At the end of this weekend posting, I'll speculate on signs of desperate scheming among residual "elders" of the Republican Party and their backers who, like Prussian nobles of 1933, are murmuring "what have we done?"
== Competition vs cooperation ==
My friend (and RASR) investment guru John Mauldin knows something's wrong. He knows the U.S. right has gone insane, but keeps trying to couch it in terms that "balance" the blame. This time he refers to the brilliant economic pundit Michael Lewis whose seven-part podcast called Against the Rules "begins by talking about referees, specifically the referees who toil at NBA games. Later episodes deal with the “referees” in financial markets, courts of law, civil society, and government."
Now you know I'm one of the folks most avidly pushing rediscovery of Adam Smith. Competition is great! But as Smith reiterated, competitors will cheat. They always have, across at least 4,000 years. For the last couple of centuries we've taken gradual, then major (if incomplete) steps toward solving the problem through careful regulation.
I've long said that regulation to prevent cheating sits at the core of our five great competitive arenas... DEMOCRACY, MARKETS, SCIENCE, COURTS and SPORTS... the last one proves the point. And I'm glad to see Michael Lewis working it.
Blatantly, sports would collapse without close regulation. Science mostly successfully self-regulates with fierce reciprocal accountability, though some institutions are required. Courts are meticulous, but can be poisoned with 3rd rate judges (a top GOP priority.)
Democracy and markets must have cheating-prevention protocols thoroughly legislated, as our parents knew in the Greatest Generation. And since Reagan, the top goal of the GOP has been to tear down (not update) those cheating-prevention tools. And as a result, now Democracy and Markets are in freefall collapse.
Alas, John M. then tries to get away with the last stand of RASRs -- Residually Adult-Sane Republicans -- crying out "Both sides are at fault!"
It's not true. It's not even remotely true.
"But the overarching theme on both left and right is that the “referees” are no longer fair or impartial."
Riiiight. Except at the level of a few cherry-picked anecdotes and some loopy campus lefty-flakes, there is no equivalence to hide behind. (Example: blue states institute paper ballots and auditable elections while red states buy no-audit machines from companies with Russian ties. How do you call that equivalent?)
A RASR who also loves America and civilization - and honest-competition, and hope for a decent future - has one option. Help kill the Republican Party dead. Be confidently assured that the Democratic Party, after restoring the Rooseveltean contract of the Greatest Generation, along with science and active leadership solving real problems, and restoring accountability...
...will then break apart! The half that forms a new "right-ish" party - the Adam Smith wing - will be pro-entrepreneurship! While also believing in facts, justice, equality, facts, honest elections, facts, science, competitive markets and and saving the Earth... and facts. It will be everything you want. But first you must help us slay a vampire elephant.
== The Smart-Rich: are they awakening? ==
A crucial divide is between those oligarchs who think insatiable cheating will perch them atop a neo-feudal pyramid of inherited wealth and power vs. those who can smell inevitable revolution.
“It’s not whether we should be capitalist or socialist. It’s how do we make sure that capitalism is working the way it has in the past,” said top investor Alan Schwartz at the recent Milken Conference, warning of “class warfare.” He noted that salaries and wages as a percentage of the economic pie are at a postwar low of 40%, prompting a “throw out the rich” mentality that would require some form of income redistribution to head off.
Mega investor Ray Dalio further warned that unless the American economic system is reformed so “that the pie is both divided and grown well” the country is in danger of “great conflict and some form of revolution that will hurt most everyone and will shrink the pie.”
Not to mention Anthony Scaramucci, who in the last week or so seems to be trying to create an anti-Trump wing of the Republican party.
And most recently, the Business Round Table (of all conservative groups) in August 2019 issued a powerful statement finally rejecting an old cornerstone, Milton Friedman's manifesto that executives owed duty only to their stockholders' immediate value, and nothing and nobody else. That monstrous ethos is now seen as catastrophic, even by the BRT, who say that all stakeholders -- employees, contractors and suppliers, and the environment and civilization over the long term, should get full consideration and voice.
Let’s be clear. Capitalism did not “work” well across nearly all of the last 6000 years, because elites foiled or slowed its competitive creativity with relentless cheating. It’s what powerful males will do, 99% of the time, and that history led Marx to confidently predict a violent, proletarian-revolution end game. But it turned out that there was another path: curb the cheating. Successive waves of reform across the last 200 years started with the American Founders seizing and redistributing up to a third of the land in the former colonies, ending feudalist oppression.
But other cheats flourished and it wasn’t till the Rooseveltean social contract that markets became flat-fair-open-competitive enough to really take off, growing an unprecedented middle class, while making shared investments in infrastructure, science, education, health, R&D and children… the greatest success story in history.
Doubt it? The works of Karl Marx, lately thought consigned to history's dust-bin, are flying off the shelves now, on university campuses and in worker ghettos around the globe. And the smarter billionaires are starting to consider what kind of society will serve their enlightened self-interest. In EARTH and in EXISTENCE I forecast that some members of the world wealth aristocracy would start holding meetings about this. Perhaps we are seeing crude, preliminary signs.
Okay... we're ready for what I promised, the aroma I am sniffing of rats desperately seeking to bail... or get off a sinking ship.
== Schemers hoping to "rescue" the GOP ==
I've been (as you know) tracking signs of an underground movement by retired or retiring GOP figures, simmering and trying to scheme for the "salvation of US conservatism."
I doubt that either of the two who have stepped up, so far, are in on it. ex-Gov. Bill Weld is a former Libertarian Party presidential candidate who -- in a sign of how low we've sunk -- appears to be taking Trump on from the president's "left." Just yesterday Joe Walsh, a conservative radio show host and former Republican congressman from Illinois, telegraphed he is running against Trump from the hard right. Nor would be the stand-up Schindler-figure, Justin Amash (like Oskar Schindler, a creep who refuses to sink further into outright evil.)
Certainly Mitt Romney is scheming. That's a given, no matter what else! But the recent wave of Texas retirees from the House? Who knows?
The figure we aren't seeing, who is doubtless talking to desperate zillionaires is Paul Ryan. (Remember him? You will, soon. Oh bet on that.)
Deterring all of this, of course, is the 88% approval rating of Trump among Republican voters, daunting almost everyone from uttering a word, let alone standing up to the madness openly.
Left out of those polls? The plummet in self-identified Republicans, nationwide, threatening with extinction the zombie implement that has served Murdoch and Putin so well. (And yes, I deeply worry what will happen when Two Scoops is seen by them as more a liability than asset: don't eat anything fed to you by your commie pals, Don, lest you be more valuable to them as a martyr.) (God bless the US Secret Service!)
Also, just how brittle is that 88% Republican support? I recall Watergate, when Nixon's devoted support collapse, like sediment raining from a supersaturated solution, or like sentiment draining from tens of millions of Republican women.
Final thought: these oligarchs should ponder deeply the fate of the Junkers-caste prussian oligarchs in 1930s Germany, who thought they could control a populist beast they helped stir into hydrophobic frenzy.
Surprise, surprise! In its froth, the beast threw its riders and a gifted svengali leaped aboard, grabbing the reins. (Remember the line from CABARET: "Do you still think you can control them?")
The beast is not to be blamed as much as the beastmasters who crafted this outbreak. You who thought you could control this were not anywhere near as smart as you thought you were. And the smartaleck "fact-people" you've waged war against are not as stupid as you envision.
History would have predicted this. If you bothered to learn any.
I've long said that regulation to prevent cheating sits at the core of our five great competitive arenas... DEMOCRACY, MARKETS, SCIENCE, COURTS and SPORTS... the last one proves the point. And I'm glad to see Michael Lewis working it.
"But the overarching theme on both left and right is that the “referees” are no longer fair or impartial."
Riiiight. Except at the level of a few cherry-picked anecdotes and some loopy campus lefty-flakes, there is no equivalence to hide behind. (Example: blue states institute paper ballots and auditable elections while red states buy no-audit machines from companies with Russian ties. How do you call that equivalent?)
A RASR who also loves America and civilization - and honest-competition, and hope for a decent future - has one option. Help kill the Republican Party dead. Be confidently assured that the Democratic Party, after restoring the Rooseveltean contract of the Greatest Generation, along with science and active leadership solving real problems, and restoring accountability...
...will then break apart! The half that forms a new "right-ish" party - the Adam Smith wing - will be pro-entrepreneurship! While also believing in facts, justice, equality, facts, honest elections, facts, science, competitive markets and and saving the Earth... and facts. It will be everything you want. But first you must help us slay a vampire elephant.
== The Smart-Rich: are they awakening? ==
A crucial divide is between those oligarchs who think insatiable cheating will perch them atop a neo-feudal pyramid of inherited wealth and power vs. those who can smell inevitable revolution.
Mega investor Ray Dalio further warned that unless the American economic system is reformed so “that the pie is both divided and grown well” the country is in danger of “great conflict and some form of revolution that will hurt most everyone and will shrink the pie.”
And most recently, the Business Round Table (of all conservative groups) in August 2019 issued a powerful statement finally rejecting an old cornerstone, Milton Friedman's manifesto that executives owed duty only to their stockholders' immediate value, and nothing and nobody else. That monstrous ethos is now seen as catastrophic, even by the BRT, who say that all stakeholders -- employees, contractors and suppliers, and the environment and civilization over the long term, should get full consideration and voice.
Let’s be clear. Capitalism did not “work” well across nearly all of the last 6000 years, because elites foiled or slowed its competitive creativity with relentless cheating. It’s what powerful males will do, 99% of the time, and that history led Marx to confidently predict a violent, proletarian-revolution end game. But it turned out that there was another path: curb the cheating. Successive waves of reform across the last 200 years started with the American Founders seizing and redistributing up to a third of the land in the former colonies, ending feudalist oppression.
But other cheats flourished and it wasn’t till the Rooseveltean social contract that markets became flat-fair-open-competitive enough to really take off, growing an unprecedented middle class, while making shared investments in infrastructure, science, education, health, R&D and children… the greatest success story in history.
But other cheats flourished and it wasn’t till the Rooseveltean social contract that markets became flat-fair-open-competitive enough to really take off, growing an unprecedented middle class, while making shared investments in infrastructure, science, education, health, R&D and children… the greatest success story in history.
That is, till that contract suffered slash-burn attacks, starting in the 1980s. And every retraction of that balanced approach – every “supply side” restoration of cheating – led to slower growth and skyrocketing disparities.
Maintaining a civilization of empowered citizenship -- the "diamond-shaped social structure" about which I often speak -- is a dilemma well described by famous historians Will & Arial Durant, in The Lessons of History:
"…the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.”
Doubt it? The works of Karl Marx, lately thought consigned to history's dust-bin, are flying off the shelves now, on university campuses and in worker ghettos around the globe. And the smarter billionaires are starting to consider what kind of society will serve their enlightened self-interest. In EARTH and in EXISTENCE I forecast that some members of the world wealth aristocracy would start holding meetings about this. Perhaps we are seeing crude, preliminary signs.
Okay... we're ready for what I promised, the aroma I am sniffing of rats desperately seeking to bail... or get off a sinking ship.
== Schemers hoping to "rescue" the GOP ==
I've been (as you know) tracking signs of an underground movement by retired or retiring GOP figures, simmering and trying to scheme for the "salvation of US conservatism."
I doubt that either of the two who have stepped up, so far, are in on it. ex-Gov. Bill Weld is a former Libertarian Party presidential candidate who -- in a sign of how low we've sunk -- appears to be taking Trump on from the president's "left." Just yesterday Joe Walsh, a conservative radio show host and former Republican congressman from Illinois, telegraphed he is running against Trump from the hard right. Nor would be the stand-up Schindler-figure, Justin Amash (like Oskar Schindler, a creep who refuses to sink further into outright evil.)
Certainly Mitt Romney is scheming. That's a given, no matter what else! But the recent wave of Texas retirees from the House? Who knows?
The figure we aren't seeing, who is doubtless talking to desperate zillionaires is Paul Ryan. (Remember him? You will, soon. Oh bet on that.)
Deterring all of this, of course, is the 88% approval rating of Trump among Republican voters, daunting almost everyone from uttering a word, let alone standing up to the madness openly.
Left out of those polls? The plummet in self-identified Republicans, nationwide, threatening with extinction the zombie implement that has served Murdoch and Putin so well. (And yes, I deeply worry what will happen when Two Scoops is seen by them as more a liability than asset: don't eat anything fed to you by your commie pals, Don, lest you be more valuable to them as a martyr.) (God bless the US Secret Service!)
Also, just how brittle is that 88% Republican support? I recall Watergate, when Nixon's devoted support collapse, like sediment raining from a supersaturated solution, or like sentiment draining from tens of millions of Republican women.
Final thought: these oligarchs should ponder deeply the fate of the Junkers-caste prussian oligarchs in 1930s Germany, who thought they could control a populist beast they helped stir into hydrophobic frenzy.
Surprise, surprise! In its froth, the beast threw its riders and a gifted svengali leaped aboard, grabbing the reins. (Remember the line from CABARET: "Do you still think you can control them?")
The beast is not to be blamed as much as the beastmasters who crafted this outbreak. You who thought you could control this were not anywhere near as smart as you thought you were. And the smartaleck "fact-people" you've waged war against are not as stupid as you envision.
History would have predicted this. If you bothered to learn any.
