Sleepless in Midland

Fox Friday 2-28-2020

Look at the length of that tail!
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This one shows off his bushy tail.
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"I'm ready for my close up."
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"Do you like my smile?"

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1:09 PM 2/27/2020

Charles Lipson explains why the two parties want to strangle each other

Democrats and Republicans are at odds, to put it mildly. That's not a healthy development, and as Charles Lipson tells us America’s House Divided Cannot Stand. The article is behind a paywall, so here's a long excerpt:

For constitutional democracies to thrive—or even muddle through—voters and candidates have to respect their political opponents. Parties must see the competition as legitimate even amid vigorous disagreement on ideas. This shared sense is a load-bearing wall for democracy.

Over the past decade, the U.S. has become much more divided, sawing holes in this wall and hoping to miss the support beams. Progressives and conservatives agree on one thing: It’s the other guys with the chain saws. A 2018 Axios poll summed up the sentiment: Some 61% of Democrats thought of Republicans as racist, bigoted or sexist. About half of Republicans described Democrats as ignorant or spiteful.

Why do so many Americans see their political opponents in such stark terms? One reason is that many on both sides think the future of American democracy hangs in the balance, that a victory for their opponents could ruin the republic. Conservatives fear the growth of the administrative state—powerful bureaucrats who rule by fiat and undermine elected leaders. For progressives, the perceived danger is Donald Trump. The left sees him as an aspiring dictator who is willing to shred constitutional norms.

The two sides might seem diametrically opposed, but they aren’t. Both could be true and form a vicious circle. If “the swamp” and the “deep state” bureaucracy are out to sink President Trump, he can stay afloat only by fighting them ferociously. The harder he fights, the more progressives double down to defend the administrative state, which their policies have built.

This conflict is sharp, deep and toxic for democracy. It is grounded in the country’s profound ideological divide, now embodied in its two parties, and the shared belief that the stakes are very high, perhaps the highest since the Civil War.

Progressives say Mr. Trump started the fight. He is confronting allies, unilaterally imposing tariffs, and rolling back regulations. He is attacking opponents on Twitter. Progressives—and some Republicans who dislike Mr. Trump—are especially troubled by his attacks on “fake news,” which they consider a dangerous assault on the First Amendment. The left is appalled when Mr. Trump criticizes federal judges, whose independence is central to the rule of law. The left also fears Mr. Trump’s entirely legitimate effort to reshape the courts.

Both sides believe in their mission—and their righteousness. The civil servants and lawmakers who oppose President Trump believe they are saving democracy. They consider it a civic obligation to speak out, leak highly privileged documents, launch endless investigations, and unleash the powerful tools of national intelligence on domestic political opponents. They are guided by what former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey calls “a higher loyalty” that pre-empts laws and procedures designed to prevent such abuses. In their minds, the ends justify the means. ...

Mr. Trump and his supporters believe they are being persecuted by these opponents. They see their views being “canceled” in college classrooms and in the media. Mr. Trump’s supporters see elites treating them with open contempt. And they’re angry about it. ...

And there is no easy escape from this confrontation. Unlike the deep cleavage in the late 1960s, it won’t end when the troops come home. Unlike the divisions in the 1930s, it won’t end when one candidate wins overwhelming popular support. The country is too divided for that.

The division won’t end after the November elections, and the question is how to repair the damage. Democrats will need to acknowledge winners in elections, not resort to calling them frauds. And both parties need to show the tolerance and respect for different views that define a healthy liberal society.

"Tolerance and respect." Easier said than done. But we should try. Arthur C. Brooks suggests we should love our enemies. One step at a time. Let's start with tolerance.

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3:05 PM 2/26/2020

Someone gave me a cold -- Liz Warren explaining hoarseness

In a recent campaign address she told the crowd, "Someone gave me a cold," to explain why she was so hoarse. Most of us might have said, "I caught a cold." But it says something about her that it had to be someone's fault other than her own.

Anyway, there are plenty of other reasons to dislike Warren, such as the flip flop on super-pac donations.

As she trails in the polls, maybe it's rude to criticize her. But who can predict the future? After all, she could be Bernie Sander's running mate. The two of them have a lot in common.

