… probably many of you, but not me… i have figured out how to get the best of both worlds and it involves a feature of Obsidian that i just stumbled on, which is ‘open in default app’… yesterday, as i was poking around, i clicked on it and low and behold, Ulysses opened up and was displaying the page i had just been working on!… i must have been asked what my ‘default app’ should be when i first installed Obsidian, but it was a complete surprise to me to discover the connection… so now, i start a page in Obsidian… open it in Ulysses and type away… post to Micro.blog when i am ready, tag it, etc… it continues to reside in Obsidian which becomes the archive upon which all the mapping magic can happen… what bliss!…

Texas Is Just Going to Build Its Own Border Wall Now… can we talk?… does anyone really think that this is anything more than political grandstanding?… immigration gets people’s blood boiling one way or another, so politicians exploit it… as far as i can tell, nobody in this country is really interested in a rational immigration policy because there is enormous labor value to the system as it currently runs… protestations to the contrary aside, this society wants illegal immigrants because they can be paid little and enticed (forced?) to work in dangerous conditions because they live in constant fear of deportation… the long history of our society is that we keep exchanging one slave system for another… and almost nobody here is blameless as we all enjoy the fruits of almost-slave labor…

Omicron, However You Pronounce It, Is Out of Control Right Now… the state of COVID in my neck of the woods… glad that we are vaccinated and boosted… still, as the article says, this sucks, and the bit about rapid tests being expensive?!!… bah! humbug!

Exhibition: ‘Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America, 1940-1978’ at the Phoenix Art Museum

… this article caught my eye straight off when i opened Feedbin… and as i read the opening paragraphs i knew i would be reading to the very end… the story of yet another woman who didn’t get the attention she deserved in the male dominated world of photography…

… as i read i encounter this:

“We talk about the poverty of the Indian, their poor health, their substandard of living – we cry – ! Who is responsible for this? The murder of the American Indian has stopped as such. No more Indian wars, but all kinds of schemes are constantly working to take still their last piece of land (we found oil, uranium, and other valuable minerals and there is fish, timber, etc.) and above all to wipe the image away – erase – “to change the Indian” – Into what? Into a middle class personality with all the ambitions and drives of our society. Competition and exploitation are the most important assets, we think. Foreign to all Indian thinking! What do we actually do? We destroy the Indian completely, mentally, psychologically, and spiritually. You might ask – so what? What is so good not to assimilate with the predominant society? Let me tell you what. Our society destroys lives – with our “know how” destroy all living. We pollute the air, the water, poison the plants and animal life. The Indian knew no money, but the Indian knew security, happiness – the Indian was a supreme conserver of nature – of life. The Indian worked with nature not against it.”¹

… competition and exploitation are the core values of our society, western civilization, the capitalist world… we destroy lives and the earth as we pursue these values to their destructive end… could it be that this grand experiment of life and “intelligence” is destined to failure?… or could it be that as significant as we think we are, we just aren’t anything close to the main show?…

… but i digress…

… Marion Palfi’s life and work are amazing… it is a long post, as almost all of them are over at Art Blart… but in depth informative on a remarkable woman…

First notes…

… week 52, last week of the year/Fall… but then i wonder, am i out of sync, is this actually week 51?… it could be… yup, it is… argh!!! ok then, week 51 it is… still the last week of fall, last few days… we are setting out on our trip on the winter solstice… hmmm… we need some sort of celebratory something to mark it… as i contemplate this, i find myself hoping that something magical will be the result of setting out on the solstice…

… in two days we set out for Florida… much to do between now and then… i did manage to get Christmas packages off to R and J, still don’t have a gift for M to speak of… some little things… what sort of anything does M need/Want?…

… H in a bad mood yesterday… temporarily lost their watch band, which i later found, then their mood started to pick up… i also think they have the pre-traveling bad mood… it seems to be a thing with them…

… today we drive up to Hudson to see S and B, pick up the fruitcakes…

… i have been thinking about a number of things that i/we have that really work… my current shoulder bag, which i have had for a long time but which i recently started using again and discovered, wow, it really is just about the perfect bag… then there is the new electric kettle we just bought that has a coffee temperature setting and we both swear it has made a big difference in the taste of our coffee in the morning… we specualte on the absence of lime scale and the lower temperature when poured over the grounds make a difference… and finally, my upright mouse which seems to have solved my shoulder pain problems entirely and is a dream to use… so comfortable… it’s so nice when things work well…

… we watched a new Netflix movie, A Boy Named Christmas, that was very good… then i read another 10 or so pages of A Christmas Story out loud to H… we are going to make it a nightly ritual while we are traveling… hoping to finish up Christmas Eve… or maybe Christmas morning would be appropriate…

… been thinking a good deal about how this journaling/photography/reading/writing effort proceeds in the new year… part of me has always concluded that one just needs to do it as they feel compelled to do it… that there is no ultimate goal to it… but then another part of me wants something more solid to come of it… wants it to be more useful to others that might encounter it… i had signs of that, one of the Micro.blog community commented that i had shared something useful… i don’t need the aprobations of others, but i don’t mind getting it once in a while…