242 comments:
1 – 200 of 242 Newer› Newest»Now that Koch is dead, does Paul Ryan still exist? He never was anything more than a Koch mouthpiece.
The Junkers stood out for being too inept to control the beast. Most populist uprisings are promptly followed by purges of varying degrees of viciousness, because the mob is visualizing mob rule, whereas the leaders are visualizing using the mob to get where they are, and then dismantling the mob.
Dr Brin in the main post:
Example: blue states institute paper ballots and auditable elections while red states buy no-audit machines from companies with Russian ties. How do you call that equivalent?
They see equivalence between Democrats wanting fair elections (because they'd win) and Republicans wanting voter suppression and gerrymandering (because they'd win). In the right-wing view, both sides are equally partisan and both sides have an equivalent right to do what best helps their own party win.
It's a variation on Krugman's "Reality has a liberal bias." Democracy has a liberal bias. And while liberals can say that and conclude "We deserve to win because more voters prefer our policies", conservatives simply conclude, "We deserve to cheat because otherwise we won't win."
Zepp Jamieson:
Now that Koch is dead, does Paul Ryan still exist? He never was anything more than a Koch mouthpiece.
There are other Koch brothers who are still very much alive.
under the previous post:
Nobody is born a Nazi or a white supremacists. But nobody becomes such unless they are utter moral and intellectual scum to begin with.
This is one of those "There are two types of people in the world" things. My wife and I had occasion very recently to discuss the fact that white supremacists really do see liberal whites like us as race-traitors, because they can't imagine a possible world in which people are judged by the content of their character rather than their tribal affiliation. In their view, society is a constant battle between tribes, with one ascending to mastery over the others, and if whites lose out to blacks or Hispanics or Arabs or whomever, they we'll be the ones shaken down or shot on sight by police and forced to ride in the back of the bus. In their view, it's a complete mystery why we wouldn't want whites to come out on top of the never-ending race war.
That some white Americans believe Americanism is antithetical to the very notion of tribalism is something they just can't wrap their tiny hands around.
Indeed, the Nazis did view the world through a prism of race war: in fact their highest loyalty wasn't even to the (Aryan) German people but to race war itself.
They weren't so much German nationalists as Social Darwinist fundamentalists, as demonstrated by the Nero Order of March 1945.
I thought you would mention Anthony Scaramucci, who in the last week or so seems to be trying to create an anti-Trump wing of the Republican party.
https://www.vox.com/2019/8/21/20813787/anthony-scaramucci-donald-trump-feud-explained
Or George Will, one of the earliest shocked and horrified conservatives.
Although I truly believe that Trump is a rapey, creepy, corrupt old pervert, he is still the least bad Republican president in the last 50 years.
And Trump’s trade war with China and the crack down on illegal immigration are two big policies that actually help the Americas working class.
But it is not surprising that some of the oligarchs in the Republican party don’t like those policies and would love to support a different republican.
The oligarchs plan B seems to be support Biden (or Harris). It looks like C. Koch is looking to buy some “centrist democrats” congress critters to make sure that a good portion of the 2021 Democratic congress members remain under corporate control and that Medicare for All and a Green New Deal are thwarted or undermined.
"There are other Koch brothers who are still very much alive."
Yeah, but the only one of any political significance is older brother Charles Koch, and at 84 years of age, he isn't going to be a significant factor for very much longer.
On white supremacists: I think the basic motivation is cowardice. They are afraid to compete with minorities, and so try to stack the odds in their own favour as much as possible. What makes white supremacists particularly despicable (and cowardly) is that the odds are already stacked in their favour to an alarming degree, and it still isn't enough.
Dr Brin in the main post:
Just yesterday Joe Walsh, a conservative radio show host and former Republican congressman from Illinois, telegraphed he is running against Trump from the hard right.
Joe Walsh was one of the most stringent Tea-Partiers during its heyday. I know, because he hailed from the suburbs of Chicago, not far from where I live.
His "apology" is Glenn Beckian in that it is essentially, "Who knew people would take what I said seriously and act on it? Now that my formerly-popular position is being seen for the evil that it always was, I regret the harm that I caused and that I am continuing to cause."
Here is an excerpt from his own words in a NY Times op-ed:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/opinion/joe-walsh-trump-primary.html
In Mr. Trump, I see the worst and ugliest iteration of views I expressed for the better part of a decade. To be sure, I’ve had my share of controversy. On more than one occasion, I questioned Mr. Obama’s truthfulness about his religion. At times, I expressed hate for my political opponents. We now see where this can lead. There’s no place in our politics for personal attacks like that, and I regret making them.
"And Trump’s trade war with China and the crack down on illegal immigration are two big policies that actually help the Americas working class."
You might want to talk to small farmers about those tariffs. If you can find any. They're getting slaughtered. The GOP had to do a stagy, but utterly useless bailout of $16 billion which we paid for, to compensate for the tariffs, which we also pay for, since it's essentially a tax on imports which adds to our cost, not China's.
As for rounding up immigrants, I've never seen a country that was worth a shit or had any sort of future that needed concentration camps. And the rate of immigration is the lowest in American history -- both documented and undocumented.
And don't forget that most of that bailout for the farmers went to the large corporate farms, not the small farmers. :(
Zepp
I am a member of a CSA and the small farmers I know are doing great.
A lot of farmers have part time jobs doing non farm stuff and that kind of work has picked up a good deal.
(just as a side note: the best environmentalist I have ever met is this little organic family farmer who is both a serious Christian and Republican.)
So where are these small farmers who are going great? Denmark? France? It sure isn't here!
Larger farmers and ranchers in CA are having a hard time because they can't get low-cost labor any more.
Like the South Park underwear gnomes & their fail-proof 'Three Step Plan for Success' -- (1) Collect underwear,
(2) ??? and (3) Success !! -- David remains emotionally invested in the belief that the US Democrat Party is in NO WAY at fault for the shit-show that is international & domestic politics.
He is the very poster-boy for Schadenfreude:
He invokes the "Do you still think you can control them?" line from CABARET and chortles about the imminent death of the US Republican Party (which represents < 24% of US registered voters), even while remaining ever confident in his belief that the US Democrat Party (which represents < 31% of US registered voters) is not dying of the very same death and, miraculously, can "control them".
He remains alone, supported by moral absolutists like Zepp Jamieson who equate Jewish oligarchs, intellectuals & nationalists with "Nazis" and "White Supremacists"," believing that "they are utter moral and intellectual scum to begin with", deserving of extinction & extermination.
And, David still thinks that he & his "fact-people" can control them !!
This scenario is destined to end badly, especially for David & all of those Fact-Nazis who hold prominent positions on both sides of the political isle.
The term "Nazi":
Once defined as (1) "a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, founded in Germany in 1919 and brought to power in 1933 under Adolf Hitler" or (2) "an adherent or advocate of policies characteristic of Nazism; a fascist", now defined as (3) anyone & everyone disliked by self-loathing privileged white boys like Zepp Jamieson.
Best
Stolen joke of the day: Trump is like Greenland. White, cold, and melting in front of our eyes.
Most scathing obit I've ever seen in a mainstream publication: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a28798394/david-koch-dead-climate-denial-republican-politics/
Because I am not generally vindictive, and I truly believe that nursing a grudge is hurtful to the begrudger, I rarely indulge in speaking ill of the dead. There are exceptions, though. A small handful of men (and all the ones I can think of are men) who have done and continue to do so much harm to this country that we're supposed to love that I celebrate their final passing with an in-your-face joy mitigated only by the certain knowledge that their deaths come way, Way, WAY too late to stanch the damage they've willingly done with malice aforethought. Some have already passed, at which times I've already shocked readers/listeners with the admonition "May he roast in Hell!", which, now that I think about it, I first heard applied to the character of Nathan Holn in some book or other.
Like Arya in Game of Thrones, I can't sleep until I say the names.
If you had advance knowledge of the thin-skinned doofus' tweets, how much money could you have made shorting stocks?
scidata last post:
In lieu of flowers, the family of David Koch requests that mourners simply purchase a Republican politician.
Bill Maher did a variation on that one this evening. "Mourners are being asked, in lieu of flowers, to just leave their car engines running."
He also said something like, "The family said he went too soon, but at least he lived long enough to see the Amazon catch fire."
I'm pretty much worn out by the preposterous brain-wormed clown, the hapless serfs here and abroad, the soma zombies, the faux-frantic media, the disgusting sycophants, and the evil profiteers' horrifying picture of Dorian Gray behind the curtain. I've been haunted by what Dr. Brin once said about us being genetically descended from the harems of brutes. [takes a long pull of tree sauce]
Like much of the planet, I'm an avid yet terrible reader. There's hope in that fact I think. Watching a semi-literate older man I know stubbornly struggling through a grocery store flyer warms my heart. Literacy and numeracy are synonyms for humanity.
Calculemus!
While I no longer even skim locum's jibbers, I had hopes that "jim" was rousing out of his capering, microcephalic froth. One hoped in vain.
If you want fair referees you have to get rid of the two party system. If there are multiple parties and you need coalitions to govern (which is what every society is actually comprised of) then it is clearly in each parties interest to have independent and fair referees. If there are two parties, then it will be in the interest of parties to have partisan referees. This is just common sense. I wish people would take off their blinkers about this. FPTP is a catastrophe, not just for voters.
I used to live in Massachusetts. Bill Weld is pretty honest, and I voted for him as (Republican) governor when the Democratic candidate was John Silber, an egotist who (it seemed to me) was far to Weld's right on the political spectrum.
They REALLY don't make Republicans like Weld any more.
Some of my fellow fossils will remember the days when there used to be "liberal Republicans" mostly from the NE. Younger boomers will remember "moderate Republicans". Xgeners might remember "conservative Republicans". Now we're hard pressed to find "sane Republicans."
" self-loathing privileged white boys like Zepp Jamieson."
Why, thank you, locumranch. That's quite the nicest compliment I've received today!
Do you think Nazism is limited to Germans in the 1930s? Not at all: there have been numerous genocides since (and not all by white cultures). Nor will they stop in the immediate future: even Israel, despite its foundations, is at risk of turning genocidal.
Fascism is mostly an economic theory, described in America as 'capitalism'. Not all capitalists are fascists, but unrestrained capitalism eventually turns to fascism since authoritarianism and control are hallmarks of any business enterprise: they want a captive consumer base and a docile work population. To that end, they need as much control as possible.
Nazism is the most malignant form of fascism, the metastatic stage four version, if you will. War and murder become essential tools.
What makes Donald Trump so dangerous is that he is the spark that turns fascism into Nazism. He appeals to the trash mob, offering power and respectability and revenge for all slights, real and imagined. To the powerful, he offers unlimited and perpetual power, and they are willing to turn a blind eye to the tactics he uses to that end. It's depressing how easy it is to turn an entire culture murderous and mad.
Well, Larry, I have to go with the famed words of Moms Mabley:
"They say you shouldn't say nothin' about the dead unless it's good. He's dead. Good!"
I thought for sure there would be some mention of Trump's utterance, as he looked to the heavens, that he was "the chosen one." I wonder how that's going to play out in the Evangelical community. Outrage or swept under the rug?
DED: Swept under the rug, of course. Joy Reid reached out to about a dozen evangelical leaders for comment on Trump's blatherings. Not one responded.
Zepp has jumped the shark & demonstrated his insanity by arguing, in effect, that non-white identity groups are capable of the very same sins as the much reviled Nazi-capable white identity group.
Now that he's described Jews as Nazis, where will this insanity end? Will he now identify blacks as racists, atheists as child molesters, muslims as feminists, women as sexists and males as perennial victims?
These are 'white supremacist' talking points, Zeppo! So, welcome white boy, welcome, now that you've finally displayed your true hate-filled colour.
Best
DED:
I wonder how that's going to play out in the Evangelical community.
Do you really wonder? I don't.
I do recall bemusedly how my formerly-sane conservative buddy on the old "Cerebus" board used to shriek about liberals considering President Obama to be a messiah. I suppose that's one of those things on the list of "It's ok when Republicans do it." The same guy lambasted me once, during the 2008 election, for saying "I want my country back". "What makes it YOUR country?". Now that that exact phrase has become a Republican rallying point, I'm sure he's more than ok with them saying it. The difference being that the country really is theirs, but not mine.
And the difference, as regards Evangelicals and Trump, must be that, clearly, Benedict Donald really is God's anointed and King of Israel. I'm waiting for them to unashamedly sport t-shirts reading "I'd rather support Trump than Jesus". I mean, at this point, why not?
Zepp Jamieson:
Fascism is mostly an economic theory, described in America as 'capitalism'.
The way I've heard it, "fascism" derives from ancient Rome, the Latin word for sticks. The theory is that an individual stick can be broken, but a bound clump of sticks is impervious. That might even be where the phrase "stick together" comes from, although I have no inside knowledge about that. But that is the theory anyway--they stick together on everything, and no one can defeat them.
Except for the rest of the world, which always does. "In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is."
Zepp Jamieson:
...Now we're hard pressed to find "sane Republicans."
And there are no good Republicans.
(Except one, but on one on this list knows her except for me)
..."arguing, in effect, that non-white identity groups are capable of the very same sins as the much reviled Nazi-capable white identity group."
No 'in effect' about it: genocide and madness is something all groups are subject to.
