Month: April 2019

Still trying to catch up: I’ve made it to the release of Robert Mueller’s redacted report

benfell

Early spring in western Massachusetts is progressing to the point I saw along the south shore of Lake Erie. I wish I could share more pictures but the roads here often offer no place to stop and while traffic is generally far from heavy, there’s just enough of it that it seems like a very bad idea to just stop where ever I see a picture I want to take.

My preference in color is not loud. I love the pastels and with the deciduous trees in this condition, I am treated to a lovely array of pastels. There are various greens, but also rouge and white hues, and also, of course, the browns. Then there is the very green grass, that was already—and despite a relatively (by recent standards) wet winter—beginning to turn yellow when I left California.

I think of returning to that yellow (after prolonged droughts, which Californians have suffered more as a rule than an exception throughout my adult life, it actually turns grey) grass and I want to retch. Oh, it rains here? Quit your bitching. I’d take it.

The situation for vegans in western Massachusetts is a bit more difficult than I anticipated and the Whole Foods in Hadley is disappointing (yes, I saw the vegan lemon mashed potatoes in the hot bar; I also needed a main course). But we need to know about Pulse, which is actually just down the road from Whole Foods. It has crucial vegan groceries in addition to mainly being a restaurant and juice bar. There is also Cafe Evolution in Florence, five miles away. Both have limited hours. Last, there is the Garden of Eat’n in Springfield—the menu here rotates on a weekly schedule so you may want to choose what day of the week you go.

I think I managed to put something of a dent in my backlog today. But it’s still there. And I”m tired.

Bernie Sanders

Edward-Isaac Dovere, “The 2020 Race Is Going Just Like Bernie Sanders Wanted,” Atlantic, April 17, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/04/bernie-sanders-thinking-he-will-win-it-all-2020/587326/

Alex Shephard, “The Impotence of ‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats,” New Republic, April 18, 2019, https://newrepublic.com/article/153605/impotence-stop-sanders-democrats

James Comey

There’s not much I can add to the coverage. I’m seeing a lot of the same analysis rehashed over and over.

Travis Andersen, “Did Trump obstruct justice? Here’s what legal experts are saying,” Boston Globe, April 18, 2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2019/04/18/legal-experts-jury-still-out-whether-trump-obstructed-justice/k7ZTOzQlUIr8J5aOPx3LKP/story.html

Aaron Blake, “The 10 Trump actions Mueller spotlighted for potential obstruction,” Washington Post, April 18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/18/trump-actions-mueller-spotlighted-potential-obstruction/

Aaron Blake, “William Barr just did Trump another huge favor,” Washington Post, April 18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/18/william-barr-just-did-exactly-what-his-critics-feared-again/

Philip Bump, “What Attorney General Barr buried, misrepresented or ignored in clearing Trump,” Washington Post, April 18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/18/what-attorney-general-barr-buried-misrepresented-or-ignored-clearing-trump/

Allan Smith, “Mueller declined to charge Donald Trump Jr. for meeting with Russian lawyer,” Washington Post, April 18, 2019, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/mueller-report-no-evidence-trump-knew-about-trump-tower-meeting-n995816

Del Quentin Wilber and Chris Megerian, “Mueller report suggests Congress should judge whether Trump obstructed justice,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-mueller-report-obstruction-russia-investigation-20190418-story.html

Natalie Andrews, “Nadler Issues Subpoena for Full Mueller Report,” Wall Street Journal, April 19, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-panel-chairman-issues-subpoena-for-full-mueller-report-11555679263

Neoliberalism

Niklas Olsen’s description of neoliberalism[1] differs from mine. His encompasses the founders of capitalist libertarianism and their movement, conflating neoliberalism as we sort of know and understand it with a movement composed of folks who actually sometimes criticize neoconservative and neoliberal policies. There are two problems with that:

  1. The capitalist libertarians, sometimes affiliated with the Libertarian Party in the U.S., remain almost entirely outside government, their policy proposals never generally gaining traction with the general public. That’s just a fact. Further, capitalist libertarians embrace competition as spurring innovation; they oppose monopolies as stifling it.

    And they embrace the market as, they fantasize, a level playing field, where all have an opportunity to improve their fortunes, doing business putatively as equals.

    In practice, and as has long been recognized, the functionalism of capitalism—really, any system of exchange—is to exacerbate inequality. Even the slightest unevenness in that illusory playing field translates to leverage—in raw terms, power over others.

    What is that little bump that gives a few leverage? Property, for which money is a proxy. And these days that bump is like a canyon, with the larger part of us, stuffed at the bottom of that canyon (even literally: compare living units) and the lucky few on top of a mountain overlooking the canyon. The climb up is long and treacherous; nearly all fall back down the walls to the canyon floor.

    But this is part of what distinguishes capitalist libertarians from libertarian socialists: The latter recognize economic authority as a problem just like political authority. The former do not, so the evidence of inequality simply fails to move them: They simply advocate “freer” (always ask for whom to do what to whom?) and “freer” markets and as neoliberals cheerfully agree, we are caught in a spiral of deepening inequality.

