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What could go wrong?

Thursday, March 31, 2022

Maybe I’m getting to be a curmudgeon in my old age. Maybe I’ve always been a curmudgeon, but this non-political article I just read sure got me into high curmudgeon. It’s about some scientists who have developed a “language” that they hope will be easily interpreted by the aliens to whom they intend to beam insterstellar messages. I’ve got no problem with doing this, but this got me scratching my head:

Humans have sent many messages intended for aliens to outer space over the years, including the physical Golden Records onboard NASA’s Voyager probes, which, like BITG, also carry images of the naked human form. However, these attempts to establish contact with an alien race are not without controversy. Some experts have warned that broadcasting Earth’s position in the galaxy could be an invitation for a potentially hostile species to do damage to our world. Jiang and his colleagues acknowledge this risk, but ultimately counter that any aliens capable of deciphering the BITG message are not likely to be aggressive conquerors.

“Logic suggests a species which has reached sufficient complexity to achieve communication through the cosmos would also very likely have attained high levels of cooperation amongst themselves and thus will know the importance of peace and collaboration,” the team said.

(Emphasis added)

I would really like to know where the “team” studied logic. Homo Sapiens has “reached sufficient complexity to achieve communication through the cosmos” a fact proven by the very team making this logical assertion, and hasn’t, so far as I’m aware, “attained high levels of cooperation amongst themselves” nor does it seem to know the “importance of peace and collaboration”. Or, to put it another way, for every example of cooperation one might cite, there is a counter-example, else there would have been no Hitlers, no Stalins, no Putins, no Trumps, etc., etc., etc. I don’t expect us to be attacked by aliens in the near future, but logic suggests that the history of humanity establishes as a near certainty that any aliens that have reached sufficient complexity to achieve communications through the cosmos might very well pose a threat somewhat akin to the threat that Columbus posed to the inhabitants of the Americas.

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This is familiar

Wednesday, March 30, 2022

I have been voted out of every elective office here in the Town of Groton, which means I have also held each elective office, so I became familiar with the budget process. So this sounded familiar:

The leadership of the Congressional Progressive Caucus voiced opposition to President Joe Biden’s $813 billion military budget request on Monday and lamented that the question so often asked of critical social spending measures—”how will we pay for it?”—is never applied to soaring Pentagon outlays.

The town doesn’t have an army, but it does have a police force, and the same rule applied. The budgets for essential services always take a hit, but whatever the cops propose they get, no questions asked.

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Those were the days

Tuesday, March 29, 2022

So it turns out that there is a seven and a half hour gap in the White House phone records on the day of the insurrection.

I was a Watergate fan. The summer the hearings were taking place I was lifeguarding at Indian Well State Park in Shelton, and when the hearings were taking place I’d use my break time in our sleeping quarters to watch as much of the hearings as I could. Believe it or not, there were honest Republicans on the committee who actually were interested in uncovering the truth!

Those were the days.

Anyway, I do recall that when the 18½ minute gap in the White House tapes came to light, the press couldn’t get enough of it. It wasn’t proof of guilt, as there could actually have been an innocent explanation, but no one quite believed that to be the case. After all, Nixon had already been found guilty by most of the American public. That was back in the day when we lacked a propaganda network and social media that prefer dollars to democracy.

Trump’s gap far exceeds Nixon’s, and is far more convincing evidence of guilt. There is no innocent explanation. Either a conscious decision was made not to keep records of Trump’s criminal behavior (for all of us non-Q folks know he was engaging in criminal behavior) or a conscious decision was made later to destroy the evidence. This is all very convenient for both Trump and his multiple co-conspirators.

Now’s the time for an easy prediction: the press will spend more time obsessing about Biden’s “gaffe!”, which wasn’t particularly gaffy (just made up that word) than it will on Trump’s 7½ hour gap, which will be quickly forgotten. At least by the media. The January 6th committee may have something to say about it, and here’s hoping the DOJ is on the case, since it’s possible the American people will deliver the House into the hands of the insurrectionists in November. Yet another thing that would not have happened in Watergate days.

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Democrats ready to attack?

Saturday, March 26, 2022

Could it be that the Democrats are finally going to start fighting fire with—-well, let’s be honest, a tiny flicker of a flame.

