I am migrating my main site to WordPress. I’m doing this for several reasons:
I’m really getting pissed off at Drupal. The current version is 8; I’m running 7, largely because the conversion to 8 is not feasible. There is no explanation or justification for making this difficult or impossible. But at some point, they’ll stop supporting the old version and I don’t want to wait until that day to make needed changes.
At one point, when I was particularly alarmed about my housing situation, I migrated the site to a host where I had to make some sacrifices. These sacrifices are problematic and appear irreversible.
I live in a relatively rural area. As I write this, the Camp Fire in Butte County, which destroyed Paradise and has been licking at Chico, is still burning and we are, something like 100 miles away, still breathing the smoke. The simple fact is that in California, we are having larger fires than when I was a kid, many more of them, and over a longer fire season. It’s probably safe to say that if an area not immediately along the coast has not burned already, it is at considerable risk of doing so. All of my research materials are archived on this site.
The procedure for updating the software is clunky as hell. I had a process for automating this, but it depends on a command-line client that has mysteriously stopped working on my server.
Paul Waldman, “Trump’s battle to destroy the Mueller investigation is officially doomed,” Washington Post, November 16, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2018/11/16/trumps-battle-to-destroy-the-mueller-investigation-is-officially-doomed/
There is a new research journal entry, “Unethical research.” It directly relates to my employment situation.
Updates
Originally published, November 7, 10:15 pm.
November 8, 5:43 am:
Ick. I deeply distrust survey methodology these days.[1] And of course the Wall Street Journal thinks the Democrats are moving to the left, a characterization that should only be accepted when we see party leadership acting decisively—rhetoric is woefully insufficient—to repudiate their decades-long practice of embracing and extending neoliberal and neoconservative policy. But for all their profound flaws, surveys may be the only hint of what’s going on with Polarization in the 2018 midterm election results and the Journal, apart from its own ideological bias, offers a pretty good analysis of the available survey data, such as it is.[2]
November 8, 1:45 pm:
Niall Stanage explains why Donald Trump’s imagination that he won the midterms isn’t completely off base.[3]
November 8, 11:24 pm:
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Trump administration had been too hasty in cancelling the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.[4] (Unauthorized Migrants)
Asylum seekers must present their claims at a legal port of entry under a new rule to be promulgated by the Trump administration.[5] (Unauthorized Migrants)
November 9, 7:01 am:
I’m a little late picking this up: Lawfare has weighed in on Jeff Sessions’ firing—er, umm, and this is an important distinction: resignation—and replacement with Matt Whitaker.[6]
November 10, 1:42 am:
You need some good news. I need some good news. So here’s Benjamin Wittes to reassure us that the Robert Mueller investigation will be just fine. He’s actually refuting a somewhat more pessimistic view, which is one way of pointing out that his view is not the only one on this topic. Time will tell, but he argues well.[7]
Back to bad news. I really haven’t been tracking the situation with U.S.-Cuba relations since Donald Trump came to power. In an avalanche of not merely bad but absolutely appalling news, it’s been one more thing than I can bear to focus on. But Pro Publica has just come out with an investigative report on mysterious sounds that apparently make diplomats and their dependents ill.[8]
Fucking hell. Click here for a video of somebody driving out of the Camp Fire in Butte County. I don’t care how you rationalize it: This took some nerve. Full stop.
It’s Donald Trump being an ass again, tweeting an allegation that California wildlands fires are the result of forest mismanagement. Firefighters point out that not all such fires occur in forests, that most California forests are under federal management,[9] and that “[i]t is the federal government that has chosen to divert resources away from forest management, not California.”[10] The firefighters aren’t talking about climate change but the simple fact is that, in stark contrast to when I was a child, we are having many, many more dry years than wet ones. The smoke being produced from the Camp Fire in Butte County, quite a ways away from the San Francisco Bay Area, is blanketing the Bay Area (including where I live in the North Bay, figure 2), reducing air quality to unhealthy levels, and drastically reducing visibility; to have such a fire this late in the year is simply unheard of. (Wildfires)
Added a pretty picture (figure 3) at the bottom of this post.
November 13, 2:25 pm:
I have now had two conversations with folks at the Census Bureau about the concerns I express in my research journal entry, “Unethical research.” These conversations go some ways toward allaying my concerns. I am considering what has been said.
November 13, 11:51 pm:
I have made my final decision about the Census Bureau job. I am resigning. For details, see the research journal entry, “Unethical research.”
There is news I have not yet archived. But for now, I’m going to bed. I’ll get to it tomorrow.