  2. Neoliberalism as we know it did not clearly appear until about the time Jerry Ford was president (following the resignation of Richard Nixon) and looks very much to have coalesced with the near-bankruptcy of New York City, for which it was fashionable to blame liberal policies, and “liberal” becoming the “L-word,” equating the set of relatively-humane policies that is generally (only generally) credited with the recovery from the Great Depression with an obscenity.

    This is when, and I believe inevitably, capitalist libertarianism comes to power and lacking any moral basis beyond an “invisible hand,” finds it profitable to side with corporate power over workers and the general public. In the name of “competitiveness,” of course, “with the world,” of course.

    This is, of course, hypocrisy. But in remaining outside government, capitalist libertarians can’t be accused of that particular hypocrisy (oh, but there are others).

    And the two groups are in fact at odds on all of neoconservatism, which embraces neoliberalism as a moral imperative, but also often embraces war, which capitalist libertarians generally emphatically oppose, for example.

I appreciate Olsen’s history and certainly, from a socialist perspective, the distinction between mainstream Democrats and all of the Republican Party, never mind the distinctions between neoliberals, neoconservatives, capitalist libertarians, and for that matter, “New Deal” liberals, could be kinda hazy, maybe a mirage. Those of us a little closer to the field will have a different perspective.

That said, I didn’t treat neoliberalism as a separate tendency of conservatism either. It’s more a weird overlap between the corrupting influence of power, capitalist libertarian dogma embraced by neoconservatives as the U.S. system that must be protected at any cost, even to the extent of conquering an empire to keep the world “safe” for “capitalist democracy.”

Olsen’s interview is useful for his description of the idea, increasingly institutionalized, that the market is a “freer” (again, always ask for whom to do what to whom?) version of “democracy” than the political kind.[2] In it’s own way it derives from the incredibly reductive political affirmation of the ballot box as a means of expressing political power.

Having reduced elections to parties which have a chance of winning and parties which do not and referendums to contests between wealthy corporate donors to push through initiatives that for one reason or another cannot proceed through the relevant legislature, how can we really argue when someone claims a dollar is a vote?

Niklas Olsen, interviewed by Daniel Zamora, “How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy,” Jacobin, April 6, 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/04/neoliberalism-democracy-consumer-sovereignty

Mergers and Acquisitions

Hopefully you read the bit above. What inspired me to write it? Um, Elizabeth Winkler’s article.[3]

[Long pause.] Why?

Well, it’s like this. In general, neoliberal policy views labor unions as monopolies to be combated, but corporations as benign (“successful businessmen!”) and to be left alone (not “punished!”). Which is to say in pretty short order that the natural tendency of any exchange system to exacerbate social inequality[4] is now embraced with a policy objective being to exacerbate it at any cost. So on the one hand, Winkler sheds a bit more light as she takes for granted the weakened condition of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.[5]

On the other hand, given the predominance of neoliberal ideology in governance, I guess I’m really surprised that such big prosecutions of corporations would happen at all or that the corporations wouldn’t simply laugh it off, with a wink to the judge. I mean it would take only one of these proposed mergers to decide to fight and take it all the way to the Supreme Court where I’m sure there are Justices who will surely sympathize with the other folks they see on the golf course all the time.

Elizabeth Winkler, “Sprint and T-Mobile Brace for Disappointment,” Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/sprint-and-t-mobile-brace-for-disappointment-11555596881

  1. [1]Niklas Olsen, interviewed by Daniel Zamora, “How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy,” Jacobin, April 6, 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/04/neoliberalism-democracy-consumer-sovereignty↩
  2. [2]Niklas Olsen, interviewed by Daniel Zamora, “How Neoliberalism Reinvented Democracy,” Jacobin, April 6, 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/04/neoliberalism-democracy-consumer-sovereignty↩
  3. [3]Elizabeth Winkler, “Sprint and T-Mobile Brace for Disappointment,” Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/sprint-and-t-mobile-brace-for-disappointment-11555596881↩
  4. [4]David Benfell, “They must pay,” Not Housebroken, February 21, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/02/21/they-must-pay/↩
  5. [5]Elizabeth Winkler, “Sprint and T-Mobile Brace for Disappointment,” Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/sprint-and-t-mobile-brace-for-disappointment-11555596881↩

Plan B: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

benfell

Since I began this adventure, my mother has been urging me towards Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where I still have relatives and where, apparently, the cost of living is lower. I have explained to her (and she should already know because she’s read the book) that Pittsburgh is on the frontier between Colin Woodard’s Midlands and Greater Appalachia, the latter likely being the source of authoritarian populism. I think either she doesn’t really buy Colin Woodard’s sociocultural analysis of Yankeedom as being more civically engaged and scholarly-oriented[1] or that she doesn’t think the difference between Yankeedom and the Midlands will be that great (figure 1).

upinarms-map-large
Fig. 1. Colin Woodard’s sociocultural regions.[2]

And, to be honest, she may have a point: While Woodard’s history is—to say the very least—illuminating, he may essentialize geographic areas in his description of sociocultural regions; his regional archetypes and sharply drawn boundaries (apparently along county lines) all lack nuance. His description of Yankeedom covers an area mainly from New England to the eastern edge of the Dakotas,[3] some of which has looked rather authoritarian populist lately. Authoritarian populism is probably the most anti-intellectual conservative tendency—even more so than social conservatism or paleoconservatism (the other tendencies in Donald Trump’s oh so very precious base).