While walking…

Heather Cox Richardson, December 17, 2021... former governor Rick Perry fingered by the J6 committee as having sent a text to 45 the day after the election suggesting they appoint their own electors in three states, before the results are in, and throw the election to SCOTUS... gun smoking much?... Mitch McConnel is beginning to hedge his bets?... supporting the work of the committee on Spectrum News... Rodger Stone pleads the Fifth all the way down... 90% of adult Dems are vaccinated, only 60% of adult Republicans are... wondering if that will lead to a voting numbers advantage for the Dems due to higher number of deaths among Republicans... i won't cry too much... #politics #january6 #pandemic

Denounce Julian Assange. Don't Extradite Him... making the case that Assange is a schmuck of the highest order, but that espionage charges against him undermine freedom of speech and the press... the Biden administration is still pursuing the espionage charge and seeks to extradite Assange to the US to stand trial... #politics #firstamendment #julianassange

Global Freedom Is on the Decline... unfortunately, not many surprises in this article from Reason.com...
As _Reason_ [noted last month](https://reason.com/2021/11/23/covid-19-made-democracies-more-authoritarian-and-authoritarianism-even-worse/), the twin threats of political populism and the COVID-19 pandemic have triggered an erosion in democratic values across the globe. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a nonprofit based in Sweden that has been tracking democracies around the globe since 1975, [warns in a new report](https://www.idea.int/gsod/global-report#chapter-2-democracy-health-check:-an-overview-of-global-trends) that the number of countries that are becoming "more authoritarian" by the group's calculus is three times the number of countries that are moving toward democracy. This year is the fifth consecutive year in which the trend has been moving in that direction.

Who Is A Woman for Purposes of Women's Only Spaces?... at the beginning of this year i was reading Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex and learned that gender is a social construct... i myself have what i consider to be feminine traits, though i have never sought to be trans-gender... i have always identified as male and don't expect to change in that regard in this lifetime... still, of all the alternative sexual preference/gender positions that can be taken, i can most readily imagnine myself occupying the trans-woman space... in fact, none of the other sexual preference/gender spaces appeal to me at all... this article discusses when it is appropriate to declare a "space" as women (identified by sex) only spaces... for the most part, it concludes that there are relatively few spaces that should be declared women (by sex) only... professional sports being one of them... #gender #transexual

What Will 'Build Back Better' Buy? Inflation.... an argument supporting Manchin... i tend to be willing to hear Manchin's arguments on spending and the economy... i worry myself about too much spending... this article discusses why he might be right...

Moonlight

Video stills series…

Reading Notes, News, Politics…

Heather Cox Richardson, December 16, 2021… a mixed bag today… Build Back Better Act has been shelved for the moment, due to the intransigence of Senator Manchin… voting rights has moved to the forefront and here again, Senator Manchin is a stumbling block… i believe Democracy is at stake and voting rights legislation is essential… there is no way to do it without amending the filibuster rule… Manchin is steadfastly against that so far… at the end, a bit about the Urghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which passed the Senate unanimously… the US pushing back on China for human rights violoations… polysilicon, used to make solar panels, will become scarcer as half the wolrd’s supply comes from Zinjiang from which the Biden administration is preventing all imports unless there is clear proof that slave labor wasn’t part of its production…

What’s Polluting the Air? Not Even the EPA Can Say… how the EPA fails to act even when receiving reports that indicate a huge toxic release problem… i wish i was not surprised…

The Most Detailed Map of Cancer-Causing Industrial Air Pollution in the US

The FDA Just Made Medication Abortions a Whole Lot Easier to Get… a step in the right direction, but, easily reversable by a future administration and:

Yet the change won’t mean a whole lot in much of the country. Nineteen states(https://www.guttmacher.org/state-policy/explore/medication-abortion), including Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama (which recently introduced a “heartbeat bill” similar to Texas’) restrict the use of telemedicine for abortion. People across the South and the Midwest will have to travel to sanctuary states like California or New York for telemedicine appointments and to receive the medication. #abortion

Biden Administration Permanently Lifts Restrictions on Abortion Pills… an alternative take on the abortion pill story…

Manchin and Sinema Are Blocking Everything… it is so depressing… i am hoping that MJ is being overly dramatic, but the available evidence supports the doom and gloom scenario… Manchin and Sinema are currently blocking everything that would help most Democrats in the midterm, and, ultimately, 2024, since a disaster at midterm will prevent them from doing anything to make a case for their continuation in power in 2024…

Congressional Republicans Provide a Way Forward on Supply Chains… it takes pot shots at Democratic efforts but does offer what seem to be reasonable solutions… one thing that puzzles me is why the water transportation industry would favor regulation that makes it harder to expand port facilities and process larger ships?… this seems counterintuitive…

If We Don’t Get Inflation Under Control, It Could Unleash Some Dramatic Consequences…

First notes…

… watched My Dad’s Christmas Date and i was bewitched by Olivia Mai Barrett… there was something about her that was utterly engaging… the movie itself was very watchable but we couldn’t escape the feeling that something missed a beat… a dad/daughter team navigating the territory of having lost a wife/mother in a car accident… it is two years on, Christmas, and both are still trying to cope… it had all the plot elements of a feel good tearjerker but in the end failed to deliver… neither of us could figure out exactly why… the acting was pretty good, the characters sympathetic, and in the case of Ms. Barett’s character, pretty engaging, at least to me… i looked up OMB, not to be confused with Office of Management and Budget, and found that she has not been in very many productions… i will be on the lookout for her in future, i feel like she had something…

