Deep Thought

There are 2 kinds of people: 

1. People who know Trump is a "fucking moron", and 
2. Fucking morons.

Needing "Leaders" is a Problem

Ignoring my many disagreements with French toward the end of this pretty good interview he's talking about a solution and he says:

...I think leadership really, really matters. I think what's needed now is compelling, bold leadership to help repair a rotting political infrastructure...

I'm not sure that he really understands the problem.  Donald Trump is, for all his many faults, "compelling, bold leadership."  He compelled a truckload of mostly [politically] uncaring people to get to the polls for the Republican primary.  He compelled people in states that were considered locks for Dems, who had voted for Obama, to switch to vote for a "Republican" and he is so bold that he not only commits sexual assault but then brags about it.

The problem, fwiw, is that the GOP leadership has, for decades, cultivated their supporters to be particularly stupid.  It's pretty much the only way to win elections when the platform your party stands for boils down to "tax cuts for rich people and whatever the moral outrage of the day is so we can keep the plebes in line/distracted".

The health care thing is the perfect example.  The complaints from the GOP is that people have to spend too much for crappy coverage, but their "fix" is to cut taxes for rich people and make it so that everyone else will have to spend more for worse coverage or go uncovered.

Yea, No, He's Also Deeply Stupid

It's probably mostly meaningless but this is a really stupid article.  I take it's meaning, but really, even the fundamentally incurious moron who now occupies the oval office doesn't know "nothing" he just doesn't know the things that are relevant to his position.  He knows how to bully, and how to shame and cajole people into doing what he wants, and how to manipulate the press, but the line that is adopted in the article is like saying dogs are smart because they eat when they're hungry.  So fucking what?  Following a logical path isn't a sign of intelligence, or understanding, and applying those adjectives to a person who is primarily exhibiting a very base instinct for self preservation (and a complimentary instinct to illicit praise from others of himself) and whose instinct works to get those things (mostly because he was given lots of money when young) isn't, well, smart.

Good Take, Odd Title

More and more appearance for Hillary Clinton and apparently more people piling on.  I really like Ezra's take though I think the title is a bit odd.  It sounds like he's going to go and talk about how good a candidate she was, and he really doesn't.

Hillary Clinton was a flawed candidate, but that was mostly through no fault of her own.  There were two big fuck-ups that tarnished her badly for me: her vote for the Iraq war and her paid speeches to Wall Street bankers.  Those were only relevant in the primary.  She was a flawed candidate for the general election, not because of those things, but because of years of anti-Clinton (and specifically anti-Hillary Clinton) bullshit that Republicans had been flinging.  None of it was true, but enough stuck in the minds of many voters that one of the more honest politicians we have was regularly rated as less trustworthy than the most dishonest hack we've ever seen.  That isn't her fault, but that should have been a very obvious issue for everyone (including her) going into the election.

There is a weird notion among Democrats that being right and good and competent count for something in a general election.  They should, I agree, but after Reagan and Dubbya and now Trump it should be really fucking clear that being right and good and competent don't count for much.  That's a problem, but it's one that all Democrats should understand well, but quite a few clearly fucking don't.

Of Course They're Incompetent

Here's a scenario for you:

You are someone who specializes in [pretty much anything] and there is a position in the White House staff to provide advice and help implement policy regarding the thing you specialize in.  You are asked to take said position.  It is the Trump White House.

Normaly the answer to something like this is not simple, but there's a good chance it would be "Yes!" That last line though is a kicker.  The problem is that Trump is a know-nothing man child who may listen to you while you are in the room but you've got at best a 50/50 chance that your informed suggestion will get implemented, a chance that goes down dramatically if anyone else talks to him between the time you did and the time that said suggestion gets implemented.  The chance approaches zero if any of a small handful of people are opposed.  In the end, whether you get fired, resign or just toil on fruitlessly, you will be forever tarnished as "that person who worked for the Trump administration."

So the answer becomes easy: NO!   The fact is that, almost by definition, anyone who accepts a position in this White House or from this president is inherently unqualified and incompetent.  His supreme court pick is already tarnished by virtue of the fact that it should have been filled a year earlier, but it was Trump that put forth the nomination.  Justice lobster is sure to have asterisks by his name throughout history.