So now that I’ve fallen flat on my face in western Massachusetts, she’s gotten involved with the apartment hunt and things are distinctly looking up. I already have two appointments for Wednesday in the Pittsburgh area (with a third expected to contact me Monday).

Understand that the point I made yesterday about barriers to housing that affect the poor, especially the homeless, still applies.[4] But my Mom is not poor—to the extent our lives can be compared, she successfully changed careers while I never really found one I both wanted and could succeed in. She succeeded in developing that career, and though she was a newspaper reporter to the end of her career, she managed to buy a house, save some money, and maximize her pensions. Her involvement in my apartment search quite literally makes all the difference and if I didn’t have her, I’d probably have been homeless for the last ten years (I moved back in with her in December 2008 while I was finishing my M.A. and stayed there throughout my Ph.D. work and since).

I am still not yet caught up on the news. But my eyes are glazing over. Good night.

The Megalithic

Michael Price, “Were Europe’s megalithic societies patrilineal?” Science, April 15, 2019, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/were-europe-s-megalithic-societies-patrilineal

Prison Guards

Philip Zimbardo might be feeling a bit of vindication about now.

Allyson Chiu, “‘Feeling cute, might just gas some inmates today’: Corrections officers face backlash over social media challenge,” Washington Post, April 18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/17/feeling-cute-might-just-gas-some-inmates-today-corrections-officers-face-backlash-over-social-media-challenge/

Subprime Lending

Ben Lane, “No-income, no-asset mortgages are back (at one lender, at least),” Housing Wire, April 16, 2019, https://www.housingwire.com/articles/48810-no-income-no-asset-mortgages-are-back-at-one-lender-at-least

North Korea

Timothy W. Martin and Dasl Yoon, “North Korea Says It Test-Fired New Tactical Guided Weapon,” Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/kim-jong-un-sends-message-to-trump-with-military-visit-11555497814

Yemen

Simon Tisdall, “Trump’s veto over Yemen is a scandalous abuse of presidential power,” Guardian, April 17, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/17/donald-trump-yemen-veto-war-saudi-arabia-scandalous-abuse

San Francisco

Dan Kopf, “San Francisco’s Diversity Numbers Are Looking More and More Like a Tech Company’s,” Atlantic, April 19, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/san-francisco-city-apps-built-or-destroyed/587389/

Julian Assange

Kevin Gosztola, “FBI affidavit in Assange case Shows government is criminalizing publication of Afghanistan war logs,” Shadowproof, April 16, 2019, https://shadowproof.com/2019/04/16/fbi-affidavit-in-assange-case-shows-government-is-criminalizing-publication-of-afghanistan-war-logs/

  1. [1]Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Penguin, 2011).↩
  2. [2]I regret that due to my move, at this writing, I do not have access to track down where I found this map. I believe it was in an online article that pointed me to the book by Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Penguin, 2011) wherein, as I recall, a similar map appears.↩
  3. [3]Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Penguin, 2011).↩
  4. [4]David Benfell, “If you don’t like homelessness, here’s an idea: Make it possible to rent an apartment,” Not Housebroken, April 19, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/04/19/if-you-dont-like-homelessness-heres-an-idea-make-it-possible-to-rent-an-apartment/↩

Trump’s veto over Yemen is a scandalous abuse of presidential power

benfell

PDFs saved on July 2, 2021.

Bruce Riedel, “Who are the Houthis, and why are we at war with them?” Brookings, December 18, 2017, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/markaz/2017/12/18/who-are-the-houthis-and-why-are-we-at-war-with-them/

Simon Tisdall, “Trump’s veto over Yemen is a scandalous abuse of presidential power,” Guardian, April 17, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/17/donald-trump-yemen-veto-war-saudi-arabia-scandalous-abuse

Kareem Fahim and Steven Mufson, “Saudi Arabia oil output takes major hit after apparent drone attacks claimed by Yemen rebels,” Washington Post, September 14, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/drone-attacks-on-saudi-oil-facilities-spark-explosions-and-fires/2019/09/14/b6fab6d0-d6b9-11e9-ab26-e6dbebac45d3_story.html

Sputnik News, “US Officials Claim Yemen Not Behind Saudi Aramco Attack, Houthis Reveal ‘Intel Operation’ – Reports,” Global Security, September 16, 2019, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2019/09/mil-190916-sputnik01.htm

Abort, abort!

benfell

I do not believe I will be able to find a place in western Massachusetts. The blog entry is entitled, “If you don’t like homelessness, here’s an idea: Make it possible to rent an apartment.” I had briefly published a Longmeadow address in my contact information page; that address has now been removed—I got my money back.

The motel is more difficult: The manager does not return until Sunday and I probably won’t leave until Monday or Tuesday anyway. I need to catch up, including on email, which I’ve been doing very poorly so far.

