, and then on to the aftermath of war. Some excerpts:

On November 28, in the hours before the crucial vote, the Arabs succeeded in obtaining a short delay. But only a serious compromise proposal could have warded off the vote for partition, and this the Arabs proved unable to put together. . . .

The voting was broadcast live on radio around the world. Nowhere was attention more riveted than in Palestine. When the tally was complete, thirty-three states had voted yes, thirteen no, and ten had abstained. Partition had passed, but not very comfortably (had three of the ayes voted nay, the resolution would have failed). The nays had consisted of the Arab and Muslim states, Cuba, and India; the ayes, of the United States, the British Commonwealth states, Western Europe, the Soviet bloc, and most of Latin America. Among the abstainers had been Britain, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, and China.

The Zionists and their supporters rejoiced; the Arabs walked out of the hall after declaring the resolution invalid. They could not fathom, a Palestinian historian was later to write, why 37 percent of the population had been given 55 percent of the land (of which they owned only 7 percent). And "the Palestinians failed to see why they should be made to pay for the Holocaust . . . they failed to see why it was not fair for the Jews to be a minority in a unitary Palestinian state, while it was fair for almost half of the Palestinian population—the indigenous majority on its own ancestral soil—to be converted overnight into a minority under alien rule." The Arab delegates asserted that any effort to implement the resolution would lead to war. [Zionist leader and later Israel's first Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion knew that there would be war. But still, he said, "I know of no greater achievement by the Jewish people . . . in its long history since it became a people" . . . .

The Zionists had effectively exploited the unusual situation, in which, for a brief moment, there was Soviet-American agreement on the Palestine problem. Helped to a great extent by the nations' feeling of guilt about the Holocaust, the Zionists had managed to obtain an international warrant for a small piece of earth for the Jewish people. What remained was for the Jews to translate the formal leasehold into concrete possession and statehood, in war—and for the Palestinians to pay the price. . . .

Operation Hiram resulted in the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] occupying all of northern Palestine up to the international frontier, as well as a small slice of southern Lebanon, and in the crushing of the ALA [Arab Liberation Army], which ceased to be a military force. The Syrian and Lebanese armies failed to interfere significantly in the fighting, leaving Qawuqji for all practical purposes to fight alone. During Hiram, IDF troops carried out at least nine massacres of Palestinian civilians and prisoners of war (at Eilaboun, Saliha, Safsaf, Jish, Hule, Majd al-Kurum, Bi'na, Deir al-Assad, and Arab al-Mawassa). . . .  

During the first stage, there was no Zionist policy to expel the Arabs or intimidate them into flight, though many Jews, including Ben-Gurion, were happy to see the backs of as many Arabs as possible. And, without doubt, Jewish—both Haganah and IZL—retaliatory policies and the IZL/LHI terror bombings were precipitants. . . .

During the second stage, while there was no blanket policy of expulsion, the Haganah's Plan D clearly resulted in mass flight. Commanders were authorized to clear the populace out of villages and certain urban districts, and to raze the villages if they felt a military need. Many commanders identified with the aim of ending up with a Jewish state with as small an Arab minority as possible. Some generals, such as Allon, clearly acted as if driven by such a goal. . . .

In the course of 1949-50, most of the abandoned Arab fields, groves, and orchards were parceled out to and cultivated by kibbutzim or immigrant settlements. . . .

It was mainly the plight of the Palestinian refugees that fueled Arab animosity toward Israel. Their massive presence served as testimony to the Arab world's humiliation, as proof of the injustice that had befallen the Palestinian people, and as a spur to anti-Israel action. Of the 700,000 or so refugees, about half were in Jordan, most of them in the West Bank. Another 200,000 were in the Gaza Strip; about 100,000 in Lebanon; and more than 60,000 in Syria.

The epigraph to Righteous Victims is from a poem of Auden's, "September 1, 1939":

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

The Republican House Speakers of my Lifetime

I've been amusing myself by recalling, and researching, the recent history of Republican speakers of the house. Maybe "recent" isn't the right word considering that Newt Gingrich was the first Republican speaker of my lifetime, and I'm on Medicare: by a plausible definition, then, "recent" means "all of them." 

Gingrich ascended to the speakership after Republicans swept the midterm elections of 1994 and he lasted till 1999. His fall was precipitated by the unpopular and unsuccessful effort to drive Clinton from office, and it didn't help his cause when it came to light that, like the antichrist Clinton, Gingrich had himself been pursuing extra-curricular frolics. He resigned, and it appeared that Bob Livingston, of Louisiana, would be his successor. But then Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine, announced that, should Livingston become speaker, he would divulge the details of his (Livingston's) afterschool activities. Livington responded by withdrawing his candidacy for the speakership and resigning his seat in the House of Representatives. This is the story of how Dennis Hastert, of Illinois, a former high-school wrestling coach, became Gingrich's successor as speaker. Hastert served from 1999 to 2007 and didn't go to prison until 2016, after his unusual banking activities attracted the attention of law enforcement. It turned out that Hastert was making large payments to a former high-school wrestler who was extorting him. The wrestler had been sexually abused by Hastert, and the investigation uncovered at least three more teenaged victims of their coach. 

Republicans had lost their majority in the 2006 midterms, the immediate cause of Hastert's resignation, and didn't regain it until 2011. John Boehner, of Ohio, was then elected speaker with less drama than we have now been educated to expect. Boehner, whom I regard with affection while disagreeing with him on nearly everything, lasted for three terms before he could no longer tolerate the tea-party yahoos, who might have driven him out if he hadn't removed himself. Wikipedia politely summarizes:

Sources in [Boehner's] office indicated he was stepping aside in the face of increasing discord while trying to manage passage of a continuing resolution to fund the government. Conservative opposition to funding Planned Parenthood as part of the resolution, and stronger threats to Boehner's leadership on account of the controversy, prompted the resignation. 

Sound familiar?

Paul Ryan, of Wisconsin, was next to bat. For some reason, he had a reputation as a "policy wonk," though his only idea, the solution for every ailment, was to slash taxes and then count the money that would flow into the treasury as a result of, I don't know, something having to do with Ayn Rand, whose books Ryan had read in college during the interludes between frat keggers. I think it's fair to say this idea was not original with him and that no result of its implementation could ever cause the assertion to be withdrawn. The more salient point is that we are now into the age of the appeasement of Trump. During the 2016 campaign, Ryan had called for Trump to stand down after the I-grab-'em-by-the-pussy tape was made public. Of course Trump didn't, and when he won anyway, Ryan bowed his knee and kissed not just the hand of the new president. He may have found it distasteful, however, as he chose not to seek re-election in 2018, and he would have lost the speakership in any event since Democrats won a majority in that year's midterm elections.

And now we come to the recently deposed Kevin McCarthy, who had to grovel before Trump, Gaetz, Greene, et al in order to become speaker. They have now axed him with the axe he supplied. No one knows for sure what will happen next, but it appears that McCarthy's likely successor will be Jim Jordan, who won't need to grovel before the lunatics, being one himself. I think that is the rift within the Republican party: there are the grovelers, sometimes referred to as "moderates," and then there are those who are out of their minds. It appears the second faction is larger, but this might be explained by members of the first group sometimes imitating members of the second group, in order to advance within the party. 

So that is the history of Republican speakers and near-speakers of my lifetime: Gingrich—Livingston—Hastert—Boehner—Ryan—McCarthy—Jordan. There is a view going around that the Republican party has recently become "broken” and “consumed by chaos.” I can see why people would say these things, but the truth is that for 30 years Republican control of the House of Representatives has always been a clown car demolition derby. 

Mea culpa, Max Kepler

Since I was back in April, May, and June, and for whole seasons before that, one of the biggest Max Kepler anti-fans, I want to go on record saying that the team's turn-around over the past 70 games or so hasn't been due only to the hitting provided by guys barely old enough to drink who, back in the spring and early summer, were either injured or tearing the cover off the ball in Triple-A—I mean Julien, Kirilloff, Wallner, and, especially, Lewis. Today, with two games left in the regular season, Kepler is batting .259 with an OPS of .811. That may not sound like anything to crow about, but you can estimate where he was in late July from the fact that in August and September he has batted slightly over .300 with an OPS a tick north of .900. He's always been a good outfielder, and for two months now he's also been an all-star level hitter.

The Twins, who were 45-46 at the all-star break, stand at 86-74. Lots of guys have played well, including Wallner who I saw play last summer for the Twins Double-A team in Wichita, and Julien who was at Wichita too even though I don't remember him, but Kepler's play has been for me the biggest surprise of all. I withdraw for now my carping complaints, Max.

I'll post another retraction if evidence turns up of Trump being a scholar and a statesman. I see that he said, under oath in a deposition, that he could not possibly overvalue one of his properties as the Saudis would always be happy to pay him as much as he asked for anything he owned. It's his successor, of course, who is guilty of corruption and influence peddling. Every accusation is a confession. 

Lauren and Kristi; Harmon and Tony

Lauren Boebert: any classier and she'd qualify for a trial membership in the demographic group sometimes designated "white trash." With some, it's heritage; for her, it's aspirational. The pregnant lady sitting behind her was upset by the vaping but, from the looks of things, Boebert's date probably wished even more fervently that both her hands were free. 

True confession: I was so taken by the video of Boebert enjoying herself at the performance of Beetlejuice that I only just now learned that the governor of South Dakota has been boinking Trump pal Corey Lewandowski for I guess a number of years. Family values dictate that they should introduce their respective marooned spouses to each other. Everybody has a hungry heart.

If anyone's saying that either Noem or Lewandowski deserves better, I demur: they're perfect together.

Now for something completely different, the online equivalent of a shower after I've made you contemplate gross stuff:

 

Watching Tony and Harmon run around the bases after a homer reminds me of what Bud Grant is said to have told players about how they should comport themselves after scoring a touchdown—"like it's not the first one you ever scored, and you're sure it's not your last, either."

Meandering

1. When I turned on the Twins game last night, they were already ahead 9 to 1. I kept watching, and the Guardians soon brought in a position player to pitch. This is now a common strategy in one-sided games as it allows the team getting beat up to get through the last innings without using up pitchers who might be needed tomorrow, or the day after that, in a game that can be won. The Twins ended up scoring 20 runs last night. 

Baseball has enacted some recent reforms, almost all of which, imho, have made the game better. How about one more?—a 10-run rule after, say, 6 innings. If the trailing team has given up, and is no longer doing its best to get the other guys out, why should the game continue? It begins to be a little farcical. The team ahead by a lot should keep trying, right? So they get hits, home runs, that they can't even feel too good about. Run around the bases, get back in the dugout, don't show anyone up. Come to think of it, not a bad idea no matter the score, especially if the alternative involves gesturing toward God in heaven as you cross home plate. What, is the pitcher an atheist?

I also don't understand the evident stoic mindset of the non-pitcher who's "pitching." You'd think he'd want to have some fun, see what he could do, try out his curve and his knuckler, but no, they all just keep lobbing it in there until, eventually, blessedly, three outs are recorded. These guys are all great ballplayers with live arms. If they'd zip it in there, make it at least look like they were doing their best to retire hitters, the farce would be harder to detect.

