unraveling

25.Sept.2024

Catching up on the prequel

Thanks to Dan Gillmor's "Cornerstone" blog, and the Sept. 23 Essentials with a reminder to look at the sidebar of the NYT Sunday feature it appears I didn't mention here yet, about the Melon Felon's indefatigable thirst for revenge and retribution. I did read the main story in the print edition, but here, with a NYT gift link: Cases of Trump Rivals Who Were Subject to Investigation. Just by strange coincidence or something.

And in the "I don't know what to file this under, but related" category, Judd Legum's got an EXCLUSIVE: The Trump campaign is still being hacked. It's exclusive, because "Robert" sent a message to him on Sept. 18, dangling the cover page, and then the whole 271-page Vance dossier, along dossiers on Doug Burgum (382 pages) and Marco Rubio (550 pages), all of them "Privileged & Confidential" until whoops, they're not.

Legum's not dishing the deets, but proving his headline, it adds up to verification that the person "has stolen electronic communications from people associated with the Trump campaign within the last ten days." After saying he's not going to publish any of the stuff, he notes that his "personal emails were weaponized by the media and the Trump campaign in 2016." He notes he "was a bit player" in the drama, by virtue of being a long-time associate of John Podesta, and remember when?

"As Popular Information previously reported, outlets like Politico, the Washington Post, and the New York Times produced dozens of unflattering articles and blog posts about Podesta's emails. Everything was fair game, from Podesta's risotto recipe to his use of the word "prick" to describe a journalist he didn't like."

It all added up to "no significant scandal," unlike the current episode when we've been super-saturated (and thus inured) to scandal, but the bigs are mum about what they've been receiving.

"The Washington Post, the New York Times, and Politico should be transparent about their decision-making and explain why it has changed dramatically over the last eight years."

And the inevitable campaign updates

Going back further in my inbox, the familiar Sisyphusean task, and reading Heather Cox Richardson's September 23 letter, I recognized that I'm rereading it, because there are so many moving parts, I marked it "unread" after the first time. "The aging salesman trying to close one last deal" is featured, pre-blaming the Jews in case he loses, rolling out some grandchildren for a photo op, "truthing" ever more bizarre and desparate nonsense, Mark Robinson, MyPillow guy using a neo-Nazi code for his pillow pricing (I wish I were making that up), the Official Trump Coin, Melanie bringing up her nude modeling work no one has been talking about, J.D. Vance serving himself ahead of the state he (supposedly) represents in the Senate, and the plan to retaliate against enemies, on simmer.

I'm proud of my nude modeling work too, but you'd be hard-pressed to find any drawings from that Life Drawing studio back in the day.

Lots of endorsements to talk about, including Sunday's "bipartisan group of 741 national security leaders," who started by saying

"We are former public servants who swore an oath to the Constitution. Many of us risked our lives for it. We are retired generals, admirals, senior noncommissioned officers, ambassadors, and senior civilian national security leaders. We are Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. We are loyal to the ideals of our nation—like freedom, democracy, and the rule of law—not to any one individual or party."

Spoiler alert, their endorsement went to Kamala Harris.

“This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism. Vice President Harris defends America’s democratic ideals, while former President Donald Trump endangers them.

“We do not make such an assessment lightly. We are trained to make sober, rational decisions. That is how we know Vice President Harris would make an excellent Commander-in-Chief, while Mr. Trump has proven he is not up to the job.”

Optimism out of dark times

HCR's Letters from an American for Sept. 24, 2024 features, and recaps President Joe Biden's address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City yesterday. Most of the way down the post, this reminder:

“Even as we navigate so much change,” he said, “[w]e must never forget who we’re here to represent.”

“‘We the People,’” he said, the first words of the U.S. Constitution, and the words that inspired the opening words of the U.N. Charter, which begins: “We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war….”

Still working on that.

We know how well this will work

The lede from the other two people on Judd Legum's "three-person newsletter," Popular Information, this morning:

The Florida Department of Education is prohibiting school districts from including core topics in their sex education courses, including contraception, consent, domestic violence, abuse, and LGBTQ issues. Instead, the state is instructing schools to "emphasize abstinence."

24.Sept.24

Recombobulating Wisconsin

Two words sure to catch my eye. This toot from lolgop (aka Jason Sattler). Spoiler alert: "Wisconsin’s first truly democratic election in over a decade has already begun." The embed puts text below the fold, it looks like, so here's more:

"Give me less than 30 minutes, and you'll hear [Dan Shafer] tell you what you need to know about Democrats' chances to win the Assembly, the U.S. Senate, and 10 electoral votes in [this] Tipping Point State."

It's wonky insider analysis of the political workings of the Badger State. Lots more of Dan Shafer's "award-winning political opinion column and online publication on the discombobulating politics of Milwaukee and Wisconsin," at The Recombobulation Area. Part of the Civic Media network, I'm just hearing about.)

It was an uplifting 24 minute listen for me. I liked the report that Tim Walz might be "deployed" to campaign in western Wisconsin, and you hear him offer to show you how cruise control works on his 1979 International Harvester Scout. ("Uh, everything works on here, except one thing I'm still tinkering with, cruise control.")

Also, I kind of knew this, but try to avoid it: the way a lot of midwesterners say "Milwaukee" is "M'walkee." It's quicker, I guess.

It's too late baby

While enjoying Seth Myers' Closer Look at the Mark Robinson scandal, and the #awkward position it puts the Republican presidential ticket in, I heard sidekick J.D. Vance, answer a question from a reporter with this, after he'd noted that "allegations" aren't necessarily true (fair enough):

NBC News: Do you believe him that those were not his posts?

JDV: Ah, I, I don't not believe him. I don't believe him. I just think that you have to let these things sometimes play out in the court of public opinion.

Ah yes, the "court" of public opinion. That and big orange Don saying that sure he'd do another debate, except that it's "just too late," because voting has already started. (Like, you know, it was on September 26, 2020, when Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and Mitch McConnell jammed her confirmation through the Senate in record time, and got it done eight days before Election Day.)

Also in the court of public opinion, this quickmeme is flitting around the intertubes just now, in the "Imagine" category:

Imagine what they would say about Harris if she had five kids by three husbands and she'd cheated on all of them.

You could look it up (on Facebook, say) and see all sorts of variants, including the one with an answer, "the media would be relentless, questioning her character, integrity, and suitability for public office. Her personal life would be picked apart, and detractors would use it to undermine her achievements.

We've kind of been all over the questions of character, integrity and suitability for public office in regard to the Felon Melon, and the answers are FAIL, FAIL, NOT, but what's left of the GOP keeps saying We Don't Care! We Can Grift Something Out of This, Too! Remember how we made out like bandits (and blew up the deficit) in 2017?

Equinox #2, 2024

Mr. Fix-it

Joyce Vance has three-point advice for women in her latest substack blog post. I think she should have started with that, so I'm quoting it first:

• It’s okay to vote for Kamala Harris, even if you’re a lifelong Republican voter.
• If you don’t want to, you don’t have to tell anyone the truth about who you voted for.
• Women should be able to make their own choices about their healthcare, and they shouldn’t have to watch their daughters suffer and even die because of Donald Trump’s abortion bans. Woman and their families should have access to IVF. Try telling men they can’t get lifesaving medical care, or even a prescription for Viagra, and see how far that gets you. Don’t vote for someone who treats you like a second-class citizen.