Plan B is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Plan C is Portland, Oregon. Plan D is back to my mother’s. But I really like the trees back east. I’m hoping Pittsburgh will work.

I still have a lot of catching up to do.

Guantanamo

Missy Ryan, “In a setback for Guantanamo, court throws out years of rulings in USS Cole case,” Washington Post, April 16, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-a-setback-for-guantanamo-court-throws-out-years-of-rulings-in-uss-cole-case/2019/04/16/6c63e052-606b-11e9-bfad-36a7eb36cb60_story.html

Assessment

One of the questions I kept asking throughout my doctoral program was why we, who were being educated in the deficiencies of a quantitative approach, were evaluating our classes at the end of each semester using—of course—a quantitative approach: to be precise, Likert scales. Every syllabus included a very similar, if not identical, rubric which was supposed to tell us how our work would be evaluated—quantitatively. (I doubt that any of my professors actually used that rubric.)

So guess what happened at “the annual gathering of the WASC Senior College and University Commission, which accredits institutions in California, Hawaii and the Pacific Islands?” People piled on about quantitative assessments of “learning outcomes” (more absolute fucking bullshit).[1] The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) is, one way or another, the accreditor for all of my post-secondary education, including at California Institute of Integral Studies (where I studied in what was the wrong program for me) and Saybrook (where I earned my Ph.D.).

Doug Lederman, “Harsh Take on Assessment … From Assessment Pros,” Inside Higher Ed, April 17, 2019, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/17/advocates-student-learning-assessment-say-its-time-different-approach

  1. [1]Doug Lederman, “Harsh Take on Assessment … From Assessment Pros,” Inside Higher Ed, April 17, 2019, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/04/17/advocates-student-learning-assessment-say-its-time-different-approach↩

‘Welcome to Massachusetts,’ the sign says

benfell

I guess we’ll see how long that lasts. Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing tomorrow: Nothing is simple, everything is interdependent, and until it’s all in place, I can’t make money.

I know. I’m long overdue for a vacation. I think the last time I took one must have been in October 2000, while I was working for Linuxcare. Before that, jeez, what a load of chickenshit jobs, I think I probably had to take one with Quinn Company. I left that job is 1985, so 1984 is the last possible year I could have had an actual paid vacation before that one at Linuxcare.

So now I’m here, albeit with a verging on stale Ph.D., hoping for something different.

The motel room seems nice enough. It’s a bit small, but it will work. And yeah, it was cheap (thanks Mom for finding it!).

One final observation from the trip. I’m still sorting out what to do about gasoline. Combining Shell premium with a container of the Techron might even work better than just using Chevron. Then I tried Sunoco, which has an extra high octane-rating gasoline, again in combination with a container of the Techron. I think this was even better.

We’ll see. Calm your typewriter fingers my fickle positivist fans (really? are there any?) I know perfectly well that there are at least two variables I’m failing to account for here: Probably the more important of the two is that I only started using the Techron intensively when I ran out of Chevron stations (that was in Wyoming, with a station that one of my phones could find, and the other couldn’t). It could be that, since I’m still using top tier fuels, I’m getting some synergistic effect with the detergents in those fuels.

That’s only probably the more important of the two variables. The other one is that I’m clearly doing a different sort of driving, driving that’s much easier on the engine. I’ve just gotten my oil changed and driven something like 3000 miles across country. Normally by now, with the driving I was doing, my oil would be starting to look moderately dirty. That amount over the full mark on my dipstick would probably be gone and then some. Neither of those are currently true. The oil, when I checked it this morning, was still over the full line and just beginning to show some color. I expect a return to normal behavior when I resume driving for Uber and/or Lyft, but it’s conceivable (IANAM – I Am Not A Mechanic) that this drive has had a beneficial effect on the engine and, further, that I have not yet seen the beginning of a tapering off in improvement.

We shall see, but getting back to the story, the first thing I wanted to do getting out of my hotel room this morning was find gas. I checked: Chevron wasn’t available around Oregon, Ohio, either. I found a Shell station that I guess was far enough away down the road that when I’d fueled up and pointed to my motel, Google routed me a very scenic route around the south shore of Lake Erie. Highway 2 goes through some absolutely gorgeous country, that yes, looks very much like what it probably looked like when I was a kid, and presumably longer.

I hardly even caught a glimpse of Lake Erie and maybe it was just that after Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and much of Nebraska with hardly any trees, I was needing trees. If so, this was the antidote, the cure, whatever. Early spring has progressed a little further here: More than one species of tree is starting to bud, and they bud in distinctly different hues. I found it absolutely spectacular and, sadly, didn’t have an opportunity to photograph—it just seemed too narrow and too disruptive to pull over for the photograph.

But I stopped at a rest stop in Pennsylvania, in that little nib on the northwest county and took this picture:IMG_20190418_113418.jpgYou just don’t get forests like this out west, at least that I know of. And honestly, I think the winter to early-spring hues of these trees is under-appreciated.