This all brings me back to the beginning of an article Digby quotes extensively from here (article is NYT which I will try my best to never link directly again):

Mr. Trump’s appetite for chaos, coupled with his disregard for the self-protective conventions of the presidency, have left his staff confused and squabbling. And his own mood, according to two advisers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, has become sour and dark, turning against most of his aides — even his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — and describing them in a fury as “incompetent,” according to one of those advisers.

Emphasis mine.  No competent aids would accept a position, and in the unlikely event one did (because she really thought she could make a difference) Donald would end up firing her because a competent person would end up disagreeing with president man-child on pretty much everything.

I Kinda Figured

It seemed somewhat obvious to me that lots of Trump voters would end up surprised/upset at Trump doing something that he said he would do.  I mostly figured it would be when the AHCA kicked lots of them off their insurance or led to increases in health care costs that they won't be able to afford, but that it's immigration related seems somehow more appropriate.

I certainly feel bad for the man who was deported, but his own wife voted for Trump!  A lot of this is shit that will have next to no impact on my life, but I wasn't too stupid to get it.  The talk about deporting "bad hombres" was obviously talking about deporting people whether or not they were "bad hombres" in reality.  This is largely because Obama was already deporting crap tons of people and the "bad hombre" segment was already covered.  The only way to deport more would be to kick out hard working, tax paying, America loving immigrants, probably breaking up families in the process, and that's exactly what is happening.

So on the one hand: I am sorry, and no family should have to go through that.  On the other: you stupid fucking people should have fucking thought about the election with something more advanced than your lizard brains.

The Horrible, it Burns!

It seems that Republicans don't actually want the pile of shit that is the ACHA to pass but no one wants to be blamed for it failing.  The Senate Republicans, if they were smart (some actually are) would bring the the House passed bill for a vote as is, vote it down dramatically, and then blame the House for handing them a pile of shit to vote for, pushing it back to them to fix.  Not looking like they'll do that but that would be their best move.

"No Labels" Is A Label

So far as Republicans go, the ones that sign on to the whole "No Labels" gibberish are better than those that don't.  So far as Democrats go, the ones that sign on are even better Republicans than the Republicans that do, but not actually good Democrats.  The problem is that "No Labels" is a label and based on what those who associate with it have said they want that label is basically "Republicans but not total assholes".

They tend to [say they] believe in cutting [business] taxes and cutting social welfare programs (including Social Security, though they are more circumspect about that). They also support science research and its conclusions, they don't think gay people are the devil, and mostly they don't believe that the brown folks are going to destroy our way of life (well, not the Hispanic brown people, they do want to kill them some Middle-Eastern brown people but even then they are more selective).

#notallconservatives... Well, Actually Maybe it is All Conservatives

No surprise I agree with Atrios about the conservative movement being and having always been a horrible thing.  I am still, however, a bit impressed at how well a movement without any popular ideas manages to be a popular movement.  Yes, racism/sexism/xenophobia/... but it's more than that.

The main goal of the conservative movement is to take stuff from most people (mostly poor, and most loudly minority but really they don't give a shit) and give it to rich people.  That's a shit goal that huge majorities in this country believe is a shit goal, and yet they get people to buy into it.  At some level, that's impressive--scary and horrible, but impressive nevertheless.

Manufacturing Jobs Aren't Inherently Better Than Service Jobs

I wish economists would make that point more often and more loudly.  DeLong kind of gets the low skilled manufacturing part in his post criticizing the consensus around globalization hurting wages.  There's a lot of talk about how bargaining (read: unions) has been actively killed by Republicans the past 30 years or so, and a mention that low-skilled blue collar jobs aren't really great jobs, but since he's criticizing Larry Summers omissions I'm feel I should criticize his: there is no mention of service industry jobs.