Every lawyer knows that it is unethical for a judge to rule in a case in which the judge or a judge’s family member has a personal interest. Anyone who has familiarized themselves with the facts about Clarence Thomas’s failure to recuse himself in cases in which his wife has either a direct interest, or has been involved in advocating for a position of one of the parties, knows that he has engaged in unethical behavior on a regular basis. This was documented rather exhaustively by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker before the texts between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows were revealed. The fact that Clarence Thomas was the only judge who was interested in letting Trump get away with hiding evidence from the January 6th committee was a bit of a red flag, made all the redder by the disclosure of the emails. It is now the case, thanks to the emails, that Thomas can not deny any knowledge of his wife’s activities.

Need I say that if a left leaning judge were engaged in this sort of behavior we would never hear the end of it from Republicans, and the media would pound away on the story endlessly. For once, the Republicans would be justified. It would be just as unethical if one of our judges did it, but of course we know they wouldn’t.

At least some Democrats appear to want to keep the story alive, and bear in mind that if they don’t keep harping on it, the media will lose interest because after all corruption is what Republicans do and it’s no big story. The only way to keep it a big story is to take a page from the Republicans and persistently make an issue out of it. Just maybe, the Democrats are going to do that. Dick Blumenthal has called for Thomas to testify before the January 6th committee and Ron Wyden is calling for him to recuse himself from cases involving the January 6th insurrection and any cases involving the 2024 election.

It’s a start. Once Judge Jackson is confirmed, and that’s inevitable now that the loathsome Manchin has announced he’ll do the right thing, the judiciary committee should set its sights on Thomas and open an investigation. It’s important that they keep pounding and keep the issue in the news. At the start of the civil war one Southern Judge resigned when he decided to commit treason by supporting the confederacy. Thomas should be encouraged to follow his example.

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True to form

Tuesday, March 22, 2022

One of the many failings of the mainstream media is its failure to point out that it’s a sure bet that if Republicans are accusing Democrats of something, they are either doing that very thing themselves or planning on doing so. Here’s the latest example I’ve come across:

In his opening remarks at Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Sen. Cancún Cruz, the new Karen of the GOP, ranted at length that Democrats hate democracy and want to use unelected officials to make policy in this country.

This from the party that has stacked the courts with judges who have bent the law and constitution to make policy in this country, including, most importantly, policy designed to suppress the vote of non-Republicans.

You could probably make a full time job out of documenting each instance of this sort of thing.

There’s also the tendency of Republicans to call us snowflakes, at the same time they complain about how they shouldn’t have to learn about racism because having their racism pointed out makes them feel bad.

I should add that this is probably not actually the latest example, merely the latest that caught my eye. They actually occur just about every nanosecond.

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Curmudgeon time

Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Ukraine is on everyone’s mind, and I’ve got nothing to add to the discourse, except Putin bad, Tucker bad, and Ukraine good. So, on to something trivial, which at the moment is all I can wrap my head around.

Yesterday, the Senate voted for something unanimously. That alone should scare the daylights out of anyone, but it wasn’t so bad. The Senate voted to stop making us turn our clocks back and forth twice a year. A great idea, since the time change is a royal pain. But of course, there’s always a fly in the ointment.

Those nasty scientists say that standard time is far healthier for us human beings as it is aligned with our circadian rhythm cycle. So, naturally, the Senate voted to make Daylight Saving Time permanent, in part because it allegedly saves a small amount of energy-this coming from a legislative body that can’t bring itself to address the energy issue in a substantive fashion.

My curmudgeonly beef is with the fact that the sun will not rise in the winter until about 8:30 in the morning, and that’s for us folks that are fairly far to the east in our time zone. By the time you get to places like Ohio you’re probably closer to 9:30, not that I care about Ohio that much since I don’t live there, but I pity the folks who do, except for the Republicans.

Only in America would a legislative body vote to make noon as far from midway between dawn and dusk as possible.

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Tucker, the 21st century fifth columnist

Sunday, March 13, 2022

So, it appears that Putin considers Tucker Carlson to be one of his most valuable propagandists:

On March 3, as Russian military forces bombed Ukrainian cities as part of Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of his neighbor, the Kremlin sent out talking points to state-friendly media outlets with a request: Use more Tucker Carlson.

“It is essential to use as much as possible fragments of broadcasts of the popular Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who sharply criticizes the actions of the United States [and] NATO, their negative role in unleashing the conflict in Ukraine, [and] the defiantly provocative behavior from the leadership of the Western countries and NATO towards the Russian Federation and towards President Putin, personally,” advises the 12-page document written in Russian. It sums up Carlson’s position: “Russia is only protecting its interests and security.” The memo includes a quote from Carlson: “And how would the US behave if such a situation developed in neighboring Mexico or Canada?”