But once again, to return to the story, I was thinking about people who have lived here for generations—this is much, much, much more common here than in the west—who are now to be convinced that what they are doing is harmful to the environment: Sure, some of it is cultivated, but to many, that’s the natural state of things. If what they are doing—and have been doing for generations—is harmful, I’m guessing a few ask, how come they don’t see it in their local environment?

And then there’s the fairly obvious follow-up question (I think one of my relatives might have put it to me when I was a kid) observing that it seems like it’s big city folks who are all upset about the environment, so if that’s the case, couldn’t it possibly be that they have fouled their own nests?

I can imagine those folks in Wyoming asking that last question too. And yes, they might be shortsighted in their premises and their implicit assumptions. Maybe they should be more appreciative of a fragile balance that makes everything they, sadly including livestock, do. But what I’m talking about, albeit superficially looking through the windows of my car, is the lived reality of people who are much more often Donald Trump supporters than not. We have to answer on those terms and I’m still thinking about how to do that.

Oh man, did I mention my mom’s vegan broccoli macaroni and cheese is amazing? I’m having more tonight, now that I’ve partly moved into my motel room. It’s just so much easier when I have access to a microwave and everything is close at hand. What would really have been good here is a way to heat it in the car—except I really didn’t have the room.

It’s going to take a while before I catch up.

Blasphemy

Just sayin’. . . .

Jon Christian, “Pepsi Plans to Project a Giant Ad in the Night Sky Using Cubesats,” Futurism, April 13, 2019, https://futurism.com/pepsi-orbital-billboard-night-sky

Back east

benfell

I know, I get it. Easterners will never agree with this. But there was a perceptible change probably some time about the time I entered the Central Time Zone yesterday, on my way to Lincoln, Nebraska (I only stopped in North Platte). I started seeing trees.

This morning, I had to run some errands: Get ice, get more Amy’s Tofu Scrambles, get Techron (I left the territory served by Chevron someplace in Wyoming), get gas, and if possible, get a car wash. The latter because I really like being able to see through my windshield and I like my headlights to illuminate something other than the insect carcasses glued to the lens.

So I wound up doing a little driving around Lincoln accomplishing that shit, which made me, again, late checking in tonight. But as I was driving around Lincoln, I was thinking of Dormont, Pennsylvania, where my mother grew up. Then, I corrected myself: No, this is a bit more like Mount Lebanon, the neighboring town where we lived for a couple years between stints in San Francisco.

And then I was thinking, wait a minute. It can’t just be that every place east of the Missouri River and a few west of it is going to remind me of Pittsburgh suburbs, is it?

The short answer is, yes. Mainly because of the trees. Out west, we have some deciduous trees and lots of evergreens–cypress, redwood, and many more. Here, it’s kind of the opposite. Lots more deciduous, only some of which, at this time of year, is barely beginning to sprout leaves, all leaving exposed the trees themselves in a shot (above) I might associate more with autumn than (here) early spring.

So I was late leaving Lincoln and, having failed to find Amy’s Tofu Scrambles at the Lincoln Whole Foods, I had to stop at the one in West Des Moines. This worked out: I was also able to get some lunch there, which is good because it’s after midnight now here at the hotel in Oregon, Ohio, too late to be having the microwave beep at full volume incessantly. I’d have been here sooner had I not eaten lunch; but not enough sooner.

But that also limits how far I’m going to get catching up on news. It certainly won’t all be tonight and I’m calling it a night.

 

The midwest

benfell

I woke up needing to pee. I’d been worried about the weather so I peeked out through the window. It was pouring down rain.

Not at all the weather I wanted to head into the Wasatch Mountains, let alone the Rockies. And indeed it was snowing as I crossed the Wasatch Mountains, but it wasn’t sticking.

I’m still not sure where the division between the Wasatch range and the Rockies was. I thought I was passing the continental divide when I saw an exit for “Divide Rd.” followed by a steep downgrade. Wyoming, however, has the continental divide marked at two locations farther east, both at around 7000 feet. By that time, however, I was on high plains and out of danger. The rain washed my car—in vain: By the time I’d gotten to North Platte, my car was plastered with insect remains.

There’s just not much to say about Wyoming and Nebraska. I was wondering how people living their entire lives in such a barren, desolate, wide open space could be persuaded of the importance of environmental protection. They see no sign of global overpopulation. There is hardly any water to pollute. The wind blows any air pollution far away. There is, on the other hand, land, lots of it, each acre seemingly interchangeable with the next for thousands if not millions of acres. They are far away from the dead zones where agricultural runoff makes sea water uninhabitable and from areas which will be inundated by rising sea levels. And they would have no point of reference for urban issues, let alone those of highly and densely populated metropolitan areas.

Instead, folks here see billboards from PassItOn.com, an entity that seems to think the big problem with the U.S. is that we fail to feel confidence, optimism, civility, and courtesy. Other signs, billboards, and crosses proclaim that we need to read the Bible (King James Version, thank you) and turn to Jesus.

Sorry, no news today. The drive today was just way, way too long.