Nor was I arguing that "Jews are Nazis". (Really, your reading skills explain quite a bit about you.) I said "even Israel, despite its foundations, is at risk of turning genocidal." If you watch the behavior of Netanyahu, you can see the similarities between him and the insane Nazi Trump.
LH: bundle of stick. Exactly so. You should hear the conspiracy theorists natter on about the bas-relief carvings of fascia behind the speaker's podium in the House of Representatives. It originally had a relatively innocent meaning of "stronger together" and didn't acquire the lockstep connotations until the 20th century.
LH wrote: "And there are no good Republicans.
(Except one,"...
In real life, I know several good Republicans. Granted, they tend to respect the freedom of others, are worried about climate crisis, etc., and I often wonder why they are Republicans because the party is so at odd with what they believe, but they cling to the 'responsible fiscal businessman' self-image, no matter how badly blown up it's been since 1980.
‘reason’ I am fine with weakening the 2 party system… after we win this phase of civil war consisting of one party as an outright tool of traitors and foreign mafias. . To do that we need the mostly-honest and mostly-loyal Democratic Party. Blue vs red-gray. Period. Period.
You are like some frou frou in 1862 declaring: We hate slavery! But also the Union. So we will march down to Georgia now wearing not blue but… um… pink! And no help from Sherman!
No… help… at all.
--
Zepp, my only problem with your answer to locum is that you paid the slightest attention to locum. Were he to go completely back on meds for two months, it would take another two for me to resume even skimming.
Ask your fiscal conservatives to make a wager over which party curbs deficits and which one sends them skyrocketing… very nearly ALWAYS.
--
LH: "I'd rather support Trump than Jesus".
I love it! Someone should set up a booth outside one of his rallies and see if they sell!
Oh, I'll get bored with Locum soon enough.
I love pointing out to Republicans that of the annual deficits, 95% are the direct result of Republican tax policies and misadventures ('supply side', ill-advised military incursions, etc) and that New Deal and Great Society programs are less than 5% of the national debt.
@Zepp Jamieson,
In point of fact, I know that "There are no good Republicans" is hyperbole. The truth in there, though, is that (these days) all active support for the Republican Party ends up being support for white supremacists, corporate power, and the perverse version of "religious liberty" which means the opposite of those actual words. A vote for your possibly-sane, socially moderate Republican Senator is, in fact, a vote for Mitch McConnell.
I mean that phrase in the sense that Dr Brin's Dena character says of men in The Postman. She acknowledges that most men are neither heroes nor villains, but that they don't matter. Good Republicans who nonetheless allow the Republican Party to remain simultaneously insane and in power don't matter.
they cling to the 'responsible fiscal businessman' self-image, no matter how badly blown up it's been since 1980.
They cling to the "Party of Lincoln" characterization too, even though they have become a different thing, in fact the opposite thing. Likewise, they cling to the image of Democrats as the party of the KKK, even though it hasn't been since 1947 or so, and certainly not since 1964. The image of Democrats as the champions of voter fraud is just as out of date, even in Chicago.
Zepp Jamieson:
No 'in effect' about it: genocide and madness is something all groups are subject to.
People with brains as tiny as Trump's hands don't realize that liberal opposition to the notion of white supremacy isn't aimed at getting rid of white people. It's aimed at getting rid of the concept of supremacy of one race (or any subgroup) over others. There's nothing contradictory about being white but not wanting white privilege to be a thing, nor about opposing white supremacy while acknowledging that other groups "do it too".
Dr Brin:
Zepp, my only problem with your answer to locum is that you paid the slightest attention to locum.
You of all people should know that not responding to loc is like giving up smoking. A hard habit to break.
LH: "I'd rather support Trump than Jesus".
I love it! Someone should set up a booth outside one of his rallies and see if they sell!
I was just mentioning this to my wife, and the more we discussed it, the more we thought the same thing. I said I actually want to wear such a t-shirt and gauge the reaction from Trumpists, which you'd first expect to be hostile, but might actually be welcoming instead. She thought we should sell them on line and we'd make a fortune. If they were displayed as you mention at Trump rallies, I'd expect them to be a big hit.
In the movie Chariots of Fire, which takes place at the 1924 Olympics, there's a scene where the very religious British runner is refusing to compete in a race that is scheduled for the Sabbath Day. The stuffy old conservative British gentlemen of the time express their outrage at this betrayal of national honor. One harrumphs, "In my day, it was king first and God second!" And this was the conservative position.
That's where Evangelicals are today. It's Trump first and God second.
I doubt Pence sees it that way. 8)
Don't I know it. I -still- get right wingers telling me Dems are the party of Robert Byrd, even though he a) died in 2010' and b) renounced his KKK membership in 1947, before any of us were born. They go dead quite when you mention Trent Lott and his ties to the Citizen's Council, which was the KKK with ties.
Sometimes it's not even hypocritical; cognitive dissonance plays a role in everyone's political makeup. People are adept at ignoring evidence in favour of belief, and political views often have the same characteristics as religious views.
Like I told the Doctor, I'll get bored with playing with locum. He's not unique, or even particularly uncommon. Usenet and 4Chan are crawling with locumranches.
LH: "In point of fact, I know that "There are no good Republicans" is hyperbole."
Yeah, I figured. Sorry if it sounded like I was taking it at face value.
Fine, I'll stipulate that there are good Republicans.
But if they exceed ten percent of the total, I'll shit in my hat and eat my hat.
@TCB,
That's not the point. The point is that the good Republicans don't do any good. They may not like Trump, but they empower him. They may not be white supremacists or misogynists, but they allow white supremacism and misogyny to take place in their name, under (I suppose) the misguided notion that it's a small price to pay for low taxes and deregulation.
Alfred Differ:
I doubt Pence sees it that way. 8)
Sure, but I meant the MAGA-wearing voters and rally-goers.
Pence is more in the "Do you still think you can control them?" clade.
Zepp Jamieson:
Sorry if it sounded like I was taking it at face value.
No worries. I say it as if I mean it at face value. In a sense, I do, for reasons explained a few comments above.
I doubt Pence thinks he controls them. I’m sure he thinks God does.
I've seen folks yearning for a return to the conservatism of Edmund Burke and Buckley.
The Burkeans have all sold their souls. There is one way any kind of US Conservatism -- restrained bureaucracy and sound budgets and resistance to left-excesses -- can possibly emerge, and that is if the fascists and oligarchs and confederates and Republicans see every party and symbol utterly crushed in the ignominy they have earned.
At which point the Democrats will split in two and those 'decent' republicans awakening from their Nuremberg rallies and Riefenstahl trances will say... 'ooh, science and enterprise-loving, justice-seeking, non-racialist world savers who balance budgets? THAT's what I meant, all along!'
Anything to the right of Chuck Schumer has thrown away all credibility through thorough and out-and-out insanity and treason.
At which point the Democrats will split in two and those 'decent' republicans awakening from their Nuremberg rallies and Riefenstahl trances will say... 'ooh, science and enterprise-loving, justice-seeking, non-racialist world savers who balance budgets? THAT's what I meant, all along!'
I recently saw a focus group of evangelical Christian Republicans who believed Trump would be the one to END racism. The problem is, they currently believe Trump to already be all of the above. How can one shake that sort of delusion? With that level of denial, even the death of the party may not be enough to convince them.
(Edited because the tag didn't work)
It remains to be seen if the liberal opposition to the notion of white supremacy is aimed at disadvantaging white people or if it's aimed at "getting rid of the concept of supremacy of one race (or any subgroup) over others" as Larry_H claims.
And, indeed, this issue may be resolved once & for all on Trump's watch as SCOTUS rules on Harvard's ability to use affirmative action to discriminate against the more meritorious Asian-American applicant.
Then, we will see if faux liberals like Larry_H are actually blank-slate equalists who are morally opposed to the merit-based supremacy concept, or they simply wish to discriminate against the white identity group in favour of reparative non-representational diversity.
I'll believe Larry_H's claim when the MSM denounces 'minority group supremacy' with equal vehemence, SCOTUS invokes affirmative action racial quotas to keep members of one identity group from statistical over-representation in each & every discipline, and more short people get to play professional basketball instead of just the freakishly tall identity group.
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I'm curious as to what group other than whites claim to enjoy supremacy.
Is Locumranch upset that he has to share his rights with his inferiors?
Zepp Jamieson:
Is Locumranch upset that he has to share his rights with his inferiors?
That's exactly what is going on, not specifically with loc, but with white Christians who "want their country back". They equate agitation by others for equal treatment with agitation by themselves for protected, superior status, as if the two are equivalent.
I think some of the confusion is sincere, in that they actually don't see the difference between the two. Think of the brouhaha over the slogan "Black Lives Matter". The complainers who come back with "All Lives Matter" or "Blue Lives Matter" think that BLM is an argument that black lives in particular are special, deserving of rights that others don't deserve. When in fact, it is a plea for black lives to matter as much as all lives should matter.
Zepp, since you seem unable to turn away, would you please (1) let us know when locum posts 3 times in a row under the influence of vitamins and (2) please not acknowledge him till that happens?
His inability to grasp basic concepts like positive sum or empathy or 3-dimensions may not be his fault. But deliberately strawmanning us with attributions to malignant beliefs that he knows we would despise... that is the repeated act of an evil person.
Yeah, Larry, that's exactly it. They love to conflate "equality" with "supremacy" or "special rights." Gays, women, immigrants, whoever--they don't want "special rights" they just want the same rights we enjoy.
RFK once said to William Manchester of the Civil Rights Movement: "We should be glad that all they want is justice, and not revenge."
Like I said, Doctor, I'll get bored. I have chores I'm putting off, and he's -such- low-hanging fruit.
The RL equivalent of locum is Trump, of course, and he's already bombed badly at the G7; I saw one post referring to the Conference as "G6 vs. Trump, and Trump keeps scoring own goals."
Re:G7
US President: We must let Russia back in.
EC President: Nope. But we maybe should let Ukraine in.
[fizz, crackle, hiss, the other G7 leaders quietly take a step back for safety]
The Rational West is no joke. Get over it.
scidata: That would be the international equivalent of renaming the street in NY where Trump Tower is situated "Barack Obama Avenue"--which, by the way, the NY City Council is seriously considering
Zepp Jamieson:
That would be the international equivalent of renaming the street in NY where Trump Tower is situated "Barack Obama Avenue"
"Barack Hussein Obama Avenue".
I don't remember the title "President" being included in the name under consideration, but that would be icing on the cake.
The proposal is to rename that stretch of Fifth Ave to "President Barack H. Obama Avenue".
Needless to say, I'm strongly in favor. :-D
About time this was said out loud.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/24/opinion/sunday/trump-jews.html
...
People involved in the new Jewish left recognize that left-wing anti-Semitism exists. But they generally don’t believe it’s a threat on par with right-wing Jew hatred.
“No political party or movement is free of anti-Semitism,” said Ellman-Golan, who had to deal with the fallout from anti-Semitism at the Women’s March. But, she said, “only one political party is quite literally inciting white nationalists to shoot up our synagogues, drive cars into our peaceful protests, mail bombs to members of our community, burn black churches and mosques, and open fire on Latinx people.”
The Jewish left rejects the idea that anti-Zionism is equivalent to anti-Semitism, but even more than that, it rejects the idea that Israel is the guarantor of Jewish safety or the lodestar of Jewish identity. A central value of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, as well as for much of left-wing Jewish culture more broadly, is “doikayt,” a Yiddish term that means “hereness.”
...
Our conflict is more definitional than Larry, Zepp & David are willing to admit:
The ADL defines the term 'Racism' as the hatred of one person by another — or the belief that another person is something other (less or more) than human — because of skin color, language, customs, place of birth or any factor that supposedly reveals the basic nature of that person. Unfortunately, the ADL hasn't kept up in the current era of reparative justice
Since the 1980s or so, Racism has been successfully redefined as something that only the white identity group can do. Racism = Prejudice + Power, the argument goes, and since the white majority demographic is believed to hold all the 'power' -- whatever that means -- then it follows that only whites can be thought capable of Racism.
Wikipedia describes this 'Racism = Prejudice + Power' formula (wherein one & only one racial identity group can hold 'power' at any one time) as a Zero Sum Game [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power].
As for now, any action the white majority demographic takes or does not take can now be described as Racism, and this sad & self-perpetuating Catch-22 called Racism must soon come to an end.
Because 'power'. Because the impoverished & predominantly white majority Red States no longer perceive themselves as having it. Because they have adopted the same empowering victim mentality that makes non-white minority groups incapable of Racism.
Because this much despised white majority demographic will become a de facto MINORITY identity group within 30 years. Because this new powerless white minority demographic will soon become incapable of Racism by this definition, too.
Larry, Zepp & other nitwits fail to understand that the 'Racism = Prejudice + Power' formula can (and will) be used against their own identity group very soon, especially if one assumes that their group possesses the POWER which makes any horrific act against them justifiable.
I wonder what the Yiddish term for 'hubris' is ?
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"I wonder what the Yiddish term for 'hubris' is ?"
'locumranch', of course.
Zepp Jamieson, apparently quoting locumranch:
"I wonder what the Yiddish term for 'hubris' is ?"
Chutzpah. I don't speak Yiddish, but even I know that one.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/operation-targeting-journalists-seen-unfavorable-to-trump-is-allied-with-the-white-house-nyt
Meanwhile, I challenge you to find a day when Donald Trump or his surrogates weren’t attacking journalism – kettles attacking pots as “fake news. Just in August 2019, an operation run by conservative operatives has reportedly scoured more than a decade of social media history from reporters who are seen as hostile towards Trump, in order to find potentially damaging posts that can be used against them. And yes, I meant “I challenge you,” because that phrase is key to a weapon too little-used against the madness.