November 15, 01:15 am:
I’m not sure how much a taxonomy actually helps, but Uber has come up with 21 categories of Sexual Misconduct[11]
Donald Trump’s idiocy on California Wildfires continues to reverberate.[12]
November 15, 7:53 am:
Brexit is in a shambles, with Parliament unlikely to approve a deal[13] perceived (I think correctly) as “the worst of all worlds”[14] and also (again, I think correctly) as “the best deal Britain was ever going to get in the circumstances”[15] and as Theresa May faces a wave of cabinet resignations.[16] What has happened here is that neoliberals have prevailed despite the rebuke they should have received in the Brexit vote, as even Brexiteers want so-called “free” trade but want Britain “free” to negotiate its own “free” trade deals with the rest of the world at the same time that, politically, 1) the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland must remain open and 2) the United Kingdom must remain united.[17] If you look at the citations, here, you might notice some of them are months old. That’s because the problems really haven’t changed.
I should also point out, regarding claims that there was indeed a “blue wave” after all, that if you have to keep saying something is something, it probably isn’t that something. A number of races remain too close to call; that so many remained in dispute days after the election, ought to, but clearly does not, inspire more than a little humility in claims of “victory.”
November 16, 01:16 am:
Fintan O’Toole has a smart analysis of the unspoken conflicts that bedevil the politics of Brexit, in which politicians are betraying the people who voted for Brexit. First, there is an English nationalism that really doesn’t care how the problem of the Irish border is solved, whose loyalty is to England, rather than to the United Kingdom. Politicians, of course, like their “nation” united[18] because, to them, any break-up means a reduction in their power. Second, some politicians see Brexit as an opportunity not to duplicate let alone preserve European Union regulation, which is necessary for the proposed customs union, but rather as a continuation of the neoliberal project to reduce or eliminate regulation.[19] (This is a part I got at least partly wrong, at least in nuance: I had thought that the “remainers” were seeking to preserve so-called “free” trade as part of the neoliberal project of globalization.[20]) The public, it seems, isn’t nearly so keen on deregulation as these politicians.[21]
Six ministers have resigned from Theresa May’s cabinet over her Brexit agreement.[22]
U.S. authorities have filed a sealed indictment against Julian Assange, who has been holed up in an Ecuadorian embassy.[23]
Fig. 1. House of Representatives results, as of November 7, 9:54 pm. New Yorker, fair use.
The 2018 midterm election results do not support any partisan imaginations of the U.S. election—including my own. And because of high turnout from bases on both left and right, these results are, perhaps, a better indication of the larger electorate than we’ve seen for a while, which makes it difficult to dismiss the really rather muddled picture that emerges.
First, and most easily dispensed with, this is no victory for Donald Trump. He can spin to his heart’s content,[24] but he lost the House of Representatives on an election he himself characterized as a referendum on him.[25]
Second, this was not a good night for progressives. As Matt Stoller noted on Twitter,
In some ways this might be a nightmare scenario. Dems winning the House, but with Obama business moderates who will make a big pretend show of opposing Trump while cutting deals to help plutocrats. Or possibly not. We’ll see how much Dems have learned.
I’m not optimistic here. These are the same Democrats who were elected to bicameral control of Congress in 2006 with a mandate to get us the fuck out of Iraq but who turned around and enabled a continuation of that war. And then there’s the great Democrat god Barack Obama, who not only did not prosecute George W. Bush administration figures for war crimes, did not prosecute the bankers who precipitated the 2008 Financial Crisis, but embraced and extended the policies that enabled these crimes.
Bush left us with two intractable wars. Obama left us with many more. For crying out loud, even Richard Nixon, whom I grew up thinking of as the epitome of evil, got us out of Vietnam.
These Democrats promise one thing, get elected, do the exact opposite, and I hope they burn in Hell.
Third, there was no “blue wave.” As somebody on CBS News put it, this was a “blue trickle.” There are other witty ways of putting it, but they’re really all getting at the same point: Against an amazingly repugnant president who draws us ever deeper than even the deepest pits of hell, Democrats performed amazingly poorly. Really, just as they had in 2016 when this thoroughly repugnant man was still only the Republican nominee.[26]
In Binyamin Netanyahu’s eyes, the ability of a country to impose ethnic cleansing justifies that ethnic cleansing. Yes, he really said this.[27] I suppose this is completely consistent with the Israeli government’s notion that it’s unfair to uphold Israel to any kind of moral standard because 1) its neighbors are (allegedly) worse, and 2) other countries (allegedly) do worse.
Just a reminder—I guess one I have to offer: Israel was founded as a response to ethnic cleansing, otherwise known as genocide. Might didn’t make right then but I guess it does now.
Fig. 2. From a parking lot in downtown Sebastopol, looking toward the Post Office, November 9, 11:45 am. This is smoke, not fog or water-laden cloudiness, from the Camp Fire, in Butte County, over 100 miles away. The smoke was worse the following day.