But, in any event, the 10-run rule: a solution for a problem. Would there be unforeseen consequences? You're down 8 in the sixth inning, and you don't want to wear out your bullpen, so you instruct your guys to give up two runs so that the game will end. Now a farce reduction act has resulted in a bigger farce. What if, after the sixth inning, you just allowed a trailing team to surrender, like when the cornerman for a boxer who's getting pummeled requests that the fight be stopped? When you call on your second-string catcher to "pitch," you're really surrendering, so why insist that the surrender be artificial and unsightly?

2. On the topic of stuff I don't understand, what's with the obsession with Biden's age and alleged "decline"?  My only theory is that the explanation relates to this journalistic rule about "playing it down the middle," which requires, apparently, that if one side has in fact committed felonies, you better find that the other side has at least committed some petty misdemeanors and then play them up as something to be balanced against the felonies. Thus, "whether it's 80-year-old Joe Biden free-associating goofily, or 78-year-old Donald Trump subverting democracy by seeking to remain in power despite having lost the election, both sides have a problem with their geriatrics." 

It's actually worse than that, since Trump, in his prime, managed to run casinos into the ground. 

3. I've been reading Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which may account for this current tendency to discern moral problems in baseball games. His subject is how to live a good life and be happy, topics that might interest anyone, but I'm not sure that a happy good life will include a reading of the Nicomachean Ethics, which for long stretches is a colossal bore. Aristotle is a wooden writer, assuming it's not the translator's fault, as well as a relentless taxonomist. How much of this sort of thing must be endured?

(1) Some things are pleasant by nature, and of these (a) some are so without qualification, and (b) others are so with reference to particular classes either of animals or men; while (2) others are not pleasant by nature, but (a) some of them become so by reason of injuries to the system, and (b) others by reason of acquired habits, and (c) others by reason of originally bad natures. This being so, it is possible with regard to each of the latter kinds to discover similar states of character to those recognized with regard to the former . . . .

Answer: Lots, if for some reason you persevere to the end. Also, this idea that the solution to every problem involves discovering the golden mean between extremes deserves whatever satire has been directed at it over the past 23 centuries. How devoted to your children should you be? Well, somewhat devoted, but not too devoted. I'm not making things up, he says that, only in a gray dull way. 

I might be with him on money, however. Many philosophers have recommended poverty, on the ground that wealth, or possessions of any kind, distract from the contemplative life. Aristotle held—I don't have to tell you, but, not too much, not too little, same as everything else. Interestingly, I just read somewhere that the philosopher Spinoza had a little problem with his sister after their father died. She wanted the entire estate. He countersued, and it was only after the court entered judgment in his favor that he gave her everything and went back to his books and lenses. I wonder whether he knew that she knew that he didn't care about money, also that she was eager to exploit this circumstance to her advantage, and that his course of going to court before assigning everything over to her was Spinoza's version of a golden mean. 

4. Today's the first day of school. Older daughter was supposed to read The Catcher in the Rye over the summer. I think once in June, twice in July, and three times in August I asked how that was going. Vague replies. Last night I looked over her shoulder as she sat at her desk reading a screen: Sparks Notes to The Catcher in the Rye.

How diligent should a student be? Not so diligent as to read the book, but diligent enough to consult Sparks Notes.

Some notes on the debating Repugs

1. First, I'm surprised that Trump didn't time his date with the authorities in Fulton County to coincide with the debate. Seems unlikely his rivals would have had much of an audience if Republican primary voters could instead have watched his motorcade cruise Atlanta's freeway system. 

2. Nikki Haley doesn't appear to be crazy. I conclude she has no chance.

3. She did say, however, that voters, not courts, should determine Trump's fate. Probably focus-group tested but it's stupid. There was an election. Trump lost. So the voters did decide. He then committed crimes in an effort to retain the office that the voters had denied him. How many cycles of losing and criming does she recommend?

4. Most representative moment: earnest appearing college-aged Republican lad asks question about climate change. Candidates take turns telling him to f-off. 

5. Of the eight debaters, six say they'd support Trump if he's the nominee even if, on election day, he's been convicted of felonies. Just as strategy, I don't get it, unless they're all angling to be his running mate. (Though that doesn't explain the case of Pence.) Generally, you criticize the front runner. Only way to catch up. Some might say that his criminality provides a possible opening. 

6. I'll never understand those who continue to carry a torch for DeSantis. But so what? I'll never understand any of it. See (2) above. 

7. Tim Scott says that, if elected, he'll replace the current attorney general. Whoa, Tim, slow down!

8. The debate occurred in the evening of the day on which Putin murdered Prigozhin and seven others. When Haley chastised the tech bro guy for taking the side of a murderer in his war with our ally, Ukraine, the audience of Republican primary voters loudly booed her. 

9. There's a lot to dislike about the tech bro guy, but the thing that'll sink him with Republicans is when Trump makes fun of his name. 

10. That Pence is too proud of having done the obviously right thing on January 6 reminds me, vaguely, of the DeSantis ad wherein his beaming wife says that, after her cancer diagnosis, "He took care of my kids when I couldn't." 

TDS relapse

Some pretty large part of the sensations Trump's legal troubles stir within me arise, I've come to believe, from my immature notion that corruption at the highest levels, while expected, should possess a certain elevation, dignity, and sophistication, as befits the lofty positions of the criminal plotters. But it's never like that, apparently. Just before I was old enough to vote:

Setting: Oval Office

Minions: These guys could squawk. 

POTUS: It wouldn't be hard to raise a ton of hush money, pay them off.

Minions: OK, sure, yeah, we can do that. 

And now, a week into my life as a Medicare beneficiary, I still feel a slight twinge when, on the morning after a former president is indicted in Georgia for trying to steal 16 electoral votes, he announces:

It's just embarrassingly shoddy and threadbare. When you zoom in, you notice the 8th-grade, C-level language errors: for example, if the report is complex (or Complex) and detailed (or Detailed), that would obviously make it harder to refute (more Irrefutable), and the conjunction therefore should be "and," not "but." Of course it's worse when you are zoomed out. I guess we're supposed to believe that, nearly three years now after the election, and on the morning after the indictment comes down, he's putting the final touches on the magnum opus proving that he won Georgia. What a coincidence! If the Irrefutable EVIDENCE had taken a week—or 30 months—less to develop, things would be different. Though inevitably, two days later:

He's sometimes been called a "con man," but if you're this bad at it, do you even deserve the title? The stream flows continuously. "I have people in Hawaii investigating whether Obama was really born there, and let me tell you, the stuff they're finding is amazing." I think it's been more than a couple of weeks since the details of his health plan replacing Obamacare were to be announced in "probably about two weeks." Et cetera. 

 

Sabato's crystal ball, take one

The Republican party in America is too detached from reality to allow confidence about what's going to happen next, but I have to say that I'm feeling good about having made this call about the governor of Florida when he was riding a wave in the way-back time of December, 2022. 

For those interested in early prognostications related to the 2024 presidential election, the Sabato Crystal Ball, named for the political scientist Larry Sabato, of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, pegs the electoral college competition at Biden 260, The Unknown Republican 235, with just 43 in the toss-up category. The four toss-up states, with their allotment of electoral votes noted, are: Georgia (16), Wisconsin (10), Arizona (11), and Nevada (6).

Since it takes 270 to win, you can see that, were this scenario to play out, Nevada is irrelevant: to win, the Republican needs to sweep Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia, because Nevada plus the larger two of the other three results in a 270-268 victory for the Blues. Though if it turns out to be that close, we'd have to consider what happens in Nebraska, since, while deep red, it awards electoral votes by congressional district, and by winning the one centered on Omaha the Republican could then pull into a 269-269 tie. But Biden won that district by more than 6 points, so if he loses it in 2024, he's probably losing Georgia, Wisconsin, and Arizona, too. The working assumption here is that a presidential election is like an interrelated system in which the individual parts do not operate independently of the others. It follows that the winner of, say, Wisconsin, is a good bet to win Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, too. If that were to happen, in Biden's favor, then the ubiquitous blue-red map would be unchanged from 2020.

The most striking aspect of this preview is probably the shrinking number of competitive states.  Suppose we add to the list of toss-ups the states Sabato and his team think only "lean" one direction or the other. That captures only North Carolina (leans Republican) and, leaning the other way, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Michigan. There are then still 42 states that aren't competitive. At least many of the residents of those states might be spared from the advertising onslaught. I'm a little worried for myself, living as I do in the Twin Cities, with media tentacles extending well into western Wisconsin. 

It's odd how so much can seem to happen without altering anything. I might have thought that there's justice in the sorry plight of the DeSantis campaign, but it's not as if Republican voters appear poised to render an apt judgment upon his candidacy. Trump's an indicted criminal defendant, and it's going to happen again, and again, with overwhelming evidence of his guilt in each case—here, for example, is the audio and transcript of the phone call to Georgia officials in which he clearly solicits election fraud and makes thinly veiled threats about what could happen to them if they don't do as he says. Poor DeSantis is trying his best to be an a-hole, but how can he compete with that? He likely hasn't even raped anyone. 

She wants a divorce!

I made a tofu dish for supper tonight (recipe), which the kids declined on patriotic grounds. I reminded them of the hot dogs we had for lunch, but of course, "What have you done for me lately?" Well, eat some bread, cuz we're not going to Dairy Queen, children's services is closed for the holiday, and HUAC was disbanded in 1975.

I can hear one of them in the kitchen right now making herself a milk shake. 

This article, by Ron Brownstein, concerning whether the United States will crack up like in the 1860s, is perhaps the tofu of Fourth of July political journalism. But it's Marjorie Taylor Greene who has called for a "national divorce," and if it would make her a foreigner, my ears are open, twitchy, and q-tipped. Ted Cruz wouldn't have to go skip out in a crisis as he would already be living in another land. 

But, as a political scientist quoted in the article asks, "What do you do with upstate New York? And Memphis?" What do you do with anywhere, really. The divide is not between regions of the country as it was in 1860. In Minnesota, we have 87 counties, and in the last election Trump got more votes in 74 of them. But in one of the other 13, Hennepin, home to Minneapolis and most of its suburbs, his deficit of about 327,000 votes was greater than his aggregate advantage in the 74 counties he carried, and he lost the state by 7 points. 

The above map, which I mentioned once before, here, is someone's version of what the family court settlement would look like in the divorce Marj recommends. The two "countries" resemble gerrymandered congressional districts—the blue one is mostly just population centers connected by land bridges. Before the last census, a congressional district in Ohio, the 9th, included Toledo, some suburbs west of Cleveland, and, in between, was often about as wide as the right-of-way taking for a highway. Blow air into that balloon and you get the above Blue Nation. I think the mapmaker's point might be to show that he's set himself an impossible task. Suppose Brownstein's political scientist had asked, "What do you do with Dallas?" The answer to that question, apparently, is you make it the capital city of the Red Nation—even though Dallas County is overwhelmingly Democratic. 

The geography of the mind is a different matter, and harder to make out, though the tells have accrued rapidly in the recent past. I remember that after the 2016 election, when Trump won despite having lost the national vote by around 3 million, some Republicans argued that it was no matter because Clinton had won California by about the same margin.  In other words, Trump hadn't really lost the popular vote, because Clinton's entire margin was secured in California, where the voters I guess aren't real Americans? It seems that being an American means agreeing with them about who's an American, but by what logic can only one side play the game? Let's instead discount the votes cast by white men residing in states that once seceded from the Union. Now she won by a lot more than 3 million. 

It's almost as if underlying the impulse to seek a divorce lies deep uneasiness about who can vote. 