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3:48 PM 2/25/2020

Love in the Philippines with covid-19 risk

When the government says wear a mask --

This is a remarkable sight. In a crowd the mask might guard against disease transmission to others. But between the marrying couples, the mask has to come off sometime.

More at Hundreds of brides and grooms kiss wearing surgical masks at mass wedding in coronavirus-hit city in the Philippines.

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1:33 PM 2/23/2020

Journalists use spy tactics -- A Swallow got intel from government official

This reads like something out of cold war spy history. Henry Kyle Frese was a Defense Intelligence Agency who had a top secret clearance. And his girl friend got him to share some of those secrets with her. From Intelligence agent arrested for spilling secrets to journalists:

Frese and the journalist had the same residential address for a year starting in August 2017 and, based on Frese’s social media pages, “it appears that they were involved in a romantic relationship for some or all of that period of time,” the feds said in a statement.

The release of the unspecified secrets could be “expected to cause exceptionally grave harm to the national security of the United States,” they said, adding that foreign countries could use the information against their rivals, possibly placing US lives at risk.

The main stream media apparently uses honey traps and swallows to get secrets that can be turned into headlines. Never mind who gets hurt. And apparently in this case, the journalists got off scot free.

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1:18 PM 2/22/2020

That was easy -- debunking report that Putin wants Trump to win in 2020

The very idea that Putin would prefer a President Trump over any of the Democrat candidates is absurd on it's face. Even one of the Democrats own witnesses in the House impeachment hearing admitted that Russia was more interested in sowing discord than getting Trump elected in 2016.

When one thinks about it, if discord is what Putin wants, the Democrats have already delivered it on a silver platter. And if, for example, that Green New Deal were to become law in the U.S. it would be the best gift Putin could ever hope to get. And he wouldn't even have to lift a finger.

Anyway, see Washingtonexaminer.com for more: National security official discredits NYT report on Russia helping Trump in 2020.

The swamp is still swimming with people trying to hurt Trump's reelection chances.

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2:25 PM 2/21/2020

Fox Friday 2-21-20

Front and side shots of Old Crooked Tail.

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2:33 PM 2/20/2020

21st century campaigning -- Bloomberg is paying people to text prospective voters

It takes a lot of money to do what Michael Bloomberg is doing. Thehill.com tells us this: Bloomberg campaign paying workers $2,500 per month to promote Bloomberg through texts, social media.

There would be 500 “deputy digital organizers” in California working between 20 and 30 hours a week for $2,500 a month. They would work phone banks and this:

The staffers will be aided by Outvote, an app that allows users to send pre-written texts, post to social media platforms and then send data back to the campaign.

So people will be receiving uninvited texts as well as phone calls? That's not cool. But it will be very interesting to see just how successful this effort and expense is for getting votes.

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6:41 AM 2/20/2020

Arthur C. Brooks challenges us to love our enemies

This was a blog post drafted in March of 2019. However, yesterday while writing about a more recent talk by Mr. Brooks I discovered that this post was not in the archives of published posts. So here it is for the first time. Or here it is again if it actually got posted but somehow disappeared from the archive. Sleepless.

There was a recent interview on C-Span's Washington Journal with Arthur C. Brooks who talked about his book, "Love Your Enemies." (Watch that interview here.)

He made some interesting observations about how people get too heated in their interactions about politics. And the solution, to love our enemies, is a tough prescription. But it's one worth considering.

The interview lasted about an hour, and rather than trying to summarize, we'll touch on some of the highlights. First off, his website contains a one paragraph description of the book, as follows:

Love Your Enemies
A NEW BOOK
America has developed a “culture of contempt.” We increasingly view people who disagree with us not as merely incorrect or misguided, but as worthless. This is warping political discourse, tearing us apart as people, and even wrecking our health. But we can fight back. Drawing on ancient wisdom, cutting-edge behavioral science, and examples from history’s greatest leaders, Arthur Brooks shows how we can bridge national divides and make progress as a society, all while becoming happier and more effective people. Love Your Enemies is a guide to building a better country-but more than that, it is a roadmap to the happiness that comes when we choose to love one another, despite our differences.