Dr Brin:
kettles attacking pots as “fake news
I don't think most people remember that for a brief, shining moment back in 2016, "fake news" was a phrase used to describe the sort of things that the Trump campaign made up which had no relation to reality. In an extraordinary judo move, Benedict Donald turned the phrase into one that means "Anything that Trump would rather not be true."
Larry: I got accused of purveying "fake news" just two hours ago, when I posted on a climate website I frequent the reports that Trump was seriously looking into using thermonuclear weapons to try and deflect hurricanes away from the mainland.
I suppose we should be grateful there are some Trump supporters with enough brains to understand what a truly idiotic idea that is, and not just set up a "Nukes for Katrina" GoFundMe page.
I remember seeing estimates that a hurricane packs the energy of whole bunches of H Bombs. Anyone seen that stat?
Dr. Manuel Garcia Jr does the math, showing his work in a good Counterpunch article. He concludes:
For the values shown,
E = 6.944 x (10 to the 17th power) joules.
The energy released by the explosion of 1000 tons of TNT (a kiloton, abbreviated kt) is 4.182 x (10 to the 12th power) joules. So, E = 166,055 kt (or equivalently, 166.05 megatons). The atomic bomb exploded at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 produced about 15 kt, so the model storm has the energy equivalent of 11,070 Hiroshima bombs.
E in this instance is a Cat 3 Hurricane. A Cat 5 would be nearly 100 times greater.
Not that I want to support the idiotic suggestion of nuking hurricanes, but the point would be to disrupt the eye wall circulation. A moderate H bomb could probably do that. If done early enough, the storm might be disrupted enough to come apart. Maybe. Testing would have to be done that violates treaties and social norms, but who gives a damn about any of that nowadays?
On the plus side, IF one intends to resume above ground testing, might as well nuke a hurricane. That way the fallout doesn't stay in the atmosphere as long. It would rain down on the SE US states pretty quick. What a brilliant idea. 8/
I prefer the term 'wake news' myself.
On kettles attacking pots, there have been mentions of reporters being harassed at CBP checkpoints when they are returning to the country. One Canadian reporter got blocked from entry.
Kendzior has repeatedly mentioned Trump's obsession with big, tumescent mushroom inducing bangs. I have been wondering if/when the resident was going to offer to nuke the Amazon for Bolsano (because, sanity? What's that?)
Final word on nuking hurricanes till they glow. A 2009 Mother Jones article on the topic cites NOAA:
The heat release from a fully developed hurricane is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes.
Sounds like you'd be bringing your nuke to a typhoon fight.
Here's the big divide in modern thought: those who have not studied astronomy and those who have.
Those who have not are driven by bronze age ideas about weaponry and human-level phenomena. Things like a burning bush or lots and lots of bullets impress them. Those who have are modest and skeptical about human capability, even those of us who are AI-savvy. We are mindful of things like the tiny blue dot, deep space, deep time, and deep complexity. No wonder early education is such a hotly contested battlefront. The watershed is lifelong. Well, nearly lifelong - that's where Citizen Science comes in.
Alfred Differ:
On the plus side, IF one intends to resume above ground testing, might as well nuke a hurricane. That way the fallout doesn't stay in the atmosphere as long. It would rain down on the SE US states pretty quick. What a brilliant idea. 8/
Yes, exactly. I don't deny that the idea of nuking a hurricane into submission sounds cool if it would work that way. My reservations are twofold:
1) I don't think it works that way.
2) (As you point out) the cure might be much worse than the disease
For the first point--real life is not a Star Wars movie or a video game. Just because you zap something with energy doesn't mean it disappears. Imagine trying to use a pin to "pop" an air bubble that is completely submerged underwater, e.g., the output of a SCUBA tank. To someone whose entire experience is with airborne bubbles, "popping" seems like a no-brainer. But it wouldn't work. The air has to go somewhere. Likewise, the energy of a hurricane.
As to the second point, are we going to regularly detonate fifteen or so nuclear bombs above the oceans every year? This won't have its own negative effects that are worse than the hurricanes? I mean, what were we afraid of all those cold war years if this is a good idea.
(Not to mention the comic book reader in me who envisions the hurricane absorbing the radiation, becoming a permanent radioactive hurricane, and developing a malevolent will of its own)
One word: Sharknado.
What did anyone think would happen?
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Pres/Maps/Aug26.html#item-1
...
In short, in the past, the U.S. president played a dominant role in G7 meetings. Trump promised to shake things up and he lived up to his promise. Now the U.S. president at a G7 meeting is taken as seriously as your loud-mouth alcoholic uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.
Someone else knows this line!!!!!
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Pres/Maps/Aug26.html#item-5
...but as Yogi Berra once pointed out: "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they aren't."
Now, I can die happy. :)
"Life's been good for Walsh, so far. "
Argh! Death to that RCP columnist! Death! or a free beer, on me, for that reference. His choice. It's a all the same to me.
@Dr Brin,
I noticed that one too. :)
The tone of that site has changed a lot since Trump's ascendancy. It used to be very dry journalistic writing. Now, they go for Maher-like snark in their commentary. And I get the sense that the meta-message is "We try as hard as we can to be above the political fray, but there are some things you just can't pretend to accept as normal."
I know you guys really hate the idea that an energetic analysis of our economic system shows the peaking of size of the global economy and long term economic decline going forward. (We have reached the point where the increasing energy cost of energy really starts to bite into the surplus energy that is needed to power everything else).
But look at the explosion of debt with a negative interest rate – there was ~13 trillion in negative interest rate debt in June of this year, there is now about ~17 trillion in negative interest rate debt.
A negative interest rate destroys capital and shrinks the economy – exactly what needs to be done if we can’t provide the energy that the economy needs to function.
Alfred Differ,
My home state is Florida and your joke definitely wouldn't be laughed at there. Would you think it funny if people made jokes about wildfires and earthquakes getting rid of Californian Democrats? Your joke was on that level and not worthy of someone of your intelligence and acumen.
Larry,
1) I don't think it works that way.
Yah. I don't think it works that way either. Even with a huge Soviet era H bomb intended to disrupt the eyewall currents, I don't think it would actually work for long. The air currents further out have huge amounts of inertia that people underestimate. It's just air, right? Push it aside, right? Heh.
I got a chance to build an airship design intended for use near 30 km in altitude. Each side of the vehicle was essentially a tube 53 m long and 13 m in diameter. They had to be filled with air for ground level operations and pumped out to give the He room to expand at altitude. When full of air, they just sat on the hanger floor looking innocent, but there was no pushing them around. If they came off the ladders we used to hold them a couple meters off the ground, they fell slowly and gently, but they'd squash anyone underneath them to the ground and take nearly a full minute to bounce back up enough for that person to escape. [That's long enough for suffocation fears to melt your brain, but not enough to do any actual harm.]
Air has much more mass/inertia than people realize including President Nut who thinks nukes are all-powerful.
@Deuxglass,
Alfred can speak for himself, but I read his comment differently from how you did. The original was:
It would rain down on the SE US states pretty quick. What a brilliant idea. 8/
I took that as a sarcastic evaluation of Trump's "brilliant idea", i.e., "Look how NOT-brilliant that is. It would hurt parts of America worse than the hurricanes would." Not an assertion that it was an actually-brilliant idea for getting rid of Republicans.
Deuxglass,
I wasn't really joking. That's what the grimace face was for afterward. I was more annoyed than anything at what the universe has dished up for me to suffer until the next election. [In a face-to-face setting, I would have added choice expletives to qualify 'brilliant'.]
I get it, though. Dark Humor is hard to signal on the inter-tubes. 8)
Just so it is clear, all forms of above-ground, in-atmosphere blasts are toxic and stupid. Blasts right above the atmosphere are slightly less toxic, but much more stupid. Blasts outside the Earth's magneto-sheath might not be so stupid, but when dealing with humans and explosions, it is best to start with the assumption of stupidity until convincing evidence demonstrates otherwise.
Alfred Differ:
I was more annoyed than anything at what the universe has dished up for me to suffer until the next election
We can only hope the next election helps. I'm already hearing rumblings that states with Republican legislatures are conspiring to send faithless electors to the Electoral College and either vote for Trump no matter the popular result or vote for third parties so that no one gets 270 electoral votes. In that latter case, the House of Representatives decides the winner, but not by a vote of members. By a vote of state delegations.
When in the course of human events...
Larry Hart,
I took it as wishing radioactive rain on a section of the country that contains in addition to friends and family, about 60 or so million Democrats just because the vote didn't go as he wanted. The subtilty you refer to would have worked if delivered orally but since it was written, it came out as just mean.
@Deuxglass,
I'm the nicest guy on this list :) , and yet I think that I would have been more likely to mean it that way than Alfred would.
Where you heard "wishing", I heard "would blame Trump for".
Larry Hart,
You are not from an area Alfred was talking about so you didn't see the connection I see which is hurricane with nuclear bomb gives radioactive rain giving the South East states that would cause death and destruction and that Alfred, for some reason, thinks that is funny.
I have followed Alfred for years now here on this forum and I feel that he is a good person so I doubt he ment it to be mean but a person just passing by would probably see him as someone who wished violent things to happen to his friends, family and neighbors simply because they live in an area hat Alfred does not approve of. Sometimes people tell tasteless jokes that they later regret.
I crewed for a hot air balloon for a bit back in 79-80. Regular very impressive demonstrations of the mass of air. A barely moving balloon can seem deceptively gentle. Until it touches the ground. Landing can get very exciting.
Larry Hart,
You are the nicest one here :)
@Deuxglass,
Thanks.
And yet I think that I would have been more likely to mean it that way than Alfred would. So go figure.
You wouldn't have liked me in my early twenties or so. I'd have sounded a lot like locumranch. Except I got better.
For the humor value:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/26/opinion/politics/greenland-trump.html
Tom Cotton: We Should Buy Greenland
...
On faithless electors...
Twice now in this century (going by inauguration date), the Republican loser of the popular vote became the president of the United States. We're told this is ok, the way Washington and Hamilton and Jefferson intended, and that "If the popular vote mattered, Trump would have campaigned differently and won California." Ok, I don't like the outcome, but I can see respect for the rules of the game.
If electors are free to vote for whomever they wish regardless of the election that put them in that position, then there is no more "rules of the game". At that point, what are we voters supposed to do about making our will known? If even a vote for (say) "Elizabeth Warren" on the ballot could elect an elector who decides to vote for Trump, then the will of the voters means nothing at all. Yes, we could change our state legislatures, but in many cases, that requires overcoming the effects of gerrymandering and voter suppression, which the supreme court just ruled states are allowed to do all they want. They even added a wryly ironic comment that if voters don't like gerrymandering and voter suppression, they can vote out the perpetrators. Just to be mean, I suppose.
I feel analogous to the black man at a traffic stop who is admonished to "just do whatever the police officer tells you to do", and then the police officer demands his wallet, and when he reaches for that wallet, the cop shoots him. When even following the rules that are stacked against you is no guarantee of fair treatment, what's left?
Watching the SpaceHopper test via indie feed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fblo3vzsOo4
The trolling by confederates is funny:
eg. "Does this thing run on lefty tears?"
When we built our airship, the president of the company was adamantly opposed to wicker baskets. He told us that would give the wrong image to potential customers and investors. Wicker was for things that crashed instead of landed. Wicker made them easier to rebuild. 8)
He also liked to point out that there weren't many used helicopters in museums and why he thought so. Apparently they didn't last long enough when faced with the rigors of actual flight and pilot errors.
He liked gliders, though. You could feel what the air was doing.
My humor runs a little dark when it comes to nukes, but my primary response to modern suggestions to use them is usually 'whadafuq'. Ask a decent chess player about looking ahead and they'll tell you they simply don't see the bad moves. Mid-level players will have a hard time seeing the best move, but they can usually spot a few really dumb ones and avoid them. Terrestrial uses for nuclear warheads strikes me as 'bad', so Trump isn't even to mid-level play yet.
I have friends and family in the states currently in reach of hurricanes. Poisoning them and their friends and family is to be avoided. I actually trust my (current) federal government not to do that using nukes, but I'm only warily optimistic that they will avoid doing it with lead or some other chemical contaminant. I have no feel for whether their state governments are up to those tasks.
I recognize that passers-by might misunderstand my darker humor related to Trump's ignorance, but I wasn't writing for them here. I take more care on FB and Twitter because I know my words might see a larger audience. The rules here are different, so I'm less inclined to self-filter. 8)
There's a helicopter museum near me at the airport of Ramona CA.
Will jim ever rise to the heights we have seen him reach, from time to time… of normal, non-tendentious and non-strawmanning discourse? Or is he determined to be are left-raging locum?
“I know you guys really hate the idea that an energetic analysis of our economic system shows the peaking of size of the global economy and long term economic decline going forward.”
We are perfectly aware… and that you have a theory. I dumb theory, since China has risen rapidly in an era of depleting hydrocarbon reserves. And those declines have not correlated well with stagnation, since oil prices should reflect that and the USA is now pretty much oil independent.