The way Vance tackled "Trump's Happy Vision for Women" starts with "what was on [his] mind at 11:49 p.m. last night," expressed in a bizarre, all-caps emission from his personal antisocial medium. You can take the jump and see the original, but the shorter is that it's the mashup of WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE? (the answer is A LOT) and I ALONE CAN FIX IT, this time for the little ladies. The culminating nonsense, in his Signature Superlative® is "I WILL PROTECT WOMEN AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE."

God bless her, Vance tries to figure out "what was he thinking" (assuming there was a thought in his head), and who in the world would be the intended audience. (Besides, you know, his ever tone-deaf ME ME ME drawing all attention to himself, and here we are falling for it.)

Vance goes on to say "Donald Trump is a lunatic," which I think is too delicate. He does bay at the moon, but that word is a bit quaint and sugar-coated. Donald Trump is a psychopath. He's not crazy, but he is mentally ill. Donel Conley in the comments, for the win:

Pimp Talk.

"I'm the only one who loves you."
"I'm the only one who can protect you."
"And if you leave me, you'll be sorry."

Pimp Talk happens on the streets and in the home.
No woman needs to believe it.
Love yourself. Protect yourself.

Leave The Pimp behind. You won't be sorry.

Astronomically speaking

We're spun halfway around our star again, and everything lined up, top to bottom, half day, half night, centered on 6:44am MDT. We've still got that jaunty 23.44° axial tilt, but it's off to the side. (I went looking for a handy image and stumbled on this frankly bizarre minute and a half from National Geographic. The facts are in order, but the graphics—and music—are other worldly, and not in the good way.) EarthSky.org has a nice image for the day, and much, much more.

Speaking of other worlds, Saturn's equinoxes are not quite 15 Earth years apart. The previous one was in 2009, when Cassini was in the neighborhood to show us wonders we had not seen before. The European Space Agency tells us the next Saturnian equinox will be 6 May 2025, which will be 15 years and 9 mo. after the one Cassini made famous. Must be the long side of its elliptical orbit, I guess? Yes: the one before, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope was Aug. 10, 1995.

21.Sept.2024

Credit where due

Twenty years or so ago, I was on the board of a little non-profit that needed a telephone of some sort, and a prepaid, pre-smart mobile phone on a prepaid deal seemed just the ticket. I forget what the initial cost for the phone was, but cheap, and by carefully shepherding the prepaid minutes, the running cost was $20/year or less, for a way to receive, and retrieve voicemail. Getting it going was way more complicated than I imagined possible, and T-Mobile insisted on my credit information to make it go. Didn't seem like a big deal, even if my initial resistance to giving them my social security number was eventually worn down. My time on the board elapsed, and others looked after the phone and its minutes.

When not having a personal mobile got to be more inconvenient than getting one, I used the same ultra-cheap approach with T-Mobile for a few years, and then and in 2016, we took the late-adopter leap to get our own smartphones, and retire our landline. I'd used the mobile when mobile enough to know that T-Mobile's coverage in the wilds of Idaho was sub-par, and Verizon had the coverage in the places I wanted it to. We had the two-year commitment "postpaid" plan (with most of the cash flow always happening ahead of the month) for more than two years, until a friend pointed out the prepaid plans could be a lot cheaper. We switched, gave up features we didn't care about (and some we did care about), but $61.50 a month for two lines and all the bandwidth we needed was a good enough deal.

More years passed, and 3 years ago a letter from T-Mobile arrives, referencing the non-profit phone deal from the two-thousand oughts. "On August 17, 2021, T-Mobile learned that a bad actor illegally accessed personal data from [their] systems, to which the criminal gained access on or before July 19, 2021."

"Information involved: While we have no indication that personal financial or payment information or credit/debit card information was access, we have determined that unauthorized access to your personal information has occurred, including your name, driver's license/ID information, date of birth, and Social Security number."

They made an offer for "two years of free identify protection services with McAfee's ID Theft Protection Service," which I didn't take for various reasons. Inconvenient? Not too worried about this threat on top of so many others? Their mail included an "Appendix" with information on CREDIT MONITORING, getting free reports, implementing a freeze, or a fraud alert. It arrived 4 years after I'd put freezes in place at all three major credit bureaus, on both my wife's and my behalf.

The big 2017 breach at Equifax got me started doing that. A class action suit settled in 2019, and I'd submitted a claim as a member of the class. Eventually, I was awarded a free Experian ID Works account in September 2022. (Nice touch, using a different bureau than the breached one.) Haven't heard about it expiring, but two years is up... They monitor my stuff at the bureaus, and out on the dark web, and what not, send me warnings now and then, nothing substantial yet, knock on wood.

Whew. It's tedious, and that's all just preamble. 8-years on, we're both ready for a phone upgrade, and following the relatively positive experience that one time at the Verizon store, we went back there. There were five clerks waiting by the door, and maybe no customers inside? The fellow who waited on us looked up our account and saw we were "prepaid," and said it would be a bad idea to get new phones from them, we should just go to BestBuy and get unlocked phones. That was... odd. But ok, it seemed honest, and maybe true. We left to find the nearby BestBuy we rarely go into, but before it turned up, I got the idea to go to Costco instead, where our new-to-us membership deal is just a few months old.

"Phone deal at Costco" equals T-Mobile these days, and we sauntered up to purple-lit counter, and engaged a friendly Mobile Expert the age of one of our grandkids, talked about the whizzy state of the art, and setting up a new account, because old-4G is going to go away, and we need 5G anyway, and now T-Mobile's coverage is really good (I hope it's true), and yada yada yada. The sign-up deal went as far as the credit check step (for a "postpaid" plan, since they hardly do any prepaid, and those aren't good deals, and don't have the $$$ bonus from Costco to sweeten the deal). No can do, because our three bureau accounts have freezes on, and I didn't think I'd be stumbling into needing a check, and did not have credentials and stuff to do a lift on the spot.

We made arrangements to do the thaw, and come back a few days hence, when his schedule and ours lined up. I asked him which bureau they used, he said he thought Equifax, but really it was best to do all three. When our appointment time came around, I did Equifax, and Experian, and decided "two should be enough," because the long-ago TransUnion setup had been funky, and we never did get a "regular" account set up with them. Phone menus are a drag, especially while they keep repeating that you could just do it on their website, you know.

This is where you'd insert the ominous foreboding soundtrack in the movie version. The second visit failed at the credit check, and it seemed TransUnion was the problem. I tried calling... got into an agent hold queue with TOO LOUD hold music, paced and steamed a while, and finally decided it would be easier to do it at home with a computer handy. But still on the phone UI? I looped around to the agent hold queue (quicker on the second try, after finding that "LIFT FREEZE" was the magic incanation to start with, from my old notes). I tried to lower the volume on the bad hold music, and accidentally disconnected the call. That was a bad moment.

I tried a third phone call, and weirdly, this one worked more or less directly! My request had been processed! Back to Costco and the T-Mobile Store-in-Store, ready for the third time to be the charm.

Nope. Failed at the credit check, strike three. I had verified lifted freezes at Experian (with email confirmation), Equifax (text message confirmation), and TransUnion (nothing but that robot voice at the end of the phone call). But no credit at the T-Mobile Store-in-Store. Had I set the end date late enough? (Yes, the end date is supposed to go to 11:59pm CT.)

Went home again, and tried to set up a web account with TransUnion, and it went surprisingly well this time, maybe even a bit too easy, given the atoms of identifying information are not terribly secret these days. It didn't get to the "credit history questions" (like, what color was the [make, model] car you bought 30 years ago? with multiple choice, including "none of the above"). But I lifted that freeze and got confirmation so now ALL THREE WERE GOOD TO GO, right?