… my main accomplishment yesterday was chicken stock… i made a bunch… H had lunch with friends so i was tied down to house, dogs and stock pot watching…

… lots to do before we leave… today i think the main thing is to get presents wrapped and sent to R and J…

First notes…

… the great cookie bake is done… L came and joined H in baking an extravaganza of cookies and stollen… we have so many cookies… time to start giving them away!…

… watched The Shop Around the Corner, or rather H watched it while i slept through the middle… i had to give a report on it to B which i did, but it was H’s appraisal…

… i am drinking too much… i don’t feel bad, but falling asleep during movies and less than optimal sleep at night are the result of that… also, not getting the kitchen cleaned up…

… Fiona escaped again yesterday… turned my back for a minute and she was on the other side of the fence rolling in something smelly… when i went after her calling she went in the opposite direction… i finally caught up with her on the street behind our house… had to call H to bring me a leash so i could lead her back… i have no idea how she did it and we are worried she is able to leap the fence… she is very agile…

… i finished a difficult part of the stair construction, fitting a board to notch around the cmu wall that steps down beside the stair stringer so i can close the gap between stair and wall which lets the weather in… made a template from 1/4” thick plywood… it worked beautifully… now it needs a railing and in the spring, staining, and we will be done… it’s much more solid than the old stair ever was…

… i will be making soup stocks today… chicken and maybe beef stock… i also have to wrap presents and prepare for shipping…

… just did a search for the best multivitamin for men… found one brand twice as either first or second pick… it includes probiotics so i can forgo my separate probiotic and may actually save money…

… five days to beginning of trip to Florida…

What i read…

Heather Cox Richardson, December 15, 2021… about the January 6 commission and the noose tightening around the administration of 45… about the build back better spending bill and Manchin’s insistence that the price tag come in under 1.75 trillion over ten years… about a defense budget with 25 billion more than 46 asked for for a single year… there is money for new technologies while preserving money for old technologies that provide jobs to constituents…

Senator Manchin, Keep Holding Out on Build Back Better, the Editors, National Review… Manchin is the lynchpin of Build Back Better… Heather Cox Richardson reports above that he will accept a bill with a 1.75 trillion price tag over ten years… this article tries to hold him to a statement early on that said 1.5 trillion was his limit… i suspect something will get passed in the end…

Sinema Doubles Down on Filibuster Defense amid Democrats’ Pivot to Voting Bill, Caroline Downey, National Review… apparently Sinema remains a know on filibuster busting… a spokesman for Sineam:

“Senator Sinema has asked those who want to weaken or eliminate the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation which she supports if it would be good for our country to do so,” LaBombard told Politico. He said that there’s a risk that the measure gets “rescinded in a few years and replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law, nationwide restrictions on vote-by-mail, or other voting restrictions currently passing in some states extended nationwide.”

DeSantis Introduces Bill Banning Critical Race Theory in Public Schools, Private Company Staff Trainings… Caroline Downey, National Review… my understanding is that Critical Race Theory is not taught in any K-12 school anywhere… that it is taught at the college level only and mostly in law schools… this article suggests that DeSantis’ bill would not only ban something that isn’t happening from K-12 programs, but reaches up to the college level and into the training programs of private companies… that would be a huge overreach that is suspect would not hold up in the courts… so, is he proposing it without expectation of it passing just to check off a box on his expected run for President?…

Are the Parents of the Michigan School Shooter Guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter? Jacob Sullum, Reason.com… this article argues that they may have been negligent, but that their actions, or lack thereof, do not rise to Involuntary Manslaughter… i suspect the author is correct on this point and so, this case becomes an argument for tighter gun control laws…

The Attempted Republican Coup Should Be the Democrats’ Leading Message. A. B. Stoddard, The Bulwark.… i agree wholeheartedly with the opinion expressed in this article and have for some time… the threat to Democracy is the number one issue that needs to be dealt with…

The events of January 6 were clearly planned and coordinated to some extent—to what extent we have yet to learn. And the same is true of the post-coup cover-up.

Republicans must be made to answer for these facts at the next election. For two reasons: If they are not made to answer for it in 2022, then they never will be. And if aiding and abetting a coup doesn’t prove to be a political liability, then such attacks will be incentivized in the future.

‘West Side Story’ and the American Melting Pot. Christian Thrailkill, The Bulwark… a glowing review of the new movie by Spielberg, though i already knew i wanted to see it… this was one of my favorite films growing up as i have always beens a sucker for stories of romance against the odds… accomplishments of any kind against the odds really…

Aleksei Navalny: The Man vs. The Symbol. Benjamin Parker, The Bulwark… this article is interesting… heroes are rarely pure as the driven snow, often, far from it… we work with the heroes we have is the point of the article… it also gets me thinking about any kind of accomplished individual that has broken ground in new or courageous or new and courageous territory… humans are imperfect creatures, to say the least, and society moves forward none the less, often carried by heroes with major flaws…

Does it degrade the thoughts of Navalny’s fans, employees, and followers to support such a man? It’s tempting, especially for Americans, to argue that racism and xenophobia ruin even the most vigorous advocacy for human and civil rights. But Russia has no equivalent of the 1619 Project. They went through a period of iconoclasm in the 1990s, tearing down Lenins and Stalins all over—and then they stopped.