 

I borrow money, develop a man crush on Karl Marx

I think of myself as a garden-variety Democratic voter, neither Joe Manchin nor a Bernie Bro, but once in a while something happens that nudges me toward Bernie or, indulging daydreams, into the arms of AOC. I recently had a $15,000 home repair—$15,350, to be exact, for a new "combi boiler." (I live in a 100-year-old house with radiators for heat; there's no separate hot water heater, the "combi" does it all.) I was going to transfer money around in order to write a check that wouldn't bounce, but then the company doing the work told me they offered 0% financing for 18 months. You can get about 5% on bank deposits these days, so I thought I might as well pay them slow, and I took the financing.

First sort of weird thing that happened is I got in the mail a credit card issued by Wells Fargo. So it's not actually the HVAC company that "offers 0% financing for 18 months." Rather, the HVAC company has some arrangement whereby they toss over to Wells Fargo their customers who don't have, say, 15 grand lying around. Uh-oh. I'm not using that credit card (though some people, especially if they're more desperate than I, might). 

Not long after that I get a statement in the mail. It's four pages long, very small print, and includes all the terms, which are apparently somewhat more complicated than "0% for 18 months," unless perhaps what happens after 18 months is positively Byzantine. I sit down to read it. Have to take off my glasses and hold the paper with the tiny print close to my face—ok, whatever, I'm old and both near- and far-sighted, but it's almost as if they want you to give up on comprehending. As you persist, so does the suspicion that the unknown authors don't want you to understand. I think I'm a pretty good reader, and I wouldn't say the document is impenetrable, but it certainly tends in that direction. Lots of people wouldn't understand it, or would grow weary of trying. For one thing, it uses a sort of private vocabulary for rather ordinary concepts, and defines these terms elsewhere within the document, so that instead of just reading something that makes sense you have to scan around to figure out what the weird stuff means and then make the needed substitutions as you forge ahead. There are many sentences along the line of, "Please note that 'accrued interest' may also be referred to as 'deferred interest' and 'subaccount(s)' may also be referred to as 'balances.'" Noted, thanks!

Well, I put in some time and feel confident that I grasp the principal details of the shit deal Wells Fargo has for the customers of their friends in the HVAC business. 

The reason they can say "0% for 18 months" is that I pay no interest if I give them something every month and the whole $15,350 by the "special terms end date," which is what they call the end of the 18-month period. That's it for the good news. I said the print is small and the language hard to understand, but one exception to that is a box at the upper-right of page 1 that says "Minimum Payment Due-----$505.75." I'm sure a common reaction to this information is, "Well, why would I pay them more than the minimum?" But notice that $505.75 x 18 = $9103.50 < $15,350. By paying the monthly minimum, you have only paid back about 60% of the debt at the "special terms end date," and now you pay interest.

The interest rate is 28.99%.

I guess that in my innocence I would have thought it was illegal to charge that amount of interest. It should be, but . . . lobbyists, Republicans, probably Joe Manchin. Willing lender, willing borrower, some will say. Not really. Remember, I got steered into this deal because I needed to heat my house and have hot water. I'm going to pay them off within 18 months but lots of people couldn't. According to Fortune, 57% of Americans cannot afford an unexpected $1000 expense. Wells Fargo: "Let's get these people to pay us for the rest of their lives!"

Send them a credit card in case they'd like to make some additional purchases.

I've now made two $900 payments, which is why my "special terms balance" on the portion of the statement shown below is down to $13,550. 

But the "deferred interest charge" of $502.65 puzzled me until I read, on a different page:

We begin accruing interest on a purchase with No Interest if Paid in Full Terms on the date the purchase posts to your Account. We calculate interest on the purchase balance. This amount is called the deferred interest charge (see "Deferred Interest Charges" shown in the SPECIAL TERMS CALCULATION section of your statement). The deferred interest charge will not be added to the regular balance unless you do not pay the balance in full by the end of the special terms period (see Special Terms End Date shown in the SPECIAL TERMS CALCULATION section of your statement). You may avoid interest on the balance by paying it in full before the end of the special terms period.

This means that, while I am paying them at a rate that will result in no interest, they are keeping track of what the interest payment would be on the unpaid balance. If my rate of pay slows, and there is outstanding debt when the "special terms end date" arrives, the 28.99% is not applied against only the amount that remains unpaid at that time. Instead, all the "deferred interest" is added to the balance due, going back to the first month, when the 28.99% was applied to an average daily balance of roughly $15,000, plus the next month, when the exorbitant rate was calculated on an average daily balance of about $14,000, and so on—a total of thousands of dollars of interest, since the rate is usurious. The impact upon someone seduced into making the “minimum payment” would be calamitous.

And that's if they don't accept the invitation to use the credit card sent to them in the mail.

A perennial argument between "liberals" and "conservatives" concerns the degree to which private enterprise should be overseen and regulated by the government. "Get big government off our backs!" cries one side—because, it appears to me, they want to be free to boost their bottom line by gouging vulnerable people of modest means who are prone to landing in desperate situations. And they're succeeding—they're gouging them. I mean, I assume this loan they have me in isn't breaking any laws, and in that case they aren't being regulated enough. 

It might get worse

These website designers and wedding cake bakers—why is it always the money of homosexuals that's too dirty for them to take? I'd think there'd be artisans whose faith barred them from working for people "living in sin," or people who have been divorced (unlike homosexuality, flatly condemned by Jesus himself), or who mean to marry someone of a different race, or a different faith, or are known to have met their beloved at a swingers' convention, or whose faults combine items from this extremely abbreviated list in ways that overwhelm the pious businessowner's impulse toward charity (and profit).  

I'm tempted to say it's just homophobia, but maybe there are plans to "call my bluff" by recruiting bigots from some new taxonomic categories for more Supreme Court fun. Let's hope not. I saw today that the Supremes have agreed to hear a case next term about whether the Second Amendment can abide a federal law, on the books for 30 years, that requires someone under a restraining order arising from a domestic violence complaint to surrender his firearms.

The case was brought by a Texas man who was indicted by a federal grand jury for violating the 1994 law that prohibits gun ownership by a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order. The man, Zackey Rahimi, was under a restraining order granted to his former girlfriend in February 2020 when he threatened another woman with a gun and was involved in a series of five shootings in December 2020 and January 2021. 

When police searched his home after identifying Rahimi as a suspect in the shootings, they found a .45-caliber pistol, a .308-caliber rifle, pistol and rifle magazines and ammunition. 

Rahimi attempted to dismiss the indictment against him, arguing it violated the Second Amendment. A federal district court denied his motion, noting that a federal appeals court upheld the constitutionality of the firearms law in 2020. 

Rahimi pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 73 months in prison, but appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals [for] the Fifth Circuit. While the appeals court initially affirmed the lower court's decision, it withdrew its original opinion after the Supreme Court last year invalidated New York's rules for obtaining a license to carry a concealed handgun in public. 

After its additional review, the 5th Circuit reversed course and held that the 1994 gun restriction for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders violated the Second Amendment, as the government failed to meet its burden of showing that the law is "consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

That should be enough fun!

Kennedy boy goes to the gym

I've been wasting my time being interested in the Robert F Kennedy Jr kerfuffle, the one arising from the shirtless photos of him circulating on social media. It might not have been the Ur tweet, but my first notice came when I saw some nut had posted this picture of Kennedy (left) alongside one of Dr Peter Hotez, a medical researcher. Kennedy is a notorious anti-vaxxer, and Hotez, a professor at Baylor University's medical school who resembles a standard-issue doughy middle-aged American, predictably is not, because . . . education, knowledge, expertise. The tweeter, who thinks that Hotez should debate Kennedy on vaccine efficacy, asserted that the side-by-side pictures of the two men clearly showed who knows more about good health. In my favorite response, someone said that the professor obviously had flunked the dead lift component of organic chemistry class. 

Seriously, though, the anti-vax idiots are really tiring. As far as I can tell, what they have going for them are a couple of facts:

i. humans are subject to illness and death

ii. most Americans are vaccinated

It follows, naturally, that vaccinated people get sick and die, which, when it happens, proves how deadly the vaccines are. Latest example is Madonna. Sixty-something woman hospitalized with illness! And she was vaccinated! Connect the dots, fool.

By this kind of "logic," every day on the nation's streets and highways people are being killed by seat belts. (I can almost hear the wingnuts now: "Yes, and it's pretty ironic if you think about it, because the elites persuaded them that seat belts made them safer.")

While it's not my area of expertise, I'm inclined to think that a physique like Kennedy's on a 69-year-old is a sign not of health but of an unhealthy obsession. He wants to be president? Ok, he's got the last name for it, but maybe, if he'd spent less time at the gym, he could have made some modest incursions upon the impressive facade of his stupidshittery. 

Sam in Alaska

Did they even go fishing? I ask because the picture accompanying the story in Pro Publica looks like a print ad for Marlboro Man wear in an online catalog. Maybe the guy on the left, never so far as I know identified, is a little chubby for the role. The other two are Justice Samuel Alito and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, whose business plan involves frequent appeals to the Supreme Court. But Alito doesn't know about that. Says so himself in the Wall Street Journal. 

Even after a long day in the boat, their nearly identical fishing wardrobes appear pressed, dry, and unsoiled. This could be explained by guides having done the work or, in the alternative, the resort's amenities might have included outer wear, photography services, and props, such as big fish. I'm pretty sure that the ranch on which Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face imports birds for the "hunt," a possible source for my cynicism re the manly activities of right-wingers. 

It's all on the up-and-up, however. As Alito explains in his essay, the seat on Singer's private jet would have been empty if he hadn't tagged along. It was him or nobody (as opposed, say, to him or someone without a vote on the Supreme Court). 

 

Don takes a dump

Tip o' the hat to the clever people writing captions for the above FBI photo of a Mar-a-Lago bathroom included within the pages of the Trump indictment:

Don's Document Dump
The Seat of Power
Republicans Suddenly Silent on Proper Use of Bathrooms
Trump Esthetic: Bathroom Overfilled with Crimes & Chandeliers
Bed Bath & Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Presumably the documents of highest sensitivity are secured behind the tension rod. 

In news "below the fold"

For those of us already persuaded of Trump's criminality, yesterday's newsworthy news was that Kavanaugh and Roberts joined the Supreme Court's reality-based minority to strike down Alabama's congressional maps. It's the 7th congressional district, the only one represented by a Democrat, and pictured at left, that triggered litigation. The population of Alabama is 27 percent African American, but the 7th district is 57 percent African American. That's partly because most of the district's land mass is made of a huge chunk of rural west central Alabama that's sometimes referred to as the "Black Belt." But suppose that a computer was asked to generate a million different divisions of Alabama into seven districts of more or less regular shape and equal population. In how many of them would you have one district including a large swatch of the rural Black Belt together with much of the (heavily African American) Birmingham metro and much of the (heavily African American) Montgomery metro? On account of the "more or less regular shape" requirement, I think the answer to that question is zero. In its actual man-made configuration, however, Alabama's 7th congressional district pulls of this feat: Birmingham sits near the terminus of the narrow weird arm extending northeasterly in a kind of anterior tail to the main part of the district, and Montgomery is at the little bulbous dragon's head forming the district's most easterly point.