Back to the store-in-store to find out, not quite. Just need a "manual review" from some T-Mobile agent in the cloud, because, you know it had failed (and failed, and failed) before. Our Expert called on his phone, authenticated himself, and then handed me the phone, to provide the magic words and numbers that make me who I am. After that, the credit check came up... with a ZERO score. Did my Expert refresh too soon? He called in a new manual review, and I talked to a 2nd cloud agent, and told her that this process was MESSED UP and it was time for it to work, or we'd be walking.

I got to tell that to a THIRD cloud agent. The final one (I think it was, I may not remember it all) wanted to call me on the phone number on file (my current mobile, almost always in a pocket), and ok, and we went through the Q&A again while I held a phone in each hand. Now he tells me that TransUnion tells him to ask me some of those credit history questions. What state was my SSN issued in? (That one is particularly lame, given that the first three digits answer that question with a ssa.gov lookup table.)

As I was doing that, I gave a thought about if he were a "bad actor," I'd be giving him everything he needs to mess with my credit file. Seems wrong on multiple levels.

But finally (and with seemed like some sleight of hand by our Expert), it was put through, with my e-signature demanded via an email, and tapped on my phone, agreeing to uncounted pages of fine print and a few large, bold-faced numbers to be transferred over the next two years (we should live so long!).

Our new T-Mobile adventure has begun. By the end of the day, I had Order Documents, an order confirmation, notice my payment (for sales tax, and two power blocks, which they wouldn't on credit), instructions to connect my new device to the network (before we have them in hand), and Let the tracking begin for the precious shipment. The "Shipping Method" says, and I quote, "Two Day - Up to 3 business days." Must be the New Math. If you're driving between Sparks, NV and Boise, ID this weekend or early next week, please drive carefully, and give trucks plenty of room.

Update:
Security guru Brian Krebs bumped a two year-old article, on Mastodon, with worrisome intel on Experian, and that "credit history question" security theater. (I'm reminded the term of art is "knowledge-based authentication questions.") Experian, You Have Some Explaining to Do.

An unfun fact in it: "each credit pull can ding your credit score slightly." The fellow in the story was willing to pay Experian $25.99 a month, which seems a bit extortionate, doesn't it?

19.Sept.2024

Republicans for Harris for national security

One hundred eleven former national security officials from Republican administrations and former Republican members of Congress endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday, saying in a letter that:

"We believe that the President of the United States must be a principled, serious, and steady leader who can advance and defend American security and values, strengthen our alliances, and protect our democracy. We expect to disagree with Kamala Harris on many domestic and foreign policy issues, but we believe that she possesses the essential qualities to serve as President and Donald Trump does not. We therefore support her election to be President.

And further that they're prepared to support her because she has:

• Consistently championed the rule of law, democracy, and our constitutional principles;
• Pledged to “ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world" and to honor and respect those who wear the uniform;
• Committed to sign the bipartisan Border Security package, drafted under the leadership of Republican Senator James Lankford and other Republicans, which would hire 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel and provide more resources for law enforcement but was opposed by Donald Trump to avoid giving President Biden any political advantage;
• Supported a strong NATO to stand up to Russia and protect European and American security and been firm in her support of Ukraine;
• Declared her intention to ensure that the United States will meet the economic and military competition with China;
• Declared her intention to "always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself" and "to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists”;
• Demonstrated that she can engage in orderly national security decision-making, without the constant drama and Cabinet turnover ofthe Trump Administration; and
• Committed to appoint a Republican to her Cabinet in order to encourage a diversity of views and restore a measure of bipartisanship and comity to our domestic politics.

And as for her opponent?

"We firmly oppose the election of Donald Trump. As President, he promoted daily chaos in government, praised our enemies and undermined our allies, politicized the military and disparaged our veterans, prioritized his personal interest above American interests, and betrayed our values, democracy, and this country's founding documents. In our view, by inciting the violent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and defending those who committed it, he has violated his oath of office and brought danger to our country. As former Vice President Pence has said "anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States."

"Donald Trump's susceptibility to flattery and manipulation by Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, unusual affinity for other authoritarian leaders, contempt for the norms of decent, ethical and lawful behavior, and chaotic national security decision-making are dangerous qualities – as many honorable Republican colleagues and military officers who served in senior national security positions in his administration have frequently testified. He is unfit to serve again as President, or indeed in any office of public trust."

Signators from A (Adm. Steve Abbot (Ret.)) to Z (Robert B. Zoellick), who served under Reagan, George H.W. and George W. Bush, including two defense secretaries, two CIA directors, and a director of national intelligence.

A failed insurrection is a practice run

Joyce Vance has Disturbing News from Georgia. (And a little joy, too—she shares some yard signs, which she says are appearing in numbers greater than she can remember seeing for Democrats in Alabama. Her recollection probably doesn't go back to 1968?)

"Today, emails between county election officials in Georgia surfaced, revealing that election deniers from 2020 are busily working on a plan to call the results of November’s election into question—presumably only if Trump loses."

Republican election officials. The Guardian reported yesterday that Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) obtained the emails from "a public records request sent to David Hancock, an election denier and member of the Gwinnett county board of elections."

"Spanning a period beginning in January, the communications expose the inner workings of a group that includes some of the most ardent supporters of the former president Donald Trump’s election lies as well as ongoing efforts to portray the coming election as beset with fraud. Included in the communications are agendas for meetings and efforts to coordinate on policies and messaging as the swing state has once again become a focal point of the presidential campaign.

"The communications include correspondence from a who’s who of Georgia election denialists, including officials with ties to prominent national groups such as the Tea Party Patriots and the Election Integrity Network, a group run by Cleta Mitchell, a former attorney who acted as an informal adviser to the Trump White House during its attempts to overturn the 2020 election."

Closer to home, at last night's meeting of the Ada County Democrats' Central Committee, Ada County Clerk Trent Tripple spoke to us about election integrity right here in our big county. The Ada County Ballot Verifier is a "one of a kind feature ensures transparency and accountability in the voting process."

Anyone can view the cast ballots, sorted by precinct, contest or candidate, and compare them to the data that were scanned from them (the "Cast Vote Record," or CVR). Voter privacy is protected: there is no identifying information on who cast the ballot. It's accessible to anyone, and includes previous elections.

There will be live camera views available, there is information specific for the media, and if none of that satisfies you, you can make a public records request.

Idaho's not a swing state; the last time its electoral votes went to a Democratic candidate was in 1964. (I think Goldwater could be a moderate Republican here now.) They did go to FDR, all four times, and to Truman. But integrity shouldn't depend on races not being close, and we do have plenty of down-ballot races that will likely be close. Integrity matters from top to bottom.

Old news, bad news, new news

Everyone knows the newspaper business is struggling. It's been struggling a long time, with the web disintermediating "breaking news," classifieds, personals, opinion, obituaries, public notices, and all the advertising you can eat, any way it can. Our household is in the aging-out cohort still willing to pay for delivered hard copy (even as our consumption of digital everything seems to grow without bound).

The Idaho Press announced (imagine a long pause while I try, and fail to find the announcement, in my email, and online, using multiple search engines, and the newspaper's website own search facility, and the mysteriously unpublicized "notice" becomes the story) that it would be changing its print and delivery from Tuesday-Sunday, by carrier, to Monday (I think they said) through Saturday, by mail. (The Saturday-delivered paper would be "Saturday/Sunday," somehow, the news before it's news.)