Perhaps one day, Russians will have the luxury of arguing over whether to dismantle statues of Navalny for his manifestations of bigotry. But that luxury is, at this point, so far in the future that it is hard to even imagine. It would mean that democracy in Russia is so entrenched, so stable, so unthreatened that it would no longer need reminders of his sacrifice. Perhaps before we worry about whether or not a man such as Nalvany deserves statues, we ought to get to a place where erecting a statue to him is an option.

Where’s the beef? Brent Orrell, The Bulwark… it strikes me as significant that this article is published in The Bulwark, a conservative leaning publication created at the beginning of the Trump Administration by conservative journalists who could not abide Trumpism and still can’t… there are some particularly interesting acknowledgements in the article:

Over many decades, the American economy has depended on a seemingly endless supply of workers (documented and not) willing to work for the sometimes parsimonious wages on offer in our advanced, globally-integrated, highly competitive, and skills-biased economy. If employees didn’t like conditions, well, there was always someone else anxious to take the work. Just five years ago, McDonalds had 50,000 applications lined up for 13,000 jobs.

… note the in parenthesis part about workers, documented and not… i have long thought there was conservative hypocrisy on the issue of immigration and that their protestations of loose border policies had more to do with ensuring an undocumented (and therefore cheap) flow of workers into the country… that is how it looks to me anyway… sure, we need well controlled borders and immigration policy is a mess… but part of the reason for the mess is our unacknowledged dependence on undocumented labor… again, my opinion…

But it goes beyond just working conditions and into less tangible, but no less real, issues with how the people who do this work are viewed and treated. Meatpacking jobs were (and are) disproportionately held by undocumented, refugee, and other immigrant workers in mainly conservative, rural states that left workers exposed to employer and government pressures and community indifference during the opening chapters of the COVID crisis. (emphasis added) The status of these workers as essential “outsiders” aggravated long-standing problems in an industry that had come to take access to a continuous flow of cheap labor as part of its business model.

… and then there is this:

We didn’t get here overnight. As one meat processing plant manager commented to NPR a few years ago, “Workers are really cheaper than machines. Machines have to be maintained. They have to be taken good care of. And that’s not really true of workers. As long as there is a steady supply, workers are relatively inexpensive (emphasis added)”, a quote that summarizes the situation better than anything else could. No doubt the market will eventually bring wages and working conditions into balance with supply and demand. For now, we know the answer to the age-old question, “Where’s the beef?”

… inflation has become a big worry… as we are mostly on fixed income at this point, i am certainly not a fan of it… but to the extent it is about better wages, working conditions for workers, and a rational immigration policy, i am happy to learn to live with higher prices for the goods i purchase…

What i read…

Exclusive: Nadia Lee Cohen’s Powerful Portraits of Strong Femininity, Ted Stansfield, AnOther Magazine… Nadia Lee Cohen turns the idea of Male/Female gaze into something quite different…

Power is the key word here – these images vibrate with the stuff. They confront you. Command you. Compel you. Meet your gaze head on. And they are full of contradictions, too: simultaneously retro and modern, they draw on a legacy of British and American cinema, but feel new and current. Likewise they are staged and stylised, but at the same time real and irrefutably raw. Meanwhile, the women themselves display both a vulnerability and a strength, presenting a fictional character and also their true self, or at least a version of it. It’s hard to look away and even harder not to feel something.

… i read that this project took six years to accomplish… i admire the discipline of a woman in her 20’s… i imagine they have fierce ambition and incredible focus…

Inside Nadia Lee Cohen’s New Book of Chameleonic Self-Portraits, Ted Stansfield, AnOther Magazine… not a unique idea, but a unique execution of the idea…

Place: Ikea Parking Lot, Anelise Chen, Believer Magazine… i plunge in to reading the article and immediately like it… as i am reading, i get the strong impression that i am inhabiting the thoughts of a woman… i knew, without having seen who the author was, that it was a woman…

For me, extended time in parking lots has always signified an emergency, precise moments of narrative dissolution: one version of the good life has come apart irretrievably, and you must, humbly, construct another. Outside hospitals and motels, breakups and breakdowns. I paced because pacing feels like the good, primal thing to do when a body is penned in. It’s what lions and tigers do in their zoo enclosures. Back and forth, up and around, prowl, prowl, repeat. I organized my movements by row: up and down the parking rows toward the now-dim signs for exchanges, returns, exit, enter. The circularity of the movements, plus the weird, abstract commands, felt cosmic. I was in an undetermined space of pure matter, performing a ritual of eternal reincarnation, living many lives.

