Fascinating links. Too good not to publish.

Real power in Congress-problem solvers. Hell is a narrow majority. 

Rare common ground in SCOTUS. How the theory that state legislatures could decide electors got busted. 

Brazil: Bannon tactics/riots. Code words used to set it up. 

Great video showing global temperature rise. 

Russia planning for offensive---mince meat. Specifically, Russian troops will be mince meat in their Feb '23 offensive

Qualified immunity

Lessons of the anthrax scare.

Detransitioners. Study on hormones for teens isn't conclusive. To read? Is this the one were no measure was that good? Check on depression. Critique of Dr. Turban, pro-transition psychiatrist. Jordan Peterson talking with detransitioner Chloe Cole. Great video of trans vs detrans discussions----watch and list the questions discussed. Reuters series on trans issues: long wait times for Tavistock. US teens and top surgery. 

Uvalde. He has a battle rifle. Report on the response from officers on the ground. 

May/June links

(Catching up on posts started a while ago. This one originally written around so long ago it's embarrassing)

The man who recorded the confrontation and death of Ahmaud Arbery, he was very nervous about his role in the incident. He tried to distance himself and wished for justice for Arbery. Now he is also charged in the murder.

Michael Flynn in the news. Transcript of his call to the Russian ambassador.  The adviser to judge says no, you can't just drop charges against someone who pleaded guilty.

Egregious incident of stalking and harassment by ebay security employees. ebay!!!!

Trouble counting lots of absentee ballots. States need to step up and make this work better.

Qanon is strange and fascinating - not what they write, but how people are responding to this weirdness and hokey conspiracy thing. More about the origin and internals in a video with a founder of 8chan (starting at 37:46).

Bolton's book, delayed by the Trump administration, showed that quid pro quo was actually standard for Trump.

According to Steve Bannon, Trump's campaign is wobbling. Trump needs to be the president and take care of the problems, like the huge covid crisis.

Interesting law ruling from the Supreme Court that concerns tribal lands. It expands the power and independence of the tribes.

Image: chicagotribune.com

Interesting factoids

My blog is now mostly links. But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking. I feel like I'm thinking as much as before. So I can't really explain why my writing has changed to these collections of short, link-based reflections.

Here are a bunch of lighter link that are still interesting.

Energy promise fulfilled? In Australia, a huge battery system is providing backup for when renewables faulty and storage for when the energy output is abundant. This is such an important step in making renewables primary in large-scale energy production.

Kick him when he's down. We can laugh and/or sneer at formerly famous alt-right jerk Milo Y__(whatever). Here's an article on his unpublished books and the editor's comments.

Hackable votes. This one is heavier: an article about how Georgia has very poor security for its electronic voting machines. It contains first-hand reports of problems and officials trying to cover them up.

Good news/bad news. A funny conundrum. Media has done very well under the Trump campaign and presidency. Viewership is up, profits are up. It could be very nasty (in financial terms) if Trump doesn't win in 2020.

Trump's mental condition. Hahahaha. Nearly everyone has an opinion, but this is the opinion of a trained neurologist.  I've had some training in neurology, so I notice many of the behaviors the neurologist mentions. I would add this: look for changes, particularly diminishing ability. As far as I can tell, Trump hasn't deteriorated, but we should be alert for the signs. This is a reasonable place for a bookmark to a lawyerly explanation for why impeachment hearings are warranted. I don't agree, but the case is well argued.

A journalist on our side. Maybe Trump, Bannon, or whoever thought Michael Wolff could be trusted to write positive fluff pieces, and they found out otherwise when he wrote Fire and Fury. This is the kind of piece that might have given them false hope. It's a sympathetic view of Roger Ailes. It also sounds like he flattered people's egos, basically conning the con men that staff the White House. I don't trust him to be fair and scrupulously accurate. However, he claims to have tapes of some interviews. Added fun!

Image: newsday.com

Links (1 of 2)

My tabs overfloweth.

Decoding anonymous sources. A good guide from Lawfare. How to interpret what reporters write, indicating how many sources they have and where they are. A good news organization follows these unwritten rules. Bad organizations pretend they follow the rules, but actually make up sources, use known unreliable sources, misleadingly edit and quote, and don't fire reporters and editors who don't follow good standards.