I've only scanned some journalistic accounts of the Court's reasoning, but my probably unusual initial take is that in this case we got the right conclusion for the wrong reason. The Supreme Court has in the recent past exhibited an extreme reluctance to interfere with the effort of state legislatures in red states to screw over Democrats. That's what's going on in Alabama, but because of political apartheid in the American South—virtually all the African Americans are Democrats and virtually all the whites are Republicans—screwing over Democrats means screwing over African Americans, with the result that a partisan gerrymander in Dixie almost by necessity, and plausibly by accident, runs afoul of the Voting Rights Act. In other words, I think an honest defense by Alabama might be: We're not limiting the clout of African Americans by packing them all into a single district, we're limiting the clout of Democrats by packing them all into a single district, which in the recent past this Court has indicated is fine. Evidence for such a defense might be that the district includes—just to the south of a northerly boundary at about the point that the odd tail begins its northeasterly stretch to Birmingham—the city of Tuscaloosa, which is home to the University of Alabama and many of the few white Democrats in the state. "See? It's Democrats, of any color, that we want to screw over! It's not our fault that most of them are black!"

Well, I would have guessed that a majority on this Court would have resolved the issue by raising a middle finger to the Voting Rights Act, and Kavanaugh and Roberts deserve credit for not doing that. No doubt it's in the dissents. 

Though I think any partisan gerrymander, not just a racial one, violates constitutional principles, this Supreme Court decision, for the reason mentioned above, will shift the political ground in the South. When the ruling was announced, Cook Political Report immediately changed its characterization of the "partisan lean" to five Dixie districts in the Democrats' direction: two in Alabama and two more in Louisiana went from "solid R" to "tossup," and one in North Carolina went from "tossup" to "lean D." These changes are made without knowledge of how the new maps will be configured and reflect, mainly, expert opinion on how difficult it is, given voting patterns and the location of population centers across southern states, to draw (for example) six districts in Alabama that can be won by a Republican: a 4-3 Republican advantage is natural, and 5-2 might be possible, but 6-1 requires the above monstrosity. 

The situation is almost identical in Louisiana, where the only district represented by a Democrat, the 2nd, is shown below. The two biggest cities in Louisiana are New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Since they are about 80 miles apart—for local reference, it's about 65 miles from Minneapolis to St. Cloud—it would seem natural to have one congressional district centered on New Orleans and a second on Baton Rouge. But in that case both districts would elect a Democratic representative. That's why the 2nd district is thin and oddly elongated—in order to take in both cities without surpassing the population limit for a congressional district, thereby ensuring a 5-1 Republican advantage in the state's congressional delegation. The Supreme Court seems to be saying this would be okay if it could not plausibly be understood as an effort to diminish the voting power of African Americans, who are 32 percent of the statewide population but 62 percent of those residing within the 2nd congressional district. 

The Republican majority in the House of Representatives is so slim that, holding every other factor in place, it will be wiped out by this decision. 

Candid camera

The family Christmas cards of some of the gun fetishists in the Congress put me in mind of Diane Arbus, the photographer of freaks and misfits who took her own life in 1971. Did she come back from the dead to contribute her skills to spreading right-wing holiday cheer?

Holiday card of Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican from Kentucky:

Arbus:

Holiday card of Rep. Lauren Boebert, Republican from Colorado:

Arbus:

The most recent holiday card of Rep. Andy Ogles, the Tennessee Republican whose district includes the Covenant School, where in March eight people were killed in a mass shooting:

Arbus was sometimes criticized for exploiting her subjects in the pursuit of "art." Well, what about the kids in the photos that are meant to warm the heart?

My former employer at the Supreme Court

 

This current case out of Hennepin County's tax forfeited land unit shouldn't be hard, but since the hearts of at least five Supreme Court justices start to race when the phrase "property rights" is mentioned, who knows? If you are so inclined, you can read about the case here, here, and here. It's of interest to me as I worked for years in this general area for Hennepin County.

I love how the verb "to seize" appears in the journalistic accounts, as in "the government seized her property"—and when I say I love it, I mean I think it's stupid. Yes, the government "seized" her condominium unit, in accordance with the laws of the state of Minnesota, around five years after she walked away from it and stopped paying the property taxes. Good grief! 

The lawyers representing her, from the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, argue that since her delinquencies summed to around 15 grand, and the County eventually sold her unit for 40 grand, the government has robbed her of 25 grand. One obvious question (of many) is: why didn't she sell it herself when she moved out? Instead, she just skated away and stopped paying the taxes. She outsourced to county government the work of selling a property that otherwise is performed by the seller and the seller's agents, such as the seller's realtor. Why should she do any of that?  If she walks, the government will have to do it. Fine, the government does it. But then, years later, when the government after jumping through a hundred hoops sells her condo unit, advancing the public interest by returning it to the tax rolls after a long hiatus, she's finally heard from, and her palms are up, the champions of "limited government" baying at her side. 

The lower courts have ruled for the County, but, as the appellants surely know, they don't have to judge shop at the Supreme Court—that field has been tilled. According to SCOTUS Blog, it was fairly clear at the oral argument today that the Supreme Court is poised to reverse and rule in favor of the (non)taxpayer. 

Timberwolves. Tennessee

I like—love—basketball and so stayed up last night watching the Timberwolves. There is this old-guy tendency to think everything used to be better and has now gone to hell and is getting worse, fast. I try to resist, but the last 20 minutes or so of that game were hard to watch. If Willis Reed was watching from above, he probably thought it's weird how humans can run 100 meters faster than ever, same for 26.2 miles and every distance in between, and can jump over bars set higher, and heave heavy things farther, but for some reason have gotten a lot worse at basketball.

Let's have a guy dribble the ball, in place but between his legs, around 30 feet from the basket until the shot clock is down to 3 seconds, at which time he can either try a 28-foot fadeaway jumper or, to mix things up, pass to a resident of Los Angeles County who has paid $400 to sit in the third row. Then it's the Lakers turn. Then our turn again. "Playoff basketball!" enthused color commentator Reggie Miller.

The above map pertains to a topic related only by its ability to irritate me. It shows congressional districts in the middle of Tennessee. Since Memphis and Nashville are both Democratic strongholds, I was surprised to hear that 8 of the 9 districts in Tennessee have a Republican representative in Congress. Nashville, for example, is in Davidson County, which voted for Biden by a 2-to-1 margin. Notice, however, that Davidson County is in three different congressional districts. The city of Nashville is in the blue district, by the 'v' in Davidson, almost on the border with both the red and the yellow districts. When the Democratic voters of Davidson County are "cracked" into three congressional districts, you can fill out all three with huge swatches of rural Tennessee and elect a Republican in every one of them! I guess that Shelby County, home to Memphis, is just too big to pull off a similar trick. If you cracked it up, there'd be enough Democrats to make competitive races in at least two districts. So pack them all into one. Then you can win everywhere else. 

I've been reading about some of the characters in the Tennessee delegation. The green district has been represented for years by Scott DesJarlais. From the Wikipedia article on him:

In October 2012 the Huffington Post obtained a transcript of a September 2000 phone conversation in which DesJarlais pressured a mistress to get an abortion. He repeatedly denied that he had taped the conversation. . . . Nine days before the general election a second woman said that she began dating DesJarlais while she was his patient. She alleged that the two smoked marijuana together and that he prescribed opioids for her while she was at his house.

Two weeks after DesJarlais won the 2012 election, the Chattanooga Times Free Press obtained a full transcript of his 2001 divorce proceedings. The transcript revealed that he had admitted under oath to at least six sexual relationships with people he came in contact with while chief of staff at Grandview Medical Center in Jasper, Tennessee. Among them were three co-workers, two patients and a drug representative. The transcript also revealed that his former wife had had two abortions, and that DesJarlais had admitted under oath that he and his former wife had recorded the phone conversation with his mistress. 

The "scandals" section of the article then concludes, "DesJarlais said on a conservative talk radio show that 'God has forgiven me' and asked 'fellow Christians' and constituents 'to consider doing the same.' " 

Well, the green is what's known as "a safe Republican district." DesJarlais's only competition has come from Republicans who in primaries have "run to the right" of him, for example on abortion, which he opposes, except for his wives and mistresses. 

Looking east

Maybe it's just a corollary to the rule about other people's lives seeming, compared to your own, full of intrigue, but I can't stop reading up on the election-doings of our neighbor to the east. Wisconsin has a reputation for being the most gerrymandered state in the country. The disparity between what happens in statewide races, and what happens in elections within districts defined by Republican map-makers in the state legislature, reveals a crime against democracy. Here are the results of statewide races in the 2022 midterm elections:

• The incumbent Republican US senator was re-elected by 50.4 to 49.4 percent
• The incumbent Democratic governor was re-elected by 51.1 to 47.8 percent
• The incumbent Democratic secretary of state was re-elected by 48.3 to 48.0 percent
• The incumbent Democratic attorney general was re-elected by 50.7 to 49.3 percent
• In an open race for state treasurer, the Republican defeated the Democrat by 49.6 to 48.1 percent

In these five statewide races, the Democratic candidate received, on average, 49.52 percent of votes cast, to 49.02 percent for the Republican. Really close! Wisconsin is an evenly divided state. 

But in races waged within districts, these same voters, on the same ballots, elected Republicans to represent them in six of the state's eight congressional districts, a pickup of one seat for the GOP. Meanwhile Republicans were elected in 64 of the 99 State Assembly districts. A 50-50 aggregate vote yielded virtually a 2-to-1 majority in representation for one party. The title of a recent book on gerrymandering is Ratf∗∗ked.

I'll admit that Democrats, by choosing to live together in Milwaukee and Dane (home to Madison) Counties, make it easy for Republicans to achieve these results. The point, though, is that if Democrats had a majority in the legislature—and, if the will of the voters mattered, they very well might—then they could draw the maps, and the result would be very different. It's not as if voters are determining the direction the state takes by choosing this candidate or that one. It's more like the Republican candidates are choosing who the voters will be in this election and that one, so that Republicans can determine what direction the state takes, voters be damned. 

And it's not as if Wisconsin isn't a key state in national politics. It might easily be the "tipping point" state in a presidential election. Thanks to the electoral college, everything hinges on the outcome in a half dozen "swing" states—and if the Democrat wins Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Nevada, while the Republican ekes it out in Georgia and Arizona, then Wisconsin chooses the president, notwithstanding the fact that in this scenario the Democrat is likely winning the national vote by a substantial margin. Against this backdrop, a Minnesota Democrat naturally wonders what makes Wisconsin so much more friendly to the GOP than our fair state. The neighbors seem similar, especially if you set aside record in Big Ten basketball games and per capita alcohol consumption. Just a casual perusal of election maps reveals, however, that the suburbs of Milwaukee are way more Republican-friendly than those of the Twin Cities. I do not understand why this should be but it's a true fact. Election results are commonly broken down by county. The Twin Cities have three counties—Anoka, Washington, and Dakota—that border the home counties of Minneapolis and St. Paul without encompassing a ton of exurban territory. Their rough equivalents in Wisconsin are the so-called WOW counties that encircle Milwaukee County—Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington. Here are the results of the 2020 presidential election in these six counties:

MINNESOTA
Anoka: Trump 49.7%, Biden 47.8%
Washington: Biden 53.5%, Trump 44.2%
Dakota: Biden 55.7%, Trump 41.8%

WISCONSIN
Waukesha: Trump 59.6%, Biden 38.8%
Ozaukee: Trump 55.2%, Biden 43.1%
Washington: Trump 68.4%, Biden 30.3%

I think the WOW counties might be on average larger in area, with the result that they include proportionally more exurban precincts, but that can only account for a fraction of the disparate verdicts rendered by suburban voters in adjoining states. As I say, I don't know what the explanation is, but I'm pretty sure Milwaukee is the outlier: across the northern tier of states, from Philadelphia to Seattle, election results in the suburbs of big metros resemble those in the Twin Cities.