… didn’t love the way this piece ended, but i love the idea of pacing in super large parking lots to clear one’s head, and then, beginning to pay attention to what is in that lot, which is way more than one would think…

Stuff I’ve Been Reading: Rickie Lee Jones, Emma Dabiri, and More, Nick Hornby, Believer Magazine… a set of well written and compelling impressions of the books in question… impressions seems the right word, because i don’t read these as critical reviews, just an accounting of a book enjoyed thoroughly… also, in the course of reading these impressions i encounter the author referring to themselves as ‘he’ again… it happened in the article above, which led me to search for information on the author and confirm that they present as female and refer to themselves as ‘she’… so now i am wondering what is going on… is being gender confusing a thing and i am out of the loop? Hmmm…

… and now i discover that Summer Thomad is not the author of the articles i am reading, but for some reason comes up with the byline when the articles feed through to Feedbin… i circle back and follow the links through to the Believer Mag website and find the actual authors and switch credit accordingly and the pronoun mystery continues because it turns out i am right about the parking lot article, written by a (Asian) woman… her bio on Wikipedia refers to them as ‘her’ and ‘she’ while she self-refers as male in the body of the article… hmmm some more…

… by the way, i really like The Believer Magazine…

Nietzsche on Walking and Creativity, Maria Popova, The Marginalian… i am a walker… i walk every day… my daily goal is at least 10K steps… right now, my weekly average is close to 15K steps… i walk, i think, i make pictures… this has gotten me through the pandemic in good shape… it turns out that Maria Popova is a walker too…

Almost everything I write, I “write” in the notebook of the mind, with the foot in motion — what happens at the keyboard upon returning from the long daily walks that sustain me is mostly the work of transcription.

Maria Popova’s recommendations on reading are always compelling… i have found so much of what i read through her…

Senator Blumenthal Delivered Speech at Communist Party Awards, Brittany Bernstein, National Review… red bating is a time honored tradition of conservatives… this reads like a political hit job… is there something wrong with what Blumenthal did?… why should his wealth-by-wife be any more of an issue than Mitch McConnel’s?… i am fine with socialist policies… not so much with communism… i also believe in freedom of association and speech…

Gone Too Far, Brendan Dougherty, The National Review… refreshing for this substantially right of center magazine to publish an article stating that:

But the riot at the Capitol happened because President Donald Trump simply lied, and lied, and lied. On that very day he lied about what the vice president’s powers were. “All Vice President Pence has to do is send it back to the states to recertify, and we become president, and you are the happiest people,” he told the crowd.

First notes…

228.4 lbs

… we are now exactly one week away from our departure to Florida… dark sky is now predicting wall to wall sunshine for next Tuesday, a change from the 1” of snow that was predicted yesterday… hopefully that will stay the forecast…

… ran into headwinds from M yesterday on the planning of Christmas Eve dinner, or so it seemed to me… they had determined that dogs would not be allowed on the terrace of the restaurant and canceled reservations and said firmly they weren’t interested in the seven fishes dinner… it all began to feel that i was headed for a situation where M was going to be unhappy whatever we did… this all prompted us to investigate dog daycare and we found some… it’s a shame dinner reservations got canceled because there would have been a place to park the dogs… called M to talk directly with them about the situation… they said nothing was wrong with the way things were turning out… i was not entirely convinced but let it go…

… i am feeling generally happy the odd tension of H over baking and finding accommodations for the dog not withstanding…

… our friend B is in for knee surgery this morning…

… we watched Die Hard last night, which is many people’s favorite Christmas Movie… it’s not my first choice given the mayhem of it all, but it will be kept in the rotation because it is pretty good for what it is…

… still puzzling over a gift for M… she doesn’t really need anything…

… want to get H a little something too…

… bought a copy of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Story to read to H while we are traveling… also bought a set of battery powered LED lights to provide Christmas Cheer in our hotel rooms as we go… my happy anticipation of the trip grows… still lots to do…

… headphones and Bach Cello Suites…

The Journals of Denton Welch…

… was feeling a bit down about the substantial posts i made to this blog yesterday that caught nobody’s attention… then this bit of sparkling prose:

All my hard bones go wild with music notes, here in the rain. The fibers tremble with the whipping leaves. To be alone in the car with sandwiches and coffee and a Turkish cigarette! So snuggly alone that the world is the car, and the wood, the road, the view stung with rain, the rest of the universe.

… the book, as it winds down to an end, has taken a mournful but quite beautiful turn… every passage seems to be spiritually aglow, radiant, even as he describes the suffering he is wishing to overcome… it is hard to escape the impression of a slow descent towards the threshold of being-not-being…

• Letters from an American, December 13, 2021, Heather Cox Richardson… the January 6 Commission referred Mark Meadows to the House for Contempt of Congress… in doing so they revealed details of information they already had… details that made it clear the 45 knew what was going on and accusing them of “dereliction of duty,” which is military speak for, you are in some serious shit… additionally, it was clear that a number of Fox News personalities not only had close ties to the Whitehouse but called repeatedly on the day of the riot to plead with 45 to say something to calm the situation… that same day they went on air and began making the case to their viewers that 45 had nothing to do with the riot, that it was ANTIFA that infiltrated a peaceful rally and turned it deadly… they were clearly lying to their viewers…

• Booz Allen Sounds the Alarm On China’s Coming Quantum Harvest, Arthur Herman, Hudson Institute… quantum computers are likely within a 10 year time horizon… they will be capable of cracking encryption deployed on most computer systems today in defense and industry… China is likely stealing and warehousing encrypted data in anticipation of that day… efforts to secure systems against quantum computing capabilities need to accelerate…

