At A Loss For Words

     Between Friday's batch of Supreme Court decisions and the likely passage of the unpopular, so-called "Big Beautiful Bill," I'm not sure what to say.  They amount to Enabling Acts for authoritarianism, an accretion of power to the office of the President that bodes only ill for the American experiment in self-government.

     Many of the people I most expected to react negatively to such a development are instead cheering it on.  I've been treated to amazingly unmoored nonsense in unpublished comments, notions not just unsupported by but refuted by observable events.

     Republican politicians, the President in particular, are behaving as if they will never leave office, as if their party will always be in the majority.  In a functioning Constitutional democracy (using the latter term loosely), turnover is likely; any power one party has granted to officeholders will be available to their successors, even if they're from a different party.  The conclusion is obvious.

     Most members of the House and Senate appear to be quite comfortable with this state of affairs, nearly every Republican and an apparent plurality if not outright majority of Democrats.  Polls of likely voters show the opposite.  You'd think that would be a warning flag for men and women who depend on winning open elections, and yet their behavior indicates it is not.  Once again, the conclusion's clear.

     I don't know what to say.  I've been jumping up and down, pointing out storm clouds on the horizon, lightning, walls of rain and tornado funnels, and a lot of people just smile and tell me we ain't never been wiped off the map before, so why worry now?  Congress is getting rich playing the stock market while the President is selling tchotchkes and memecoins and U.S. citizenship, playing with tariffs like a child smashing toy trains; the Administration is back to insisting on "official truth" at odds with objective reality and the Constitution is slowly crumbling under the weight of "Christian Nationalism," authoritarianism and kleptocracy.  The people who ought to care about it and are in a position to take immediate action, judges and legislators, are smiling and nodding like a heroin addict right after a big hit.

     I am without hope for our country's future.

Buckle Up

     It looks like we're in for a bumpy ride.

The Crazy Never Stops

     The Federal lunacy and cruelty is too much to keep up with, from yanking funding from a program to vaccinate children to intramural fights over the actual impact of bomb raids on Iranian nuclear facilities.  It's an ongoing "shock and awe" campaign of fucknettery, grift, Social Darwinism and junk science, ultimately self-defeating.  The question is not if it will fall apart under its own disconnection from reality and ramshackle improvisation but when -- and how hard it will hit.

     Who it will hit is a certainty, or rather, who it won't hit: the rich are safe; inside-dealing Congresspersons are safe.  And I'm not talking about the guy in your town who owns a string of fast-food franchises and buys a new Benz every year; as far as the top one or two or even five percent are concerned, he's exactly the same as clock-punchers like you and me.  And we'll be left carrying the weight when things go off the rails, our retirement and Social Security looted (five years and counting until it starts to ramp down, and not gently), Medicare hacked down to whatever minimum, health research stymied, stunted and strangled a-borning.  The "beautiful people" will float secure in beauty; the rest of us are left picking up their mess.

     Right now, it's like watching the fall of a basket of eggs dropped from a great height: it will hit; they will break.  The only question is precisely when and how far the raw egg will splash -- and how badly they've rotted on the way down.

Under The Heat Dome

     Call it climate, call it weather: either way, there's broad agreement that this extremely hot weather is unpleasant.  So far, the central air-conditioning at Roseholme Cottage has kept up; I keep the dehumidifier going in the basement and manage the temperature setting on the main floor by how much condensation appears on the longest and most convoluted duct in the basement.  73° to 75°F keeps everything manageable and comfortable.

     My car's climate control barely copes.  The system is low on working fluid and I should get it into the shop, but it's not too bad, yet.

     The kicker is the building at what I call the North Campus.  The equipment up there is happiest between 60° and 65°F and it moves a lot of air.  A zip-up hoodie over a T-shirt is barely enough, and by the time my day ends, the oppressive heat outside is something of a relief for at least the first half-hour.  Going from one extreme to the other plays merry hell with my sinuses, and while it's definitely a "first world problem," it's a problem nevertheless.

     By the weekend, the prediction is that the worst will have passed, for now.  But if it's getting this hot in June, what's August going to be like?

     Call it weather; call it climate.  Either way, it's as real as a sledge hammer.  And there's no dodging the blow.

Cease Fi-- Incoming!

     In the wake of the U.S. bombing of several nuclear-work sites in Iran, there was supposed to be a cease-fire between Iran and Israel.  The President of the U.S. said so.

     Their militaries don't appear to have gotten the message.  I don't know if their governments have.  Each is accusing the other of going back on the agreement.

     I'm not chortling at Mr. Trump's disappointment (he was chiding the Israelis on social media not long ago).  I'm certainly not cheering on the conflict; it is messy, with missiles, bombs and drones striking civilians along with their (presumed) military targets, in a region already filled with tragedy.

     Who ever calmed a hornet's nest by shaking it?

It's Alan Turing's Birthday

     It's Turing's birthday, a day to remember that the brilliant mathematician and computer theorist was an enormous part of the UK's early lead in developing computers -- until he ran afoul of laws criminalizing private sexual behavior.  Turing was gay, at a time when same-sex acts were illegal, and after arrest, trial and conviction, he lost his security clearance and was effectively unemployable in cutting-edge work.  Subjected to harsh and unusual treatment that sidelined his solo efforts, he is believed to have committed suicide.