Thank God for Madison! 

And, speaking of Madison, it's interesting to track results over time. Here is the percentage of the vote received in Madison's Dane County, first by Hillary Clinton in the presidential election of 2016, then by Biden in 2020, then by Democratic governor Tony Evers in his 2022 re-election, then by Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz (who won last week by 11 points in a race in which she ran on abortion rights and "fair maps," against a lawyer who carried water for Trump in the state):

71.4
75.5
78.6
82.0

I suppose the bad news for Democrats is that this trend can't continue for long, 100% being a ceiling. But here in chronological sequence—Clinton, Biden, Evers, Protasiewicz—are the same four data points for each of the three WOW counties:

Waukesha: 33.5, 38.8, 39.5, 41.9
Ozaukee: 37.8, 43.1, 44.2, 47.7
Washington: 27.4, 30.3, 30.7, 33.6

The Democratic share of the vote keeps increasing, in a big Democratic county as well as the most populous Republican ones, and it matters not whether the Republican is Trump or someone who might plausibly be described as "Trump without the baggage." A hobbyist like me thinks that the instinct toward self-preservation should cause Republicans to find a new faith—but, then, not being in the cult, I regard its rituals with the uncomprehending wonderment of a heretic. 

Concerning discerning

Of course, this White House sides with the mob, not with the democratically elected government of Tennessee. These people would be defending January 6 if it was their party. https://t.co/NnDPmAB1kw

— Dan McLaughlin (@baseballcrank) April 6, 2023

@baseballcrank probably also has trouble distinguishing between a technical foul in a basketball game and Sherman's March to the Sea. The disease is going around. I see that wingers are pretty upset to discover that the judge in Trump's hush money case contributed $35 to a Democratic party campaign fund. Wait till they hear about Justice Thomas's vacations! 

I should just read the sports page, where to date the game stories about the Twins have been cheerful 71.4% of the time. 

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, so Democratic members of the House in safe districts were in the best place 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.  

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. 

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. 

Regular Joe turns up on Project Runway

Henry David Thoreau advised against participating in any enterprise requiring new clothes. According to a corollary, only people of dubious character devote a lot of care and attention to the question of what to wear. I'm sure there must be counterexamples, but the experience of watching this year's SOTU didn't persuade me I'm being unfair. Regarding wardrobe criticism, I can be bipartisan: Republican on the left, Democrat to the right, possibly the most absurd specimens of their respective parties, both striking a characteristic pose in the Capitol on Tuesday evening.

 

Back to the Republicans. I don't know why they get so upset when it's pointed out that they're enemies of Social Security. The government deducts money from every American paycheck, funnels it into a gigantic government trust fund, then redistributes the proceeds to people who, in the government's estimation, need the money more than the people who just earned it. I think there's a word for that, which may account in some measure for the term Social Security. It seems odd that Republicans should think they can wear out their vocal cords yammering about the horrors of socialism and then, without causing anyone to laugh, feign outrage over being depicted as enemies of a straightforwardly socialistic program.

Leak investigation: almost as if they didn't want to find out

I've been reading about the Supreme Court's evidently failed attempt to figure out who leaked the draft of Alito's decision overturning Roe. They interviewed almost a hundred employees and everyone said, "I didn't do it." Imagine that! Did they interview the justices? You couldn't tell from the first press release—I guess they didn't predict there'd be curiosity on that point. Now they say that they did speak with the justices and none of them fessed up, either. But all nine were helpful, answered every question in addition to offering some of their own, and, in the end, they were not asked, as the other employees all were, to sign a sworn affidavit stating, "I didn't do it." 

It's been widely reported that the public's confidence in the Supreme Court is at the level of the juice in the puddle below the dumpster. I hope they weren't expecting a boost from this "investigation." Assume, for the sake of argument, that all the Court's employees are willing to lie to save their ass but that none would go so far as to commit perjury. In that case, there's only nine suspects left. My prime suspect, Alito himself, bursting with pride of authorship, is still alive, so there is no reason yet to ask penance for my cynicism. 

I offer this argument only for its possible impact upon others. I personally do not doubt that Supreme Court justices in general, and Alito in particular, would lie under oath as well as in other circumstances. It's one of the things Sen. Collins and I agree about. 

Notes on senescence

It seems there are few things like a significant snow event to bring into view signs of encroaching senescence.

1. I decided to do the snow removal in shifts, the better to preserve my energies. Heading out for my second go at it, I discovered that my neighbor had already finished the job. Probably viewed my efforts from the window and knew he never wanted to see anything that pathetic again. 

2. Then the plow went by and filled in the end of my driveway with approximately 3 tons of frozen crustiness. I was out hacking away at it this lunchtime when my daughter got dropped off by her friend's dad. We exchanged meteorological pleasantries, as Minnesotans will, and then, pulling away, he advised me to "be careful." 

3. A day or two before the storm, I'm stopped at a red light in south Minneapolis and a young woman, out for a run, crosses in front of me. I follow her with my eyes, naturally. As she approaches the opposite curb, she takes a short stride in order to land at the front edge of a puddle, then springs over it with her next long stride. I used to be able to do that!

4. Last time I was in an uber I was somewhat younger than I am now. Still, I guess I was old enough so that, taking my seat, I observed the driver checking me out in the rear-view mirror before changing the radio from a hip-hop station to MPR. Probably should be thankful it wasn't right-wing talk! 

5. Since I've strayed from the original theme of winter's memento mori, I might as well mention what I take to be the best bit of commentary on the recently concluded clown show in the US Capitol—someone, taking note of Kevin McCarthy's craven concessions to the certifiable lunatics in his caucus, tweeted that, in exchange for the votes needed to be elected Speaker, he had promised to use the gavel only for the purpose of pounding himself in the crotch. 

 

It profits him not

Came in from shoveling snow, turned on a cable news channel, and now I'm thinking that Kevin McCarthy should be trying to organize the House Republican caucus into an "electoral college." It's a proven remedy for the problem sometimes referred to as "can't win enough votes."

Seriously, though, there is now someone on saying, "Today's nonsense shows Republicans aren't interested in governing." He appears pretty well dressed considering he must have just awakened from a years-long sleep. 

Another bit of CW relates to McCarthy supposedly having "sold his soul" to advance his political career. Usually, as in the gospel of Matthew (16:26), the phrase refers to abandoning principles in order to get money, power, some worldly good. In A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More upbraids Rich, who, in exchange for perjured testimony, has been appointed attorney general of Wales: "Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales?"

Poor McCarthy! He "sold his soul" and now it looks as if he won't even get the shitty little prize. 

 

Musky

You can tell that Elon Musk is one of these think-outside-the-box, business geniuses because a person of ordinary abilities who ran an electric car company would never think to overpay for a social media company and then while away time shit-posting on his new toy about the people most apt to buy an electric car. The car company's stock has taken a hit—

—but the market is checkers and Elon's one of these guys who strolls from table to table playing chess games simultaneously against 24 overmatched grandmasters. If he were president of Ukraine, instead of that badly dressed fellow, Putin would beg to touch his robe. 

Drinking with DeSantis?

"I voted for the one I'd rather have a beer with" must be among the dumbest justifications of voting behavior you hear—although, now that I've typed those words, I'm thinking that if I had heard all the justifications this one about a tavern partner might have to be moved far, far down the list. It's among the dumbest of the ones that is regularly spoken out loud. I believe I first heard of it in connection with George W. Bush's supposed high "likability" factor—anyone would rather have a beer with him than with stiff wonky Al Gore, it was said. Did anyone at the time point out that you could not have a beer with Bush, a dry drunk?  It says something that the impossibility of it is just the beginning of the problems. Actually, I think I'd rather drink alone, since presidential candidates self-select for possessing unattractive quantities of ambition and self-regard. Fine. It's an unusual job, so maybe an unusual person: the exact opposite of what is indicated by "someone I'd like to have a beer with." 

Such were my desultory thoughts after seeing recently on the news a clip of Ron DeSantis snarling at someone. For the people who'd want to have a beer with him, the attraction could only be the pass to get all mean and bigoty even before alcohol starts abetting the nastiness. Putting to one side the meaning of his words, I doubt most people could stand to listen to that high-pitched, nasally whine of complaint for the time it takes to slam one and head for the door, let alone for four years. Yet among Republicans he currently occupies an exalted slot between the angels and Trump. What is the high-minded reason for the cachet? I predict he flames out, like Scott Walker, the former boy wonder governor of Wisconsin who so far as I know does not these days even have a show on Fox. Whom the gods would destroy they first allow to win an election or two. 

 

Herschel sprints to the wire

 

If there's a loving and omnipotent God who cares about America, today is the last one in which making fun of Herschel Walker will seem like permissible fair play instead of the kind of easy cruelty that causes smart asses to make fun of kids who ride to school on the short bus. For today it's still possible that Walker could be elected to the US Senate. Here he is, countering the suggestion of a political reporter that Georgia Republicans might not vote in today's runoff election since Democrats have already clinched majority-status in the Senate:

They're not [less motivated] because they know right now that the House will be even so they don't want to understand what is happening right now. You get the House, you get the committees. You get all the committees even, they just stall things within there. So if we keep a check on Joe Biden, we just going to keep a check on him. 

This is just barely coherent enough to persuade me that Walker doesn't know that he's running for US Senate—which, you know, is different from the House of Representatives, not that he's up to speed on the partisan alignment of the incoming House.

Ladies, cut us some slack, not all men who beat up the women in their lives are this dumb. 

After a hard weekend of nothing much at all

 

I've spent most of the long weekend verifying Paul Westerberg's maxim about how it's possible "to work up a mean mean thirst after a hard day of nothing much at all." That's him, above, performing solo "Here Comes a Regular"; the studio version, from the Replacements' Tim, is here.

I felt most alive while watching the Gopher football game. It might be Wisconsin's new thing to be just a little worse than us each year. Took some doing in 2022. Soon as the exhilaration of winning a close game against a hated rival had worn off, I asked myself: What's the best team we've beaten this season? In the nonconference schedule, we won games against New Mexico State (which finished the year 5-6), Western Illinois (0-11), and Colorado (1-11). Our wins in conference games, with the opponent's final conference record indicated, were against Michigan State (3-6), Rutgers (1-8), Nebraska (3-6), Northwestern (1-8), and Wisconsin (4-5). We had the good fortune not to have either Michigan or Ohio State on our schedule. We did play Penn State, the third best team in the league. They beat us 45-7.

In other competitions, I had the radio on this morning and heard the show's host ask Mara Liasson, NPR's Washington correspondent, what her biggest takeaway from the midterm election was. She said it was that the country, besides being bitterly divided, is also evenly divided. She noted that four states generally regarded as "swingy" moved definitively toward either the Republicans (Florida, Ohio) or the Democrats (Pennsylvania, Michigan). By her estimate, that leaves only four true "swing states," which are not on the whole particularly big ones: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Wisconsin. 