• Fox Hosts Begged Trump to Stop the January 6 Attack on the Capitol, Amanda Carpenter, The Bulwark… confirms Heather Cox Richardson report that Fox News personalities pleaded with 45 to stop the riot and then went on to spin it as not his fault at all… family members and members of congress too…

• What Did Governor Hochul Say About Religion!?, Josh Blackman, Reason.com… a case is made that injunctive relief should have been provided given the awkward at best statements of Governor Hochul about the religious exemptions being denied…

• Barrett and Kavanaugh Supply Another Majority to Deny Religious-Liberty Exemption… this case is seeming more interesting than i at first thought, or, rather, i thought is was interesting at first, but for the wrong reasons… i am no friend of organized religion, i am somewhere on the spectrum between atheist and agnostic… but the reasoning here seems a bit botched…

  • This time, it was New York’s vaccine mandate, which initially included an exemption for religious objectors. These objectors included some Catholics and other Christians who oppose abortion. The vaccines are derived in part from abortion — specifically, from fetal-cell lines used in vaccine production and testing. Nevertheless, when Kathy Hochul replaced Andrew Cuomo as governor, she stripped the religious exemption from the mandate, making the astonishing acknowledgment that she had done so “intentionally” because those who resisted vaccination “aren’t listening to God and what God wants.”

• January 6 Committee Votes to Recommend Contempt Charges for Mark Meadows, Zachary Evans, National Review… of note to me is the article’s description of the events on January 6th and the calling into question the makeup of the committee:

  • The select committee was formed to investigate the Capitol riot, during which supporters of the former president breached the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to interrupt the certification of the Electoral College results. > > However, Pelosi refused to appoint two lawmakers recommend by House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to the panel, leading McCarthy and most Republicans to withhold cooperation with the committee. Representatives Liz Cheney (R., Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R., Ill.), both staunch critics of President Trump in relation to the events of January 6, are the only Republicans on the nine-member committee.

First thoughts…

228.2 lbs

… awake at 1:30 AM, back to sleep, up at 3:40 AM… two beers last night, the extent of my drinking… seems to have lead to better sleep and feeling better this morning… my weight has returned to a downward trend… as i write that, i have a debate in my head about bringing the scale on our trip… stepping on the scale every morning helps keep me from overeating in general… on some level i must have internalized what overeating is by now… time to fly solo?… then again, maybe not…

… yesterday a bit broken and frustrating… H’s holiday baking effort threatening to melt down… i try to help them with decorating the cookies but their instructions were poor while making it clear they did not invite freelancing… i gave up trying to help… they accused me of not listening… no dear, i love you but you suck at giving direction… i gave the dogs a bath as they had been rolling in smelly shit…

… today i need to be more focused on what i want to get done…

… M being a little irritating about the food menu for Christmas Eve and Christmas… was hoping they would get all the shopping done before i got down there, but it’s clear they won’t…

… we are cash poor at the moment… struggling to put the finishing touches on Christmas as a result…

… the forecast is calling for snow the day we are to leave… oh joy… this was always going to be the danger of traveling this time of year… it doesn’t look like it will be too bad and we will stick to major highways which are generally good at keeping the roads safe to drive on… it should get better the further south we go… plus, we have an all wheel drive car now…

Video still series…

Video still series…

Over the weekend I read this lengthy and fascinating article about human characteristics we all share that have made us vulnerable to the increasingly virulent partisan divide we are experiencing today.

What follows is a lengthy exploration of this article and what I believe to be important about it. In case you need to cut to the chase and move on with your day, here are my main takeaways:

To have any hope of engaging in productive and deescalating dialogue on the critical issues of our time:

• discuss issues, discuss values, discuss policy, discuss facts, embrace complexity and don’t argue when others characterize your politics
• make a sincere effort to inquire about and understand the reasons people have for their views, share the reasons for your views, and resist the temptation to immediately debate the rightness or wrongness of those views
• assemble a carefully curated set of information sources that you have verified for factualness and understand the biases of; include sources from far left to far right and in between; make an extra effort to read or view the sources that challenge your views on major issues… here is my list¹

Read on if you would like to know more about what underpins my basic take aways.

Last week I read an article about Fred Hiatt and the Washington Post in which the following paragraph jumped out at me:

Sarah Longwell recently told a story about meeting me (Benjamin Wittes, the author of the article) and having no ability to identify my politics. This is an ethos I learned from Fred: discuss issues, discuss values, discuss policy, discuss facts, embrace complexity and don’t argue when others characterize your politics.²

Over the weekend I read Why Is It So Hard To Admit When You’re Wrong? by Ronald Bailey in The Bulwark. It confirmed my instinct about the importance of the above quote.

Bailey makes the following point about people and partisan politics:

Today, if you are a member of one of the two major American political parties, you are statistically likely to dislike and distrust members of the other party. While your affection for your own party has not grown in recent years, your distaste for the other party has intensified. You distrust news sources preferred by the other side. Its supporters seem increasingly alien to you: different not just in partisan affiliation but in social, cultural, economic, and even racial characteristics. You may even consider them subhuman in some respects.