Fig. 3. With all of Donald Trump’s bullshit generally, his bullshit about climate change in particular, and his bullshit about California Wildfires in particular, I was needing a reminder of what we’re actually talking about. I took this shot on November 12 at 4:32 pm from along Highway 20, between Willits and Fort Bragg.
As I explained in my dissertation,[1] the first thing and most important thing to understand about people fleeing Central America is that the conditions that drive them north are, in significant part, the product of U.S. policy. The not very “new” drug gangs that now merit the Wall Street Journal’s attention[2] and that now supplement but do not replace the cartels are a nimble response to the drug war’s closing of some transit routes. As the Journal notes, they have dramatically increased the violence in Central American villages—and certainly not just in El Salvador. The Journal is also considerably less anxious to acknowledge the North American Free Trade Agreement’s and Central American Free Trade Agreement’s ruin of Mexican and Central American farmers, driving entire communities into dire poverty, which these people also flee.
Donald Trump and his crowd are thus trying to have it both ways: They want to preserve the policies that push people north but have the people remain in intolerable conditions. They treat an arduous and highly dangerous trek as if it is too easy by seeking to build a border wall and sending in the military[3] but do nothing about the desperation that drives these people.
And as for the militia,[4] they should have joined or stayed in the military, where they can have the shoot-em-up adventures they so desperately long for and which the U.S. continues to enthusiastically pursue.
Something I let pass below was the xenophobic and extreme right-wing violence—yet more violence—that has occurred recently. There have been three such incidents—bombs sent to some of Donald Trump’s prominent opponents, a shooting of two people (Blacks) at a Kroger store, and an attack on a synagogue that killed 11 people.[1] I generally let stories like this pass. The U.S. is an extraordinarily violent and vicious society, due to alienation, due to a style of entertainment that promotes violence and Hierarchically Invidious Monistic thinking, due to the identification of a significant part of the population with guns, due to empire and its legacy. I see such stories and I don’t really see them as news. You may deny that “this is who we are,” but the plain and simple fact is that it is. I don’t like it but I am powerless to change it. So I have to accept it. (Yet more violence)
Words fail me. I cannot even utter what Mike Pence did.[5] (Yet more violence)
Moved Jennifer Rubin’s column on Donald Trump’s and his supporters’ ‘victimhood’[6] from Donald Trump to Yet more violence. Also, this post had misclassified Paul Waldman’s column[7] under Donald Trump when it had actually been archived under Yet more violence.
I don’t know who is telling Donald Trump he can end birthright citizenship with an executive order[8] but I’m sure wondering how they manage to mangle the 14th amendment to reach that conclusion. The amendment begins, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”[9] The only weasel words I see there are about being “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” but if they’re here, they’re subject to that jurisdiction. Unless, that is, Trump wants to not enforce the law against unauthorized migrants. (Unauthorized migration)
October 30, 2018, 11:10 am:
If you are not Jewish—or maybe if you are—but have Jewish friends who are now in mourning, this article[10] might help. (Yet more violence)
Donald Trump should take a hint[11]—and not go to Pittsburgh. (Yet more violence)
I am not caught up.
October 30, 2:19 pm:
Aaron Blake thinks Donald Trump’s claimed intention to abolish birthright citizenship by executive order is a “cynical ploy that, even if it’s attempted, will likely fail. And it probably won’t even be attempted.” His logic boils down to that this is the kind of thing that idiot authoritarian populists, whom Trump wants to motivate to vote, slobber over.[12] My guess is that Blake is right. (Unauthorized migration)
Donald Trump is a black hole. There is no limit to the depths of his depravity. The latest? “When we learned last week of allegations that women were offered money to make false claims [of sexual assault] about the Special Counsel, we immediately referred the matter to the FBI for investigation.”[13] (James Comey)
October 30, 3:40 pm:
I neglected to mention in the last update that I am still not caught up.
October 30, 10:52 pm:
Now, I’m caught up.
It’s been a week. Just as my server was having a crisis, I had to leave to go to Southern California. Now that I’m back, I’ve almost got things back to a tolerable condition.
And my patience with my credit union is running very, very short.
I had a transaction declined for absolutely no good reason. It wasn’t that I had insufficient funds and, it turns out, it wasn’t that they had suspected my Southern California activity was fraudulent.
Though my patience with so-called “fraud protection” ran out a while ago. I do yell at customer service representatives on the phone these days and I have been no less scathing in my communication with the credit union (they close down their customer service phone lines at night and on weekends so I couldn’t actually yell at them). I have been hit with these holds numerous times, presumably because my life does not—nor would I ever in a million years want it to—fall into nice neat predictable patterns except over a relatively, but apparently long enough to fool their artificial idiocy, short periods of time.