The announcement did not say anything about the carriers who will all be out of their job after Sunday, Sept. 29. We had a good carrier who we could contact directly about any problems (which were pretty much never her fault). She included a farewell letter in a recent delivery, "with a heavy heart" about the abrupt end to what she said has been her "full-time job for over 14 years." We're sad to have her cut off too, and to give up the generally pleasant morning ritual of going out to get the paper.

After starting to retell my own history in newspapers, I see I already did that here, on Dec. 9, 2019, early in our subscription, and at the end of our church's newsletter print run. I mentioned "more than half a century" as you do if you're lucky enough to get to be an old fart, and checking the date on that old black and white print, I see it has now been 62 years since I was on the back patio by the garage, reading the funnies when I felt like it, and my dad snuck around the side of the house to catch me in the act.

While searching for that latest Idaho Press announcement, I stumbled upon news of the Idaho Statesman doing that, a year ago. "As digital transition evolves" in the headline, 159 years into their press run. They touted a "24/7 digital product" (as if what, some news websites go to a test pattern at 1am?) "with three days of high-quality print editions, beginning Oct. 9[, 2023]."

"The print editions will publish Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays and be delivered by mail, arriving on the same day as publication, in most cases, alongside your regular mail delivery. The Sunday newspaper will arrive on Saturday because of the U.S. Postal Service’s delivery schedule."

So, the news before it's news on Saturday? More feature oriented? More thoughtful? At any rate, they'll stay busy, with their "eEdition" "publishing seven days a week." What else will be new?

"We are also launching an insider’s guide to the Boise area with a new website section and newsletter. The Explore Boise City Guide captures the very best in our service journalism and gives tips to residents on how to live their best lives in Boise and the Treasure Valley."

Living your best life is good. And this fun fact, the month after they marked their 159th birthday: "The Idaho Statesman was launched July 26, 1864, as the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman." The current editor, Chadd Cripe, was "in his third year as editor [and] on staff for 27 years," had a few personal notes in the announcement.

Wikipedia tells me the Idaho Press (fka Idaho Press-Tribune) goes back to December 1883 (as the Caldwell Tribune), and who knew, Frank Steunenberg was one its first owners and editors before going on to become Idaho's fourth governor and getting assassinated in 1905. (You can read all about that in J. Anthony Lukas' 1997 epic Big Trouble.) No one has jumped right on editing the Wikipedia page about its circulation changes.

The "official subscription website of the Idaho Press" (which you may or may not get to from that newzware.com URL; I had to jump through a wicket) does not yet breathe a word about the change coming October 1. You can learn that Adams Publishing Group bought the deal in 2017, and see offers mentioning "carrier delivery." The fine print notes that "SUBSCRIPTION TERM prices and publication days are subject to change," and something something "12 premium content editions" for which "there will be a charge," "which will shorten the length of your subscription." And this pair of omnibus disclaimers:

"The publisher reserves the right to change subscription rates during the term of any subscription. A Maintenance fee may be added to subscriptions to accommodate for increased business expenses during the year."

Whew. You can see why they're so keen on signing you up for an EZ-Pay CONTINUOUS SUBSCRIPTION with automatic renewal. How long will it be before no news is fit to print, I wonder, and all your news bits are e-delivered while your EZ-Pay bits whiz upstream?

18.Sept.2024

Dire straits

The appeal of Donald J. Trump is a baffling mystery to me. Perhaps some combination of mindless team loyalty ("anybody but them"), a promise to all white people that there will be no accountability for transgression, and the bully boy joy of punching down?

The undeniable truth is that Trump is a psychopath, nearly devoid of human empathy. (I'm giving him the benefit the doubt with "nearly"; I haven't seen any evidence, but you never know.) He is a conman, a grifter, an aged-out "playboy," a fraud, a walking compendium of what we used to call deadly sins. Disasters and ruined lives bubble and fester in his wake. "America's Mayor," and a seamy platoon of failed lawyers, the Pillow Guy, Jeff Sessions, Mike Flynn, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Michael Cohen, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Rick Gates, Allen Weisselberg by one accounting, ruined or on the road to ruin (or still on the bandwagon to ruin, as the case may be). Far more than a thousand insurrectionists.

There were enough outrages in 2015 and 2016 that should have been utterly disqualifying, but the Republican party kept rolling over and enabling the worst outcome from his mental illness, trying to enlist dictators, kowtowing to dictators, using a dictator as a character reference, and telling us in one of his confessional "jokes" that yes, he'll be a dictator, "but only on day one."

His response to the many attempts in process to hold him accountable for his own actions seem to be driving him more fully insane. A year ago, it was news that he was ramping up violent rhetoric, mocking the results of his stochastic terrorism, raging about prosecutors and judges, and generals (applying his indirect sashay for a pastie of plausible deniability, "in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH"). A YEAR AGO.

Now that an actual assassination attempt, and another wanna-be assassination has got up near his face, he's got a new angle on violence, his favorite retort: I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I? Joyce Vance: Rejecting Violence, But Only When It's Directed At You.

Trump said "inflammatory language" from Democrats was at fault. Without an iota of evidence. Who needs evidence? Trump's chief fluffer, "JD Vance" picked up the charge, too. Since “no one has tried to kill Kamala Harris in the last couple of months," how much "evidence" do you need?

Trump and the cuckolded Republican Party are a threat to democracy. He (and most of they) continue to deny the reality that they lost the 2020 election, and gloss over the violent attempt at insurrection to overcome that fact, and stay in power. Not to put too fine a point on it:

"Over the past year, the former president has likened his political opponents to “vermin” that he pledged to “root out” and described the left as an “enemy from within” that posed a more pernicious threat to America’s well-being than foreign enemies. He has suggested that some of his opponents should be subject to military tribunals for treason; urged his supporters to “go after” the New York attorney general, whose office filed a lawsuit against him for fraud; and said that Democrats are destroying the country.

"Yet in his Fox News interview, Mr. Trump insisted he did not use “highly inflammatory language,” but added, “I can use it, too — far better than they can — but I don’t.”

His outrageous lying is beyond gaslighting. As Rebecca Solnit put it:

"This is where we're at in the USA. Trump is with this loon demanding mass executions of Democrats; Vance is feeding the hate by lying about the two guys who showed up with rifles around Trump, neither of whom is aligned with the Democrats. And Vance's lying keeps getting more horrific and menacing. The lack of any values beyond the acquisition of power is evident in his condemning the (false) association with would-be killers* while supporting the real threats of mass murder here."

*The July would-be assassin did kill a bystander and injured two others.

16.Sept.2024

Three score and ten

"Age at death" commands more attention as your own numbers tick skyward, and obits get more interesting. Today's is for singer and guitarist for the Jackson 5, Toriano Adaryll "Tito" Jackson, gone at 70, which seems decidely too early to me now. Things I learned from reading his obit:

He looked mighty fine in 2012! Six brothers are mentioned, but they don't say which one wasn't in the "5". (Maybe they rotated?) His three sons, Taj, Taryll and TJ, have a group called "3T." The 5 were a "boy band" before I'd ever heard the term. And a reminder that Michael, the "King of Pop" only made it to age 50, now fifteen years ago. I love the Gary, Indiana origin story:

In a 2019 interview with Vlad TV, Tito Jackson said that as a child, he would regularly play his father’s guitar behind his back.

“One day I broke the string and I didn’t know what to do about it,” he said. “He came home and saw the string broke and was really upset about it.”

After punishing him, Mr. Jackson said, his father asked him to demonstrate what he knew. His father gave him that guitar with the instructions to learn every song on the radio.