     Approve, disapprove or ignore his affectional leanings as you wish, but bear in mind the cost to free individuals and to society in general when prejudice is made law.

"Don't Put It In The Paper That I Got Us Into A War"

      The United States of America both is and is not presently at war with Iran.  If you ask the Administration, someone like, oh, Vice-President James David Vance,* you'll hear that of course the U.S. isn't at war with Iran, only with Iran's nuclear-bomb program.

     The thing about war is that the other side gets a vote.  Flip it around; say the Royal Theocratic People's Republic of X†, no, Z‡, er, Y decided that American nuclear weapons were a clear and present danger and by dint of either remarkable aerospace engineering or a sabotage organization that leaves SOE in the dust, levels Pantex.  Downwind of that event, would you suppose our government might consider the act tantamount to a declaration of war?

     It's likely that the Trump Administration's avoidance of calling it an actual war is an effort to dodge having to go to Congress for retroactive permission, hat in hand and bearing a "What I Did With The Military This Summer" essay as called for in §1543 of the War Powers Resolution (U. S. Code Title 50, Chapter 33) -- and the problem with that is, despite the title, the Resolution doesn't give a damn if it's called a war or not; Congress gets involved "in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced— (1) into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances; (2) into the territory, airspace or waters of a foreign nation, while equipped for combat, [...] the President shall submit within 48 hours to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and to the President pro tempore of the Senate a report, in writing, setting forth— (A) the circumstances necessitating the introduction of United States Armed Forces; (B) the constitutional and legislative authority under which such introduction took place; and (C) the estimated scope and duration of the hostilities or involvement."

     Only Congress has the power to declare war, and as far as Congress is concerned, only they get to decide to wage warlike activities.  They've been in the habit of passing legislation that amounts to an advance pass for the Executive Branch to get into specific fights, but even then, they want to have just enough engagement to claim credit if it works out okay -- and the Constitution gave them the responsibility.

     It's a tissue-paper barrier, one that only holds up as long as everyone plays by the rules.  "Playing by the rules" has not been a hallmark of the Trump Administration.  Nevertheless, it is there and Congress isn't liking the taste of it.

     Governments in general have a fondness for short, victorious wars.  Armed conflicts are real morale-boosters.  Governments also have a well-established history of misjudging the duration of such wars and the likelihood of success, and governments that put the decision-making for wars in the hands of one man have been especially bad at this.  Mr. Trump has got his war, however much reluctance his Executive Branch has to call it one, and we'll be finding out how that goes.  Congress has issues of its own to figure out, having to do with Separation of Powers and being treated with caviler disregard -- and we'll be finding out about that right along with them, too.

     The issue is a splitter, hawks and "Christian Nationalists" on the pro-war side (the latter are thrilled by the prospect of "war in the Holy Land"), "America First" isolationists opposed, proceduralists (sincere and opportunistic alike) among the Democrats and Republicans appalled at the manner in which the action was initiated. 

     Interesting times.  I loathe living in interesting times.  Couldn't we have a few decades of dull muddling-though instead?
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* His present chosen name, changed first from James Donald Bowman as assigned at birth and most recently, informally, styled as "JD Vance."
 
† A little bird twittered No.
 
‡ And likewise, a bear.

Fascists, Begone!

     A recent news story neatly encapsulates the present moment: a student at the University of Florida's law school wrote a paper for one of his classes arguing the U. S. Constitution was intended by the framers to apply only to white people, and only they should be allowed to vote -- and the Trump-nominated judge who taught the class awarded him top marks for it.

     The student had expressed similar views in the past, writing that non-white people should be given a decade to leave the country and that naturalized aliens were never supposed to be more than second-class citizens.  The University stood on viewpoint neutrality and free-speech rights, correctly pointing out that people have a right to speak their minds.  What finally got him in trouble was a posting on the former Twitter, saying Jews must be abolished "by any means necessary."  That resulted in his being suspended and barred from the campus, and increased police patrols in the area; the student sued and the case will work its way through the courts.  (One key issue is the difference between an abstract "should" and a concrete "must."  Holding outrageous opinions is one thing; advocating criminal action is very much another.)

     That's Trumpism in a nutshell: push to the limits, reward prejudice, and then see how much farther they can go.  This is just one example but the pattern is repeated over and over, and the people pushing the hardest often embrace the idea of violence even if they do not take action themselves --  the Florida law student wrote that if U.S. courts failed to create white rule, the matter would be resolved "not by the careful balance of Justitia’s scales, but by the gruesome slashing of her sword." Whatever a society rewards, it gets more of. This is what Trumpism rewards.

     This not what American society should reward.  That's not a matter for polite debate over tea and cookies, it's a core value.

A What, Now?

     A local radio newsperson just told me over the air that the storms that knocked out my electricity the day before yesterday -- and that of hundreds of thousands of other people along their track -- also spawned "Eee Eff Oh" tornadoes.