What DOES correlate… and a lefty should be pounding… is rising wealth disparity, which pulls money out of circulation, since the rich are mostly hoarders, not investors. Adam Smith knew it and mIlton Friedman and the Supply Siders were fools or liars.
-It's not the wanting Greenland. That's just a childish thing, motivated by narcissistic need for a big, Trumpish legacy on maps. But would be harmless. Maybe even long range beneficial. What is insane is the notion of "buying" it! First, no one wants to be 'bought or sold". It's in "deal" making 101. Second, Denmark is NOT who you dicker with, since the Greenlanders were already getting ready to declare independence.
A man with even a hint of a brain would have gone directly to the Greenlanders and said "Wanna be U.S. citizens? Also we promise 50 years of each Greenlander receiving whatever Alaskans now receive in cash, plus 50% of mineral rights."
What all of this proves is not so much that the core idea was crazy, but that he is an imbecile, and so are his followers. And so is Tom Cotton.
On kettles attacking pots:
I can't even begin to describe how racist & unenlightened this liberal-progressive analogy is.
On the imminent dissolution of the GOP & the conservative movement:
It indicates that the conservative movement is now POWERLESS and, in accordance with the current formulaic 'Racism = Prejudice + Power' definition, the nearly defunct conservative movement can no longer be accused of Racism.
This POWER now lies in the hands of the MSM, the liberal--progressive party & the Blue Urban elite and, for good or ill, what ever happens next is entirely up to them, especially if they touch the Electoral College.
The next election & the fate of the nation rests entirely in their powerful Blue Urban hands.
Best
____
The idea of acquiring Greenland is just as ridiculous as acquiring Alaska & the Louisiana Purchase, so let's all mock Harry S. Truman for his attempt to buy Greenland in 1947. Truman was moronic and so was NATO & his ill-conceived Marshall Plan.
Dr Brin:
What all of this proves is not so much that the core idea was crazy, but that he is an imbecile, and so are his followers. And so is Tom Cotton.
Agreed on all counts.
The reason I posted Tom Cotton's op-ed was to stress the point that, whatever dreck comes out of Trump's mouth now, some Republican will chime in to support it. I've slightly altered the wording of my proposed t-shirt to read, "I'd rather follow Trump than Jesus!", and I do believe it would be a hit among Evangelicals. And maybe also among liberals who get the joke. Maybe I can unite the country. :)
Cotton is why first lieutenants got fragged.
Some call Greenlanders potential victims like Puerto Rico. Not if their "deal" is to come in as a state! With two senators, they'd be major power brokers. And these idiots could have used that to make a deal. But they are idiots.
Hmm. And how many Senators does Puerto Rico have?
Exactly. They never had bargaining power. Greenlanders might.
And how many Senators does Puerto Rico have?
And how many divisions does the Pope have?
You're assuming the administration would be dealing in good faith. I see no evidence for that.
If I was a Greenlander I would vote for unification with the USA for $2 million - and I would need to see that in my bank account in Canada BEFORE voting
As well as statehood and the share of mineral profits
Something we already know...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/opinion/aoc-crenshaw-republicans-democracy.html
The point of the slogan ["We're a republic, not a democracy!"] isn’t to describe who we are, but to claim and co-opt the founding for right-wing politics — to naturalize political inequality and make it the proper order of things. What lies behind that quip, in other words, is an impulse against democratic representation. It is part and parcel of the drive to make American government a closed domain for a select, privileged few.
Just a quick thought about biodiversity, reading by the firelight, so-to-speak. Mass extinction is much more than a philosophical or political argument. The Earth is the ultimate pharmacy. Confederates are susceptible to E-coli infection like everyone else. Horseshoe crab blood is irreplaceable, and costs up to $15,000 per quart.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a26038/the-blood-of-the-crab/
This isn't just about hugging trees and protecting owls. All that national park land isn't a hooker to be used then bought off cheap. Future generations will ask uncomfortable questions if we ignore the rape.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said that "Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free".
So knowing this, what do we know? We know that freedom implies inequality; we know that equality is the antithesis of freedom; we know that the Larry Lickspittles out there who worship equality HATE freedom; and we know that the Tree of Liberty is in desperate need of watering.
Best
Larry: I've probably posted this 100 times over the years, so forgive me if I'm repeating myself here: people who say that the US is a republic, not a democracy, don't know what either term means.
A Republic is any nation-state that is not a monarchy or a theocracy. North Korea is a republic. The UK and Iran are not. Canada is not, because technically, the Queen runs the show. The US, of course, is a republic.
A democracy is where sovereignty resides with the people. The US is a democracy--it's the very first line in the preface to the Constitution, the statement of intent. But it's even harder to categorize by country than is republic. Iran, despite having widespread voter sufferage and actual election, is not a democracy because sovereignty resides with Allah. The USSR, in which elections were meaningless, was a democracy. Canada, with free and fair elections and public input on the legislative process at all levels, is not a democracy, even though to all intents and purposes it's one of the most democratic nations on earth.
The US is a Republica, and it's one of the clearest delineations of what a democracy is, as well.
"Equality" is another concept Nazis don't get. People aren't equal. Some are stronger than others, some are smarter. No sensible person disputes that.
Equality means "equal access to the law and opportunity". Having an IQ of 60 doesn't entitle you to a college degree because other have college degrees; it just means that you have the same opportunity to apply for a college and be judged on your scholastic and other abilities. Equality means that no matter your gender, race, religion or politics, you can expect the same treatment in a court of law as anyone else. It means you have the same right to vote, the same right to be served in any public business, the same right to buy or rent a home, the same right to be hired at a factory or market.
David
I think it is kind of weird that you think an energetic analysis of the economic system is dumb, but to each his own.
But it seems that you have some misunderstandings about what the theory says. The size and complexity of an economic system is limited by the energy cost of getting the energy and the amount of energy you can access (over a period of time).
The Chinese economy was able to grow in size and complexity while the energy cost of energy was increasing because
1) The Chinese economy started the process relatively small and less complex.
2) The energy cost of energy has been rising sense the 1990’s and has only now reached the point at which the energy cost of energy is high enough to strongly impact the growth of the size and complexity of the Chinese economy.
3) There still has been sufficient quantities of fossil fuels available.
And I noticed that you completely avoided the new information I was pointing to.
A huge debt equal to about 20% of the size of the global economy now has a negative interest rate! That percentage is growing rapidly, and this is before the recession hits. Once the next recession hits how many 10’s of trillions of dollars worth of debt with a negative interest rate will the central bankers around the world try and issue?
This is kind of a fun meditation.
Which overpaid executive's idea on using nuclear weapons is dumber......
Nuking Mars or Nuking a hurricane?
scidata:
This isn't just about hugging trees and protecting owls. All that national park land isn't a hooker to be used then bought off cheap.
Unfortunately, what remains of the Republican Party voters seem to have one and only one goal in mind--making liberals feel bad ("owning the libs"). If we feel bad because our ecosystem is being systematically harmed, that's good enough for them. That they will suffer too is merely the cost of doing business.
Zepp Jamieson:
North Korea is a republic. The UK and Iran are not.
Iran is specifically referred to as "The Islamic Republic". So it's kind of ironic if they're not one.
They aren't. Just as the People's Democratic Republic of Korea is not democratic.
One of the things that makes political science (which is not a science and only tangentially about politics) so difficult is that politician define the nomenclature. It's a bit like having a group of 4 years old define a food nutrition pyramid.
The way I always learned it, in a Republic, the voters choose representatives to set policy instead of doing so as a collective.
The way Republicans seem to think of the term, a Republic is such that the voters get to choose representatives from a pre-determined elite, who then get to set policy in ways that benefit those representatives themselves. But we get to pick which ones, so...democratic.
Zepp Jamieson said...
"Equality means that no matter your gender, race, religion or politics, you can expect the same treatment . . ."
Particularly these days in which the diamond we achieved for a time has turned back into a triangle, I think it's important to add social status and economic status. Both conceptually and in real life human behavior these are inextricably intertwined with the items you already listed, but I think it's important to explicitly include them.
If I get entangled with the law I am unlikely to be treated the same way a millionaire partner at a law firm would be even though I am a white male. Though I, in turn, am likely to have a better experience than a white male homeless person and just about any African-American that isn't obviously well above me in social and or economic status.
I'm pretty sure I've posted this before:
Thom Hartmann said it best, in my view: "If you want the most technical term, our country is a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic. Our form of government, the constitution limits the power of government. We elect representatives, so it's not a pure democracy. But we do elect them by majority rule so it is democratic. And the form of, the infrastructure, the total form of government, is republican, it is a republic."
He continues:
In the early days of this country, James Madison basically created a distinction that didn't exist before this, and this was in 1787. The, it used to be, if you look at dictionaries pre 1787, the words democracy and republic were interchangeable. The Roman republic was referred to as a democracy, the Greek democracy was refereed to as a republic. The words were interchanged. And in one of the Federalist papers, and I forget which one it was, I think 14 maybe, but it's been a long time since I read them, in one of the Federalist papers in an effort to, which were put into the newspapers by Hamilton and Madison, and John Jay wrote a couple of them, to sell the constitution to people, because we were operating under the articles of Confederacy in 1787.
To sell the constitution, Madison created this artificial distinction. And what he said, basically, was that democracy, that we weren't creating a democracy in the United States, and in a technical sense it is not a pure democracy, because like Greece, you had to have at least 6,001 people show up for a decision to be made. It had to be real majority rule. And so Hamilton, excuse me, Madison made the point that democracy could arguably be considered a form of mob rule, whereas a republic imposed, you know, an infrastructure of laws and prevented mob rule.
Continued...
Thom Hartmann, continued...
Now, what he (Madison) omitted, intentionally, because he was trying to sell the constitution, he was trying to basically reinvent language, what he omitted was that we democratically elect our representatives. And later in his life, in the 1830s, after his presidency was over, keep in mind this was in the 1770s or 1780s, in the 1830s when he was an old man, when he was writing his memoirs, he came out and said, and there's a whole, if you go to buzzflash.com and look at my book reviews, the very first book review that I ever did for BuzzFlash, which was like five years ago, it's the oldest one on the list, is all about this topic, or it has several chapters on this topic. And I forget the title of it now, but it's a great book and it's written by a guy who's a constitutional scholar ["How Democratic Is the American Constitution?" by Robert A. Dahl.] And Madison in 1834 said, you know, after all these years, we can, you can use the words interchangeably. And that was about the time that the Democratic Republican party that Jefferson created dropped the word "republican" from its name. And that was about the time that Madison, who was one of the early founders of the Democratic Republican party started again using the word democracy.
So from the 1830s, so from the founding or in the mid 1780s until the mid 1830s we referred to America as a Republic. From the 1830s until the modern era we referred to it as a democracy, but then when Joe McArthur came along he started, he and some of his advisors, and Karl Rove really got on this big time, said, "wait a minute, calling this a democracy sounds too much like the Democratic Party. We should call it a Republic because that sounds more like the Republican Party." And so the talking point on right wing radio has been, and Limbaugh's been pushing this for 20 years now, has been that we don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic, and that you shouldn;t call it a democracy, it's a republic. And the reason why is because they like the word republic because it sounds like republican and they hate the word democracy because it sounds like democratic. And ... that's the bottom line, we live in a democratic republic.
Zepp Jamieson & Darrell_E are lying hypocrites who do exactly what they accuse their opposition of doing because they pull false definitions out of their arse when it suits their nefarious purposes.
What they call 'Equality' is actually 'Equality under the Law' wherein 'The Law' is defined as " A rule of conduct or procedure established by custom, agreement, or authority", even though they support & advocate for 'law' that treats one identity group different from any other identity group.
Actual 'Equality' is coming for these lying progs quite soon and, I shit you not, they will not like it when it arrives.
Best
jim,
Nuking a hurricane is much dumber.
The worst thing about nuking Mars is it might not work as a terraforming plan. The surface of Mars is already pretty hellish with respect to radiation exposure.
Okay... one more thing that might make nuking Mars dumb is I'm not sure how we would get the bombs there in working order. They actually require TLC to function which I always found ironic.
Locumranch is still waiting for vindication of his world view from on high. Soon! You will all PAY for your sins! pfft.
On a more serious note, getting progressives to use 'equality under the law' instead of 'equality of outcomes' is actually an accomplishment. The next step is to build respect for 'equality of opportunity', but equality under the law is required first.
One tricky point about 'the law', though, is that most of our law is not written. These laws are what are called 'just behavior' expectations. What is expected of me, what I expect of others, and all that is formed informally and learned starting at infancy. 'Equality under the law' is one we learned through the generations and liked it enough to enshrine it in the Constitution as it applies to law enforced by authority.
No matter what I try to tell or ask or demand of my cat, he seems to hear the same thing, "Meow, meow, meow."
I'll leave as an exercise to the reader what relevance this observation has.
Alfred
I agree that actually nuking a hurricane comes with some pretty obvious and horrible consequences and would be a much worse thing to do.
But the idea that you can transform Mars into a planet that people can live on by dropping nuclear weapons on it, is just flabbergastingly stupid.
jim:
the idea that you can transform Mars into a planet that people can live on by dropping nuclear weapons on it...
Maybe the point is to clear the way by bombing the Martians back into the stone age first?
Before we start dropping nuclear bombs on Mars it just might be better to make sure that it is totally uninhabited and that it is not claimed territory by anyone else. Mars for all we know could be inhabited by a very old race. I have a hunch that intelligent dinosaurs tried to terraform Mars 68 million years ago without first asking permission. It ended badly for them. Let's not make the same error.