I was not watching The Cher Show back in 1975 (didn't have a TV, for starters), but that clip of the 5 as young men, and Michael's incandescent dance moves, OMG. (In the comments, on YouTube: "Read that Cher said this was the hardest number she ever did on her show. Trying to keep up with Michael’s dancing was near impossible. He really was from another planet, so much talent.")

Tito had some nice solo bits in the medley, showing off his beautiful voice, but it's a bit weird to have him upstaged in his own send-off. Fortunately, it's not too hard to find more recent work on his eponymous domain, like this great "Love One Another" from the current decade. (He looked good in 2021, too!) Nice reggae number there, too, extolling family values. "Home is Where the Heart Is."

14.Sept.2024

Random Notes

Charley Locke brought up the Notes App in The Atlantic, and the moment after I started reading her take of "a collection of throwaway thoughts becom[ing] a record of person’s real self," I had to take a look at mine, going back to my phone's epoch, mid-2016. I'd certainly used it as "built-in scratch paper on a phone" (on the way to learning I still prefer a pen and a little paper notebook), but I did wonder how much of my "digital subconscious" it might reveal.

There are notes from the semimonthly get-together I moderated for many years. Notes from the time I went to a meeting of a committee I would never join. Notes from planning meeting for a river trip, dominated by a fellow who didn't end up going. Notes from the 2017 beginning of our 2018 adventure to Transylvania.

Her "incomplete list of what people [she knows] have written" into the app has a lot of things I do not. A lifelong bucket list, for example, or even an 8-year bucket list. Nothing about furniture, karaoke, celebrity crushes, colleges to apply to, "inside jokes with an ex," a list of people I've slept with, or any unintelligible late-night revelations.

I'm astounded to read that anyone would "use the Notes app for 'nearly everything'," given its minimal user interface. (Maybe I need a newer version?) It doesn't take dictation, unless you like the idea of replaying a sound recording. (I've got a different app for that, thanks.) My swipe-typing skillz are ok as far as they go, but the misapprehensions, and annoying persistence of memes are tiresome. (I was into aaaand somewhere along the line, and it just won't let go. E.v.e.r.y is even worse; backspace won't delete it entire, things it's a serious of short sentences. How-To Geek has a list of 10 Samsung keyboard features, not including how to edit that memory list. And a longer list of keyboard esoterica, from 2022 also doesn't get it.)

Digging further, I found a note saying an old friend "wanted to read about the Owhyees," but her time was up a few years ago, as was the person's referenced only by intials who I hoped would not go on a certain group outing.

I see the author is barely into middle years, "a decade" goes back to "the summer after [she] graduated from college." My scribblings from 70s and 80s would certainly be a tour of the sub- and semi-conscious. They're on paper, here and there in memorabilia boxes and journals and heaps, resting easy. This is nice:

"The raw data in the Notes app force me to acknowledge that while being a young adult was exhilarating, it was also exhausting: I was constantly pushing to figure out who I was, with no certainty that I ever would. Reading these notes today makes me feel tenderly toward that vulnerable version of me, but I also want to look away. Confronting the glaring proof of how young and earnest I was feels a bit like staring into the sun."

12.Sept.2024

Karl Rove said so

Speaking of heads spinning, I did not see this coming. Robert Reich gave over his latest blog post to the guy George W. Bush liked to call "Boy Genius," and "Turd Blossom." Karl Rove’s take on Tuesday’s debate, published in the Wall Street Journal: "catastrophic."

"Mr. Trump had to know the vice president would try to get him to lose his cool. She did. She went after him on his multiple indictments. She called him “weak” and belittled him as a six-time bankrupt, spoiled inheritor of wealth. She said his former national security adviser thought him, in her words, “dangerous and unfit” for the Oval Office.

"As is frequently the case with Mr. Trump, he let his emotions get the better of him. He took the bait almost every time she put it on the hook, offering a pained smile as she did. Rather than dismissing her attacks and launching his strongest counterarguments against her, Mr. Trump got furious. As her attacks continued, his voice rose. He gripped the podium more often and more firmly. He grimaced and shook his head, at times responding with wild and fanciful rhetoric. ...

"It matters how debating candidates carry themselves. There, it was no contest. Ms. Harris came across as calm, confident, strong and focused on the future. Mr. Trump came across as hot, angry and fixated on the past, especially his own. She mastered the split screen, projecting confidence and wordlessly undercutting him by smiling while shaking her head as he spoke."

Kamala Harris' response to how much fun she had deconstructing the sequel was to suggest she's ready to go again. Trump, busy declaring victory, just as he did in the Spin Room, tapped out, truthing "THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!" For his true believers, and right-wing media sycophants that may pass for a show of strength?

Inside the spin room

Before I get into it, let me shout out the ad the Harris-Walz team dropped this morning, clipped out of Tuesday night's debate, "when Harris held Trump accountable for overturning Roe v. Wade": Wanted. A powerful dose of truth about one of the important things at stake on November 5.

THEY'RE EATING DOGS Now then. We saw the incredibly unprepared and inept DonOld imploding on the debate stage in a shower of cats and dogs Tuesday night, and then, wait, what? He dropped into the "Spin Room" to truth his way to the W?

One reporter asked the obvious question: "Mr. President [sic], if you're so confident you won tonight, why are you here? Why not let the performance speak for itself?"

The Dunning-Kruger nominee said "I thought it was a great night."

He's not wrong, of course, but missed identifying the actual winner of the debate, by a whisker. ("I said that?") Also, how exactly do statistics work again?

"The polls are indicating that we got 90%, 60%, 72%, 71% and 89%," he said.

THEY'RE EATING CATS Numbers like nobody has ever seen before. He also said he thought "it was the best debate that I've ever personally, that I've had." Following that "perfect phone call" to the president of Ukraine to extort some campaign dirt on Biden in 2019, how did that work out? Or that other "perfect phone call," to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on January 2, 2021, nearly three weeks after the Electoral College had met and declared Joe Biden the winner, in which we all heard him say "I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have [sic], because we won the state [sic]." He didn't say "sic," and he lost Georgia's election by 11,779 votes.

I didn't find Seth Myers' A Closer Look Live Primetime Special: Harris Baits Trump into Melting Down in Debate, until today, but it's still pretty fresh, and covers the highlights pretty well.

And in terms of hitting the gush over the right field fence for Team Factotum, see if there's anyone who holds a candle to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson extolling the finery of the emperor's new clothes:

"[Johnson] said that former President Trump “clearly prevailed” in the Tuesday ABC News debate against Vice President Harris, praising his “authenticity” and arguing the moderates leaned in favor of the Democratic nominee.

“Well, I will tell you what, President Donald Trump is the reigning presidential debate champion, and even though the contest was three to one last night, he clearly prevailed,” Johnson said during his Wednesday morning appearance on FOX Business Network’s Mornings With Maria with guest anchor Cheryl Casone."

After I wrote all of the above, I got further down in my inbox to Heather Cox Richardson's Sept. 11 Letter, which starts with a deeper look inside the Spin Room, where Trump's "historically bad" performance was under discussion. (Contrast Johnson's pathetic gaslighting with "[l]ongtime Republican pollster Frank Luntz [going] on record [to say] that Trump’s debate performance would cost him the presidential race." And the deep roots of narcissistic insatiability going back to Sean Spicer and the size of the inauguration crowd. It used to be an entertainment schtick; now it reeks of desperation.

The S.S. Trump is losing bouyancy. Johnson pulled the continuing resolution with a gratuitous "only citizens can vote" provision, and support is leaking for trying to manipulate the Fed into putting off a needed rate cut to further pre-election sabotage.