My takeaways from her takeaway are, first, it's absurd that, thanks to the electoral college, the voters in well over 40 states are going to be ignored in the next presidential campaign. Get rid of the electoral college: most votes, from sea to shining sea, wins! Second, since we're stuck with the Rube Goldberg machine into the foreseeable future, trading the electoral votes of Florida and Ohio for those of Pennsylvania and Michigan is a decent deal for the Dems. Then, of the 46 states that Liasson thinks pretty clearly lean one way or the other, 22 (including D.C.), with 260 electoral votes, are blue, and 25, with 235 electoral votes, are red. You need 270 to win and the electoral vote counts of the four swing states are Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Nevada (6), and Wisconsin (10). You can see that, in this scenario, Nevada hardly matters, either: to win, the Republican would have to run the table in Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin—Nevada plus the two biggest of the other three isn't enough, though at that point the outcome in two congressional districts in the states (Maine and Nebraska) that don't award all their electoral votes to the statewide winner could become determinative. 

Do such calculations seem bizarre? Put yet another tally mark in the electoral college's crowded debit column. 

Tournament of Champions

When I issue directives or make pronouncements, my daughters have begun augmenting their eye rolls with "Ok Boomer." It's adorable! I fight back by cheering for Sam, the old guy to the right, in the just concluded Jeopardy Tournament of Champions. But then I saw the below clip of Amy Schneider testifying before the Ohio legislature about some dumb law the state was considering in order to make trouble for trans kids.

She's such a mensch that I'm okay with her beating out my demographic colleague for the $250,000 grand prize. Who is the comedian—Beth Stelling?—who says, "I'm from Ohio. A lot of people who live there don't realize that you can pack a bag and . . . leave forever." JD Vance would be one more reason to relocate.

On the other hand, considering our goofy electoral system, the migration should probably be in the other direction. There's more of us but we don't live in the right places. Poor distribution. Colonize the red states!

I wonder what Amy thinks about the shooting at the LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs. Compared to a few hundred cops at Uvalde, the club patrons made pretty quick work of the active shooter. Trying to think of a new slogan. Best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a few unarmed queers who've had a couple?

By the way, it is Beth Stelling. Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Reading the Times

Today's New York Times story concerning another Supreme Court leak is in some ways quite an odd linguistic performance. The story is here. It begins:

As the Supreme Court investigates the extraordinary leak this spring of a draft opinion of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a former anti-abortion leader has come forward claiming that another breach occurred in a 2014 landmark case involving contraception and religious rights. 

In a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and in interviews with the New York Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case.

It's the passive voice in the first sentence of the second paragraph that seems awkward and unusual. The passive voice is what linguists call a construction that uses a form of the verb "to be" in order to leave out the sentence subject or agent—you might say, for example, that "the ball was hit" instead of "John hit the ball." In this case, the second paragraph informs us only that Schenck "was told" of the outcome. Maybe in his interviews with the Times Schenck didn't say who told him?

No, that's not it, but it seems like it's really hard for the Times to get to the point. Here's the fourth paragraph:

Mr. Schenck's allegation creates an unusual, contentious situation: a minister who spent years at the center of the anti-abortion movement, now turned whistle-blower; a denial by a sitting justice; and an institution that shows little outward sign of getting to the bottom of the recent leak of the abortion ruling or of following up on Mr. Schenck's allegation.

I was at first confused by the phrase "a denial by a sitting justice," though if I'd stopped to consider I suppose I might have hit on the conclusion that Schenck must have told the Times that a sitting justice was the source of the leak. It would be odd, however, that the identity of a Supreme Court leaker was held back until after his denial had been clumsily mentioned. Anyway, I plunged unthinkingly ahead, and eventually got to the story's ninth and tenth paragraphs:

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck's star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by the Times. "Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails," she wrote.

Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that's exactly what happened. . . .

Why so much wheel spinning in the mud before divulging that Justice Alito goes out to dinner with Christian evangelical activists and lets them know that he's authored the opinion that will make them and their friends at Hobby Lobby happy? "You can get your PR releases ready because Sam Alito's come through again!" Seems like you shouldn't have to turn inside the paper from page 1 to receive this information. 

I'm coming toward the view that Alito is the likely source of the leak in the abortion case as well. If his lips were loose in 2014, there's no reason to think they'd be sealed in 2022. The probable motive in the abortion case would have been to lock in the decision before anyone squishy defected. Imagine the abuse that, say, Kavanaugh would suffer if it was known that his late change of heart or mind allowed Roe to stand. I'm tempted to think, too, that once you've admitted Alito as a young man must have done well on standardized tests measuring academic potential, you've exhausted his store of attractive human traits. 

Reading the story is like wallowing in stinky mire but there is one moment of unintended comic relief:

In the interview, Mrs. Wright said that while she did not have her calendars from those days, she believed the night in question involved a dinner at the Alitos' home during which she fell ill. She said that the justice drove her and her husband back to their hotel, and that this might have been the news she wanted to share with Mr. Schenck.

I'm trying to imagine Mr. Schenck's disappointment when, having been warned against email as a vehicle of communication for Mrs. Wright's portentous news, he placed a phone call and was told only that she'd left the party early feeling ill. She's a high-toned old Christian lady and also a liar. For a recent Times story that's sickening through and through, no comic relief, try this one.

 

Fox news lands a blow against drug abuse

Sean Hannity plays dumb, says he doesn’t know where the predictions of a red wave came from. So the Washington Post lets him have it with a supercut of his own Fox News predicting a red wave. pic.twitter.com/Uq2J3PMdlw

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) November 12, 2022

 

Now that this video clip exists in the world, there will never again be a reason for me to shoot heroin into my veins.

Burying the lede

The opening to an Associated Press story on Tuesday’s elections for Wisconsin State Assembly:

Wisconsin Democrats scored a major victory in Tuesday's election when they staved off Republican hopes to win supermajorities that would have allowed them to legislate without fear of vetoes by a Democratic governor.

The Democrats remain a feeble minority in heavily gerrymandered Wisconsin. But they just managed to retain enough seats to prevent Republicans from the two-thirds majorities that could have overridden the vetoes that Gov. Tony Evers used frequently in his first term. 

Republicans needed to flip five Assembly seats and one in the Senate. They got the Senate seat when Romaine Quinn defeated Kelly Westlund for an open seat in far northwestern Wisconsin. 

But Democrats defended three of the six seats Republicans had targeted in the Assembly. . . .

Evers vetoed nearly 150 GOP bills during his first term. With enough votes to override Evers, the GOP could have dramatically reworked state politics over the next two-year legislative session—including reshaping election administration to their advantage in a key battleground state.

Um, pardon me AP, but you've buried the lede with that fleeting allusion in the second graf to "heavily gerrymandered Wisconsin." The statewide vote tally for the Assembly is incomplete, but Wisconsin Democrats won the races for governor, secretary of state, and attorney general. It's a 50-50 state, unless it's 51-49 in favor of the Dems. Yet on account of gerrymandering the Dems are reduced to celebrating the "major victory" of having "staved off" the prospect of a Republican supermajority in both houses of the state legislature: We got as many votes as they did, probably a few more, and as a result the expert map drawers will have a veto-proof majority in only the Senate! In the Assembly, our deficit will be no worse than 35-64! Whew!

I love how the story says that Republicans, had they done only a little better on Tuesday, would then have been in position to "reshape election administration to their advantage." LOL! 

Man on the street speaks

About 1-in-4 Americans die of heart disease.

American: I'll have a cheeseburger with fries!

The chance of winning the Powerball jackpot is less than 1-in-292 million.

American: You can't win if you don't buy a ticket!

Here is journalist Elizabeth Kolbert reviewing the literature on "Why Facts Don't Change Our Mind." I was put in mind of this general topic of irrationality while growing depressed by "voter interviews" on TV news. One guy says he could fill his tank for $50 when Trump was president and now it costs $200. Let's see, gas today costs about $3.70 per gallon, so x is to $3.70 as $50 is to $200: x is then 93¢.

You could not buy gas for 93¢ a gallon when Trump was president. In fact you couldn't buy it for twice that. It did cost less: Covid was raging, demand was down, and meanwhile the president was carrying on about the wonders of Ivermectin, to say nothing of the possible curative properties of ingesting bleach or shining an ultraviolet light up your arse ("through the skin," to be precise, "or by some other method"). Alas, he was then diverted by the need to overturn an election.

If his side does well on Tuesday, at least it will prove elections are free, fair, and secure again.

Second chance in Jeopardy, with a dig at Lauren Boebert

Some online training I had to take included the above image from a Jeopardy college tournament show. The picture isn't clear, but the category the young Caucasian brainiacs avoided for as long as they could is "African American History." You'd think the political indoctrination and Woke dogma that Republicans assure us kids are subjected to at college would make them all eager to shout, "Who were the Tuskegee Airmen?" But, no, TikTok celebrities for a thousand, Ken.

Speaking of Jeopardy, there is a Second Chance tournament going on right now. Contestants who lost close games to Super Champions like Amy Schneider have been invited back to play against one another in a sort of Noble Losers bracket—two brackets, actually, with the winner of each advancing to the upcoming Tournament of Champions, where they will have a chance to avenge themselves further. I have a crush on the first Second Chance qualifier, Jessica Something-or-Other from Nashville. (Forty-five years ago I knew the full names of my crushes.) I got used to cheering for Jessica when on her first show she was giving Matt Amodio, who had won like a thousand games in a row, a run for his money. Then in Final Jeopardy Matt implausibly couldn't answer a question in the geography/history field, and Jessica didn't bet as much as the other challenger, who won the game. Then that "other challenger" won like ten more games in a row, so you could say that, without ever winning a game, Jessica played .500 ball against Super Champions. Now she lapped the field in her Second Chance bracket, and she seems like a normal person, not an idiot savant or any of their near relatives. 

My favorite in the other bracket is Do-Hyoung Park, a St. Paul native who studied computer science at Stanford and now covers the Twins for mlb.com. Renaissance man! He had the misfortune of going against Amy Schneider, who, assuming Ken Jennings has no secrets, is the greatest transgender Jeopardy player of all time. Do stayed with her throughout the game and would have won if she'd drawn a blank in Final Jeopardy. She didn't, of course. Do's Second Chance game airs tomorrow (Wednesday the 26th). I'm glad he wasn't in Jessica's bracket as its torture when ambiguity infects your rooting interest. 

Someone who's not a candidate for Celebrity Jeopardy? Lauren Boebert, Republican of Colorado. Can someone explain to me why this data reflects poorly on Biden?

Here’s how many individuals on the FBI’s terror watch list CBP arrested over the last 6 years:

FY’22 : 98
FY’21 : 15
FY’20 : 3
FY’19 : 0
FY’18 : 6
FY’17 : 2

Border security is national security, and we’re all in more danger thanks to @joebiden.

— Rep. Lauren Boebert (@RepBoebert) October 24, 2022

He arrests terrorists and has also been caught on tape telling his son that he loves him. Scandalous! Boebert was recently reading a Bible verse off a teleprompter when she became confused by the phrase "wanton killing." She interrupted herself to admit she was clueless about the connection between homicide and the Chinese menu item known as a wonton. According to the polls, Kevin McCarthy has only a few more weeks to wait before he can make her the chair of a congressional committee. 