Awww shucks. In a rare coincidence I decided to skim a crazy rancher comment and my name was in it! Should I be proud? Anybody have something I could clean this off with?
Darrell E:
I decided to skim a crazy rancher comment and my name was in it!
Did he assert that you said something that was the exact opposite of what you actually said?
Nuking Mars is dumb and useless, but harmless - the planet's already dead, you can't make it deader with nukes. (Although Musk does seem to be under the impression that Mars has a functional magnetosphere and enough atmosphere to prevent orbital nukes from irradiating the planet.)
Nuking a hurricane, on a planet where life has evolved for several billion years to not be resistant to heavy irradiation, is dumb, useless, and potentially lethal. So yes, it's several orders of magnitude more stupid than nuking Mars.
The "nuke a hurricane" thing probably started by a senator whose state just got runover by a hurricane asking a general if an atomic bomb would stop one. The general said "I don't know. I'll ask our people." It goes down the chain of command to a colonel who asks the scientists who put together a team to study it. They come back saying "We don't know if it will stop a hurricane but it sure as hell will spread radioactivity all over." The colonel tells that to the general who tells the senator that it isn't a good idea. "Why not?" the senator asks and the general replies "That's classified." And it is because you now figured out how to weaponize a hurricane and that is useful.
At the time both sides were testing nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, underground and even under the sea almost weekly. Schemes like this were common. I remember they thought about using atom bombs to build a new Panama Canal. Now we see them as crazy ideas but back then people were looking for ways to use this new and exciting technology. I wonder what schemes that look great to us now might look crazy to future generations? Anybody here have any ideas about that?
Jim,
The particular executive you are thinking about with regards to Mars is not a stupid guy. He very much wants Mars to be a human livable world and has hired decent talent to turn parts of that vision into strategic plans and early objectives. As a team, I am sure he is aware of many of the difficulties.
First, I doubt the plan involves ONLY nukes. I am sure it is also flexible enough to deal with hiring more talent should he ever get close enough to try making changes. Talent turns vision into strategy and then into measurable, testable objectives. It will not be just him doing this and he IS known to flex when reality disagrees with him.
Secondly, you are seeing a marketing campaign and mistaking it for a detailed plan. “Nuke Mars” fits on a bumper sticker and t-shirt. The point of the campaign is to get people to remember his long-range vision. SpaceX exists because he wants that vision… not because the IIS owners need a way to shuttle people there and back or some sat com consortium needs a new bird in geo-sync orbit. His investors want those short range goals met because they have to think about investment exit plans, but he wants MUCH more. To get there he has to market the long plan. Investors have to be educated to make these things work.
Thirdly, why would you care if he wants to do something stupid? It’s not your money to spend wisely.
Deuxglass: what schemes that look great to us now might look crazy to future generations?
I have one. AI.
We don't have a theory of mind. We don't have a decent map of human neurology. We don't have any answer as to why intelligence evolved in the first place (it's of questionable energy/advantage ratio, making it an iffy selection feature at first). We don't have any scaffolding for how to deal with a true AI (AGI). Can you imagine the stable genius having the first go?? Beep Bop. Must sterilize biological infestation.
So, let's start throwing hundreds of trillions of transistors at the problem, using blind machine learning. Let's see what dad keeps in this drawer...
scidata,
Dune. The Butlerian Jihad. How do you train to be a mentat?
Deuxglass,
My suspicion is our children’s children’s children will think that burning any of the coal we dug out of the ground was crazy. Not necessarily because of all the CO2 we generate that way, but because of all the particulates and pollutants we generate that way. The CO2 is tolerable up to a point (that we passed a while back), but SO2 and Mercury and other crap… not so much.
Next up would be our willingness to burn this stuff inefficiently (incompletely) and using air (producing nitrogen oxides). Ozone is rather toxic and is just one of the byproducts of the complicated chemistry experiment we have been doing on our children and ourselves over the last few generations.
I would put the use of lead in our gasoline at the top, but we already realize how dumb that was.
I suspect you are right about the historical background for nuking hurricanes. That is right up there with using them to relieve pressure on active volcanoes so they go ‘pop’ instead of ‘BANG’. 8)
Let me answer Alfred and Deuxglass at the same time.
The whole Star Trek Future with space colonies, teraformed Mars, and space ships to other solar systems will be seen as pretty ridiculous.
The only good place for people to live is the earth.
As a side note*** the least crazy idea for using nuclear weapons for something other than killing a bunch of people is .....
Brain Wang's idea for a Nuclear Vern Cannon to launch a battle ships worth of materials into earth orbit.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2010/03/150-kiloton-nuclear-verne-gun.html
Alfred,
I expect that you are right on that. I would also expect that things we generally view as harmless now might in the future be considered the height of stupidity. To take a hypothetical example we know that cell phone emissions are harmless. We know that plastic bottled water is also harmless but maybe future studies might find that cell phone next to plastic bottled water creates a compound that causes cancer.
scidata said...
"We don't have a theory of mind."
I'm pretty sure there are many proto-theories of mind. In any case, we're working on it. Real progress is being made and the pace is picking up.
"We don't have a decent map of human neurology."
Same as above, working on it, real progress, pace is picking up.
"We don't have any answer as to why intelligence evolved in the first place (it's of questionable energy/advantage ratio, making it an iffy selection feature at first)."
This really isn't true anymore at all. We have very good ideas about how high intelligence may have evolved and good ideas how positive selection pressures for high intelligence could occur and confer advantages. Good ideas as in models that make sense both mathematically and as plausible fits to real data. As with any question of such historical depth the exact story of how humans evolved high intelligence can not be reconstructed without the use of a time machine. As to why intelligence evolved, there is no why, it's just something that happened.
Larry: I don't want to sound like I'm arguing from authority, but that's what I was taught in Polisci. You're are the commonly held beliefs, and libertarians and other right wingers misuse those to their own ends.
Scidata wrote: "We don't have a decent map of human neurology."
I just read Neal Stephenson's "Fall: or, Dodge in Hell" which addresses the issue of uploading a human 'soul' to the cloud. He postulated that it would, in order to succeed, require a whole body neural transfer--not just the brain, but the entire nervous system. That kinda makes sense to me.
Alfred Differ wrote: "On a more serious note, getting progressives to use 'equality under the law' instead of 'equality of outcomes' is actually an accomplishment."
It isn't, you know. A large majority of us lefties understood the distinction from the get-go, but it was an interpretation of our views that was assigned to us by people annoyed that they might have to share their rights (and more importantly, their jobs and other perks). It sounded a lot more communist that way, you see.
Nah, Darryl E, he just called us lying hypocrites and based it on the claim that we were saying the exact opposite of what we were saying.
That boy has a limited arsenal, doesn't he?
@Darrell E
No, I actually did mean 'why' not 'how' intelligence evolved. Things like eyes and simple brains evolved many different times along many different paths. High intelligence only once. Seems odd. Why just once? I'm not one of those destiny types that thinks that evolution has an arrow or an apex. I don't have an answer, but I don't think anyone else does either.
You even mention certain people, they win. Certain people get mentioned a lot when they deserve to be ignored. That's a win. For the abyss.
You must go 31 minutes in to this Cnet video but the Starhopper test was truly awesome. Go Elon and colleagues!
https://www.cnet.com/news/spacex-starhopper-prototype-takes-a-giant-leap-for-elon-musk/
“If I was a Greenlander I would vote for unification with the USA for $2 million - and I would need to see that in my bank account in Canada BEFORE voting.” You’d depopulate the place, you know. They’d ALL move to balmy Nova Scotia.
“I think it is kind of weird that you think an energetic analysis of the economic system is dumb…”
That’s what you call it, of course. You combine stating the obvious with asserting that creativity and whole new ways to use power efficiently are irrelevant and that a correctable theft of trillions had nothing to do with economic slowdown.
“Nuking Mars or Nuking a hurricane?
Bah. The nuke thing is not serious. He wants to hit Mars with asteroids. That’d release the water.
Alfred you’re still skimming his spews? Well, one of us ought to, just to see if 3x in a row he posts something more sapient than the toxic bubble on the ass of a tree frog.
Zepp Jamieson:
I just read Neal Stephenson's "Fall: or, Dodge in Hell" which addresses the issue of uploading a human 'soul' to the cloud. He postulated that it would, in order to succeed, require a whole body neural transfer--not just the brain, but the entire nervous system. That kinda makes sense to me.
To me as well. Think how much of your mood is influenced by hormones and the like. How much of your value judgements about the moment and motivations of what to do next have to do with whether you feel hungry or tired or have to piss. A bit of indigestion subjectively alters your perceptions. I think it was 1984 that mentioned something as small as a toothache subsuming the entire universe.
I may be heavily influenced by Vonnegut's short story "Unready to Wear", but it does seem to me that your personality without your physiology is an oxymoron.
Zepp Jamieson:
he just called us lying hypocrites and based it on the claim that we were saying the exact opposite of what we were saying.
You might as well also mention that the sun rose this morning and that water is wet. None of it is new information.
I am looking at my gmail inbox. I used to be able to open a screen for my "contacts" and edit contacts. Where the F did they hide the button to open gmail contacts?
@Dr Brin,
Always assuming that your screen looks like my screen,
Up toward the top right, there's an icon that looks like three rows of three dots. If you hover over it, it says "Google Apps". If you click that, a bunch of options come up. One of them is "Contacts"
David,
My 'contacts' button is in the lower left. It's pretty small and misbehaving at the moment.
As for skimming him... not so much. He was defining things and then arguing from that position again and I was mildly curious if his definitions had anything to do with the rest of us. As usual, the answer was 'sorta but in a limited dictionary kinda way'. Mostly boring except for the "You'll get yours!" summary which tempts me to go pop some popcorn to watch. 8)
jim,
The only good place for people to live is the earth.
For now, I'd have to agree. It better not stay that way, though, or we will go extinct in short order. Primate species burn out quickly.
Industry must move off-world as much as reasonably possible.
Raw materials and their refinement must be acquired off-world as much as reasonably possible.
The way I look at it, Africa is the best place for people to live... until we moved elsewhere, learned how to live there moderately well, and then altered ourselves to complete the migration. For example, my light skin, tolerance of lactose, and resistance to alcohol poisoning are some of those adaptations my ancestors needed to live up north.
Alfred, Elon Musk is an intelligent man. The problem is, his intelligence is limited in scope - he's great at engineering, not so much at other things. And Dunning-Kreuger is in full effect here, because he assumes he's a genius at everything, and news media, consisting of people who generally aren't as smart as Musk, go along with this self-assessment.
His proposal is to provide a sort of "second sun" for Mars by exploding a prolonged series of fusion warheads just outside the planetary atmosphere. Not being as well-versed in planetology as one might wish, he presumes that Mars is protected from the radioactive effects by a strong magnetosphere and thick atmosphere, just like here, so he could terraform the planet that way. Sadly, his assumption is in error, but I still say he's welcome to try - it's not like he could make Mars much less habitable than it is right now.
As for Earthside bombs, speaking as a former nuclear planner who had to become quite familiar with the effects of the weapons, I can assure you that there is no sane use for the damned things on this planet. One could, hypothetically, use them for an Orion drive, but only in space - the environmental damage from launching an Orion craft from Earth's surface would be frankly horrific.
Given his level of honesty, "Trumpenranch" seems a better nym for him.
LH: " Think how much of your mood is influenced by hormones and the like"
Stephenson factored that in. In order for his creations to resemble humans, Dodge had to embrue them with needs, wants, desires and a variety of intellectual and emotional short-circuits before they would seem 'human'.
Zepp Jameson
According to
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Seven out of the top ten "Democracies" are Constitutional monarchies
Canada is number 6
The US is number 25 and is a "Flawed Democracy"
scidata
The human brain is a real energy hog - 20% of our food goes to feed it
So right from the start the larger brain would need to pay it's keep or evolution would reduce it
I believe that the "killer app" that enabled the larger brain was "Death at a distance" - pre-humans became adept at throwing rocks - we can throw much much better than any other animal
In the early days this would have been much much more deadly than today as all the prey animals would not have learned to run
Rock throwing and teamwork - fed the bigger brain - and needed the larger brain
Deuxglass,
A big one will probably land when they prove our food additives are driving the obesity epidemic. Imagine the future textbook that points to transfats, hypersaturated fats, and other stuff we eat because it tastes good as the stuff that produced the epidemic of Type II diabetes, Alzheimer's, heart disease, strokes, and the rest of the set of self-inflicted injuries.
I know a doctor who explained to me that 3/4 ths of his time was spent dealing with the consequences of obesity. Imagine all the money we spend on this in the US. The only reason I didn't list this as #1 is you wanted 'schemes that look great to us now'. I don't know anyone who thinks its a great idea for us to experiment upon ourselves this way, but many DO believe it to be as harmless as cellphone microwave emissions. 8)
Alfred Differ:
Mostly boring except for the "You'll get yours!" summary ...
Sounds like every super-villain origin ever written. "Someday, I'll get even. I'll show them all!"
These days, he could go on a mass-shooting rampage, the default response of the white Christian incel in danger of being treated the same as everybody else.
Zepp Jamieson,
It isn't, you know.
Shh. I know.