     Tell me you're reading copy in a "book" font like Times New Roman without telling me you're reading Times New Roman.  Old-time paper wirecopy from an Extel dot-matrix printer or an older Teletype Model 15* had a dot in the center of the zero or a slash through it, preventing confusion between "0" and "o" in the all-capital-letter output.  So, too, did some computer fonts.  Local newspeople, if they were leaving a story for someone else to read, were careful about making the distinction when they typed it up.  "Orator" was a popular typewriter font (especially in television), simple and clear.

     But it's 2025.  Nobody (well, hardly anyone) prints this stuff out and the "wire machine" is not consuming several reams of fanfold paper a day: there's no reason not to spell it out.  Those E F zero tornadoes can be just that.

     A person reading news copy has enough to do.  (Try it sometimes.  Don't go too fast!  And remember, you've got to make the sentences make linear sense using only intonation and pacing.)  These days, they're scrolling through their script with a hand or foot controller, reading it a line or more ahead if they've been in the business longer than a few weeks; in TV, they're taking it from the camera-front prompter while a producer talks in their ear and in radio, they're running their own levels, watching the clock so they don't get steamrollered by the next ad or program and making sure all the sound bites are ready.  Scoping out a "0" from an "o" (even if you typed it yourself) doesn't need to be among the tasks.
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* Mechanical teletypes made the most wonderful rumbling clatter, a sound that meant "news" to several generations; stations used to hang a microphone in the wire-machine closet and run the sound at low level under newscasts, or to at least under the opening.  Those mics were still there when the cheaper, simpler dot-matrix printers replaced the Model 15 -- and made a sound like tiny robot farts as they printed.  Somehow that noise never caught on.  

Juneteenth

     Today is Juneteenth, the day the last group of enslaved Americans of African descent learned they were slaves no more.

     Our country fought a bloody war over a matter that most major countries had already ended through legislation.  The UK ran well ahead of us in this effort, and while many people celebrate this day -- and it should indeed be celebrated -- it's also a good day to remember that doing the right thing is not always easy, quick or painless, and we're not always in the lead.  History is not a perfect, smooth upward curve. 

In The Dark

      A string of bad thunderstorms rolled across Indiana late yesterday afternoon, catching me on a break at a bookstore near work.  About five o'clock, the power went out.

     Work has a generator and an automatic transfer switch.  The bookstore, not so much.  The traffic lights, not so much.

     I was near the North Campus, where various street projects have snarled the already-busy traffic.  From the bookstore, I could see the intersection I'd need to cross to get back, a six-crossing-six (counting left turn lanes) with a two-block backup in at least two directions.  The intersection kept jamming up, minor fender-benders and gridlocks as drivers tried to sort out how to accommodate the left-turn lanes when a dead stoplight defaults for a four-way stop.  In theory, right-of-way precesses around the intersection counterclockwise, a system the works well enough when a pair of two-lane roads meet.  If no one is turning left, it often devolves into taking turns, alternating the north-south and east-west (etc.) streets.  The multi-lane version with left-turn lanes can work that way, too, but it's complicated and all it takes is one driver getting out of sync or in a hurry to bollix the whole thing.

     So I waited, texting Tam at home, nearly seven miles away: "STAYING SAFE?"
Tam: "OK.  POWER IS OUT HERE."  That was about 5:15.  I checked the power and light company's outage map, and they showed small outages everywhere, with a few bigger ones indicated.

     By six o'clock, power was still out and the bookstore decided to close.  They let the remaining customers put our selections on hold and gently shooed us out.  The big intersection was still a mess.  The store is in a large strip center and I scouted around the parking lot in my car: the way to the south, where the street narrows to a lane each direction, was moving pretty well, so I took it, aiming home.  A mile down the road, the traffic light was out, and churning through it was slow.  Two miles on, the light was working, and I was able to turn.  Next stoplight was out, but with lighter traffic, going smoothly.  From there on, including crossing Meridian Street, a major north-south artery, all the traffic lights were okay, businesses open, houses lit up -- until I got to my neighborhood.

     I drove down in front of my house.  The porch light was out: no power.  That meant the garage door opener would be out, so I parked in front and went in.  I had leftovers in the freezer, and with a gas range, that meant it was time to use them up.  Not too long after I arrived, there was an ugly gazonking noise from the direction of the substation a few block away, surely a sign of progress.  I made dinner and Tam and I watched the little battery TV in the kitchen while we ate, thinking the lights would come back on at any moment.  Nope.

     We cleared away the TV trays and dishes as best we could; by then it was getting dark enough we broke out flashlights.  I plugged my phone into the fat backup battery I keep charged up just in case, and went to bed with a book on my iPad.

     It wasn't a good night for sleep.  I kept waking up in the dark, wondering where I was and remembering, lighting the iPad back up and reading until I dozed off.  Eleven p.m., midnight, two a.m., three....  At four-thirty, I was startled awake by eye-searing brightness through closed eyelids!  I'd apparently flipped the switch for the overhead light at some point, and, the power being out, left it on.  That sixty-Watt light might as well have been a flashbulb.  I got up, turned it off, wandered out to the kitchen in time to see the light in the garage go out, went out and checked that the garage door was down, and went back to bed.