This is a glaring omission for a couple reasons. One goes to the whole globalization issue: outsourcing service industry jobs is harder than manufacturing.  Yes, you can locate a call center in India, but you can't really staff a grocery store for St. Louis residents by hiring people in Tanzania, or move goods within the US with truck drivers in China or go to get a physical from a doctor in Cuba.  Those jobs don't globalize the way manufacturing can.  They may also be harder to mechanize due to our preference for human contact/interactions.

The other reason it is an omission has to do with the reduction of bargaining power.  The reason that manufacturing jobs are perceived as better is because they have, historically, paid better, and the reason for that is unions and bargaining.  Low-skilled service jobs (operating a cash register, or stocking shelves) often do not have unions to support the wages and benefits.  If Wal-Mart had ended up unionized when it was started I think the jobs in this country would be very different today.  Now I don't think that the big box stores would be nearly as prevalent were that the case, and that's an alternate reality with far reaching consequences, but we perceive manufacturing as better than service, not because it is, but because it is associated with unions.

Science Advocacy

Ah for the shared science perspectives in the decades before I was old enough to vote.  There is certainly a lot of noise around scientists becoming increasingly "concerned" with the way science is viewed and treated [by politics/politicians] in this country.  Deciding what to do isn't easy for reasons pointed out as part of this post a few weeks back.

Basically science and scientists, while knowing full well, that science is inherently political (funding from government, initiatives and tax exemptions for R&D...) it has not, historically, been partisan.  Sure Reagan liked his science explodey, but everything else got funded along with it.  Things started changing in the 90's.  Initially this was part of the GOP's strategy to court evangelical voters (creationism good, evolution bad!) but that embrace of some anti-science views made it easier for anti-science ideas and points of view more generally to gain traction among Republicans (politicians and voters).

Yes, there are plenty of anti-science, and unscientific views that get associated with liberals (anti-GMO and anti-nuclear energy are the big two...anti-vaccination is historically party independent, though after being thoroughly discredited they are gaining ground again thanks to the current administration), but the Democratic party does not broadly embrace those views--at least not yet.

But despite the obvious situation that Democrats are better for science than Republicans, science organizations and scientists have been reluctant to push that, and for a simple reason: if scientists start endorsing Democrats over Republicans, then the GOP will see just one more reason to not support science.  So what's the fix?

Today, if you are a scientist or science fan, or just someone who thinks science is a good thing, then there is no real question that voting for Democrats is better for science.  Still, that isn't really how most people--not even necessarily most scientists--vote.  Social programs, taxation, foreign affairs, and the place of government in regulating industry/finance/trade are all things that tend to be higher on most people's mind when selecting for whom to vote.  Maybe because most people thought that it didn't really matter much for science, but it looks like scientists, at least, seem to be becoming more aware that it does--or at least more active about it.

Sure, But Only If You Disagree With Them

I get the point Atrios is making here, but leaks really do exist in a grey area.  Leaks that are vindictive, or that are trying to discredit someone based on irrelevant information are mostly bad, while those from whistle blowers are mostly not bad (not necessarily good, per se but not bad).

It's not easy to determine good from bad.  Leaking about a politician having an affair is largely irrelevant, but if that politician is having an affair with someone who is the same [gender] while fighting against legislation that protects LGBTQ people, well, it kinda becomes relevant in that case.  Leaks that endanger US operatives in foreign nations are bad, but what if those operatives are torturing and raping people in those locations?  Even more, leaks that show the US doing bad things in general do endanger other Americans that are not doing that by association.  This is why we have a court system.

It's not perfect, and there are some serious potential issues with the courts going forward, but it's the system we have.  If someone does something nominally illegal (leaking classified docs) but there are extenuating circumstances (the docs are covering up war crimes) then a judge/jury can say whether breaking the law was ok.  Or something.

Until you get to a court case all we have in the meantime is speculation which is very likely to be clouded by political priors.  Maybe that means everyone is full of shit, or maybe (more likely) it means that distinguishing between full of shit and not is a fools errand, in which case it may as well be that everyone is full of shit.

Good Interview

I should probably read Hillbilly Elegy, but not sure I can spare the depression.  I think this is a very good interview with the author (J.D. Vance), and mostly I was nodding my head throughout.