I have traversed Nevada and am in Salt Lake City

benfell

The picture above tells a lot of my story today, driving from Reno to Salt Lake City. There is actually green grass among some of the unusually bright green sagebrush I saw as I left Reno. As I continued east, sagebrush as I remember it became visible, but not always consistently. At one point, I was looking at a scene with sagebrush as I remember it, the really green aforementioned sagebrush, and sagebrush that was all dried up and about ready to roll (tumbleweed).

I took this picture about half-way between Valmy and Battle Mountain. Many Nevada towns have their initial inscribed on a prominent hillside. Reno has “R,” Sparks has “S,” and Battle Mountain has—get your juvenile giggle on—”BM.” Yes, they really put that on the side of something that doesn’t quite look like a hillside overlooking their town.

This is roadway I haven’t traveled since, as a kid, my father took me to visit my Uncle Len and grandparents after my parents divorced. I remember the side of a mountain bearing the fully spelled out text, “Battle Mountain.” I didn’t see that this time. Instead, I saw “Bowel Movement,” or rather its initials used as a euphemism.

I’ve been thinking about Wells, Nevada, since I set out. Wells is basically a no-account town most of the way to Wendover on the Nevada-Utah border. But I remember one year as a kid, when we moved from San Francisco to Pittsburgh in a Jeep Wagoneer towing a U-Haul trailer (with a moving van coming separately).

The day before we left, it rained hard enough in San Francisco that the water was piling up on 23rd Avenue where we lived. The storm drains couldn’t drain the water fast enough. That storm caught up with us a little west of Wells. There was a multiple-car pileup, due to ice, that we slid right into. We wound up going into Wells to give our statement, then continued on to Salt Lake City, staying with my grandparents while we got the front end fixed.

I also remember Wells from a return trip from Pittsburgh—when I was a kid, we took a few trips across country between Pittsburgh and San Francisco, so I’m not sure if this is when we were moving back to San Francisco a couple years later. The car had mechanical trouble. We wound up getting towed to, you guessed it, Wells and staying overnight while it got fixed.

I stopped in Wells for gas today. As with the rest of the drive, it was uneventful. But having driven clear across Nevada, seeing very few trees (mostly along rivers and streams), it was a bit of a surprise to see small trees east of Wells. They were clearly distinguishable from shrubs in that they had central trunks and branches. But not much larger.

Wendover is a bigger place than I remember. As with Winnemucca and the other towns I passed, I-80 no longer goes down city streets; bypasses have been built on the north sides of these towns (I didn’t recognize any as having been built on the south). But it even has tall buildings now. I could have stopped there for gas instead of Wells, but I’m fussy: Chevron really seems better in my car, and this isn’t the first car I’ve noticed that in. I remembered Wendover as a final stop for slot machines before hitting Utah and I certainly didn’t remember whether it had a Chevron station. For the record, it does now.

I encountered some sprinkles as I traversed Nevada, but the rain didn’t really start until I’d crossed into Utah. From the vantage point just east of Wendover, the Great Salt Lake looked like a mirror. I never had a really good angle for a photograph, partly because I was heading east.

So I’m in my hotel. I’m tired so I’ve grabbed some of my mother’s vegan broccoli macaroni and cheese that she sent me off with. It rocks. It absolutely rocks. It’s infinitely better than what they have at Amy’s Drive Thru in Rohnert Park. My mom sent me off with two pretty good sized containers. I’m most of the way through the first one and had a slice of her always excellent vegan pumpkin pie.

Rain is also in the forecast for tomorrow, but it looks like temperatures will be high enough at least to cross the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake. I will be trying to make it to Lincoln, Nebraska. That means also crossing the Rockies. Wish me luck.

I’m still heartbroken about leaving California. I just wish I could find a real job there.

Brexit

Another metaphor would be rats deserting a sinking ship. Brexit has gone completely wrong, I don’t think anyone actually sees a way through the mess, and I think anyone who thinks they see a way is delusional.

The thing of it is that no one, not a single one, has put forward a convincing case that they could have done better than Theresa May at coming up with a deal. They blame her anyway and carry on with their delusions that they could indeed have done better.

And now that it looks like the Tories will lose a general election,[1] they are indeed abandoning the ship. They should be pilloried for their hypocrisy and their self-righteousness.
3035
Cartoon by Ben Jennings, via the Guardian, fair use.

Notre Dame

The picture that accompanies the story makes the fire appear catastrophic, but firefighters say they’ve saved the structure. And as usual, Donald Trump made an ass of himself, suggesting “flying water tankers.” Such water drops would collapse the structure.[2] The Atlantic has more photographs.