11.Sept.2024

The war on t/error

Given the date, a moment to reflect on wars past, present, and to come. Thom Hartmann takes note of the day's "darkest irony," although vilest gaslighting might be closer to it, with the former guy's and the Republican Party's "Peace Candidate" Debate Scam, "trying to rewrite the history of their using unnecessary wars to get re-elected."

"...Trump supports Putin’s destruction if Ukraine, the kidnapping of over 100,000 Ukrainian children and their deportation to one of the few nations on Earth where child porn is legal (and a major underground industry for Russia), and the militaristic fantasies of pretty much every major world dictator and corrupt wannabee dictator from Kim to Xi to Netanyahu.

"Trump claims that there were no terrorist attacks or war deaths when he was president. Like most of what he asserts, it’s a baldfaced lie. While only 16 American soldiers have died during President Biden’s tenure, 65 died under Trump."

Hartmann looks deeper into the suicide bombing in Kabul that resulted in 13 of those 16 deaths on Biden's watch. Turns out the non sequitur "Abdul" that popped out of Trump at the debate was the bomber, not the Taliban leader that he played "Let's Make a Deal" with to set up the disaster.

But how did that debate go last night?

HCR had her September 10, 2024 report in my inbox before midnight Pacific Time, and as ever, she does a more comprehensive job of summarizing the signal event of the day than I'm going to. She starts with the insight from the "entertainment" angle:

"Former president Trump has always approached debates as professional wrestling events in which the key is not to explain policies or answer questions, but rather to demonstrate dominance over your opponent."

Our Vice president, Kamala Harris, was the dominant presence on the stage last night, helped, rather than hurt, by how capably her baiting "angry Trump" exposed the weakness of his narcissistic psychopathy, as he spoke many more times (for a few more minutes), with so much less of substance to say.

The ABC moderators did apply some guardrails, but even three on one, it's hard to contain the blubbering blowhard when he's in WWE mode. The most clownish moment, as captured in ABC's "partial transcript":

DAVID MUIR: I just want to clarify here, you bring up Springfield, Ohio. And ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community --

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ve seen people on television

MUIR: Let me just say here this ...

TRUMP: The people on television say my dog was taken and used for food. So maybe he said that and maybe that's a good thing to say for a city manager.

MUIR: I’m not taking this from television. I'm taking it from the city manager.

TRUMP: But the people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there.

MUIR: Again, the Springfield city manager says there's no evidence of that.

TRUMP: We’ll find out

And in spite of it being 2024 now, and that we heard the old guy admit, without a wink wink nudge nudge, that he lost the 2020 election "by a whisker." Can we see that in context? Was it on this hour-long podcast with Lex Fridman on Sept. 3 that has had 4.8 million views now? Fridman refers to it at the index for "2020 election" almost 16 min. Here it is, starting at 10:56.

"I was told if I got 63 million, which is what I got the first time, you would win. You can't–not–win. And I got millions of more votes on that and uh–lost by a whisker, but, and look what happned to the world..."

As Kamala Harris put it so memorably in last night's debate, "Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. So let's be clear about that." Wikipedia's entry for the election includes a brilliantly expressive cartogram of the electoral tally, in which 74 votes—almost 17% of the total—flipped between 2016 and 2020. Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and one of Nebraska's five votes went for Biden-Harris. 158,429,631 total votes were cast, 51.31% for Biden, and 46.85% for Trump. That's not a "whisker," Don. Nearly 4.5% is a wallop. (And lest we forget: Hillary Clinton's electoral loss was in spite of her winning the popular vote by more than a 2% margin; 66 million voters tried to pre-fire him in 2016, but failed, due to our founding enslavers' peculiar institution.

I blogged the 2020 electoral view on Dec. 5, 2020; that result withstood the many insufficient legal challenges that Trump's legal teams attempted. Between the Dec. 14, 2020 meeting of the Electoral College, and the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, Vox detailed Why Trump’s attempt to steal the election was too much even for Republican judges, and no, the cases were not all thrown out because the plaintiffs lacked standing, as he falsely claimed last night. In the section headings, his "legal arguments [were] abysmally weak," "Biden’s victory [was] too big to be overturned," the Supreme Court [hadn’t] laid the groundwork for a decision overturning Biden’s victory," in spite of their demonstrated hostility to voting rights.

Nearly four years on, the last section heading is still true: American democracy is still in peril.

9.Sept.2024

News à la carte

Judd Legum's Popular Information makes a case for itself, and subscription journalism in every emailed issue for my (currently free) subscription. $50/year on Substack. That's less than we're paying for either of the two newspapers we get, and we're more likely to read all of what PI sends out. Touting its ability to "create change":

"Popular Information exposed how Walgreens, which refuses to dispense abortion pills in several states where abortion remains legal, financially supports the anti-abortion movement. Our story on Walgreens quickly went viral, and Walgreens became the #2 trending topic nationwide. A few hours later, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the state would stop doing business with Walgreens."

(Aside: We did business with Rite-Aid for a long time, from when it was the most convenient location to us, and then wasn't. Now Wal-Mart, CVS, and a Walgreens are all with a mile, and none stands out as preferred. My vague unease with Walgreens' corporate malfeasance waxes and wanes over time, but they had the latest Covid-19 vaccination available when we wanted it, and they do a good job of records management (as far as we can tell), and getting whatever they get paid from Medicare without us having to do anything.)

Today's PI post, from Legum: Major outlets change standards for hacked emails, protect Trump. Remember "but her emails" in 2016, when "the Washington Post published dozens of stories based on these leaked emails"? And the New York Times "published at least 199 articles about the stolen DNC and Clinton campaign emails between the first leak in June 2016 and Election Day"?!

"The steady drumbeat of mostly unflattering articles was a major part of the election narrative in the days and weeks before election day."

That and Jim Comey's Boy Scout act running the FBI feeding the the media frenzy for the late October surprises, and you-know-who getting surprise elected, and the bad clown show that followed?

It would be great to think they'd been chastened by their mistakes, but the more than faint whiff of bias is disturbing.

"For weeks, major American media organizations — including The Washington Post, Politico, and the New York Times — have possessed internal Trump campaign documents. What do these documents say? We don't know because all three outlets have declined to publish the documents — or excerpt a single sentence."

Apparently there's "a dossier exploring the vulnerabilities" of Don-old's chosen running mate, not that we really need to see more than what's on offer, at the corner donut shop, or in his own words. The campaign spox response is precious:

"Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung demanded the media keep the internal documents secret. "[A]ny media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want," Cheung said in an August 10 statement."

Reminds me of a Lincoln Project ad I saw yesterday, about "a President's first job, to protect our nation from all enemies foreign [Putin head shot] and domestic [Trump's]," promoting Kamala Harris who "has sworn to do just that."

The Lincoln Project has a hell of a menu to choose from on their own site, including funny (a David Attenborough send-up about "Impotus americanus"—PREY); insider (featuring Chris LaCivita, as SPY); brutal ("Even Fox News is hanging up on your crazy calls."—DECLINE); chilling (CABINET); funny (/WEIRD); and positive—for the Harris-Vance ticket: ACCEPTANCE.

Back to the MSM, credit where due, in a shout-out to WaPo for this accurate headline in their current ELECTIONS coverage last Friday: Trump rants, resurfaces sexual assault allegations for 49 unfocused minutes.

"The Republican nominee spoke in an appearance billed as a ‘press conference’ that sometimes verged into a stream of consciousness that was hard to follow. He took no questions."

Not too far down the story, it's noted that this Festivus-worthy airing of grievances came after "attending oral arguments in his appeal of the verdict that found him liable for sexually abusing advice writer E. Jean Carroll decades ago," so yeah, it was top of mind.