Authors these days boil everything down to five main rules. And here are Mr. Brooks' rules:

1. Stand up to the man (i.e., stand up to our own side on behalf of people on the other side);
2. Escape the bubble (get out, get to know people with whom you disagree);
3. Say no to contempt (don't hold people with whom you disagree in contempt);
4. Disagree better, not less (acknowledge that people with whom you disagree are not evil); and
5. Disconnect (turn off the TV for a couple of weeks).

Taking an hour out of one's day to watch an interview is probably a lot to ask of people in this day and age of instant internet dopamine supply. But it was worth my time to watch it. Maybe it will be worth yours, too.

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2:57 PM 3/24/2019

Reposted
1:49 PM 2/19/2020

Arthur C. Brooks at recent National Prayer Breakfast

He was featured in a blog post last year titled "Arthur C. Brooks challenges us to love our enemies" (which I now can't find.) He's a compelling teacher, and his lessons are worth learning.

Most recently, he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast. From the transcript

I am here today to talk about what I believe is the biggest crisis facing our nation — and many other nations — today. This is the crisis of contempt — the polarization that is tearing our society apart. But if I do my job in the next few minutes, I promise I won’t depress you. On the contrary, I will show you why I believe that within this crisis resides the best opportunity we have ever had, as people of faith, to lift our nations up and bring them together. ...

So what's the problem:

The problem is what psychologists call contempt. In the words of the 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, contempt is “the unsullied conviction of the worthlessness of another.” In politics today, we treat each other as worthless, which is why our fights are so bitter and cooperation feels nearly impossible. ...

How do we overcome this?

To achieve these things, I’m going to suggest three homework assignments.

First: [Mr. Brooks asks us to pray.]

Second: Make a commitment to another person to reject contempt. Of course you will disagree with others — that’s part of democracy. It is right and good, and part of the competition of ideas. But commit to doing it without contempt and ask someone to hold you accountable to love your enemies.

Third: Go out looking for contempt, so you have the opportunity to answer it with love. I know that sounds crazy, to go looking for something so bad. But for leaders, contempt isn’t like the flu. It’s an opportunity to share your values and change our world, which is what leadership is all about, isn’t it?

The nation is being ripped apart with partisan beliefs. It's nice to get a reminder that we should love our neighbors.

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4:15 PM 2/18/2020

Groundhog Day Super Bowl ad with Stephen Tobolowsky

My favorite character actor is Stephen Tobolowsky. His most famous character was Ned Ryerson in "Groundhog Day" which got a revival in a commercial that aired during the Super Bowl the other day.

The commercial was very entertaining -- a Super Bowl commercial really has to be good since so much talent and money is put into them. However, with this one I had to use a search engine to remember what product they were actually trying to sell. So while a prize winning commercial might get the eyeballs, it might not sell the widgets.

"Groundhog Day" and/or Tobolowsky fans might enjoy the podcast featuring Tobolowsky's commentary to the movie.

Stephen Tobolowsky is a great story teller. And his podcast series ended way too soon.

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2:16 PM 2/16/2020

Not a jury of his peers -- Roger Stone juror was Trump hater

One of the foundations of the U.S. criminal justice system is that the defendant is entitled to a jury of his/her peers. Unfortunately, the federal court system's jury voir dire gives the judge the authority to question the jurors, not the attorneys. And while a prospective juror might proclaim impartiality, it would be difficult for the defense attorney to root out some deep seated animosity.

And now we are hearing about the jury foreman, Tomeka Hart, in Roger Stone's trial. Seems she is a Democrat party activist and an avid Trump hater. Furthermore, there were others on the jury with similar bias. Could it be that no one in a typical Washington, D.C. jury pool not biased against Donald Trump? If that's the case, the trial should have been removed to another jurisdiction.

References: Juror 1261 in Roger Stone's case: Was justice undone?;
Tomeka Hart: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know;
Roger Stone mistrial? Trump hater Tomeka Hart was Jury Foreman;
Roger Stone Requests A New Trial, Citing Revelations About Anti-Trump Juror.

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11:36 AM 2/15/2020

Fox Friday 2-14-2020

It's a zoo out there.

Here the cat, Lil Gray, watches a fox eat the food.

Nice closeup of Mr. Fox.