Lori Hinnant and Samuel Petrequin, “Notre Dame Cathedral is ravaged in blaze; Macron pledges to rebuild,” Boston Globe, April 15, 2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2019/04/15/paris-notre-dame-cathedral-flames/xxj3cTUPh1XtTMfTte2VNL/story.html

  1. [1]Edward Malnick and Christopher Hope, “Tories face 60 seat loss amid Brexit backlash as ‘Corbyn bound for No 10,’” Telegraph, April 13, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/04/13/tories-face-election-wipe-party-course-lose-60-seats-hand-corbyn/↩
  2. [2]Lori Hinnant and Samuel Petrequin, “Notre Dame Cathedral is ravaged in blaze; Macron pledges to rebuild,” Boston Globe, April 15, 2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2019/04/15/paris-notre-dame-cathedral-flames/xxj3cTUPh1XtTMfTte2VNL/story.html↩

I have left California

benfell

The weather forecast for Truckee included a 100 percent chance of rain tomorrow, so I decided to leave Sebastopol today and beat the mountain weather (nonetheless, a few sprinkles hit my windshield as I came down from Donner Pass). I am now in Reno and have checked in to my motel. It looks like it should be a relatively quiet room, well away from the street, in a building behind the lobby and swimming pool.IMG_20190414_135906 (1)
There are still several feet of snow on the ground in the Sierras, above 5000 feet. Reno, after a relatively (by recent standards) wet winter, is a greener shade of dry. You can see snow covered mountains.

Reno isn’t as friendly for vegans as it was last time I was here, a few years ago. I’ve found my way to House of Mexica; I am hypersensitive to onions, peppers, and cilantro, so I made this choice with some trepidation, but I got a burger that was entirely decent.

Brexit

I’m no fan of polls now that the response rate is something like nine percent. But they obviously still have an impact as we can see with the Telegraph leading with a panic about the Tories possibly getting drummed out of office for failing to deliver Brexit. While an election that could produce such a result has yet to be called, backbenchers continue to maneuver, looking for a way—it looks like they just might find it—to call another vote of confidence in Theresa May.[1]

Edward Malnick and Christopher Hope, “Tories face 60 seat loss amid Brexit backlash as ‘Corbyn bound for No 10,’” Telegraph, April 13, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/04/13/tories-face-election-wipe-party-course-lose-60-seats-hand-corbyn/

  1. [1]Edward Malnick and Christopher Hope, “Tories face 60 seat loss amid Brexit backlash as ‘Corbyn bound for No 10,’” Telegraph, April 13, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/04/13/tories-face-election-wipe-party-course-lose-60-seats-hand-corbyn/↩

Julian Assange arrested

benfell

Updates

  1. Originally published, April 11, 6:40 pm.
  2. April 11, 8:07 pm:
    • Julian Assange lost support—becoming a clearly unsympathetic figure—with Wikileaks’ publication of Democratic Party dirty laundry (that badly needed airing) and with his near-endorsement of Donald Trump. Philip Bump reviews what is and is not known about Assange’s role in 2016, including in alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.[1]
    • Speaking of alleged Russian hacking, the Department of Homeland Security (a fascist name if ever there was one) has notified state election officials that Russians visited all fifty states’ election websites and obtained at least some sample ballots and voter registration information.[2] Someone who’s actually paying attention might notice that this is all public information, but no, let’s just scapegoat the Russians instead.
  3. April 12, 9:25 am:
    • Elon Musk wants people to work eighty hours per week.[3] And Jack Dorsey has a ‘biohack’ that invites a comparison to anorexia.[4] I’m going to have to think about this more but it strikes me that there’s something awfully weird about high-flying tech executives taking on the human body as if it is something to be given up for Lent.
  4. April 12, 12:39 pm:
    • Owen Jones hits all the right notes in opposing Julian Assange’s likely extradition to the United States.[5]
  5. April 12, 6:30 pm:
    • Those who believe in the rule of law should be freaking out: Donald Trump apparently promised Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan a pardon should McAleenan end up in jail for turning migrants away at the border and wants to send asylum-seekers to “sanctuary cities.”[6]
    • As it heads toward an IPO, Uber continues to face problems with corporate culture and drivers. It admits that drivers may become even more unhappy as the company cuts compensation in a (likely vain) quest for profitability.[7]
  6. April 13, 10:40 pm:
    • George Monbiot argues that neoliberalism has gone farther in privatization and reduction to quantification than even Ludwig von Mises, the capitalist libertarian whom I had the impression would privatize even fire departments, advocated.[8]

Julian Assange

Assange-Trump-Toilet-941
Cartoon by Steve Bell via the Guardian, April 12, 2019, fair use.

William Booth et al., “WikiLeaks’ Assange arrested in London, accused by U.S. of conspiring in 2010 computer hacking attempt,” Washington Post, April 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/wikileakss-julian-assange-evicted-from-ecuador-embassy-in-london/2019/04/11/1bd87b58-8f5f-11e8-ae59-01880eac5f1d_story.html

Philip Bump, “What we know — and don’t know — about WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and the 2016 campaign,” Washington Post, April 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/11/what-we-know-dont-know-about-wikileaks-julian-assange-campaign/

Danica Kirka, “Assange will fight extradition to the US after being arrested, charged,” Boston Globe, April 11, 2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2019/04/11/london-police-arrest-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange/xqaIjgHFWoguTJofEZRSFP/story.html?s_campaign=breakingnews:newsletter

Owen Jones, “Whatever you think of Julian Assange, his extradition to the US must be opposed,” Guardian, April 12, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/12/julian-assange-extradition-wikileaks-america-crimes

Brexit

Brexit-Halloween
Cartoon by Bob Moran via the Telegraph, April 12, 2019, fair use.