"[H]e went before the cameras and repeatedly impugned his accusers. He dismissed a string of allegations as entirely meritless as he leaned into his core message that he is a victim of political persecution."

Judges and juries are "persecuting" him too (maybe it's just bad spelling), so judicial persecution, eh? To the punch lines:

"In a roughly 49-minute appearance that sometimes verged into a stream-of-consciousness rant that was hard to follow, Trump also reminisced about his early career as a real estate mogul and reality television star. (“I was,” he said, “a celebrity for a long time.”) He lamented his two impeachments, calling them “impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two.” And he mentioned Monica Lewinsky, the former White House intern who had an affair with President Bill Clinton, at least three times."

And the inevitable tell:

“This is the weaponization of justice at a level that nobody’s ever seen in this country before,” Trump said..."

Nobody's ever seen as vile a president in this country before, either. I mean, he's making Andrew Jackson look like a Boy Scout. This was also the "press conference" where he was flanked by a couple of his lawyers and said "I'm disappointed in my legal talent." (After he blamed "rigged judges" for outwitting them.)

7.Sept.2024

Worthy of note

Rebecca Solnit: The mainstream press is failing America – and people are understandably upset.

"[T]he behemoths of the industry seem intent on bending the facts to fit their frameworks and agendas. In pursuit of clickbait content centered on conflicts and personalities, they follow each other into informational stampedes and confirmation bubbles.

"They pursue the appearance of fairness and balance by treating the true and the false, the normal and the outrageous, as equally valid and by normalizing Republicans, especially Donald Trump, whose gibberish gets translated into English and whose past crimes and present-day lies and threats get glossed over."

Zen and the Art

The Facebook account W.Whitman Books shared a remembrance of Robert Pirsig on his 96th birthday, seven years after he shed his mortal coil, with a photo of him and his son Chris behind him on a particular 1966 Honda CB77 Super Hawk, now in the possession of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Says there, the Smithsonian put it on display this April, "along with the book's original manuscript, Pirsig's manual typewriter and his Apple II computer," in its American on the Move exhibition. The FB post's introduction before a selection of pithy quotes includes this lesson in perseverance:

"Pirsig took nearly four years to complete Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance... He received 121 rejections before an editor finally accepted the book for publication—and he did so thinking it would never generate a profit. 50,000 copies sold in the first three months, and more than 5 million in the decades since. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has become the best-selling philosophy book of all time."

When that book came out in 1974, I was in the last throes of the motorcycle obsession that had fueled countless anatomically correct drawings in my high school notebooks, then my very own ride a few minutes after I turned 16, the start of my own grown-up tool collection, and plenty of skinned knuckles from motorcyle maintenance on my own bikes, and rebuilding my sister's Bridgestone to facilitate her selling it to my best friend. So yeah, I was in the target audience, even though I can't tell you when it was I got around to reading it. "The 70s," at least. Before, or after my own Bildungsroman wandering across the continent as a 20-year old? Can't say. It would have been after I took Philosophy 101 in creaky old Bascom Hall, watching dust motes drift in rays of sun while contemplating the mind of René Descartes.

“Sometimes it's a little better to travel than to arrive,” Pirsig wrote, back in the day. We are always in transit, of course, in our comings and goings. You can't go home again, but then you do go home (if you have a home), sometimes, maybe even regularly.

“You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.”

Saturday morning

Even though I was up dark thirty, my morning routine had me rolling for a sunrise ride a little too late to catch the best photo. It came up a bit on the orange side, better than blood orange but not the proper yellow of clean air. We're "in the yellow" for a moment, better than the orange, red, purple, or marroon. High 80s to 90 is "moderate," rather than unhealthy for some, or all, or worse.

It was cool enough to encourage me to press the pace a bit, underdressed for the conditions, perhaps. Or motivationally dressed. I checked in at the best local blackberry patch I know, and found a very few juicy ones left, and a lot of blackberry raisins. Some in their prime, some a bit dry.

And then I rode up and down some streets I rarely visit, and found a nice tranche of Harris Walz signs, here in our good old District 16. Back home, I missed my perfect score on the flashback quiz, guessing the settling of Tenochtitlan earlier than it was. Fun to see the finding of the "huge rift" in the ocean floor is almost as old as me.

And then was charmed to see there are current links given with the placed items (connecting historical dots, sort of). Who had scientists hoping to fire trillions of neutrinos from Illinois to South Dakota on their BINGO card? That was related to Copernicus' upending the entire science of astronomy.

Mexico City's swampy beginnings were connected to 6 European Cities Where You Can Swim in the Wild. Boise City's river running through it used to get slaughterhouse offal, but was cleaned up long before we arrived. It keeps its steadily bracing temperature by being fed from the bottom of Lucky Peak reservoir, pretty much 4°C year-round. More people boating on it than swimming.

The Paris Olympics and swimming in the Seine piqued interest, and the participating photogs had a nice eye for jumping and diving, in Copenhagen, Oslo (near the floating sauna—they have 14 floating saunas open year-round!), and Basel. The photos from London and Munich just showed serene paddlers. Sorry there are no photos of me and my buddies jumping off the Chicago & Northwestern bridge by the Lincoln Park golf course, into the Milwaukee River that one time, before that urban waterway had been cleaned up all the way, half a century ago.

5.Sept.2024

Bleeding and leading and lying and crying

First of all, you know that "if it bleeds, it leads," right? The rule of local (and yeah, probably national) news. It requires close attention, and filtering to see the bigger picture. Really, you have to take some trouble to find facts about longer-term trends. It's not a lot of trouble though, and what you'll find is that both violent and property crime rates have PLUNGED in the last three decades, according to both FBI data and US Bureau of Justice Statistics. And the most recent information shows that "across several major categories, crime is down substantially during the Biden-Harris administration." Contrary to what you'll hear from the facile liar running against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Since the American Carnage® brand is so central to Don-old's psychopathy, the grifting that feeds it, and his Stay-Out-Of-Prison '24 campaign, he is tireless in the false counter-narrative to that fact. Judd Legum provides a recent performance sample:

During an August 20 campaign stop in Howell, Michigan, Trump said that people "want to be safe" and, therefore, he would win the election. "You can't walk across the street to get a loaf of bread," Trump said. "You get shot. You get mugged. You get raped. You get whatever it may be. And you've seen it, and I've seen it. And it's time for a change."

I'd have to walk across a couple streets to get to the nearest loaf of bread for sale, but I'm 100% confident I could do so without being shot, mugged, raped, or "whatever it may be." I have not experienced "it," nor seen "it" happen to anyone else. Nor has "it" come up in any news I've seen. (I do know attending school could get you shot, but that was as true when Don was king as now.)

We have seen a marked increase in executive crime since 2015, but it's weird to have the most prominent perpetrator be the messenger on that subject. Legum offers fact-based insight:

"A new report from the Pew Research Center helps explain why Trump's fallacious attacks on crime work. The report found that about 70% of Americans get at least some news about crime from local news outlets. Americans generally trust what they hear on local news — 71% believe that local outlets report the news accurately.

"And what they learn on the local news makes them upset. According to the report, "[m]ost Americans who get news about local crime say they at least sometimes feel concerned or angry about what is happening after seeing or hearing about it." The report also found that the more local crime news people consume, the more likely they are "to say they are concerned about crime in their community affecting them or their family."

As John Prine told us, more than fifty flippin' years ago, blow up your TV, eat a lot of peaches, and so on. Don't listen to barking mad men.