     Almost twelve hours without power.  Everything in the fridge is inedible except for Tam's soft drinks. my peanut butter cups, the UHT milk I keep in there because it's better cold and maybe the oranges.  I don't know about the contents of the freezer but I don't feel like trusting to luck.  Trash day is tomorrow and it's all going.

     We have had worse.  I think the power was out for nearly three days after the flooding Spring storms shortly after I moved in, but it hasn't been that bad since.

How Not To Get Published

     Unlike many blogs, this one has a comments section -- but it's not automatic.  I screen comments.

     From time to time, one of my perennially-unpublishable commenters accuses me of "censorship."  Nope, sorry, that's not what it is.  Censorship is when a government (or, occasionally, another powerful entity) suppresses your expression by law or force.  All I'm doing is exercising editorial discretion.  You can say whatever you like on your own blog, or in a comments section that I don't control, or paint your opinions on your own wall.  But this is my blog, and I decide what gets published.  If you want a soapbox, there are plenty available elsewhere.  This one is mine.  I am not obliged to provide equal time for differing opinions.  Just as you are not allowed to daub your slogans on my fence, you don't get to use my comments section as your megaphone. 

     What doesn't get published includes (but is not limited to) comments I deem to be inflammatory or excessively partisan, statements of opinion presented as fact, any unusual claim unsupported by evidence, and anything I suspect of being a cute attempt to smuggle in signals (if your screen name is "Horst1488," your comments are never going to be approved).  If I think your comment is too far off-topic, it's probably not going to get through screening.

     These decisions are a judgement on the comment itself or, in the case of "Horst," on the commenter's lack of taste.  They are not a judgment of the commenter themselves, nor do they represent an endorsement of the opinions expressed in the comments that do get published.

Still Making Them Famous

     It is with resignation that I note news media are still making killers famous, just as long as their victims are numerous and/or famous.  It doesn't make any difference where you look -- Fox News, over-the-air TV networks, NPR: Coverage of the attacks on Minnesota politicians gives the attacker's name over and over, mentioning the names of his victims only once or twice.

     Credible reports put that killer firmly on the political/religious Right, but that doesn't matter, either; an insurance executive was shot down on the street by a guy from the Left or the muddled middle (he hasn't been as easy to figure out) and you're ten times more likely to know his name than the name of the man he killed.

     This kind of killer appears to succeed more often when they're mentally askew.  Perhaps more motivated; perhaps they're more likely to take an unusual approach.  But we know that many of them are attracted by the idea of recognition: their crime will make them famous.  It's not a sane evaluation, but as long as we continue to put the names of these killers in banner headlines and treat their lunacies as worthy of recognition, the incentive remains.

Late Posting

     It was an overwhelming weekend, filled with the kind of stuff that ends up in history books -- footnotes, if we're lucky, but I'm not liking our luck just now.

     I have avoided the news this evening and for all I know, we're at war right now.  Or maybe just in the middle of a Tweet, Truth and Skeet storm from the Commander-in-Chief and all the assorted pundits.  Don't know.  Surely it will either wait, or hit too hard and fast to matter.

It's Father's Day

      My Dad has been gone for eighteen years now.  I still miss him.  In some ways, he left a few years earlier; his memory failed him and his last few years were spent as a relatively pleasant stranger among other strangers; but I believe he knew he was loved.

     If your father is still around, take a few minutes to spend with him, even if you don't get along.  He won't be here forever.

A Ditty For The Day

      We used to get it.

A Member Of Congress Steps Up -- And Gets Stepped On

     Arguably, he was grandstanding: U. S. Senator Alex Padilla showed up at a press conference in LA held by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and started to ask a question, giving his name and title in the process.  Three men shoved him out into the hall, where he was handcuffed by men wearing vests marked "FBI," briefly detained and then released, having not been formally arrested or charged.

     But here's the thing: Members of Congress are allowed to be just this kind of meddlesome.  It's in their job description.

     Officially, Cabinet Secretaries and Senators are just about co-equal; for diplomatic purposes (who gets their hand shaken ahead of whom or gives way in the desert line at a State dinner), the Cabinet (at 12th) is one notch ahead of Senators (at 13) and they both get to elbow aside state Governors and House members.  But in the checks and balances kind of way, Senators and Representatives are supposed to get kid-gloves treatment, especially when acting in the interest of those they represent; the military rank them above 4-star officers and Secretary Noem, were she just a bit more slick, would have countered with an impatient, "Yes, Senator?" Then let him speak, and made a non-committal or cutting remark before returning to her prepared statement. 

     She didn't.  By chance or design, a ranking member of the Executive branch caused a ranking member of the Legislative branch to be silenced, shoved aside, and restrained.  He was made to kneel before being proned out and cuffed.  It's holographic; you can take the part for the whole, and understand this to be the Trump administration's entire approach to federal governance: autocratic and high-handed, believing its authority to be unquestionable.

     This is not the way our government was supposed to function.

Congress Keeps Stepping Back

      The Framers of the U. S. Constitution thought Congress would be where the action was; that the numerous Representatives and august Senators would serve as a check on one another and, protective of their power and mindful of their responsibilities to their constituents, as a check on the Executive Branch and careful gatekeepers of the federal judiciary.