You’re also likely to be wrong about the characteristics of members of the other party, about what they actually believe, and even about their views of you. But you are trapped in a partisan prison by the psychological effects of confirmation bias. Being confronted with factual information that contradicts your previously held views does not change them, and it may even reinforce them. Vilification of the other party perversely leads partisans to behave in precisely the norm-violating and game-rigging ways they fear their opponents will. It’s a classic vicious cycle, and it’s accelerating.³

And then there is this paragraph:

The consequences of this big chill are apparent in several other studies, notably the work of the Louisiana State University political scientist Nathan Kalmoe and the University of Maryland political scientist Lilliana Mason. One of their more striking results is that 60 percent to 70 percent of both parties in a 2017–18 survey said they thought the other party was a “serious threat to the United States and its people”; 40 percent of respondents in both parties thought the other party was “downright evil.” In another poll, 15 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats agreed with the brutal sentiment that the country would be better off if large numbers of opposing partisans in the public today “just died.” And 18 percent of Democrats and 13 percent of Republicans said that violence would be justified if the opposing party won the 2020 presidential election.⁴

It dismayed me to find that I am rolling with the statistical majorities of both parties. I currently believe that the Republican Party, at least the part of it that seems to be in control at the moment, is evil. My wife will tell you that I have more than once expressed the sentiment that perhaps it isn’t such a bad thing that “Trumpers” are refusing to vaccinate and wear masks, my presumption being that more of them will die. I draw the line at violence if the opposing party wins, but i might get there if i believe they stole the election in 2024, as MSNBC and other news sources warn daily that they are trying to position themselves to do. By the way, is anyone else surprised that Democrats were 5% more likely to resort to violence than Republicans if the other party won in 2020?

This brings me to another point brought home by this article. Our perceptions of what the other side is feeling and thinking relative to our perceptions of ourselves and what each side is actually thinking is significantly misaligned:

In a 2015 YouGov survey, respondents reckoned that 32 percent of Democrats are LGBT, 29 percent are atheists or agnostics, and 39 percent belong to unions; the right figures are really 6, 9, and 11 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, they estimated that 38 percent of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year, 39 percent are over age 65, and 42 percent are evangelicals; actually, just 2 percent earn that much, 21 percent are senior citizens, and 34 percent are evangelicals.

Democrats and Republicans also regularly overestimate just how much their opponents loathe them. On a sliding scale from 0 (least evolved) to 100 (most evolved) Republicans rated the humanity of their fellow partisans at around 85 points and that of Democrats at 62 points, a 23-point difference. Conversely, Democrats gave 83 points to their political confreres and only 62 points to Republicans, a 21-point difference. Even more interesting is that the Democrats guessed that the Republicans would award them just 36 points (26 points less than the true number), while Republicans estimated that Democrats would give them a measly 28 points (34 points less than the true number).⁵

And, less I believe that my party, the Democrats, is the superior one when it comes to tolerance there is this:

One of the more dire consequences of this exaggerated meta-perception—the perception partisans have of the other side’s perception of them—is that it seems to make people more willing to support illiberal and antidemocratic policies, such as curbs on free speech and political participation.

Moore-Berg’s findings were essentially replicated in a 2021 study by the University of California Santa Barbara social scientist Alexander Landry and his colleagues, who further found that “despite the socially progressive and egalitarian outlook traditionally associated with liberalism, the most liberal Democrats actually expressed the greatest dehumanization of Republicans.” Democrats also expressed greater antidemocratic outgroup spite than Republicans.⁶

Note that these are findings confirmed by a study conducted in 2021 and are highly counterintuitive to what I believe I am experiencing.

Depressingly, the article goes on to say that providing more accurate information generally fails to convince anyone siloed in their partisan points of view of anything other than their rightness. We select and deploy the information that supports our silo.

And here is a critical point for me:

Partisan cheerleading sounds harmless—not much different from fans rooting for a local football team, right? Nope. Hannon argues that ”if our disagreements are not based on genuine reasons or arguments, then we cannot engage with each other’s views." If team loyalty is the main thing, then the upshot for Hannon is that “we cannot decrease polarization by reasoned debate.”⁷

A recent conversation with a family member about January 6 (they were denying it was anything other than a first amendment sanctioned protest) quickly made me angry and when I shut it down (a moment I was not entirely proud of), they noted that they were just trying to relate how things looked to “their team.” Hmmm…

And what if people are offered a range of information sources which could provide additional information about whether their beliefs are accurate? Will they take advantage of it? Apparently not:

Peterson and Iyengar also gave respondents access to various news sources so that they could check for additional information on whether their beliefs were accurate. These included sources identifiably associated with both liberal and conservative partisan loyalties, so-called mainstream sources, and expert sources from peer-reviewed journals. Some 29 percent turned to co-partisan sources, 26 percent to expert sources, 38 percent to mainstream sources, and only 7 percent to out-party sources.⁸

I have found this to be true of myself in the past. Even now, after a number of years of making the effort to read from various sources across the political spectrum, I struggle with information that contradicts a strongly held view. It is critically important to put together a range of factually accurate sources of information which both support and call into question our partisan beliefs and most people, on both sides, don’t do that.