Point of view (on mass murder)

Updating my own infrastructure, and archive are not among my most alluring hobbies; the former gets attention when there's an emergency (typically foisted on me by my webhosting company), and the latter rides the wave of my undone "to do" list past each sunset.

Given the news about the DOJ trying to clamp down on Russian efforts to subvert another national election (in favor of Donald Trump again, what a coincidence), it occurred to me to check my long "World News" link roll (at right in the current format, below the also long, and not recently vetted Blogroll), to make sure that I didn't still have the Russian propaganda organ RT in it. Looks like I removed that a while ago. I still have the Moscow Times, which, given Putin's control over Russian media in general, may not be much better.

The link to Juan Cole's latest blog/opinion/independent journalism effort, Informed Consent, on his eponymous domain out of Michigan caught my eye. I checked to see that yes, it's still ticking along. I woke up in the middle of last night thinking about my recovery from broken ribs (three weeks ago today!), composing a lively poem in Amanda Gorman's style that segued from my body to yesterday's school shooting in Georgia. (If only I could have written down my 1:30am thoughts, I'd share that with you.) With that still on my mind, the headline of his lead story grabbed me: 4 Dead in Mass Shooting in Georgia dominated Media; 42 dead in Mass Bombardment in Gaza Ignored. He starts with a local indictment:

"Regular mass shootings are not permitted in actually civilized countries, whether Europe or Japan. They are as much an American peculiar institution as our form of plantation slavery was, and they are just as rooted in a valuing of property over humanity (in the case of slavery it involved turning humanity into property). ...

"Some of the unsympathetic, [] distance themselves from the rawness of these murders by seeing them as a cost of living in a “free” society, by which they mean a society that has few effective regulations about the ownership and use of guns. They see the mass shootings the way many people see automobile deaths, as “accidents,” as a feature of life that the believe unavoidable."

I wonder if we're unique in the penchant for trying children and youth as "adults" too? I'm not sure at what age the pretense could make sense, but 14 is not it. The Juvenile Law Center notes that the numbers "increased substantially in the 1990’s in the wake of a baseless and racist myth that a generation of "super-predators" was on the rise." Contrary to what you might believe from +rumpublican fear-mongering, "crime has steadily decreased since that time" even as laws continue to subject youth to criminal conviction and sentencing."

Cole has more about our domestic problem, worth reading. Then proceeds to the international indictment:

"The Israeli military allows an astonishing, and sickening, 20 civilian deaths for each militant of the Qassam Brigades that it kills with drones and rockets. No civilized military behaves in this way. It is creepy. US officers would be court-martialed for implementing such lax and inhumane rules of engagement. Officers have told me that the Geneva Conventions are their “Bible.” They are deeply angered when it is suggested that the Israeli military is behaving no worse than the American does."

The PBS NewsHour did lead with the shooting in Georgia, but also covered the latest Israeli attack, part of "more than a week of deadly raids" "that show no sign of letting up," along with the polio vaccination efforts in Gaza, briefly. 70 seconds of last night's broadcast (starting at 14:25 / 56:47).

3.Sept.2024

The main plot line of USA v. Donald J. Trump

The best part of Joyce Vance's Sept. 3 post ("Jointly Where Possible") is the photo of her two chickens, Toot and Pickles. The rest, as they say, is dicta. Or perhaps dickta in this case? The case, of course, is UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD J. TRUMP, CRIMINAL NO. 23-cr-257 (TSC), now with its superseding indictment, from a second grand jury. The required "joint status report" has two paragraphs of perfunctory agreement, less than two pages from the plaintiff's side, and six and a half pages from the defendant's, detailing the endlessly dilatory tactics of the Trump team. Vance:

"Trump’s lawyers are devoted to preventing the public from learning anything about the Special Counsel’s evidence in the case before the election. It’s the same strategy we’ve seen Trump use repeatedly in litigation: delay, delay, delay."

Their schedule proposal would have the Special Counsel's disclosures "regarding Presidential immunity" by the end of September, and a go at the motion that was good enough for Judge Aileen "loose" Cannon, to dismiss based on "improper appointment" of Jack Smith. The rest would be after November 5, into and past January 20, 2025, and then "Spring - Fall 2025" for "Additional proceedings, if necessary." Additional proceedings like the actual trial for the felony crimes of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States; Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding; Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding; and Conspiracy Against Rights.

Plus the other two felony indictments (for federal crimes in Florida, and state crimes in Georgia) that have been successfully delayed (at least) by the endless parade of Trump pettifoggers. It hasn't been breaking news for years, and I scrolled on by the succinct quickmeme I saw yesterday, something like

IF THE ONLY REASON YOU'RE RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IS TO STAY OUT OF JAIL, YOU'RE NOT QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT.

Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the L.A. Times spilled the beans almost three years ago: Why is Trump running for president again? To stay out of jail.

"Throughout his epic, scandal-ridden career, Donald Trump has compiled an astonishing record of impunity, constantly staying one jump ahead of prosecutors, plaintiffs and creditors.... [His] record of escapes would make Houdini envious."

That was column came after former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted and sentenced to 7½ years in prison for bank and tax fraud (and was pardoned by Trump); after deputy chairman of Trump's 2016 campaign Rick Gates had been convicted for conspiracy and lying to the FBI; after former campaign advisor George Papadopoulos was convicted and sentenced to prison (and was pardoned by Trump); after his "personal lawyer" Michael Cohen had gone to prison for doing Trump's bidding in election interference to keep the hush money paid to a porn star under wraps; after Roger Stone was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison for obstruction of justice, lying to Congress and witness tampering (and was pardoned by Trump); after we all listened in on Trump's "perfect phone call," suborning Georgia election officials to interfere with their state's 2020 election; while a bipartisan House committee examined the January 6, 2021 violent insurrection in gory detail; but before the Trump org was found guilty of criminal tax fraud in New York; and well before another Trump org business fraud conviction in New York led to the man being barred from serving as an officer or director of any corporation or other legal entity in the state for three years, while failsons, Eric and Donald Jr., were barred for two years, with penalties and interest now up in the range of half a billion dollars. (H/t to Axios for their March, 2024 Charted: Trump world allies sentenced to prison.)

This is the 2024 nominee for President of the United States for the once great, and now fully cuckolded Republican Party. Unbelievably.

1.Sept.2024

A hell of a week ahead

Joyce Vance is back on her blogging job, and previews the action-packed several days to come. The screen shot from Mark Levin's show on Fox News shows Trump doing his lying/deranged accordion hands, for this:

"In an interview on Fox News tonight, Trump said, “Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it … ”

"That, right there, is the banality of evil. The former president, using an American flag behind him as a prop, while claiming he had the right to interfere with the decision made by the voters in 2024. That’s what election interference means in Trump’s case—stealing an election that you’ve lost."

There's more. It's mind-blowing, less than three weeks away from the earliest early voting, which starts two days after Trump's scheduled sentencing for his 34 felony convictions for business records fraud in New York.

I stumbled across the WaPo's editorial board offering for today, America has two presidential candidates. Let’s compare them. Have you heard one of the candidates is "new"? "Both she and the old one are scrambling to define their differences."

Which the board isn't going to take the trouble to figure out on its own, even as they've been stricken with amnesia. No mention of felon, criminal, convicted, indicted, insurrection (let alone impeachments, January 6, Jared's $2 billion take from the Saudis, etc.). Worried about stinking up the jury pool?

After Kamala Harris' exciting start, what has she done for us lately? It seems they're a little bored already at the Post... even as their "Democracy Dies in Darkness" banner yet waves.

raveling

Tom von Alten