Michael Birnbaum and William Booth, “E.U. leaders offer to extend Brexit until October, avoiding chaotic exit on Friday,” Washington Post, April 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/theresa-may-heads-to-decisive-eu-summit-to-beg-for-more-time-before-britain-brexits/2019/04/10/1b342ffa-5622-11e9-aa83-504f086bf5d6_story.html

Daniel Boffey and Rowena Mason, “Theresa May agrees to October Brexit as Donald Tusk warns UK ‘don’t waste this time,’” Guardian, April 11, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/apr/11/may-agrees-to-october-brexit-after-franco-german-carve-up

Gordon Rayner et al., “EU delays Brexit date to Hallowe’en – with review in June – on bruising night in Brussels,” Telegraph, April 11, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/04/10/eu-delays-brexit-date-halloween-review-june-bruising-night/

Donald Trump

Brian Faler, “Treasury misses congressional deadline for turning over Trump’s tax returns,” Politico, April 10, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/10/trump-tax-returns-congress-1342027

Maslow’s Hierarchy

Lila MacLellan, “‘Maslow’s pyramid’ is based on an elitist misreading of the psychologist’s work,” Quartz, April 10, 2019, https://qz.com/work/1588491/maslow-didnt-make-the-pyramid-that-changed-management-history/

Roman Catholic Pedophilia

Benedict would blame the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s for the Catholic Church’s pedophilia problem. “Some analysts noted that clerical abuse cases existed well before the 1960s.”[9]

2016 Elections

Sean Gallagher, “DHS, FBI say election systems in all 50 states were targeted in 2016,” Ars Technica, April 10, 2019, https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/dhs-fbi-say-election-systems-in-50-states-were-targeted-in-2016/

Dieting

Monica Hesse, “The key to glorifying a questionable diet? Be a tech bro and call it ‘biohacking,’” Washington Post, April 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-key-to-glorifying-a-questionable-diet-be-a-tech-bro-and-call-it-biohacking/2019/04/11/12368e2c-5ba2-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html

Migration

Philip Bump, “Trump thinks sending migrants to immigrant-heavy, immigrant-friendly cities is a punishment,” Washington Post, April 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/12/white-house-wanted-send-migrants-cities-with-lot-immigrants/

Jake Tapper, “Trump told CBP head he’d pardon him if he were sent to jail for violating immigration law,” CNN, April 12, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/politics/trump-cbp-commissioner-pardon/index.html

Uber

Julia Carrie Wong, “Disgruntled drivers and ‘cultural challenges’: Uber admits to its biggest risk factors,” Guardian, April 12, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/11/uber-ipo-risk-factors

Neoliberalism

George Monbiot, “Quantomania,” April 13, 2019, https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/13/quantomania/

  1. [1]Philip Bump, “What we know — and don’t know — about WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and the 2016 campaign,” Washington Post, April 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/11/what-we-know-dont-know-about-wikileaks-julian-assange-campaign/↩
  2. [2]Sean Gallagher, “DHS, FBI say election systems in all 50 states were targeted in 2016,” Ars Technica, April 10, 2019, https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/dhs-fbi-say-election-systems-in-50-states-were-targeted-in-2016/↩
  3. [3]Nathan Crooks, “Elon Musk Says You Can Change the World Working 80 Hours a Week,” Bloomberg, November 26, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-26/elon-musk-says-you-can-change-the-world-working-80-hours-a-week↩
  4. [4]Monica Hesse, “The key to glorifying a questionable diet? Be a tech bro and call it ‘biohacking,’” Washington Post, April 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-key-to-glorifying-a-questionable-diet-be-a-tech-bro-and-call-it-biohacking/2019/04/11/12368e2c-5ba2-11e9-842d-7d3ed7eb3957_story.html↩
  5. [5]Owen Jones, “Whatever you think of Julian Assange, his extradition to the US must be opposed,” Guardian, April 12, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/12/julian-assange-extradition-wikileaks-america-crimes↩
  6. [6]Philip Bump, “Trump thinks sending migrants to immigrant-heavy, immigrant-friendly cities is a punishment,” Washington Post, April 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/12/white-house-wanted-send-migrants-cities-with-lot-immigrants/; Jake Tapper, “Trump told CBP head he’d pardon him if he were sent to jail for violating immigration law,” CNN, April 12, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/12/politics/trump-cbp-commissioner-pardon/index.html↩
  7. [7]Julia Carrie Wong, “Disgruntled drivers and ‘cultural challenges’: Uber admits to its biggest risk factors,” Guardian, April 12, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/11/uber-ipo-risk-factors↩
  8. [8]George Monbiot, “Quantomania,” April 13, 2019, https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/13/quantomania/↩
  9. [9]Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli, “Ex-Pope Benedict contradicts Pope Francis in unusual intervention on sexual abuse,” Washington Post, April 11, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/speaking-out-at-this-difficult-hour-a-once-quiet-ex-pope-pens-a-lengthy-letter-on-sexual-abuse/2019/04/11/0ffa162e-5c1a-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html↩