The proliferation of self-consciously partisan broadcast media, such as Fox and MSNBC, and of partisan gathering places on social media platforms provides political sectarians plenty of opportunity to find information that confirms their ideological predispositions and disparages their opponents' views. In 2019, a Perspectives on Psychological Science review of 51 studies testing for political bias found that “both liberals and conservatives were biased in favor of information that confirmed their political beliefs, and the two groups were biased to very similar degrees.”⁹¹⁰

In case you thought your side was superior in its ability to follow the facts where they lead there is:

… a 2019 study, “(Ideo)Logical Reasoning: Ideology Impairs Sound Reasoning,” that found an equal tendency among liberals and conservatives to ignore the soundness of classically structured logical syllogisms in order to reach conclusions that supported the political beliefs that they already held.

Or perhaps you thought your side has the superior set of moral values:

… a 2018 study in Political Psychology, “Deep Alignment with Country or Political Party Shrinks the Gap Between Conservatives' and Liberals' Moral Values,” found that liberals and conservatives broadly share the same moral foundations and values.¹¹

Towards the end, Bailey notes that the partisan divide around any given issue can be thawed if each side gives reasons for their views, rather than engaging in debates about those views, as most of us are all too quick to do:

The good news is that when presented with reasons favoring their opponents' views, partisans were less likely to report that their opponents lacked intellectual ability or moral character. “Our results provide evidence that reasons serve a novel function distinct from persuasion, decision change, or acquiring knowledge,” conclude the researchers. “Even if the consideration of opposing reasons does not induce a change in one’s position, our results indicate that presenting opposing reasons might at least make people less likely to view their opponents negatively. This, in turn, might have the potential to make people more willing to listen to opponents and more willing to engage in genuine discussion with their opponents, which might have positive implications for compromise, fruitful deliberation, and the pursuit of a common good.”¹²

And that is what led me to the steps for stepping back from the partisan divide at the beginning of this post.

What i read today…

… my reading this morning has been principally around the Supreme Court decision handed down yesterday that allowed Texas’ anti-abortion law, S.B. 8, to remain in effect…

Letters from an American, December 10, 2021, Heather Cox Richardson

This case is about far more than abortion. It is about the federal protection of civil rights in the face of discriminatory state laws. That federal protection has been the key factor in advancing equal rights in America since the 1950s.

The Texas Abortion Decision Protects the Traditional Rule of Law

Hard cases make bad law, and bad decisions make more hard cases. Roe v. Wade was a bad decision that has distorted many areas of our law. The Supreme Court created this monster with Roe, but in the Texas abortion cases decided this morning, it found itself caught between two sides trying to evade or rewrite the rules. On the one side was the Texas legislature: The new Texas abortion law, S.B. 8, is a too-clever-by-half attempt to get around Roe’s distortions by creating its own somewhat-novel enforcement mechanism. On the other side were the abortion clinics and the Justice Department’s lawsuit, both of which treated legal abortion as a constitutional interest so powerful that protecting it required the Court to bulldoze longstanding doctrines limiting the powers of federal courts.

How Narrow is the Pathway the Supreme Court Left for Suits Challenging SB 8 and Other Similar State Laws?

As noted in my last post about today’s Supreme Court ruling in in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, the key question for the future is how close a connection state officials must have to enforcement of the law in question before plaintiffs can potentially bring preenforcement challenges against those officials.

SCOTUS Says State Judges and Court Clerks Can’t Be Sued To Block Enforcement of the Texas Abortion Ban

The Supreme Court today held that Texas judges and court clerks cannot be sued to block enforcement of a state law that prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected. But it said the plaintiffs challenging S.B. 8, which took effect on September 1, can proceed with claims against state medical regulators.

Justice Sotomayor’s Flawed History To Promote The Myth of Judicial Supremacy

The United States did not fight a Civil War over the theory of judicial supremacy. But judicial supremacy was a contributor to the Civil War. Of course, I speak of Dred Scott v. Sandford. Chief Justice Taney recognized a new constitutional right based on substantive due process in order to resolve a controversial social debate by placing it beyond the power of the elected branches. Sound familiar? In Casey, Justice Scalia directly equated Roe and Dred Scott.

SCOTUS Rules Extreme Texas Abortion Ban Will Remain in Effect, Though Abortion Providers Can Sue

Today, in what could at best be considered a mixed ruling for abortion rights, the Supreme Court decided that abortion providers may sue some state officials in federal court over an extreme Texas abortion law. But in a huge blow, the court will also allow the law to remain in effect while the case moves forward.

The Most Blistering Lines from Sotomayor’s Extraordinary Dissent in Today’s Abortion Ruling

In an especially gripping section of the 13-page opinion, Sotomayor wrote that Texas’ brazen challenge to federal law “echoes the philosophy of John C. Calhoun, a virulent defender of the slaveholding South who insisted that States had the right to ‘veto’ or ‘nullify’ any federal law with which they disagreed.”

“The Nation fought a Civil War over that proposition,” she argued. “But Calhoun’s theories were not extinguished.”

… moving on to readings other than news…

Carl Jung on How to Live… you make the road by walking…¹

Your questions are unanswerable because you want to know how one ought to live. One lives as one can. There is no single, definite way for the individual which is prescribed for him or would be the proper one. If that’s what you want you had best join the Catholic Church, where they tell you what’s what. Moreover this way fits in with the average way of mankind in general. But if you want to go your individual way, it is the way you make for yourself, which is never prescribed, which you do not know in advance, and which simply comes into being of itself when you put one foot in front of the other.²