I need to be clear here: Declines for scratching-their-scrotum reasons are absolutely unacceptable. They are intolerably rude. They are inexcusable. And don’t try to tell me they’re protecting me against fraud when all I see, and see way too often, are false positives, which means I have no evidence whatsoever of true positives, but considerable reason to doubt they can tell a false positive from a true positive. All they’re really doing is keeping me from money I have a right to access, just as I need to access it. What this really amounts to is another way of picking on the poor, who are less likely to have access to alternative payment methods.
Right now it looks like they just have an incredibly incompetent Information Technology department. Among other things, they hate Android. Their Android app simply sucks in so many ways that I’ve uninstalled it and refuse to use it. They failed to enable near field communication (NFC) payments on Google Pay for Android devices for years after it worked on Apple Pay and didn’t get on the ball for at least several months after claiming it worked (it does now work on my Wear OS smartwatch).
And again, these assholes are making huge salaries while I remain poor. I should dump them for their arrogance alone. As it is, I’m getting closer to making that decision simply because with their IT problems they simply aren’t a reliable place to keep what little money I have.
Twitter isn’t really the place for lengthy ranting. The post-length limitation and the fact that posts can’t be edited both make it dubious. So I don’t do it often. I did it Wednesday.
Stop right here. I swear the idiocy, ranging from the mundane to the spectacular, I have encountered over the last 24 hours is more than a person should have to bear with in a lifetime. 1/7
We can start at the top of course although this goes back decades. I just love how @theDemocrats and their believers are trying to get out the vote saying they’ll reverse @realDonaldTrump‘s repugnant policies when you know that if they ever get back into power, 2/7
they’ll just do what @BarackObama did with his predecessor: embrace and extend his policies, effectively enshrining them with, yes, *bipartisan* support. Because that, to @theDemocrats, is a “middle way.” But oh yeah, let’s all put them in power. 3/7
Then there’s @AAA insurance who can’t seem to process a payment with things predictably going down the toilet from there. And Uber (whom I’ve contacted separately so won’t tag here) whose driver app completely mishandles the Pixel 2 XL camera for the selfies they require. 4/
And $EMPLOYER (still not a real job) whose training program is broken, whose support is perpetually backlogged, difficult to get ahold of, and simply seems clueless. 5/7
But yes, I’m supposed to be impressed when the @chronicle of Higher Education carries an article like this (see image) when the reason people want to get rid of disciplines is that the boundaries between them are arbitrary and serve as blinders, yielding yet more stupidity. 6/7 pic.twitter.com/KO3FJUK5lJ
And actually, no, I’m not impressed when I see this (see another image) at https://t.co/5YhqZJzqeC . Because it’s obviously par for the course. And no, I can’t have a real job because STUPID. 7/7 pic.twitter.com/6w1W69NQ0b
AAA took its own failures as a reason to shut off recurring payments. Which is simply a non sequitur, but to them, this is logic. My guess—I don’t know because they haven’t actually mentioned the expiration date like anybody else does in this situation—is that the card information is out of date. It’s my debit card; a little, but not very long before the expiration, they send me a new one. When I activate it, the old one immediately becomes invalid. If they’d simply include the expiration date with the notice of failure, it would help a lot. Instead, they offer a generic message: Their site is currently unable to process payments.
Uber requires its “partners” (the euphemism for employees whom they’re trying not to acknowledge are employees[1]) to occasionally submit a selfie when they try to go on line or even while driving for verification. This supposedly happens at random and there is no alternative procedure. So now I’m supposed to drive 70 miles out of my way to the nearest “Greenlight” location on the slim hope that they’ll be able to sort out their malfunctioning app there. (Lyft does not do this.)
Meanwhile, Lyft sends me a note informing me that someone gave me a low rating on cleanliness. Which is absurd. The car is spotless. I have it washed nearly every day and the interior cleaned about twice a week on monthly plans I have with not one, but two, car wash places.
And when I composed the twitter rant, I forgot to mention $EX-EMPLOYER, who keeps wanting to know if I’ll come to work today, when I have repeatedly informed them that I can’t plug the piece of shit GPS tracker that they require into my OBD2 port because it wipes critical safety related settings on my car. We’re only talking about minor things here like braking and traction control. As the rainy season approaches. My mechanic and dealer have both informed me that plugging things into OBD2 ports is unsafe. The relevant regulation only requires GPS tracking, owned by the company, not the driver, that can promptly locate the vehicle and must be attached to the vehicle. It says nothing about the OBD2 port, but $EX-EMPLOYER insists this is the only solution.
Understand the people who make these decisions are pulling down six and seven figures, if not more. But I have to be poor.
Here’s some quantitative analysis confirming what we already know: The Democratic Party is run by absolute fucking idiots who have no business being in politics and who do not deserve anyone’s faith, let alone that of progressives.[1] Or to spin it slightly differently, to vote for Democrats might be to vote for neoconservative and neoliberal ideas, as with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but it sure as hell isn’t to vote for progressive accomplishment.