It is now time for me to point out that were the Russians touting a left leaning pundit we would never hear the end of this, either from the media or the Republicans. Next I have to point out that the Democrats themselves will do precisely nothing to make an issue out of this. Next I have to bemoan the fact that the Democrats seem incapable of propagating a talking point and are also incapable of coming anywhere close to speaking with one voice.

My problem is that I’ve said all this so many times I can’t think of a new way to say it, so if anyone happens to read this they will just have to consider it all said. Is it really too much to ask that the Democrats attack the Republicans for being the fascists that they are?

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Why am I not surprised?

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

It’s apparently a law of nature. The more a Republican accuses others of breaking the law, the more likely it is that they themselves are breaking that law:

Tina Peters, a county clerk running as a Republican for secretary of state of Colorado, was indicted Tuesday evening on 10 criminal counts related to allegations that she tampered with election equipment after the 2020 election.

The indictment, which the district attorney of Mesa County, Colo., announced on Wednesday, is connected to Ms. Peters’s work as a top county election administrator, a role in which she promoted former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen.

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On what planet do these pundits reside?

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

How deluded do you have to be to snare a guest spot on the New York Times op-ed page?

Today we are treated to an op-ed by Melissa Murray, who is a professor of law at New York University. It seems fairly clear that Professor Murray is unaware of the political developments taking place over the last 30 years or so. Here are the introductory paragraphs:

Much has been made in recent days of the racial and gender diversity that President Biden’s choice of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson would add to the Supreme Court. But there has been surprisingly little discussion of the fact that she would join Justice Amy Coney Barrett as the court’s second working mother.

Two years ago, when Justice Barrett was nominated, her status as a working mother was invoked by her Republican supporters as additional evidence of her fitness for the court. At her confirmation hearings, she was praised as “a walking example of how young children and demanding work can coexist.”

She goes on with a lot of drivel about how the Democrats should be using this as an argument to garner support for Jackson’s nomination.

Let’s put aside the fact that one’s status as a mother truly is irrelevant in considering one’s qualifications for a Supreme Court judgeship. In Barrett’s case, her “motherhood” was more a sign of religious fanaticism than anything else.

Professor Murray, like so many members of the punditocracy, actually seems to believe that some Republicans might be swayed to vote for Jackson if the same argument they deployed for Barrett were deployed for Jackson. To which one must truly ask, where has the professor been for the past 30 years or so? The Republicans have already shamelessly argued that there’s really no hurry to confirm Jackson, and whyever are the Democrats in such a hurry when surely we should be collegial about these sorts of things. Does she really think the response to a motherhood argument would be anything other than scorn? Hasn’t she noticed that hypocrisy is the standard operating procedure for the Republican Party, enabled by a media (the Times being a prime offender) that has decided that since this type of behavior is normal for Republicans it’s hardly worth commenting on, much less condemning, while any such thing coming from a Democrat will be roundly and repeatedly condemned.

This is one time when I am definitely with the Democrats. Expect no Republican support for Jackson. Push her through as quickly as you can. You might call out Republican hypocrisy but don’t really bother to try to convert any of them. The more you try, the less success you will have. All you really have to worry about is Manchin and Sinema.

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Just wondering

Saturday, March 5, 2022

By no means am I trying to defend Melania Trump, who is a truly loathsome individual, but I often wonder just how much personal involvement she has in the various recent scams to which her name has been attached. There was the NFT scam from a few weeks ago, and now there’s yet another Trump style charity scam, which seems awfully similar to the charity scams perpetrated by her husband and step-children, though this one is attributed solely to her.

She has come to her own defense through a series of written statements, which could have been authored by anyone and were most certainly not written by her. All of her scams seem to be almost indistinguishable from those perpetrated by the very stable genius.

It would be interesting to know whether she is even aware of these things before they blow up in scandal. Again, these are the type of things that someone in her position could have pulled off easily if they’d stayed out of politics and just kept to their place as rich grifters. Maybe if the criminality gets more pronounced we’ll find out her real role, because if she ends up on the wrong end of a criminal indictment she’ll surely turn on whoever is actually hatching these scams.

Now whoever could that be?

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