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4:30 PM 2/13/2020

What's your Chinese social credit score?

Attorney General William Barr held a press conference the other day in which he announced indictments against four Chinese military hackers. Unless those malefactors decide to travel to the U.S. they will likely never have to face justice. They are more likely to be awarded honors by the Chinese government. Mr. Barr's prepared remarks can be seen here. And this excerpt tells us just how many American's personal information was purloined from Equifax:

This was one of the largest data breaches in history.  It came to light in the summer of 2017, when Equifax announced the theft.  The scale of the theft was staggering.  As alleged in the indictment, the hackers obtained the names, birth dates, and social security numbers of nearly 150 million Americans, and the driver’s license numbers of at least 10 million Americans.

Let's not forget that Chinese hackers stole OPM information about government employees a few years ago.

The objective could have been to aid thefts from the hacking victims. But it's just a likely, and maybe more likely, the goal was to compile dossiers on each and every American for future use in persuasion or coercion.

A news item supporting this theory is the scoring of American governors revealed in BUSTED: Mike Pompeo Says He Has List of American Governors Named as 'Friendly' by Communist China.

Meanwhile, major print periodicals routinely contain inserts paid for by the Chinese which purport to tell us all how great China is.

As if we needed a reminder, we would all do well to remember that China is not a friend.

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3:08 PM 2/11/2020

Better dead than red -- University of Massachusetts would prefer a life ending meteor strike than Trump re-election

This doesn't appear to be satire. However, one has to reason that Democrats will lie to pollsters to emphasize their dislike of Donald Trump.

Whatever the case, The University of Massachusetts Lowell conducted a YouGov poll of mostly Democrats, and one question in particular is worth noting. Here's the headline from thecollegefix.com University poll finds New Hampshire Democrats choose human extinction over Trump re-election.

The screenshot the below features the question and responses.

But the tell that it's a bluff can be found in question UML908 which purports to show that only 5% approve of Trump's handling his job as president.

That's very far off from recent poll results of some of the more famous pollsters. And it's probably a good indicator of the bias among the respondents.

The poll results can be see at UMass LowellSurvey of New Hampshire Democratic Primary Voters.

Oh, by the way. For anyone who doesn't remember the phrase in the headline, "better dead than red," that was a slogan was a response during the cold war to Khrushchev's threat to bury us. Khrushchev later revised his threat with the prediction that gullible Americans would eventually vote in communism. That one is still unresolved.

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1:13 PM 2/9/2020

Fox Friday 2-7-20 -- Snow day no shows

The same fox a couple of hours between visits.

Snow day. The food tray and water bowl are buried under the snow. No critters showed up. Can you blame them for not wanting to walk through the snow barefooted?

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2:29 PM 2/6/2020

Battle of publicity stunts -- Pelosi ripping up speech and Gaetz' threatened ethics investigation

Nancy Pelosi performed a publicity stunt when she tore up her copy of President Trump's speech at the end of his State of the Union speech. Other Democrats probably loved it and thought it was a fitting way to try to regain the spotlight after a tremendous speech.

Now we learn there is an ehthics investigation threatened. See Gaetz to File Ethics Charges Against Pelosi: ‘She Destroyed Official Records.

Maybe technically Pelosi actually violated an obscure rule against destroying government records. But as we've seen with Hillary Clinton's email scandal, the Democrat position on the issue is "so what?"

Pelosi was only conducting a publicity stunt. That's all she had left. And if it's OK to burn an American flag, then ripping up a paper copy of a speech doesn't seem all that bad.

But in these days of battling publicity stunts Gaetz has every right to do whatever he wants. Go for it Matt.

Ridicule is bloggers' weapon of choice. And Pelosi with her senile/infantile tactics is fair game.

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6:25 AM 2/6/2020

Snow Day!

This morning in Midland, Texas, we woke up to a beautiful white landscape.

These photos were taken a few hours apart -- the one with the ruler followed a secondary snow storm.

In case the reading isn't visible, the top of the snow is roughly seven inches above the ground.

Needless to say, the snow has basically shut down the town.

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2:33 PM 2/5/2020

A dirty little secret -- low Democrat turnout at Iowa caucuses in spite of all the media buildup

Politico summed it up nicely in The biggest problem for Democrats wasn’t the vote count.