Now That's an Idea

When Republicans do something they have a nice simple phrase they can tell everyone, and make sure people know that it was Republicans that did it.  When Democrats do something it gets hidden, and is so complicated that it's not always easy to know what it is or whether/why it is good.  The ACA (Obamacare) definitely has this problem, and it is much easier to attack than defend (you actually have to understand it somewhat to appreciate it--even if you still don't really like it--and most people don't but on the other hand: "website BAD" "premiums going up!" "mandate and tax"), so I think the article at democracy journal should be required reading for Democratic politicians.

No, It Shouldn't Matter

Worse than I'd expected.  And Atrios is kind of right that this shit shouldn't matter, but because the dumbass we've got for a president now thinks it does it really does matter.  They are lying about the size of the crowd, when anyone with a pair of eyeballs can see that it was much smaller.  Crowd size shouldn't matter (any reasonably popular Democrat is likely to get a bigger crowd in DC than a comparably popular Republican because it's DC), but that makes the Trump administration reaction that much worse, and that they are lying about this does, in fact matter.

They can't tell the truth about something this blindingly obvious.  That matters.

Just Sayin'

Or, really, showin':

Considering Trump's personality I think lots of news stories focusing on how small and insignificant his inauguration/concert/hands are compared with Obama's would be a good thing.  Waiting now for his twitter rant about how cameras are biased against him.

Can't We All Just Get Along?

No.

Joking aside, it seems like the past couple decades we have been moving somewhat backwards [globally] with regards to how we see and treat people that are different than us.  Some of this is fairly obvious racism like the Trump campaign and many of the hard right parties in Europe (mostly anti-Muslim, particularly Muslims from the Middle East).  But it's more than that, there seems to be less and less willingness for people to perceive others as human and worthy of respect (yes, this often includes me).  In the US there is also a lot of "Ideaism" in that people who don't agree with my position are not just of a different opinion or even not just wrong but are also bad people.

While I will still maintain that a vote for Trump in the last election can only be explained by racism or stupidity (no, there are no other reasonable explanations, if you are trying to find one, you're most likely to get back to stupid).  But, and this is somewhat counterintuitive considering my personal feelings about education, stupid doesn't mean bad.  In fact I think that most people in most things are stupid.  We do stupid things all the time, and just because someone happened to vote in a manner that I would say is not stupid, doesn't mean that their reason for the vote wasn't stupid.

I actually do understand how good people could for Trump--they vote in a stupid fashion for stupid reasons.  That doesn't make them bad people inherently any more than someone who tells you that 7*7 = 42 is a bad person.  I'll admit that I think that the fraction of Trump voters that are good but stupid is pretty small (the fraction that is stupid is high, but I think a lot of those people have more hate than not).

All this said, there are positions that are objectively harmful to others and, therefore, not just wrong but bad, and so you do still run into issues of how to treat people as human who don't reciprocate.  I'm really not sure how to.  Tyler Cowen put up a quick note in support of Black Lives Matter.  The comments are overwhelmingly racist (including one calling him a race traitor, lots of comments about black people being inherently criminal and inherently less intelligent, and arguing that segregation was good for black people--yes, people actually said and defended all of those things in the comments).  Cowen's post and position really shouldn't be controversial.  But how do we react and respond to the very racist response seen in the comments to that post?

Calling them all racists (which is true) doesn't help, and for people outside the debate it seems like name calling which is problematic, as name calling is perceived as an indicator of a weak position.  On the other hand, trying to use more conventional argument (citing statistics, and studies, and explaining why they are racist without necessarily explicitly calling them racist) makes the arguments seem to be on level ground--this is a big problem that occurs when scientists "debate" creationists, creationism is emphatically not science.  Ignoring it also problematic as it means that the dominant side heard is the racist one.

So how should a decent, intelligent person respond to positions (or individuals) that really are horrible?  I'd like to think that pointing out facts and saying that racist positions are racist would do it, but we know that it doesn't, in part because it is remarkably easy to get people to strongly believe things that are demonstrably not true.  So should it be ignoring and letting the noise pervade?  Or name calling and making it seem there isn't a rock solid counter argument?  Or countering legitimately and making people believe that factually challenged and racist opinions are on near-equal footing?