Facts versus the crime "narrative"

 

I pointed out, here, that homicide rates are highest in red states. Since Republicans try to win votes with tales of out-of-control violent crime in big bad blue cities, I have often wondered to myself why a Democrat never seems to cite data pertaining to the issue. It's just a fact, for instance, that the states with the five highest homicide rates are, in order, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas. Maybe hot weather causes armed citizens to shoot one another? I don't know, and neither do Republicans. Illinois, a favorite whipping boy of the Republicans on account of Chicago, does crack the top 10 at number 9—which means, by the logic of the complaint, that it's doing better than the bottom five and also better than South Carolina and Tennessee (numbers 6 and 7, respectively). 

I doubt it was because she received my telepathically transmitted advice, but I see now that the Democratic challenger in Oklahoma's gubernatorial race pointed out in a debate that, under the Republican incumbent, the state has higher rates of violent crime than either California or New York. The video of the entire debate is above; the exchange I'm referring to begins at the 41:00 mark. The reaction of the Republican governor is sort of funny. He laughingly denies that it's true and appeals to the audience: "Oklahomans, do you believe that we have higher crime than New York or California?" The audience, and even the debate moderators, seem to think it's a wild charge: "We'll fact check that," says one of the questioners. When he does, he'll discover that she's right. Of course there are fewer homicides and other violent crimes committed in Oklahoma than in New York or California. But the number of these crimes per 100,000 population is somewhat higher in Oklahoma, and an Oklahoman is more likely to get shot than a Californian or a New Yorker. 

Actually, I think the fact checking has occurred, because the other day Marc Thiessen, a wingnut columnist whose delusions are published on the editorial page of the Washington Post, wrote a piece dismissing "the red state murder problem" as a "bogus claim" intended to divert attention from a raging crime epidemic in Democratic cities. He doesn't deny that violent crime rates tend to be highest in red states, but argues that this is because of all the criming in "Democrat-run cities" like New Orleans, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Birmingham, Alabama. Without these cities, says Thiessen, crime rates in the red states would drop significantly.

But this is no argument at all. Blue states have "Democrat-run" cities, too. St. Louis and Kansas City are in Missouri; New Orleans is in Louisiana; Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland are in California; and New York City is in New York. Rates of violent crime are considerably higher in Missouri and Louisiana than in California and New York. Why? Thiessen's column is just gaslighting, but, if I was determined to take him seriously, I'd say his solution to the riddle must be that blue cities in red states are hell holes compared to blue cities in blue states. If you value your life and live in Birmingham, move to L.A. before it's too late! 

He's just a kid who's 4!

 

I mentioned, here, Jennifer Senior—mostly her journalistic accounts of the social science relating to human happiness. She's also the author of a book about parenting called All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting. She took the title from a chance conversation she had at a playground with a new dad who, when she asked how he found fatherhood, replied that it was "all joy and no fun at all." Well do I remember wanting—yearning—to be left alone on the playground bench while the kids played, but of course someone's unhappy every other minute, and then they want to be pushed on the tire swing, and then someone falls and gets hurt, and then, and then . . . no fun at all. I think the "all joy" was mainly the guy's way of acknowledging how he knew he was supposed to feel.

But the playground was no match for the peculiar, numbing torture of children's TV programming. The worst show ever was Caillou, about this Charlie-Brown looking boy and his perfect little kids' world, the loving parents, the doting grandparents, the friendly townspeople, and, above all, the grating jingle:

I'm just a kid who's 4,
Each day I grow some more,
I like exploring on Caillou!
So many things to do,
Each day is something new,
I'll share them with you on Caillou!
My world is turning, changing each day,
With mommy and daddy and finding my way!

In the typical climactic scene, Caillou visits, say, the fire station, where the firefighters invite him to climb aboard their biggest truck and toot the horn while working the steering wheel. They tell him he'll be a great firefighter one day, if he wants. They give him a fire helmet and everyone beams and laughs. After he's climbed down, his proud parents embrace the little egghead as the theme song kicks in. He's just a kid who's 4, each day he grows some more, Caillou!

I suffered this vivid flashback while watching political news on TV. It seems that Herschel Walker, the Republican US Senate candidate from Georgia, has gone on some field trips to police stations and the nice cops gave him "badges" that he now displays to anyone who'll listen to a potential senator's version of show-and-tell. Well, it's probably better for him and his campaign that people are talking about his toy badges rather than his secret children, the women he's beat up, and the abortions for which he's either advocated or paid. His official position on abortion is evidently that he's pro-life except in those cases where he's the one who knocked her up. Our country has a population of 330 million, a hundred of whom are members of the Senate, and there's about a 50-50 chance that he'll be one of them. Feeling small for having been nauseated by Caillou.

Electoral data points

1. 

If I'm clicking about The Web at night and discover suddenly that it's 3 in the morning, the site I'm most likely at, if not baseball-reference.com, is this "extremely detailed map of the 2020 election." It shows the result of the last presidential election at the precinct level—that is, the vote totals reported out of every polling place (almost) in the land. It's full of curiosities, like the one pictured above, which displays the result in one of the rare precincts in Los Angeles County carried by Trump. As you can see, it's in Beverly Hills. You can make out two main roads within the precinct. The east-west one that divides the precinct into a northerly and southerly half is Sunset Boulevard. The north-south road that intersects Sunset Boulevard near the precinct's eastern edge is Rodeo Drive. If you use the above link to go to the site itself, you can zoom in to a level where those street names are labeled. I wanted to stay out far enough to suggest how anomalous the Beverly Hills result was, compared to the surrounding territory. Biden carried Los Angeles County by 71 to 28 percent. In the dark blue precincts, his advantage was no less than 85 to 15 percent. But in the Beverly Hills precinct where the head of the National Rifle Association buys his Italian suits—your dues hard at work, schmucks!—Trump won by 19 points.

I admit that highlighting the result in a single precinct (though in the context of the ones around it) is a pretty sketchy method of rebutting the frequently heard claim that Democrats are "elitist snobs" while Republicans are the party of "working people." More scientific methods might include, for example, exit poll data indicating Biden carried voters earning less than $50,000 per year by 57 to 42 percent. He also carried those with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 by a nearly identical 56 to 43 percent margin. Trump, however, won voters with 6-figure incomes by 54 to 43 percent. These macro data points tend to confirm the micro one from Beverly Hills, though in my opinion the micro one is a little more eye-catching—like the shoppers along Rodeo Drive.

The exit poll data, overall, are about as interesting as the extremely detailed map. Here's just one more revealing bit, out of many. "Are you white and a born-again Christian?" Of those answering No, 62 percent voted for Biden. Of those answering Yes, 76 percent voted for Trump. It's easy to see why.

 

 

Queens and princes, senators and footballers

Stunned to read that Prince Andrew didn't want Charles to be King, and even lobbied the Queen to implement a work-around. Big, if true. 

Been reading about Brett Favre, too. Maybe I should be thankful that I don't have a butt-load of money as no Republican official would ever think to tempt me with a scheme whereby a few million dollars intended for impoverished Mississippians gets “misdirected” to my accounts. Apparently Favre's defense is that he had no idea where the money came from. Plausible—but, if he's that dumb, he should run for US Senate, like Herschel Walker. In a few years, then, the three stupidest senators could be Tommy Tuberville (former head football coach at Ole Miss and Auburn), Herschel Walker (former star running back at the University of Georgia), and Brett Favre (former star quarterback at Southern Mississippi). I realize Favre isn't running for high office, but he's grifting, so it's only a matter of time.

Before disagreeing, note that I said stupidest, not vilest. The vilest is probably Ted Cruz, of Texas. I'm going through the SEC in my head, thinking of their schools and senators, an exercise that reminded me just now of Marsha Blackburn. She represents Tennessee in the US Senate and may be dumber than any of the footballers. Lincoln should just have let the South go. It would be okay if these blockheads were senators from another country. 

Confession of error

This article, "Confession of Error on My Abortion Post," by a National Review writer, seems to me like the first cousin of a Freudian slip. The author, Andrew McCarthy, had criticized Sen. Lindsey Graham's call for a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks gestational age, on the ground that it would prevent states from adopting stricter limits, including comprehensive bans with no exceptions for rape such as have already been adopted in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Texas. But Graham's proposed federal law would do no such thing. States that wanted comprehensive bans could still have them. The 15-week ban would apply nationally to states that, for example, wanted to retain the same access to abortion as existed under Roe. 

My take on this is that McCarthy assumed Graham, a politician, was attempting to dress the wound the Dobbs decision has inflicted on Republican prospects in the midterms. One can imagine an agreement, advertised as a compromise, whereby Republicans, in order to secure a nationwide ban after 15 weeks, would give up the extreme measures that have been enacted in a slew of red states. If Democrats voted against such a "compromise," Republicans could then ask: Who's extreme? McCarthy, however, doesn't want red states to have to live with a mere 15-week ban, even if it might be good politics.

But he was wrong about what the senator is proposing. Graham, too, is unwilling to force red states to permit abortions up to 15 weeks after fertilization. It's worth recalling, I think, that the winning argument at the Supreme Court was that the Constitution is silent on abortion and that states therefore should be able to do as they see fit regarding abortion policy. People like McCarthy and Graham celebrated the decision, but its logic was so "summer of '22." Now it's been a few weeks, football season has begun, and it develops that only states with legislatures and governors who agree with Graham and McCarthy should be left alone to do as they see fit. Graham, especially, wants the Big Bad Federal Government to enact a national law telling Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois, Minnesota, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and others that what they'd like to do, which is what they have been doing for years, is now going to be illegal. "Federalism if you agree with me; a national ban for all who don't."

It's sort of comical to see one nut having to apologize for assuming, falsely, that another nut feels constrained by logic, coherence, consistency, and an election-year wish to appear "reasonable."  

Kids go to “school,” education does not occur

We senior citizens like to think of ourselves as old hands who've seen it all, but twice a week I'm shocked by something, and one of the two for this week is going to be this article, in The New York Times, about private Jewish religious schools in New York. It begins:

The Hasidic Jewish community has long operated one of New York's largest private schools on its own terms, resisting any outside scrutiny of how its students are faring. 

But in 2019 the school, the Central United Talmudical Academy, agreed to give state standardized tests in reading and math to more than 1,000 students. 

Every one of them failed.

And continues:

The leaders of New York's Hasidic community have built scores of private schools to educate children in Jewish law, prayer and tradition—and to wall them off from the secular world. Offering little English and math, and virtually no science or history, they drill students relentlessly, sometimes brutally, during hours of religious lessons conducted in Yiddish. 

The result, a New York Times investigation has found, is that generations of children have been systematically denied a basic education, trapping many of them in a cycle of joblessness and dependency. . . .

The schools appear to be operating in violation of state laws that guaranty children an adequate education. Even so, the Times found, the Hasidic boys' schools have found ways of tapping into enormous sums of government money, collecting more than $1 billion in the past four years alone.

Maybe I’m shocked only because I’ve had a possibly exalted view of the intellectual acumen of Jews ever since I learned Albert Einstein was Jewish in the same week I heard Archie Bunker tell Edith that he didn’t want a Jewish doctor “unless I’m really sick.” Years ago I saw a movie, "Jesus Camp," about young kids sunk in the religious zealotry of the adults in their lives, and was nudged toward the view that Christian fundamentalism is child abuse. Now I’m thinking the phenomenon is ecumenical. It's outrageous that government supports with tax dollars religious schools that aren't teaching kids any math or science or literature (besides the Bible) while the politicians most eager to give them money are complaining about test scores at public schools and purging the libraries of books fundamentalists don't want to read. You can disagree with me, but I don´t want to hear from you till you’ve solved a problem from my 9th-grade public school kid’s math homework tonight:

Write an equation for the parabola that cuts the x-axis at 3, passes through (5, 12), and has an axis of symmetry at x = 2.