Politico's subhead: "In Iowa, the party was counting on Barack Obama-levels of enthusiasm. They got Hillary Clinton-level turnout instead." Ouch!

Oh, and the irony is that even with a lower than expected turnout they still couldn't get an accurate vote count.

Maybe this whole episode will inspire a nationwide Super Tuesday primary. That would serve the country better than the piecemeal process currently in place. Many Democrats are ready to ditch the electoral college, but somehow this particular logic regarding party primaries hasn't yet caught on.

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10:27 AM 2/5/2020

Bang the drum slowly -- Tony Adams counted the drum beats in the Astros sign stealing scandal

This is one of those things that makes the internet such a valuable resource.

A fellow named Tony Adams did the painstaking task of watching reruns of as many Astros' games as he could find. Then he documented the number of times someone banged on a garbage can -- one of the signals used by the sign watcher to alert a batter what kind of pitch to expect.

Here's his opening statement:

I’m an Astros fan. They cheated during the 2017 regular season — the evidence is clear. In an attempt to understand the scope of the cheating and the players involved, I decided to listen to every pitch from the Astros’ 2017 home games and log any banging noise I could detect. These are the results of my efforts. I’ve logged over 8,200 pitches and found banging before over 1,100 of those pitches.

See a bar graph of his results at Sign Stealing Scandal.

It's a truly remarkable piece of work.

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3:33 PM 2/4/2020

Pushinka -- the fox that became a dog

The first book about pets ever to appear on my reading list was "How To Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)" by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut. It was about the grand experiment engineered by Dmitri Belyaev as he supervised fox farming in Siberia. Fox pelts were very profitable for the communist government of the Soviet Union back during the Stalin era.

And while Stalin opposed intellectualism and genetic studies, he supported any efforts to improve the production of the pelts. So Dmitri Belyaev had a way to conduct clandestine experimentation at a fox farm. The foxes there were predominately wild and aggressive. But occasionally some of them didn't show as much hostility to their human minders as others. Mr. Belyaev's experiment began with breeding the tamest males with the tamest females. Then with the help of Lyudmila Trut, one of Mr. Belyaev's loyal assistant and the book's co-author, he continued breeding the tamest offspring of the experiment's progeny.

The first "pet" to result was a loving and lovable fox they named Pushinka. It was touching to read about Pushinka and how much she was like the domesticated dogs we know.

The book was very enjoyable, except for the part describing how thugs looking for valuable fox pelts broke into the house where Pushinka and her pups lived. Skip that part.

In any event, the book brings to light the personalities of the people and animals involved in that novel experiment. And any pet lover will appreciate the efforts those people put into the project. For a sneak peak see How To Tame a Fox—and Build a Dog at moderndogmagazine.com.

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2:44 PM 2/3/2020

Charles Murray - genes and IQ

Charles Murray's suggestion that genes determine IQ shouldn't be controversial. Anyone who has been alive long enough to observe non-family members can reasonably presume that smart kids probably have smart parents. But putting that theory into words invites criticism from those who would contend that a person's environment determines his/her IQ. And in this age of identity politics and victimhood, anyone who disagrees is on dangerous ground.

That's where Charles Murray stands.

Murray authored a recently published article titled Genetics Will Revolutionize Social Science in which he predicted that further advances will result in the study of polygenic scores -- the adding up of alleles associated with a particular trait, IQ being one of those traits. Here's a quote:

Progress during the past five years has been rapid for many traits. In the case of IQ, the share of the variation in scores that can be explained from genetic material alone went from zero in 2015 to 5% in 2018 and 11% in 2019. That doesn’t tell us much about any individual’s IQ, but it’s enough to be useful in addressing many important issues.

But are we there yet?

We’re not there yet. I think the application of genomic data to social science questions is roughly where aviation was in 1908. The world’s best plane, the Wright Flyer, was little more than a toy. Yet within a decade, thousands of acrobatically maneuverable aircraft were flying high and fast over the battlefields of Europe.

That's quite an intriguing analogy. And we must hope that the forces of opposition won't hinder any revelations that might result from that research.

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1:30 PM 2/1/2020