     Congress has never done an outstanding job of living up to this expectation, but historically, they've done about as well as we might expect of ordinary men (and a few women).  Through my lifetime, they've increasingly taken up the habit of handing power over to the Executive whenever they found the exercise of it inconvenient, had a majority of the same party as the President or wanted to dodge the blame if things didn't work out.

     The most recent piece of authoritarian backsliding comes from the House, at the hands of South Carolina's Nancy Mace and Brandon Gill of Texas.  Mace and Gill* want to give the Attorney General the power to deem any city "lawless" if it meets any of a vaguely-defined set of criteria, and to rinse away† federal funding to any not-so-fresh city so labelled for up to 180 days.

     You probably know what feedback is -- that howl that sometimes arises in a PA system when the microphone is taken in front of the speakers, growing louder and sharper until someone relocates or turns off the mike.  That's positive feedback.  Negative feedback works the other way, damping down distortion; in electronics, it's how we stabilize amplifiers and limit their gain.  Too much can be a problem; it's got to be set just right.  When legislators try social engineering via laws, that's a kind of feedback.  It's got to be just enough to accomplish the goal -- and it had better not be positive feedback, or it will only make the the problem worse.

     The news release for the bill specifically mentions Los Angeles, where four square blocks of downtown have seen both peaceful protest and violence over the last few days, where 4,000 federalized California Guard members have been sent in -- without, so far, pay or provisions -- to protect federal buildings and some employees and where some 700 U. S. Marines have been dispatched to do something -- DoD hasn't been forthcoming about their exact mission.

     I wondered just what federal funding Los Angles might be receiving now, and for what purpose?  Was it, perhaps, paying a plushy addendum to the Mayor's salary?  Supporting a den of fatcat politicians?  Imagine my surprise to read the city "receives federal funding for a wide range of programs, including transportation, housing, community development, and public safety," and, under the American Rescue Plan, funding to "support initiatives like housing and homelessness services, community development, and justice diversion programs. Federal grants also contribute to infrastructure improvements and social services."  In short, it goes to programs intended to reduce lawlessness across a wide range of situations and behaviors, everything from police to getting the homeless off the streets.  Cutting the money for that in response to a determination that a city had become lawless is positive feedback!

     It's a bad bill.  It surrenders yet more power from the Legislative Branch to the Executive -- and sets up the exercise of that power in a way that makes the problem it purports to address even worse.
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* Make of that what you will.
 
† I certainly did.

Breakfast Sandwich

      A remarkable substitute for butter on a breakfast sandwich is...muffuletta olive salad!

     The stuff is a chopped-up mixture of olives and other vegetables in seasoned olive oil, best dipped out with a fork and spread between layers.  It would work directly on thick, toasted bread, but I prefer thin-sliced rye.

     This morning's had a slice of crisp bacon, a thin slice of ham and read-through-it slices of roast beef, the latter two heated a bit in the skillet, plus a broken-yolk egg and a slice of Colby Jack cheese, and a generous amount of olive salad.  Delightful!

Bad Math

     Sure enough, someone took me to task: "One could also argue by your logic that 68% or so of the people were opposed to the Democrats [...] borders policy...."

     Nope.  One can argue that 30.9% of the possible voters favored the border policies put forth by the Democrats, 31.8% preferred Mr. Trump's Republican border policies, 1.3% wanted something different....and 36%, the largest group of possible voters, didn't care enough to fill out an absentee ballot or go vote in person.

     Understand this.  People who voted for candidates with a realistic chance of winning the Presidency constituted roughly 32% for the Republican and 31% for the Democrat.  That's not a mandate.  More voters said "Meh" and stayed home than exercised their franchise for either one.  That's not a commanding victory.  It's not a clear policy choice.

     Sharp eyes will have spotted a "[...]" in my quote.  The commenter wrote "...Democrats open borders policy...," and the problem with that* is, the Democrats do not have an open borders policy; you can go look up that party's 2024 platform (start on page 64) and read all about their actual border policy, amidst the campaign glurge.  Under "Securing the Border," they wrote:
     "In President Biden's second term, he will push Congress to provide the resources and authorities that we need to secure the border. This includes additional border patrol agents, immigration judges, asylum officers, cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop the flow of fentanyl, and funding for cities and states that are sheltering migrants."
     They published that version of their platform shortly before their abrupt change of candidate.  Readers with undamaged memories may recall a 2024 bipartisan bill to beef up border security, tanked by the GOP after initial support: then-candidate Trump asked them to stop it, lest he lose an important campaign issue.  He would not have done so if it promised to make border security worse.  So don't come to me talking about "open borders."  Democrats and Republicans ran on securing the border, with significant policy differences, but neither one was in favor of "open borders."  Both of them promised to increase border security.