Apparently the children of Hasidim would benefit from being subjected to a standard form of adolescent torture that their elders, though plenty cruel, are in no position even to imagine.

College boy

Have been recalling lately how I paid for college. Items in the news, you know. Basically, my parents bankrolled my college education. I recall having a campus job washing dishes in the cafeteria a couple times per month. That was good for a trivial amount of pocket money. I also took out a loan for the relatively small portion of the big bill my parents didn't cover. I think maybe they thought it was important I have "skin in the game." Anyway, it was the kind of loan where you get the money, and you don't start paying it back till you're done with school and working. Then, you pay like on a mortgage, and interest accrues on the unpaid principle. When that day came, my dad gave me the money to pay off the loan, and he stepped into the shoes of my creditor—nice for me, as his interest rate was zero. Even nicer: after I'd been paying him awhile, he told me one day to forget about it, which until now I mostly did. 

My parents weren't rich—middle class tending toward affluent, at best. I think they were able to save a tidy sum for my college (and my sister's) because, one, they placed a high value on education—just as something good in itself, without reference to any goal of "getting ahead"—and, two, by inclination and upbringing they preferred to live modestly. Also, college didn't cost as much in the 1970s. I think I remember that in my sophomore year the cost of tuition, room and board at my college was $4050. The year before it had been under $4000, and it never reached $5000 while I was there. Today, it's $63,110. 

Probably you can see where I'm going with this. All things considered, I probably shouldn't be the one to bitch my guts out about the federal government forgiving $10,000 of student loan debt for people who lacked the advantages described above. It's true that loan forgiveness does not address the underlying problem of high college costs. But I wonder whether this argument doesn't turn against the people making it. Especially at public colleges and universities, a leading factor in rising costs is that they are not funded as generously by taxpayers as they were 40 years ago. The schools therefore cut programs and pass along costs to students, who take out loans and fall into debt at 20. The people who complain bitterly about loan forgiveness are the same ones vehemently opposed to what they regard as "lavish spending" on higher education. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that what they're actually against is people of modest means attaining a college education.

Unless, of course, they're good at sportzing. No one complains about taxpayers footing the college bill for good sportzers. You can read here about how the government allows affluent people to save for college while simultaneously reducing their tax bill. No one seems bitter about that, either.

 

Biden owes Americans an explanation on why a truck driver who didn't go to college is now responsible for the student loans of a rich lawyer.

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) August 24, 2022

And it does not tend to diminish my support for a policy initiative when I notice that those in opposition, including US senators, have no better tactic than to lie about it. Since "rich lawyers" earn more than $125k/year, they are barred from having their loans forgiven under the plan. 

Scott Shapiro tweets

 

I want to plug my favorite tweeter, law professor Scott Shapiro, who, as revelations connected to Trump's casual home storage of classified documents became more stupefying, tweeted:

As a young boy, I was at a creepy circus when an old witch hobbled over to me and whispered in my ear: "Donald Trump is not entirely trustworthy."

I see now that was just yesterday, when he was on fire. For example:

A real shame that the FBI never raided Hillary Clinton's home for her emails, because Republicans would have been forced by their own principles to defend Hillary.

I've seen enough: I'm ready to call the 2020 race for Joe Biden.

Interesting thought experiment: what if a Democrat had sensitive government information in her basement?

A couple days ago, he tweeted:

Programming announcement: I'm officially undecided about DeSantis. I will be doing my own research on the Florida governor and presenting my findings on here. More to come.

A few hours later:

I think I found an instance of Ron DeSantis acting hypocritically. Checking my analysis, but this could be big. 

Between those two, demonstrating his versatility:

The great economic innovation of NFTs is getting people to pay you for absolutely nothing in return.

A smattering from the past week or two:

It's unreasonable to demand coup leaders keep records secure during active rebellion.

When I was 10 years old, I was at the circus on a school trip. An old witch hobbled up to me and whispered in my ear: "The future is so bleak that Dick and Liz Cheney will be the voices of Reason."

Coup leaders warn of a second coup if DOJ prosecutes them for their first coup.

Finding it hard to believe that Trump would be careless or worse on matters of national security.

Trump had a standing order to repeal every law he broke.

I am losing faith in the Republican party to act responsibly.

He ruthlessly mocks "the Supreme Court of the Republican party" in an ongoing series of tweets along the line of, "SCOTUS rules 6-3 that Ted Cruz's wife actually is ugly." "Set to hear oral arguments on whether his dad killed Kennedy." "Cruz submits amicus brief arguing Trump is right, his dad really did it." I'm just making those up, in order to inject some semi-original content here, but you get the idea. Here's a real one:

Supreme Court rules 6-3 that Diabetes isn't a real disease because the word does not appear in the Constitution.

Shapiro tweeted out the above meme on the day Trump took the Fifth a couple hundred times in a deposition related to the New York attorney general's investigation of the Trump Organization's allegedly corrupt and unlawful business practices. Though unburdened by a legal education, I wonder whether there isn't a natural conclusion to be drawn—namely, that by answering truthfully Trump would declare his own guilt.

Anyhow, Shapiro has around 80k followers, which is probably not as many as would enjoy his tweet-sized commentary. 

The Geek surveys many scenes

"Gleeman and The Geek" is a podcast for fans of the Minnesota Twins. Gleeman refers to Aaron Gleeman, who covers the Twins for The Athletic. His podcast sidekick, "The Geek," is John Bonnes, the proprietor of Twins Daily, an online news site for all things Twins. I have a friend whose knowledge of the Twins' farm system calls to mind the adjective "encyclopedic." He's also fond of informing me, for instance, that Luis Arraez is batting .260 against left-handed pitchers (.360 against righties) and that the opposing team's batting average against Sonny Gray on his third trip through their batting order is .320. I used to think the devotion to Twins Studies exhibited by such esoteric knowledge must exceed that of fundamentalists for the Bible, but, having now driven to Wichita with him by way of a Des Moines stopover, I realize that his secret is listening to "Gleeman and The Geek" in the car and perusing Twins Daily on his iPad while ingesting the morning dose of caffeine. If he can store for recall one morsel per session, a conservative estimate, it's still more than enough to amaze a more casual fan.

On the podcast, which is both smart and funny, Gleeman comes off as the bigger geek while Bonnes supplies the laugh track. I come to discover, however, that Bonnes is a nerdish number grinder as well, and not only on the topic of baseball. Both guys live in downtown Minneapolis, and Bonnes, judging by his social media posts, is highly annoyed with the Grand Old Party's narrative concerning a crime wave that's made our city center not just unlivable but dangerous for the courageous suburban sojourner who wants to go to Target Field and maybe enjoy a late meal with a few drinks after the game. His retort is a series of posts called Today's Dangerous #DowntownDawdle, which consists mostly of selfies of him and his wife enjoying themselves in crowded downtown establishments. He always calls out the business name, and usually in the background you can see a plated sample from the menu and a few dead soldiers—neither he nor the Mrs. appear to be teetotalers. The subtext is plainly, "Another fun night without getting shot!" He's also a pretty good photographer: a recent variation was a picture of the just risen sun glistening off the sides of Minneapolis's glassy skyscrapers—it concluded with a thank-you to his dog, whose weak bladder I guess accounted for him being outside with his phone at that hour. 

Since The Geek has a lot of followers, it was just a matter of time before some people started replying with links to news stories about our mean streets. What about the lead on KARE 11 last night? Your head's in the sand! Get real about crime data! Sure, it's great for you in the prosperous North Loop, but what about the less privileged? (Everyone knows Republicans care deeply about the less privileged.) Bonnes's response was an exercise in social sabermetrics: he applied Minneapolis crime statistics to demographic data and roughed out the probability of being assaulted in downtown Minneapolis. Executive summary: if you dare drive east into downtown on 394 from, say, Wayzata, you might as well go to the game/concert/play/saloon/restaurant/show because, once out of your car, by far the most dangerous part of the evening is over. He notes that his calculation overstates your peril considerably if you are not the kind of person to get into drunken arguments with strangers in bars. 

I see that Dr. Scott Jensen, the GOP candidate for governor, has interviewed some 70ish ladies from outstate Minnesota somewhere who say they are too scared to come to Minneapolis anymore. Well, yeah, of course they're scared: they've been listening to you, not geeky John Bonnes! Anyway, what is the Republican solution to the problem candidates like Jensen are loudly diagnosing? Their brief is a lie, inasmuch as the point seems to be that violent crime is a problem mainly in big cities in blue states with Democratic mayors and governors. Of the ten states with the highest murder rates in 2020 (the last year for which comprehensive data is available), eight have voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election this century. Murder rates in Trump states were 40% higher than in states carried by Biden. The five states with the highest murder rates are, in order, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, and Missouri. Of the hundred biggest cities in America, only two are in these five states, but all five have a Republican governor and a Republican majority in their state legislature—not just for the last year or two, either. You can look these things up. It's as if the failing students were shouting advice about how the others should study. 

ADDENDUM

Tonight’s “Dangerous” #DowntownDawdle :
• #MNTwins win, duh.
• Nur-D album 💿
release party at First Ave
• midnight drinks 🍺 on O’Donovan’s patio
• a 2:30 AM walk (stumble?) thru downtown’s mean streets.
• Our status: yet again, still alive. 👫😉 pic.twitter.com/wTkjFcyE0W

— John Bonnes (@TwinsGeek) August 20, 2022

Arrested development?

She makes me laugh so hard. She’s a kindergarten teacher who makes videos talking to politicians the way she does her kindergartners. pic.twitter.com/INCNXoEEvu

— StaceyC.inKS (@StaceyCKs1) August 14, 2022

Since it's baseball season, I may not be up to speed, but it seems Trump's account of what's going on with federal government documents kept illegally at Mar-a-Lago has progressed from "Returned them all" to "They weren't classified" to "FBI planted classified documents in my beautiful home" to "I declassified them by deciding in my mind that they weren't classified anymore" to "But Hillary/Obama!" Lots of people are pointing out that Tuesday's lies are refuted by the new ones he tells on Wednesday (since, for example, he could not have declassified documents planted by the FBI), and that he can't himself declassify documents, though it hardly matters anyway, as the crimes he could be charged with don't require the documents to be classified. So as usual he's flooding the zone with fecal matter, and friend and foe alike are performing taxonomic labors upon his effluvia. But it seems to me the more pertinent questions are:

Why did you have these documents in your home?

Why didn't you give them back? 

What did you plan on doing with them?

It could well be that the darkest suspicions of some of his foes aren't justified. For instance, his motive might just be part of the everlasting vanity project: he wanted to show cool stuff to people he'd like to impress. The theory here would be, basically, that the guy who was president for four years has the sensibility of an adolescent male bragging to peers about having copped a feel in the back row of the theater. The wide-eyed attention of fatuous admirers is the grail. The tik-tok artist above thinks he stalled out long before adolescence. Who knows? I'm not a shrink, but it's obvious he's a mess.