I learned years ago with certain bosses that when they have to make a decision, it is best to offer them three options. One you write up must be unpalatable so they reject it, but it must not seem like that was your plan from the start. Do it right and they pick something close to what you want and think they owned their decision. Some see this as a cynical way to live, but I see it as helping them see the obvious.
Occasionally… it works. Doesn’t take much effort if it doesn’t.
As far as Musk and his Nukes is concerned - at this stage he KNOWS that he does not know HOW to terraform Mars
But he is fairly sure that it will be very energetic!
So he is throwing ideas into the air - which is EXACTLY what you should do at this stage in any project
Burning Coal
Coal is at least one part per million Uranium
We burn about 7,000 million tons of coal a year
So 7,000 tons of Uranium goes up the smokestacks in nice "breathing sized" particles every year
Nice high smokestacks to spread it as far as possible
SOME coal plants do have scrubbers - but how effective are they?
If ALL plants had superb 99% effective scrubbers (the don't) then we would still be putting 70 TONS of finely divided Uranium into the air every year
And I am quite sure that Uranium is NOT the worst thing!
Jon S was talking about the BAD effects of nuclear explosions - how does the 20 kg or so of radioactive crap from a nuclear explosion compare to the 7000 tons EVERY year from coal??
Re: Evolved Human Intelligence
I'm in complete agreement with Darrell E, duncan cairncross, and whoever else explains the mechanism. And obviously, it did happen, so there's that.
My point is about thinking we can easily apply this to AI. If high intelligence is just evolutionary gears & ratchets machinery, then why didn't it happen many times? We're missing something. Not to be overly dramatic, but that something could kill us all. Calculemus! is not only a rallying cry, it's an advisory for vigilance and mucho preliminary legwork. This has the feel of the SETI debate (for obvious reasons). I may soon be hit with the 'Brin Shutdown': because The Great Silence. QED.
Zepp Jamieson:
In order for his creations to resemble humans, Dodge had to embrue them with needs, wants, desires and a variety of intellectual and emotional short-circuits before they would seem 'human'.
That's one thing I don't understand about real life AI. What motivates it to do anything at all?
duncan cairncross:
The human brain is a real energy hog - 20% of our food goes to feed it
So right from the start the larger brain would need to pay it's keep or evolution would reduce it
Is anyone else familiar with Kurt Vonngegut's novel Galapagos? All of humanity is rendered sterile except for a few stranded survivors on the Galapagos island. Over the next million years, streamlined swimming is much more of a survival advantage than big brains, so humanity becomes something akin to seals, with flippers instead of hands, and much smaller heads. Which in the narrator's opinion (and Vonnegut's too, I assume), solves many problems.
Maybe you had to "be" there. :)
the default response of the white Christian incel
Ugh. Unfortunately true, but I hope he doesn't. I'd prefer a comic book villain.
I'm not with you all, though, when it comes to an uploaded soul not being enough to recognize it as human. Current humans are quite varied and we manage to recognize most of them well enough. Personalities with 'no physiology' would just seem different but close enough... assuming the copy was high quality.
Think about the little copies we make of our loved ones inside our own minds. Different physiology, but close enough to be useful. High quality copies would require more space, but not change our motivation to create them.
Alfred Differ:
I'm not with you all, though, when it comes to an uploaded soul not being enough to recognize it as human.
Recognizable as human, maybe, but that's not what I was talking about. Without the things that drive and motivate you, it wouldn't seem like you. It wouldn't be you living on as an AI--more like someone else who had learned a lot of the same stuff that you did.
Duncan wrote: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
Seven out of the top ten "Democracies" are Constitutional monarchies
Canada is number 6
The US is number 25 and is a "Flawed Democracy"
I don't dispute that, and find it utterly unsurprising. But they are still not Republics.
Jon S,
I know the personality type. Been around lots of people like that. It is not as simple as Dunning-Krueger, though, when they are immersed in a team of similarly smart people. Weird things emerge. My spectacularly brilliant plan to take over the world is not as personally attractive to the genius sitting next to me, so she looks at it with much more skepticism than I can. Neither of us have to be experts, but we cannot act as a coordinated unit until we get past her skepticism, thus our power to alter the world is limited by something much more useful than our individual inclination toward self-deception. Part of this is just CITOKATE. The other part is about how powerfully innovate teams are emergent phenomena that leverage flawed humans rather well.
Watch the investment folks and you will see Musk is not universally treated as a genius by the media. He has lost talented people from his teams over important differences and many people know that. I have been in those situations too and there is nothing quite like a former innovation ally taking their own path to cause a disturbance in the [cult] force.
I have been part of early visions that required strong marketing efforts to draw in investors. Actual plans do not survive unchanged, so it is best not to take them too seriously. Their purpose is to sell the vision. In this case, the vision is of a habitable Mars. How one gets there is the stuff of innovative minds. Draw them in with a grand vision and they will find a way forward whether it involves nukes or not.
"...how does the 20 kg or so of radioactive crap from a nuclear explosion compare to the 7000 tons EVERY year from coal??"
Still worse, generally speaking. It's not the 20kg or so used in the weapon that's the main problem, although the incomplete fusion of material does mean there's probably going to be more than a few grams of P-239 scattered about after the fact. There's also the secondary radiation effects, especially Sr-90 and Cs-137, which are very nearly as hazardous to life as P-239 itself. In comparison, the uranium and thorium in coal ash, while worse for the environment than nuclear-power-plant waste, are relatively minor threats.
Then there are the blast effects, which cannot be discounted, and the fallout from any blast radius that actually touches the ground...
LH: "That's one thing I don't understand about real life AI. What motivates it to do anything at all?"
That's a very complicated question that deserves a very complicated answer.
Volition.
That's it. Just one word. Nobody really knows what the hell it is, but every living thing has it. In it's most basic form, it has two drives that we all share: the drive to acquire nutrition, and the desire to reproduce.
Zepp Jamieson:
In it's most basic form, it has two drives that we all share: the drive to acquire nutrition, and the desire to reproduce.
Both of which are understandably necessary ingredients in life forms which survived and evolved over millions of years. There's no implicit requirement that an AI would have such drives, though, unless they were programmed in, in which case, the AI is acting more like a conventional computer program and not like a sentient being.
So to clarify my point, even if an AI were self-aware and intelligent, what would compel it to interface with humans at all, let alone in any useful manner?
LH: Same answer. Volition. Volition begets self interest, which would be the ingredient a self-aware AI would need to interface with the rest of the universe.
You read "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" I'm sure. Remember when Mycroft 'woke up'? He needed a reason to reveal himself, and he wanted to display a sense of humour. Made him worthless as a computer (and a computer with volition is an oxymoron, given the behaviour we expect from computers). Manny had to go him and basically tell him to pretend to be a computer so he wouldn't get shut down. True AI is going to need to want to, I don't know, eat kittens and have sex with USB ports. Otherwise it's just a computer.
"I have no mouth, and I must scream"
Larry Hart said:
That's one thing I don't understand about real life AI. What motivates it to do anything at all?
Gunnerkrigg Court offers one answer.
Alfred Differ said:
Actual plans do not survive unchanged, so it is best not to take them too seriously. Their purpose is to sell the vision.
In 2009, the "Zero Carbon Australia" plan proposed using a mix of distributed solar, solar thermal, and wind farms to provide 100% of Australia's stationary energy needs by (*sob*!)2019, for ~$370 billion (in 2009 AUD). The possibilities of rooftop solar were noted during the research phase, but weren't included as it hadn't yet met the criteria for commercial viability. It was clearly meeting it by the time of publication. Storage batteries took a few more years.
The point is that Alfred's right: the original version is a 'proof of concept' vision (here, that Australia can go 100% renewable). The shining path revealed may end up being the road less taken.
Musk has lost talented people
Well surprise!
Most people move on after about 7 years
With literally hundreds of top talents working for his rather large businesses I would expect him to be losing top talent at a much higher rate than he actually is!
As far as I can see Tesla is losing people at a lower rate than established companies and a company that is growing fast would normally be losing people FASTER as the the initial hiring is the most risky period
One more take on the "Republic, not a Democracy" RW cant:
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/08/republicans-reveal-their-ignorance-of-us-government-with-their-latest-attack-on-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-columnist/
Being a vampire has certain limitations, but it can also be a ton of fun. Your extra strengths and abilities can make you successful in almost every endeavor you participate in and before you know it the money and acquaintances will come streaming in. You can build wealth and gain prestige and notoriety and attempt things you may never have even considered as a human. One thing you will definitely have more of is time. Beef up your education and learn all you every wanted to. Travel the world to see things most people only ever see on TV This is going to be especially fun if you turned to share your life with one of us. Let us show you the wonders of the world. Learn new languages, go skydiving or scuba dive with sharks, visit the African safari. You no longer need to be scared of nature or wildlife – you will have become the worlds strongest predator. Have fun with it and your life as a vampire can be more fulfilling than you ever dreamed. Explore, experiment, experience and get excited. There’s a big world out there with lots to see and do and as a vampire, you can do it all. If your dream is to become a powerful person in life contact: Richvampirekindom@gmail.com
Jerome - all of that is very true
But being unable to go out in sunlight could be a problem for skydiving or SCUBA
And how does SCUBA go with being unable to cross running water?
These days, he could go on a mass-shooting rampage, the default response of the white Christian incel in danger of being treated the same as everybody else[Larry_H].
That Larry_H would scapegoat the "white Christian incel" is especially ironic, considering that he hails from Chicago, the Windy City, where private gun ownership is prohibited, whites are rarely involved in gun-related deaths and the mass-shootings occur so often that the mainstream media now only reports the numerical weekend total:
https://chicago.cbslocal.com/tag/weekend-shootings/
But, since the largely imaginary 'white nationalists' are not and have never been involved in these weekly exercises in diversity, all we hear is *crickets* from the national media, because only the much-reviled majority identity group is ever taken to task for the rogue actions of their putative racial representatives.
Larry_H will offer no response because he has nothing to say.
Enjoy the sound of *crickets*.
Best
Just getting caught up on "Preacher" Amazing, the uses they find for vampires. Did you know they make great material for prosthetic ears?
I heard two related news stories on the radio this morning that have me bummed about the future.
1) The reason the Amazon is on fire and will continue to burn is that the Trump-like right wing in Brazil has pulled a coup and is in favor of "developing" the Amazon for crops and mining. The coup involved, among other things, illegally impeaching the old president (based upon charges which had already been dropped) and then framing the favored candidate for president so that he was in prison during the election. The right-wing government in place is currently dismantling the legal mechanisms for protecting the Amazon.
2) Trump, whose re-election is almost guaranteed now by faithless electors, is also dismantling any sort of environmental protections in this country, not just for business interests, but so that he can build his border wall without concern for the damage it causes. And he promises to pardon any infractions caused by the building of said wall, including infringement on private property.
So what recourse is left? 1776? 1789? A "Helvetian War" with Brazil?
In related news (emphasis my own) ...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2019/Pres/Maps/Aug28.html#item-2
FEC commissioner Matthew Petersen announced Monday that he will resign, effective at the end of the week. The body, which is charged with enforcing U.S. election law, is supposed to have six members, with a bare minimum of four required for a quorum. Petersen's departure drops the total number of commissioners to three, which means that it can no longer hold meetings, issue fines, make or enforce rules, or conduct investigations. Essentially, the commission will be able to receive campaign reports and complaints of election violations, and they can go to the media to give an airing to major concerns, but that's about it.
The curious choice made when the FEC was created, namely that there should be an equal number of Republicans and Democrats as commissioners, has led to frequent deadlock as America's parties have become more polarized. Nonetheless, even with two hardcore Republicans as commissioners (of which Petersen was one) and two hardcore Democrats, they still got something done. Given the likelihood of foreign interference in 2020, not to mention all the various shady and corrupt behavior we saw in 2016 and 2018 (e.g., the House election in NC-09), it might be nice to have someone guarding the henhouse from all the foxes. Noted elections expert Rick Hasen, of the University of California, Irvine, certainly sees it that way:
You get three guesses as to who is responsible for this situation, and the first two don't count. Yep, it's Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. Trump has only nominated one FEC commissioner (Trey Trainor), and that was over two years ago. Trainor still hasn't been confirmed, or even considered, because McConnell—who dislikes clean and honest elections—hasn't allowed any FEC nominee to be considered since 2015. Clearly, the Majority Leader thinks that if he holds on long enough, he can kill the FEC. And it would appear he's right.
scidata said...
Re: Evolved Human Intelligence
"My point is about thinking we can easily apply this to AI."
I agree completely. I'm one that thinks that AI is going to take longer than the more optimistic proponents suppose. What seems the most plausible path to AI to me at this point, and I am most definitely a non-expert, is one that includes an evolutionary process rather than just an engineering process to such a degree that we will not fully understand how it happened or how it works.
"If high intelligence is just evolutionary gears & ratchets machinery, then why didn't it happen many times?"
Two things to consider. First, high intelligence has happened many times on Earth. Granted, not as high as humans, but quite high. And the more we've learned about the cognitive abilities of other animals the clearer it has become that is almost entirely a matter of degrees of difference as opposed to unique capabilities. All of the cognitive features that we used to take for granted as being unique to humans have been found in many other animals to one degree or another. In most cases there are some examples in which the feature is quite highly developed, on a par with young humans. In the context of biology our cognitive abilities are not unique except that we happen to be at a peak compared to other animals that evolved high intelligence. Being the organism at the peak of some evolved trait is not a rare or mystical occurrence.