Programs to Help "The Poor"

I really do understand why Atrios (and his commentators) is bagging on the piece linked in his posts (one post here, the other linked in that post, and the piece referenced also linked in both).  I agree, the best aid for poor people is to just give them money.  Attaching strings and playing games about their goals and making them jump through hoops is all counterproductive, and both makes the program more complicated (and expensive, and bureaucratic) while also meaning fewer people get (as much of) the aid they need.

But the catch is that the programs are for "The Poor," and therein lies a problem.  If you have a program that is expressly for poor people the first thing you have to do is verify that they are, in fact, poor, and not just someone with low income that is sitting on piles of [cash, property, gold], and at some point you can't actually figure that out.  If someone scrimps and saves and keeps all their money in cash in garbage bags but never opens a bank account to deposit it and doesn't buy easy to track things like property, they could well have plenty of money and just lie about it and it may be impossible to find out otherwise.  I know that is a rare case, but it is one that no one (neither rich, nor poor) wants to have happen.  Making it more difficult to get access to the benefits is one way to keep people who don't really need the aid from even trying (not a good one and I don't endorse it).

I recognize that that the best real solution to that problem is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.  So a few undeserving people get a bit of extra cash.  It isn't the end of the world, and it's not common enough to be a problem that we should make it insanely difficult for deserving people to get that money.

In the real world, however, people get more pissed off by people getting something they don't deserve than they do about the inverse, and while we can't (mostly because politicians won't) do anything about bankster bonuses and corporate vultures, we can make sure that someone with $10k in savings doesn't get food stamps, or that, if they do, they have to buy beans and rice, because if they were really hungry they wouldn't be wasting their money on shrimp (note: beef is acceptable because cattle ranchers told congress so)!

The solution is actually pretty simple: make the cash giveaway program for everyone (yes, this is secretly a universal basic income post).  If everyone (18 and over who files a tax return) gets $15k/year from the government then you don't have to worry about whether or not anyone deserves it.  Yes, you need to increase taxes to do this (quite a bit, that's a nearly $5T plan).

We're not going to do that, though, so we're stuck with a situation where our poverty amelioration programs are all directed at "The Poor" and that means every one of them is going to have some extra, stupid crap associated with it to make sure that the recipients are "legitimately" poor.

Self Driving Cars

Atrios's new bugaboo it seems.  He's right that we won't get there so long as there isn't something that forces us to.  That is, that last 1% (or 0.1%...) can probably only come from mandated full implementation of autonomous vehicles.  The issues/problems he describes are due to human drivers.  If all cars are autonomous and speak to each other (via street grid) then all of those things either go away or can be dealt with.

Of course, that type of mandate won't happen until a critical mass of vehicles out there are "Autonomous-ready" and that isn't likely to happen in my lifetime.

Must Have a Pickup to be a Real 'Murican

The trend in pickup trucks is both fascinating and idiotic to me.  A pickup is traditionally half a car, with a bed that is useful for hauling stuff.  Everyone needs to have a friend/neighbor with a pickup, but almost no one should have a pickup themselves.

30 years back, pickups were cheaper than cars because they were less useful (to most people) than cars.  Today, however, they are some of the most expensive.  The cheapest base model F150 Ford offers (just under $27k) is more expensive than the base model of every car they offer except the Taurus (just over $27k).  Chevy is a bit better because they have the lower tier Colorado (Ford no longer offers a Ranger) but that is still starts out more expensive than 3 of their 5 cars.

The other thing is that more and more of these trucks are less and less useful.  You have to go out of your way to get a bed that will hold a standard sheet of plywood flat with the tailgate up.  Now, you may not see any reason to have that, but then, why the hell are you considering a truck?  Also, many of the bigger trucks you see, e.g. on the road in Houston, are jacked up to the point that accessing the bed is nearly impossible, and certainly not useful for hauling since you'll need an elevator or installed lift gate to get things in and out.

If your truck is a fashion accessory, fine I guess, I just think it's stupid (as I think most fashion related things are stupid).