     Hype and bullshit don't impress me.  Repeating unsupported opinion as fact doesn't overawe me.  We have a great big Internet and you can look this stuff up, and then look up the sources it relies on.  Why people are so unwilling to do so mystifies me.  I guess it's just too uncomfortable, all those long words and unfamiliar concepts.
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* Aside from improper formation of the possessive, that is.  Blog comments, like social media microblogging or dropping a postcard in the mailbox, are one of those things where you make an irrevocable act and watch, aghast, as your typos and slip-ups sail off, unreachable.  It will happen to each of us over and over, and it probably already has.

Predictably...

     A few innumerate folks have written to tell me that nuh-unh, most American citizens really do want ICE raids and federal response to protests against them.

     So let's run the numbers.  64% turnout in 2024, so 36% of possible voters picked None Of The Above, or at least didn't care enough to vote.  The remainder and a bit of math gives us 30.9% of possible voters for Harris, 31.8% for Trump and 1.3% for someone else.  That's 31.8% of possible voters who wanted Mr. Trump badly enough to go vote for him -- and 68.2% of them who did not.

     This is a close match to a President whose favorability scores run in the 40s.  Which they do, and were falling the last time I checked.

     Sure, a lot of people aren't upset enough to go marching and waving signs, and even fewer are so mad they'll set cars on fire or throw things at well-armed police.  But don't for a minute confuse that with enthusiasm for oppression or masked federal agents staging raids on people showing up for immigration hearings or hanging around big-box building-supply stores hoping to pick up work.  It's not popular -- and will get less so as the high-effort, low-paid jobs that keep us fed and housed increasingly go unfilled.

     My suspicion is that these chickens will come home to roost in the midterms, and the Trumpists in office and holding Administration jobs will cry foul when their numbers shrink.  The only question is how bad the rout will be -- and if the opposition party (parties?) can come up with a clear counter-message of their own in the meantime.  California's Governor Gavin Newsom, who was trying pretty hard to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares at the same time, is presently learning a painful lesson about carrying a scorpion across a river, but will it stick? 

You Voted For This

      Stock-market volatility; the CDC's entire vaccine advisory board removed despite RFK, Jr's promise to Congress not to do so; ICE raids in Los Angeles (and elsewhere) that triggered protests (also in LA and elsewhere), protests that periodically flare up into violence, and the violence in LA has resulted in 4,700 federal troops being sent in, despite LA and California officials saying they had the situation under control.  California is suing the federal government: 4,000 of the soldiers are California National Guard members, and there's a difference of opinion over the legality of federalizing them in this manner.

     Meanwhile, at least two foreign journalists covering the mess in LA have been hit by "less-lethal" fire, and if you're in the few blocks where law enforcement, ICE agents and protesters clash, it looks pretty bad even before it turns physical.  (Elsewhere in the sprawling city, it's life as usual, which seems to be a surprise to some commentators.  There are ten million people in LA County, compared to almost seven million in, say, all of Indiana or Tennessee: there's a lot of room for life-goes-on. We only see what the cameras are pointed at.)

     American voters chose this, 49.8% to (at least) 48.3.  (Yes, yes, only the electoral college votes matter, and that was more lopsided, call it 58%.).  In LA County alone, out of 3.7 million votes,* 1.2 million went to the Republican Presidential candidate.  They voted for this, and I hope they don't have urgent business near the protests.

     Vote for blood, expect blood.  Still think it was a good idea?
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* 37% turnout?  An estimated 17% of LA County residents are non-citizens.  That leaves 46% sitting on their hands come Election Day, and compares very unfavorably to a national turnout of almost 64%.  If you worry that a few high-population states dominate elections, I guess LA's got your back. 

Poking The Bear

      Sure, you can probably make a case that those hard-working ICE agents are "just following orders" in LA, but even if they're victims of the system (eye roll), the people who gave them their initial orders and who keep sending them back out either know in advance or at least know by now that the protests are reactive; the violence is reactive.

     If the feds were serious about stopping the protests, they'd pull those ICE agents out.  Send them home or, better, to Las Vegas, and wait for the furor to die down.  Come back more stealthily another day.

     Instead, they've got LAPD in there running interference, and the last I heard, National Guard troops were warming up in the bullpen.  I sure hope their officers didn't miss the use-of-force history lesson about Kent State.  You can go on social media right now and find video of protesters tossing tear gas canisters back at the gas-masked police, and if that's just the early innings, it could get way more spicy.

     And it will do so just as long as ICE and police and the National Guard keep getting sent in to poke the bear.  This isn't subatomic rocket-brain physics; we know what started it.  We know what's keeping it going.  And you're either in there cheering on the spectacle or you're asking why the feds are still leaning on the throttle.  What's in it for them?  What's their endgame?

     Better look close.  This isn't war -- it's three-card monte.

Giant Dopes

      I am convinced the people helming the so-called "Artificial Intelligence" efforts don't understand how a Large Language Model works -- or they think that's all anyone is: a mechanism that, given a topic and general direction, is able to predict the most probable next words and phrases, over and over:

     "Our vision is that, over time, A.I. would become part of the core infrastructure of higher education." 

     That's Leah Belsky, OpenAI’s Vice President of Education.  She's talking about a contraption with no mechanism for distinguishing between truth and fiction, no sense of right and wrong, no notion of the difference between meaningful art and utter dreck.  This is not a matter of preferring Rodin to Picasso but of not understanding the distinction between the work of either of them and a mud pie -- or a cow pie.  The software knows nothing of pain or joy, truth or beauty, lies or horror.