I’m not hearing much from Cuba as Hurricane Michael brushes (to put it mildly) the west end of that island. But I suspect the Cubans know how to tell a hurricane how to get its act together, because Michael is looking a lot more organized now than when I first published this issue.
October 10, 1:22 pm:
From Cuba (or at least the strait between it and the Yucatan peninsula) with love: Hurricane Michael has made landfall as a Category 4 storm.[2] In figure 1 (now here preserved as the 12:00 pm version), it indeed appears undiminished in fury.
October 10, 10:00 pm:
I agree with the substance of Marlon Smith’s essay.[3] I worry about men—like Smith—telling women how to conduct feminism. That said, Smith’s essay, for me, captures again the failure of the Third Wave of Feminism[4] and the reason I’ve been expecting a fourth wave (the latter is likely under way, but still not authoritatively recognized).
October 11, 6:12 am:
“[Hurricane Michael] was the most powerful tropical storm to hit the Florida Panhandle since record-keeping began in 1851. Just two hurricanes have ever hit the United States with barometric pressure readings in the eye — a key metric of a storm’s effects — lower than the 919 millibars of Michael.”[5] As to the rest of it, there’s probably no substitute for actually being there—which sounds like a terrible idea.
Wall Street is throwing a temper tantrum.[6] But “[d]espite the selloff in stocks, financial markets overall didn’t exhibit a classic flight to safety. Two safe assets, gold and bonds, have had a horrible year and were essentially flat on Wednesday. . . Investors are starting to realize how dependent the longest bull market in history has been on cheap money.”[7] This latter bit may be a sign that yet another one of those “creative destruction” parties capitalists love so much, a recession, is in the offing. Mind you, I haven’t recovered from the one in 2001 so I’m just really low on sympathy for all these rich bastards.
October 11, 3:55 pm:
The Dow Jones Industrials fell by over 500 points but “[t]he rise in bond yields paused”[8] and, allegedly, “All the leading indications that would point to a recession in the next year just aren’t there.”[9] I love these assholes who think there’s no sign of a recession. Until there is. And when it’s way too late to be a forecast.
Something I heard about yesterday but then failed to capture and archive at the time was a sense that Wall Street is concerned about the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. Justin Lahart discusses this concern.[10] Something else I’ve been hearing for a while but is not captured here is that the Fed desperately wants to rebuild the arsenal of weapons it expended in the financial crisis of 2008.
I disagree that the markets are rational in the short or long term, except perhaps within an unsustainable frame, but Allan Sloan explains why Wall Street’s reaction to the Fed’s raising of short term interest rates is, well, short-sighted.[11]
October 12, 11:15 pm:
A sleeper question has been, what happens when Robert Mueller finishes his investigation, specifically, what happens to his findings? The Department of Justice, within whose auspices Mueller operates, is an executive branch department. So there’s no guarantee that Mueller’s findings would ever see the light of day. It turns out the Watergate investigation encountered a similar problem, analysis was done, and some folks think that analysis might help Mueller.[12] So this judge’s ruling, seeking to release findings that have been kept confidential for decades, is hugely important.[13] (James Comey)
Fig. 1. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration infrared satellite imagery of the Gulf of Mexico (public domain), assembled into a 72-hour gif, as of 12:00 pm, October 10.
So I was driving in the Redwood Shores area of Redwood City last night and happened to see strange lights. They didn’t seem to be moving. I stopped the car, opened my window, heard no sound, and took a picture (figure 2). I thought maybe these lights were drones, hovering, shining their lights through some smoky skies.
Fig. 2. Photograph by David Benfell, October 7, 2018, apparently of SpaceX on ascent.
Apparently, it was Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket, headed for space.[14]
[4]See also Audre Lorde, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, ed. Charles Lemert, 4th ed. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2010), 449-451.↩
A problem that Christine Blasey Ford faces as she confronts Brett Kavanaugh in the latter’s confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court is that the rich and well-connected protect each other. They do this even when, as with Judith Butler (a renowned critical theorist), they clearly should know better, and at the expense of “lesser” people.[1]
September 24, 1:01 am:
A second woman, Deborah Ramirez, has come forward with allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, specifically that he “exposed himself to Ramirez during a party. She acknowledged lapses in her memory of the episode but said she remembered Kavanaugh standing to her right and laughing while he pulled up his pants, according to the [New Yorker] magazine.”[2]
September 24, 9:49 am:
Government of the bullies, for the bullies, by the bullies: Donald Trump stands by Brett Kavanaugh.[3]
White House officials say Rod Rosenstein has offered to resign.[4] (James Comey)
Rod Rosenstein has not resigned or been fired after all. This might happen Thursday. Or it might happen after the midterm elections.[5] (James Comey)
I am not caught up.