Second, it only happened once, so far, on Earth. At least it seems a bit fantastical that there could have been a species of human comparable intelligence sometime in Earth's past. Or is it? I don't know. As for the future? The lifetime of a species is tiny compared to the lifetime of the biosphere.
"We're missing something."
There is no doubt that we are missing something. Many things in fact. But this is no different than a myriad other biological puzzles. We haven't figured it out. Yet. But we have made serious progress. Especially in the past 15 years or so since we've developed tools that have empowered such research. It is a complicated puzzle for sure. I've got the feeling that a lot of people aren't going to be too happy about the results. But that happens a lot when reality doesn't live up to cherished beliefs.
"Not to be overly dramatic, but that something could kill us all."
I'm not sure I understand what you mean to say. That AI gone wrong could kill us all? I agree completely, but I am not confident in any assessment of the degree of risk of that kind of outcome. Interesting times ahead. Hopefully not in the Chinese proverb sense of that phrase.
Darrell E:
"Not to be overly dramatic, but that something could kill us all."
I'm not sure I understand what you mean to say. That AI gone wrong could kill us all?
While that's a separate concern, I read the original comment as meaning that there's some reason why high intelligence does not survive as a trait, and that the reason may be lying in wait to stomp on us at any moment.
@Darrell E
Sounds like we're more in agreement than not. The 'missing something' thought - here's some wild speculation. It may be some sort of positive feedback loop, arrived at by evolution, but then going asymptotic at the tipping point. Think Hofstadter's 'Strange Loop'. I'm not trying to be mystical, we just don't know (yet). That's what could kill us all. The dad's drawer analogy actually pales in comparison.
There are two kinds of people in the world - those who believe in proof by mathematical/logical deduction/induction and those who don't. The former are often French, and have an irritating, while charming, arrogance about them. The latter know about cosmic ray bursts and the 'good enough' principle of biological evolution. Math is theory at best, delusion at worst. Computation is reality. Perhaps the greatest mathematician of all time, Laplace, finally came around to my way (actually Bayes' way) of thinking before shuffling off this mortal coil.
Calculemus!
Larry Hart said...
"Zepp Jamieson:
"In it's most basic form, it has two drives that we all share: the drive to acquire nutrition, and the desire to reproduce."
Both of which are understandably necessary ingredients in life forms which survived and evolved over millions of years. There's no implicit requirement that an AI would have such drives, though, unless they were programmed in, in which case, the AI is acting more like a conventional computer program and not like a sentient being."
I'm not sure there is any difference, in this context, between drives being programmed into AI software by a human programmer and drives being programmed into a living organism by biological evolution. Sentient beings are just as bound by causality as computers, aren't we? We can't make a decision that is contrary to our hardware + software + inputs any more than a computer can, can we? The one difference is that we can't model human hardware, software and inputs because there are too many unknowns and too many variables for us to manage at the moment.
@Larry Hart: I read the original comment as meaning that there's some reason why high intelligence does not survive as a trait, and that the reason may be lying in wait to stomp on us at any moment.
Interesting perspective. You have a SETI mindset.
emphasis mine...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/trump-white-voters.html
...
In a reflection of the complexity of the effort to analyze Trump’s white support, Paul A. Djupe and Ryan P. Burge, political scientists at Denison University and Eastern Illinois University, have challenged Ekins. They argue that the seeming racial moderation of white evangelical voters is superficial, far less important to them than their partisan commitment to Trump and the Republican Party.
“Why are religious Trump voters showing more support for Trump when they hold more liberal attitudes?” Djupe and Burge ask. Because, they argue, “partisanship is their core value and all else is secondary, including their religion.”
...
In other words, "I'd rather follow Trump than Jesus!"
Darrel: Computers are nearly at the point where one could have the processing capacity of a human brain, and almost certainly can match the level of a small rodent. Mice can demonstrate motivation and even, to a degree, individualism, something not yet seen in computers. Without volition, a computer is just a computer, and adding more capacity is about like stacking hamburger patties seven feet tall and expecting a basketball player.
Zepp,
If the measures of capacity are things like calculations per second, storage and similar, then I agree 100%. The differences between what evolved nervous systems and computers are capable of is almost certainly down to things like architecture and "software."
A software example I like. A number of years ago some researchers studying jumping spiders discovered some amazing things about them that defied the then current understanding of what was possible. They discovered that jumping spiders could spot prey a good distance away, plot a complex course from their location to the prey, memorize the course and then follow it to the prey even though while doing so the spider could no longer see the full course or the prey. This involves advanced cognitive abilities that were not possible, per then current understanding, with the tiny number of neurons available to the jumping spider. Of course it wasn't magic it was simply that natural evolution had come up with a way to do those things with that limited number of neurons that humans had not yet dreamed of. Further interdisciplinary research led to improved software allowing computational tasks similar to what the spider was doing with much less resources than had previously been possible. There are many other similar examples. Another favorite involves goshawks and "optic flow."
If we've just relatively recently been able to figure out how to get a computer to do what a jumping spider can do with much fewer computational resources then I think it is likely to be awhile before we manage to create an AI no matter the capacity of our computers. It isn't a matter of capacity, or at least that's only one limiting factor. It seems apparent that a more important factor is how that capacity is used.
Hello Brinners. I've been gone a while: Real Life (TM) hit pretty hard. In many good ways, but still pretty hard. I'll try not to be so much a stranger.
Larry sagt:
We can only hope the next election helps. I'm already hearing rumblings that states with Republican legislatures are conspiring to send faithless electors to the Electoral College and either vote for Trump no matter the popular result or vote for third parties so that no one gets 270 electoral votes. In that latter case, the House of Representatives decides the winner, but not by a vote of members. By a vote of state delegations.
I can reassure you some on this point -- there are several backstops to this "strategy", which was actually thought through back in the 19th century when sectional voting in the Electoral College was more frequent.
First off -- so many states have laws on the books about faithfulness of electors that it would require a Supreme Court decision in advance to prevent this from becoming Bush v. Gore II. The Republicans can't trust that Roberts will sacrifice what remains of SCOTUS credibility for pure partisanship; there is very, very little they can do to control Roberts, and unlike some members of the Court, Roberts wants to be powerful as Chief Justice for a long time and knows that without respect the Court is just an irrelevant group of nine people having philosophical chats over coffee on a side street.
The law giving states the power to certify their own Electoral College votes is 3 USC 5 -- passed after the 1876 disputed election -- but critically it concerns the appointment of the electors, not of the votes cast by the electors. 3 USC 15 spells out what happens if there is objection at the counting of the electoral votes, and has quite an involved process spelled out. Again, that process centers on whether the electors were duly elected -- not how they voted.
If there is more than one tally of votes submitted from the same State, then the two houses vote, separately, on the validity. The process spells out what happens if the identity of the electors is questioned. It does not spell out what happens if the vote itself is questioned; and the determination of the validity of electoral votes is meant to be according to that state's legal code.
In other words, if being a faithless elector is against the law of that state, then the faithless elector's vote should be rejected. Of course, if the Republicans still control the Senate, they may very well ignore what should be; in which case, the state governor's choice breaks the tie.
So! In order for this trick to work, there have to be enough faithless electors in swing states with Republican governors to pull the count below 270. Is that possible? In some scenarios, perhaps. Is it likely? Not very.
And finally -- the House can decline quorum. The Constitution says two-thirds of the states have to have members present in order to vote -- but the Speaker decides whether or not the quorum exists! The text is ambiguous as to what happens if a state's delegation is incomplete, and the Speaker might well rule that two-thirds of the states must have a complete delegation to vote. It would be a relatively simple task requiring the absence of a mere sixteen Members to deny the quorum under those rules, and (assuming the Speaker still commands a majority of the chamber) she can also refuse to order the sergeant-at-arms to retrieve those members.
In other words, there is more than enough sand to be thrown into the gears here to bog the situation down long enough to force another Compromise of 1877 situation -- which would be the best we could get out of such a horrendous morass.
Thank you for that, Catfish N Cod. I had been considering various approaches to what could well be a nightmare scenario and a possible death knell for the US, and you have several elements I hadn't considered, and which make me somewhat more optimistic about the situation. Now, if only we had paper ballots, election security in place, and a functioning FEC....
Catfish 'n Cod:
Hello Brinners. I've been gone a while: Real Life (TM) hit pretty hard. In many good ways, but still pretty hard. I'll try not to be so much a stranger.
Hey, good to see you. Our host has been particularly worried. :)
Of course, if the Republicans still control the Senate, they may very well ignore what should be;
I'd say it's a certainty.
In other words, there is more than enough sand to be thrown into the gears here to bog the situation down long enough to force another Compromise of 1877 situation
A Republican president in exchange for allowing white supremacy to prevail? Sounds like a lose-lose to me. :)
Zepp Jamieson:
Now, if only we had paper ballots, ...
The beauty--if you want to call it that--of the faithless elector scenario is that it doesn't depend on miscounting the votes. I'm talking about the scenario in which (say) Joe Biden wins Wisconsin, but the heavily-gerrymandered state legislature sends a delegation of "Joe Biden" electors to the Electoral College who in turn vote for Donald Trump. If I'm not mistaken, the supreme court has already ruled that state legislatures have the right to do pretty much whatever they feel like in choosing presidential electors. Having a popular election or adhering to the results thereof is not mandated.
Not sure I get this LH: “Trump, whose re-election is almost guaranteed now by faithless electors…”
Sure, the dems need to be careful when they assign their electors lists to each state. But it should be easy to find lists of folks who hate Trump and will stay true to the democrat. Yes, everyone should read my Blackmail riff. But there are other worries like cheat voting machines.
The FEC news is bigger and I am spreading it.
“Computers are nearly at the point where one could have the processing capacity of a human brain,”
Depends on what you call a ‘computational element.” If it’s neurons, then a compact supercomputer already has as many as a human brain. If it’s SYNAPSES then the number is reachable, soon. If you include the thousands (or more) of murky, non-linear neuron components that seem to engage in some kind of bias calculations? Then we may be many decades away.
Catfish! Hoping life has taken many positive turns for you and welcome back.
“I'm talking about the scenario in which (say) Joe Biden wins Wisconsin, but the heavily-gerrymandered state legislature sends a delegation of "Joe Biden" electors to the Electoral College who in turn vote for Donald Trump. If I'm not mistaken, the supreme court has already ruled that state legislatures have the right to do pretty much whatever they feel like in choosing presidential electors. Having a popular election or adhering to the results thereof is not mandated.”
Wow! Cool paranoia! As if those WI legislators could then go home to houses in WI that would then still be standing? Anyway, when you vote for president, aren’t you actually voting for a slate of electors already picked by the candidate?
Lets look a little closer at the nightmare scenario.
The election is in November, both the popular vote and the individual state contests will be known for about a month before the electoral collage meets. The rightful winner will already be known.
There would have to be some kind of at least semipublic movement to elect corrupt members to the electoral college.
What does the democratic winner of the election do?
Do they say we must accept the verdict of the electoral college?
Do they say if the electoral college defies the will of the people we will peacefully refuse to work with Trump or the republicans on anything while he is in office?
Or do they just come out and say if the electoral college doesn’t confirm the results of the election there will be civil war. And make it know though deniable intermediaries that those faithless electors will be held personally responsible for starting the war.
Dr Brin:
Sure, the dems need to be careful when they assign their electors lists to each state. But it should be easy to find lists of folks who hate Trump and will stay true to the democrat.
That's a big piece that I'm unclear on. Who assigns the electors? The parties, or the state legislature?
https://reason.com/2019/08/28/the-return-of-the-faithless-elector/
...
So when Michael Baca was appointed as one of Colorado's nine presidential electors***, he (along with the other eight electors) took, as required by Colorado law, an oath affirming that he would cast his electoral ballot for the candidate who received the highest number of votes in the State on November 8—Hillary Clinton. Despite having taken the oath, Mr. Baca crossed out "Hillary Clinton" from his presidential ballot and wrote in "John Kasich." (He was, reportedly, concerned that Russian interference in the election on Clinton's behalf [!] might have influenced the electoral results).
...
Colorado's Secretary of State then removed Mr. Baca as an elector, refused to count his vote, and appointed a substitute elector who cast her ballot for Ms. Clinton.
Baca filed suit, arguing that his removal, and the nullification of his vote, violated his constitutional rights under the Twelfth Amendment. The district court dismissed his claim, on several alternate grounds: that the claim was moot, that Baca lacked standing to press the claim, and that there was in any event no viable constitutional claim to pursue.
Last week, the 10th Circuit reversed on all fronts. After a long and complex discussion of the standing and mootness questions (through page 56 of the opinion), the court proceeded to resolve "whether Colorado may constitutionally remove a presidential elector during voting and nullify his vote based on the elector's failure to comply with state law dictating the candidate for whom the elector must vote."
The answer: No, it may not.
...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-25/electoral-college-chaos-is-possible-over-faithless-elector-ruling
A federal appeals court has held that members of the Electoral College have a constitutional right to vote for a different presidential candidate than the one they swore to support — and whom the voting public in their states actually chose.
It’s a terrible holding.
Inventing a right to be a faithless elector invites chaos, elevates formalism over democracy, and shows how indefensible originalism is when applied to evolving norms of democracy.
...
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