     It's not that AI doesn't care; it's that there is nothing there to care.  The output may be telling you Jane Austin and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley were sisters, but it's not because the machine believes that: there's nothing inside it to do the believing.  It was just the most plausible sequence of words in response to your particular question at that particular point.  The haunting truth is there is no ghost in the machine.  And it appears that most "AI" executives believe there's no ghost of personhood inside anyone around them, either.

     Trained on plagiarized works, even the very best "AI" anyone has isn't doing anything more than coming up with the most likely logical and grammatically-correct sequence of words in response to a prompt.  It's an impressive feat, and I'd trust a good (and well-disciplined) AI to create a meeting transcript, or a top-of-the-line one to suss out whether I'd correctly employed the subjunctive (as if!).  But you cannot learn from them; they cannot be trusted to referee facts, let alone exercise judgment.

     It should be no more legal or socially acceptable for a private entity to build and make use of LLM "AI" in open-ended discourse, counseling or teaching than it is for a private company or individual to stockpile sarin gas or make their own nuclear weapons.

Watching The News

     I cannot help but think that it is not a good sign when a spat between two very powerful men over a piece of legislation neither one of them has a vote on dominates the headlines for an entire day.

     One of the two will, eventually, have the opportunity to say yea or nay to the entire bill, but until then?  They're both Just Some Guy; any American has a chance to write to or ring up the offices of their Senators and Representatives, and no one of us should have any louder a voice than the rest of us.

     Yeah, yeah, realpolitik admits it ain't that way and it never has been, but the field used to be at least a little bit flatter, and everyone pretended it was even more so than it was.  Now you can't even express an opinion without picking a prince.

     It's not a horse race and neither of the principals knows what he's doing when it comes to the national economy or the federal budget.  Watching them is like watching a couple of chimpanzees fighting with sledgehammers in a house under construction: sure, it's fascinating, but sooner or later, one or the other of them is going to knock out something load-bearing and it will all come tumbling down.

I'm Done Reaching Out

     There's no point to it.  No point in reaching out politically, the gulf is too wide; no point in reaching out professionally, since I have at most three and a half years to go; no point in reaching out personally because friends are a nearly universal disappointment (perhaps I have terrible judgement).  I'm happy to have congenial acquaintances, but no closer.

     No point in finding new places that stock the oddball stuff, much of it electronics, that interests me: the ones that haven't already closed are winding down.  The same is true for fiction magazines; what were once paying markets (and they do still try) are endless wells of financial need and to subscribe is to receive emails a few times a year, admitting things aren't going so well and inviting you to kick in a few bucks to keep the publisher going.  You'd have to be heartless (which I'm not) or wary of losing money (which I am, past a spare five I didn't need for lunch anyway) to turn away.

     The world I grew up in and became a functioning adult in was fading away before the pandemic, albeit with a little grace.  The pandemic and political turmoil upended it and what's left is mostly ruins.  I don't care for the world that is emerging from the wreckage and I am unwilling to spend the rest of my days weeping in the ashes of the past -- and so I am done reaching out.

     You people want to fuck up the world?  Great, get to it.  Go screw yourselves.  I'll be reading books I already own.

Context Stripping

     One of the things a news story should do, past "who, what, when, where, how," is provide context: a Mob hit done by running the victim over with a car may look just like a pedestrian struck down by a driver busy texting, but an English teacher from Springfield arguing online about WWE wrestlers who flattens an elderly shopper and a "button man" from Hoboken taking out a damaging witness with a stolen Caddy are not, in fact, the same story.

     Early coverage is going to be the same -- "[NAME] was killed at [TIME/DATE] by a hit and run driver while crossing [LOCATION] Street.  Police are seeking...."  Follow-up should tell readers/listeners/viewers more: what notable connections did the victim have to wider events? If the suspected driver is arrested, what is known about him and his circumstances? If he is charged, what are the charges?  Did accused killer and victim know one another?

     There are limits.  News stories aren't trials; you'll notice I wrote "accused killer" in the previous paragraph, not "murderer;" he or she will not be the latter unless they are charged and found guilty -- and in the case of the distracted wresting fan, "manslaughter" is the more likely charge.  Ledes (the first few sentences or opening paragraph) are generally written in neutral language.  It should not be so neutral that it obscures what happened: "Died following a shooting incident" is mealy-mouthed avoidance; the victim was shot and killed, presumably by the accused killer.  This kind of dancing around is most evident when police kill someone -- the facts are often not in much dispute, though circumstances may be murky, but the Press shies away from admitting that yes, sometimes the police kill people, in favor of passive-voice construction in which people are, somehow, killed.

     Of late, this kind of "exonerative" construction has been bleeding over into non-police killings; when a gay voice actor was shot and killed at the site of his family home, itself recently destroyed by fire, after what appear to have been months if not years of conflict with neighbors, news stories have carefully tiptoed around the situation; he's another person said to have "died following a shooting incident," as though a mistaken hunter or some wandering, self-animated firearm shot him, and not a guy from his street, presently in police custody.