September 25, 1:37 am:
Apparently Deborah Ramirez’ accusation of sexual harassment against Brett Kavanaugh is on weaker legal ground than Christine Blasey Ford’s.[6]
An as-yet-unnamed third woman, represented by Michael Avenatti, apparently has credible information against Brett Kavanaugh.[7]
September 25, 11:24 am:
A judge has labeled Bill Cosby a “sexually violent predator,” meaning he “must undergo counselling for life and appear on the sex offenders’ registry.”[8]
September 25, 2:52 pm:
Bill Cosby has been sentenced to at least three years in a Pennsylvania state prison.[9]
September 26, 12:37 am:
Added a photograph of Bill Cosby being helped to a police car to be taken to jail.
September 26, 7:15 am:
In our system of so-called “justice,” we very often focus on inconsistencies in the victim‘s story as a way of discrediting the victim and turning a proceeding into an attack upon her, all in the name of course, of allowing the accused to confront his accuser, but it seems Brett Kavanaugh has a few of his own.[10]
September 26, 12:01 pm:
Michael Avenatti’s “third accuser” against Brett Kavanaugh has come forward. Her name is Julie Swetnick.[11]
September 27, 11:24 pm:
There’s a lot to catch up on with the Brett Kavanaugh nomination:
I don’t believe I’ve noticed Paul Waldman’s work at the Washington Post before. But he effectively dismantles the Republican case for ramming through the nomination.[12]
Apparently Kavanaugh might not just have been a drunken asshole would-be rapist while in high school. According to an anonymous allegation, he was still a drunken asshole would-be rapist when he was 33 years old.[13]
I was specifically not reacting to early reports of Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I was waiting for the picture that includes Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony. The bottom line seems to be that both did what they needed to do, while the committee’s chairman, Charles Grassley, seems defensive about his and his committee’s handling of the confirmation and the appointment of a prosecutor from Arizona to handle questioning seemed to backfire on the Republicans who (probably correctly) figured they didn’t know how not to be bastards in questioning Ford.[14]
September 28, 6:03 am:
Are Republicans so partisan that they will put a possible sex offender on the Supreme Court? Maybe. The Judiciary Committee is expected to vote today (September 28).[15]
September 28, 1:57 pm:
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the full Senate[16] but a final vote will be delayed pending an FBI investigation.[17]
Donald Trump claims the FBI is free to pursue the investigation of Brett Kavanaugh wherever it leads, but the White House has in fact sharply limited the scope of the investigation to the claims of the first two women, Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez. Julie Swetnick’s claims will not be investigated. Furthermore, the White House has limited the witnesses who may be interviewed.[18] I’m just going to say it: Somebody at the White House is very afraid of Swetnick.
October 1, 12:49 am:
Jerry Brown signed Net neutrality into California law and the U.S. Department of Justice promptly sued.[19]
Apparently, we still do not know the scope of the FBI investigation for Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. But the part about omitting Julie Swetnick’s claims seems to be holding.[20]
October 1, 7:34 pm:
This looks Freudian to me: A psychiatrist weighs in on Donald Trump.[21]
The White House has now instructed the FBI to interview anyone necessary for the Brett Kavanaugh investigation. The deadline—the investigation must be complete by the end of the week—is unchanged.[23]
October 1, 11:15 pm:
A real populist would do away with all these so-called “free” (for whom?) trade agreements, but Donald Trump’s new North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) looks a lot like the old one.[24]
October 2, 10:56 am:
When Christine Blasey Ford appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, senators had a prosecutor from Maricopa County (Joe Arpaio territory) question her. This prosecutor wrote a report essentially saying Ford’s testimony was insufficient and Republican senators used this to claim Ford’s testimony was uncorroborated. Experts from both major parties say more investigation is necessary and that the prosecutor’s report looks like a political hack.[25] (Brett Kavanaugh)
Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony may have been deceptive, in that he withheld truth, but it doesn’t quite rise to the level of lying.[27]
October 3, 1:12 am:
Benjamin Wittes has a comprehensive assessment that tilts against confirming Brett Kavanaugh. My differences with Wittes are that 1) he cares much more about the integrity and credibility of the nomination and confirmation process than I do; 2) he cares much more about the possibility that Kavanaugh may be being treated unfairly than I do; and 3) I think it fair to say, I care much more about the prospect of a possible sex offender participating in decisions affecting hundreds of millions of people, especially women, than he does. But he cares enough about what I do enough that it is one of a number of reasons he gives for opposing Kavanaugh.[28]
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a story to tell about a younger Brett Kavanaugh, then part of Kenneth Starr’s Whitewater investigation; Vince Foster; and the intimidation of a witness.[29]
October 4, 1:19 am:
Jeet Heer argues that Republicans are attempting to salvage Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination in essence by asserting that it’s normal for boys to commit sexual assault.[30]
October 4, 8:31 am:
Women cite a few reasons for not reporting rapes and sexual assaults. These boil down to 1) that their stories will be discounted, and 2) that they will be attacked. So look what we have here:
There are a number of witnesses the FBI did not talk to in its so-called investigation of Brett Kavanaugh. Deborah Ramirez perceived no effort to corroborate her story.[31] “White House spokesman Raj Shah said Thursday that the FBI agents had reached out to 10 witnesses — nine of whom were interviewed — and that no one had corroborated the account of Christine Blasey Ford, the first woman to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault.”[32] In general, the supposedly apolitical or even allegedly anti-Trump FBI appears to have adopted a “see no evil” approach with regard to Kavanaugh.