Now, one of those sources. Seymour Hersh is implicated in the Seth Rich-to-Wikileaks story. He claims it's just a rumor. I should dedicate a post to the Seth Rich story, but I'm too lazy. Briefly, Rich was a low-level staffer at the DNC or Hillary campaign and was killed in his DC neighborhood. Cue the conspiracy theories. Fox News got ahead of itself and coerced a contributor to say stuff he didn't actually believe, prompting him to sue. Seymour Hersh is involved because he is supposedly the source of some of that info. There's a tape of Hersh talking about the case. Strangely the tape begins and ends abruptly. I have suspicions that Hersh contradicts or says it's mostly his speculation. I haven't trusted edited tapes since Shirley Sherrod as smeared. Nonetheless, Hersh isn't saying what he knows. He ought to clear it up since the concern about a conspiracy is important here.

Sheriffs as the supreme law. Here is another right-wing idea to counter big, bad government. The concept is that the sheriff, being locally elected and accountable, is the supreme authority in a county, and doesn't have to enforce national laws. Remember Bull Connor and this doesn't seem so good. Joe Arpaio is supposedly an advocate for this idea. Luckily, he lost his last bid for reelection.

Another worrisome tactic to watch. Using Freedom-of-Information requests to undermine and sue small local school districts. Tactic supported by Steve Bannon. The goal is mirky, but maybe it's hidden in the settlements.

Russian election interference (another example). Something to watch. Fake accounts on Facebook bought ad time from Facebook. The purchase was automated, so even Facebook didn't know it was happening. Parking this timeline of Russia interference denial here. Hoping I can find it again.

Image: bostonglobe.com

Cleaning the White House

I'm a bit late on this story, though it's still relevant and may be relevant for a while to come. Like Kelly, Trump's new chief of staff, McMaster was generally considered a wise choice, and not a known crazy.

Unfortunately, some Trump supporters like crazy. McMaster is therefore having some problems and riling up some folks. He's been trying to clear out some of the crazy that was appointed to the National Security staff, and there's pushback. So far, the pushback has been ineffectual. Trump has indicated support for McMaster, and hasn't tweeted catty comments as he did with Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General.

Bannon, who is a patron to many of these crazies (as part of his position as the near-alt-right), has been keeping his head down and avoiding the volleys. It's interesting to see which parts of the conservative media are on which side.

One right wing favorite wrote a memo about how there's a shadow government in the US, and it's not being displaced as it ought to be. The author has now been displaced, to the howls of some. There are complaint about 'the deep state' and Obama holdovers, both of which are probably traitors. It's a damn shame that this chance to finally clean up those damn socialists is slipping away. If America isn't great again, it's because of those traitors that got to stay on.

Image: thepeoplescube.com

Extra. Not particularly connected, but a taste of Russian 'news.' It would be a horrible template for news here.

Update 8/14/17. I was right about relevance. Here's a pair of articles about the feud and ideological differences between Bannon and McMaster, include lies peddled on (wait for it) Alex Jones' show.

How bad is the alt-right?

I'm only going to tackle a small piece of this question.

To start, here is David French on the threats he and his wife get daily because he was against Trump. I guess a specialty of some alt-right creeps is to Photoshop his wife's face onto the most disgusting pornographic image they can find and then send her the resulting artwork.

Next, it was instructive to read what Breitbart had to say about the alt-right. Basically, they are currently noisy frat boys, but they're also right:

"In short, they want what every people fighting for self-determination in history have ever wanted, ... — to come out of the woodwork and stand up for their values and culture."

This at the end of an article about the white nationalism, xenophobia, misogyny, and hate in the movement.

A related question is how much Steve Bannon, Trump's chief strategist and adviser, is a fellow of the alt-right. Ben Shapiro, formerly of Breitbart and thus a colleague of Steve Bannon, drops a lot of stories on him. The charges seem fairly specific, but I can't be an unbiased judge.

However, the press isn't finding very horrendous quotes attached to Bannon. Maybe this will change because he had a radio show, and people may need to listen to a lot of it to find the nastiest bits. Stay tuned.

Image: gotnews.com

Update 2/21/17. Milo Yiannopoulos, author of that article in Breitbart about the alt-right, was invited and then disinvited from this year's CPAC conference. He's been a popular guest on college campuses, invited by conservative groups because he infuriates liberals. But evidently he went too far in talking about sex with underage teens, so his fame and welcome are drying up extremely quickly. Ah, a bit of justice.

Update 3/14/17. I don't generally read The Daily Kos, but this very long article has a surprising number of well-made points, with many links. Not your typical conspiracy theory.