     Maybe it's the influence of corporate attorneys, worried about lawsuits; maybe it's just lazy writing.  Maybe they're trying to avoid delving into what appears to be a complicated situation.  But I'm here to tell you, when a person is shot, someone's finger was on the trigger.  Maybe it was a distracted English teacher; maybe it was a hitman.  Maybe it was a homophobe shouting slurs or a hothead annoyed about late-night parties and beer bottles over the fence.  Whatever it was, those things are part of the story and the lede should at least put alleged fingers on real triggers, and not just float the gun in via a telekinetic poltergeist.  It's not too much to ask.

News Cycling

     I'm so tired of a news cycle that consists of "Crazy/extreme politician does something crazy" followed by "Mass violence and/or war crime," followed by "Crazy domestic politician clashes or communes with crazy foreign politician" replaced by "Crooked politician gets caught and/or commuted" followed by "Crazy politician(s) rattle sabers" followed by "New fighting in [site of long-term conflict]," on and on, all of it a sameness and very much in the mode of our always having been at war with (or in) Eastasia or Eurasia.

     Call me soft and sentimental, but I want a news cycle with headlines about curing cancer or an HIV vaccine (which we almost had, until the Feds decided to cut the budget and spend whatever was left on trainee plumbers), about Moon landings or progress on self-sustaining, controllable fusion reactions.  Not "Economy tanks because some nitwit pulled the wrong cord."

Nehemiah Scudder, Is That You?

     Indiana Governor Mike Braun, about as four-square a Trumpian politician as could be, a businessman with strong roots in traditional Indiana conservative Republicanism, didn't want him.  The state party insisted, and Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith was on the ticket in 2024.

     Mr. Beckwith is an unabashed Christian nationalist; as far as he's concerned, the rules of the Bible -- his faith's version of the Bible -- ought to be the laws of the land.*  And there he is, one notch away from the state's top executive office.

     When you get one of these fanatical fellows in high office, there's not a lot to be done other than watch them closely and sue if they get over the line.  They've got a tendency to overestimate the popularity of their positions and to overreach.

     In Indiana, there's a pretty good watchdog, and they publish what they observe.

     And Nehemiah Scudder?  He's always lurking.
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* Although, shockingly, that doesn't include just about all of the Old Testament stuff about what foods one should eat and how they should be prepared, or details like the prohibition on wearing cloth woven from two kinds of fiber.  Shrimp cocktail and polyester blends are still on the menu, boys!  Women making their own decisions, not so much.  The picking and choosing can be quite selective, and the end result has more in common with a fictionalized far-Right version of 19th-Century or 1950s America than Bible times.

And He's Out!

     Not Elon Musk, who is apparently promising to stop by the White House from time to time in the future and lend Mr. Trump's government his own special stink.  That's practically moot, like bums urinating into a five-alarm fire.

     Nope, the latest departure hadn't even arrived: Jared Isaacman, nominated by then-candidate Trump to be the next NASA Administrator, has been de-nominated after what the administration is calling "a thorough review of past associations."

     As oligarchs go, Isaacman's not an especially bad one: he's a sure-enough pilot, with over 7,000 hours of stick time and is qualified on many military jet fighters, a notoriously unforgiving class of aircraft: there are old fighter pilots and bad fighter pilots, but old, bad fighter pilots are as rare as the dodo.  And he's genuinely space-happy, funding and flying aboard commercial orbital missions.  With Washington picking zillionares for the top jobs, he'd be a natural for NASA, one even I could tolerate.

     So what happened?  Here's a hint: White House assistant press secretary Liz Huston has said, "It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda...."

     Just what did Isaacman do, you ask?  Support Hamas?  Hang out with agents of Red China?  Sneak in illegals to process credit card payments at his company, Shift4?  Cozy up to the Russians to buy MiGs at a discount?

     Um, no.  Open Secrets has the skinny: it seems the gazillionaire has been donating to Democrats at least as often as he has to Republicans, in keeping with America's time-honored tradition of letting rich men buy as many congenial politicians as they can afford.  In particular, he gave to state Democrat parties in Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2024, states with Democratic governors where the Republicans eked out a narrow Presidential victory.  That's too much Mr. Trump and company to bear, and so he's out, despite being reasonably well qualified, a close associate of Elon Musk and promising to go along with the Republican plans for NASA.  He'd've offered to rub red Huntsville, Alabama mud in his navel on stage during that city's Oktoberfest,* if that's what the job required.

     It wasn't enough.  The Party, like its many authoritarian predecessors, requires total commitment; hedging one's bets is grounds for expulsion.

     They'll name someone else for the job, possibly Marco Rubio or Stephen Miller.  Back to the Moon?  I wouldn't bet on it.  And it gets worse: they've hacked severely at NASA's budget.  Goodbye, Moon!
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* Oh yes they do.  You're surprised?  After all those paperclips?  The references to FTL travel via "Gobau-Heim-Droscher space" over at I Work On A Starship didn't happen for no reason, though I don't think any of them got recruited for U. S. rocketry.