Senate Republicans are embracing an ad hominem approach toward Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers.[33]
October 4, 4:52 pm:
Ben Sasse, uncharacteristically for Republicans in the present polarization, acknowledged that women’s experience of rape is a thing.[34] To give a speech such as he gave on the Senate floor and then to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh would be paradoxical. But right now, it seems like none of it makes any difference: At least some powerful Republicans don’t care and continue to press forward[35] while at least two of those whose votes seemed in doubt expressed satisfaction with what can only be considered a rather dubious FBI report.[36]
Mostly for the record here, Brett Kavanaugh was indeed confirmed to the Supreme Court. I’m really not that much interested in the political blow-by-blow of how this will affect the midterm elections next month,[37] but I will point out that if voting—as some recommend in response to this confirmation[38]—actually was a functional strategy, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. And as for November, we’ll see that soon enough. The rest is bullshit, piled up by those who need to pile up bullshit.
For those who do not recall, Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Senators on the Judiciary Committee, two of whom are still there, offered a brutal example of “gaslighting” before “gaslighting” was a term. Needless to say, Thomas now sits on the Supreme Court, where he participates in some of its more ignoble decisions.[39]
I am no longer on Google Plus. Their artificial intelligence bot censored two of my comments on Saturday, September 22, claiming they were spam. These were political comments, not commercial speech. Since rape is an issue of the day, and I was discussing that issue, I suspect that the use of the word ‘rape’ is what triggered the bot. Google Plus offers no means to appeal its bot’s decisions; I can only send “feedback,” which I have no reason to believe is even read, let alone by a human.
Unfortunately, my relationship with Google will continue. As things stand, I continue to face homelessness, likely in about ten years (I will be about 70 years old at this time), plus or minus a few years. Among other things, this means I need to get out of the business of hosting my own sites at home, since I may no longer have a home. At $20 a month, the G Suite deal, which hosts my email, contacts, and calendar, and offers unlimited cloud storage, is simply far too good to pass up.
Fig. 1. Brett Kavanaugh. Photograph by Tom Williams of Getty Images, via National Public Radio, fair use.
I address this in two new blog posts entitled, “Clarity on Brett Kavanaugh” and “Innocent until proven guilty.” But of course the controversy rages on as a third, as-yet-unidentified woman represented by Michael Avenatti has something to say,[40] and meanwhile:
It seems that Donald Trump thinks his administration did a great job with Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He said this at a briefing in anticipation of Hurricane Florence which appears to be taking direct aim at North Carolina.[1]
September 13, 4:41 am:
How do you know that the Philippines are one of those “other” places, where human lives and property don’t matter as much? I’m only now finding out about Super Typhoon Mangkhut.
September 13, 12:54 pm:
CNN stopped just short of calling Donald Trump a liar for denying that about 3,000 people died in Hurricane Maria.[2] But apparently, this is how Trump deals with failure.[3]
Hurricane Florence has begun already moving onshore in North Carolina. But it will only make landfall in the next few hours. The New York Times explains some hurricane-related terminology.[4]
After making a beeline that seemed directly aimed at my friend’s house, Florence made a hard left turn, skimming the North Carolina coast, finally making landfall very near to Wilmington (figure 1).
Paul Manafort is “flipping”[6] and Jennifer Rubin thinks she already knows what he knows,[7] but then, so does everybody else. And who knows? Maybe they’re all right. But I’m beginning to suspect we’re all getting way ahead of the evidence. (James Comey)
September 14, 9:55 pm:
So Robert Mueller is going to a lot of effort, all to write a report that Rudy Giuliani says the Trump administration will likely seek to bury. Some legal experts want to offer Mueller a road map from the Watergate era for getting his report out.[8] (James Comey)
September 15, 4:51 am:
Florence isn’t done yet (figure 2). The center of the storm has nudged over into South Carolina and back toward shore. It looks to me like it might head back to sea where, I guess, it could regain strength.
September 15, 5:21 am:
Saved an image of Mangkhut crossing the Philippines (figure 3). I’m still hearing a lot less about this storm but, for now, I’m keeping the latest available immediately below figure 3.
Niall Stanage is a little better on the significance of Paul Manafort “flipping.”[9] I just think we need to slow down here and wait to see what Robert Mueller actually gets, that is, assuming we can.[10] (James Comey)
September 16, 12:38 am:
The latest imagery seems to show Florence has now, after a feint toward the South Carolina coast, moved a bit inland. It looks to me like it is still drenching North Carolina.
Deanna Paul is a reporter for the Washington Post. But apparently before she was a reporter, she was a prosecutor in New York City. She thinks Paul Manafort flipped because he was facing a “functional life sentence.” She doesn’t appear to take into account that Donald Trump was dangling a pardon.[11] (James Comey)
September 16, 6:54 am:
While this probably says at least as much about my own coverage (which has rarely focused on ‘natural’ disasters and relies heavily on English sources) as it does the mainstream media, Typhoon Mangkhut finally hit my news radar as it reached China (figure 4). The Washington Post story includes mention of the damage and casualties in the Philippines and mention of it reaching mainland China[12] (where it looks to me is where the eye is) but focuses Hong Kong. The Guardian does a little better, giving the Philippines its own story[13] in addition to including mention in its story on the impact on Hong Kong.[14]
If you’re in Florence’s path and considering riding it out, your President just said that a hurricane response where 3,000 die is his measure of success.
You won’t find this link on my Weather Satellite Photos page because I haven’t updated that page. But I finally went through and tried to refresh some of the stale links I’d been using to download weather satellite photos. In fact the one for the U.S. East Coast is still live, but the photographs uniformly have roughly the rightmost third blacked out. So I started a new series for the east coast.
In fact, I have a childhood friend who now lives directly in the path the hurricane now seems to be taking (which now seems unusually straight). She and her husband have evacuated, but of course, they couldn’t take their house with them. Fig. 1. From the run on September 14 at 7:00 am: After making a beeline that seemed directly aimed at my friend’s house, Florence made a hard left turn, skimming the North Carolina coast before making landfall at or very near to Wilmington. Fig. 2. From the run on September 15 at 4:00 am: Florence has edged over into South Carolina and back toward the coast. It looks to me like it might be headed back out to sea, where, presumably, it might regain at least some strength. In the meantime, North Carolina continues to feel the effects.
Karen Zraick and Christina Caron, “Landfall, Storm Surge and the Waffle House Index: Hurricane Terms and What They Mean,” New York Times, September 13, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/13/us/hurricane-season-terms.html
The Whiner-In-Chief, also known as the delusional, raging Narcissist-In-Chief, is at it again. As if he ever stops.
Trump’s outburst should remind us of several troubling facts. First, whether he is lying (or is simply a victim of his own self-delusion that he is incapable of error) is beside the point. He’s not functioning as a president or any other officeholder should. He cannot comprehend facts, process them and take appropriate action. He is, in a word, non-functional.[15]
And yes, I’m wondering what to make of a so-called leader who, instead of emphasizing a need to do better than Puerto Rico, focuses on, not merely defending, but actually implausibly praising an indefensible past performance,[16] even as catastrophe looms in the Carolinas.
This link hadn’t gone stale, so the 72-hour gif was available as soon as I found out about this storm. Fig. 3. From the run on September 15, 4:00 am: Mangkhut crossed the northern edge of one of the Philippines’ main islands. Fig. 4. From the run at 5:00 am on September 16. Typhoon Mangkhut has reached China.
So you can see my critique of that anonymous op-ed in the New York Times below. Now here’s David Frum with an entirely different but no less harsh take.[1] (Donald Trump)
Meanwhile, and mostly for the record, the White House reaction.[2] (Donald Trump)
Funny how no one is talking about the 25th Amendment, which provides for this contingency. The argument that “[w]e want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous[3]” only makes sense if Mike Pence is not a more reliable conservative than Donald Trump. But, also according to this unnamed opinion writer, allegedly a senior White House official, “the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.” Further, we are to understand, “[t]here are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more. But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.”[4] Would Pence have a worse “leadership style?” And finally, if you claim that “there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president” but that “no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis,”[5] what exactly would this official call what (s)he and his or her unelected colleagues are doing when they subvert an elected official’s will? (Hint: David Frum has a clue.[6])
I think Matthew Yglesias has this right:
Working for the occupying authority while telling yourself that your presence does more good than harm because you curb its worst excesses is not resistance it’s collaboration.
I’ve said before that if it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense, and it cannot last. My problem is that with Donald Trump, we are now so far beyond that point, that I have to question my understanding of what makes sense.
