Sittin' on a Sofa on a Tuesday Afternoon

Listen to the candidates "debate"
Laugh about it, shout about it,
When you've got to choose —
Every way you look at it, you lose

— Paul Simon
(with slight contextual updates since the 60s)

Shockingly, virtually nothing happened in last night's "debate" that was either surprising or, in fact, "news."

• These moderators were slightly better than the last time around… they earned a C-minus. They were handicapped by an insane format, of course. They get some points for at least sometimes calling bullshit on, well, bullshit. But they lose points for the condescending banality of their questions… and even more for letting candidates get away with not answering the questions before them, and for going even farther off topic in their "rebuttals" (which were actually "responses" but whatever).
• Ms Harris nearly blew it initially, because she really didn't answer what was very much a softball question. The obvious response to what boiled down to "Are you better off than four years ago?" would have been something like

  You and many, many Americans are alive. Our economy has, under President Biden's leadership, largely recovered from the largest public health crisis in a century. And you didn't even need to drink bleach to get here!

  followed by whatever canned nonspecifics the don't-offend-anyone idiots advising her had force-fed into debate prep.

  But that's not what we got. We got Aunt Fluffy, for at least a few moments… and precisely because this was the first question, that was at best inept strategy. Her actual answer was obviously nonresponsive enough that some undecided voters might well have made up their minds at that point… and missed her improvement later in the session. "Sandbagging" only works after establishing a position of at least some strength — it depends upon already having established a prima facie position, thereby requiring the opponent to respond.

• Or maybe it wasn't that Ms Harris "improved" so much as she let her opponent be himself — allowed him to demonstrate to anyone not blinded by tribalism who had two brain cells to rub together that, no matter what policy disagreements one might have with Ms Harris, they pale in comparison to the utter inhumanity and unsuitability for any office (even business leader… or gameshow host) of that opponent. In a representative democracy — and that includes elected chief executives (and elected judges hack phhhht), not just legislators — one isn't voting for policies; one is voting for persons who, when they are confronted with the unknown, can be trusted to do something appropriate regardless of personal benefit to that elected representative. "Concept of a plan" eight years after the issue became live, since that opponent was campaigning on the same subject in 2016, is short of the mark — and that was one of the good points!

  But there's one aspect of that candidate's obsessions and answers I cannot let go. At risk of violating Godwin's Law, it's worth recalling certain rallies that were extremely well-attended… and marked by speeches (not just from the "main attraction") long on tribalist bullshit and very, very short on facts and actual policy. It's not that this particular candidate is as evil as Hitler (or, for that matter, that most of this candidate's supporters are comparable to Nazis) — he's not that competent and doesn't have enough competent people in his inner circle — but that the methods and obsessions are so disturbingly parallel. (And with Party Congress sessions two decades later a couple thousand kilometers east-northeast.)

• Last, a bit of amusement in the aftermath. I'm a dog person, and I have children (much to their chagrin). I'm not a fan of That Childless Cat Lady… but I applaud the timing of her endorsement in that she left it until after (a) the candidate she was endorsing didn't embarass herself and all sentient beings and (b) the other one… did. Indeed, this cat lady made the point that she had actually watched the "debate" prior to issuing her endorsement. That doesn't make her music more to my taste, but still…

Weird Duck Sausages

You know things have gotten — well, weird — when the Prince of Darkness announces he'll be voting for a Democrat because the guy nominated by his own party is too evil. Ms Harris, I recommend politely RSVPing "no" to any invitations to go duck hunting; any implications that target selection (and downrange clearance) may be equally off now are entirely intentional.

Meanwhile, early next week things will get even weirder with yet another non-debate debate.

• Across the Pond they're proposing to eliminate more feudal lords with inherited titles from the House of Lords. Although I think Charles III's head is safe (or at least safer than his namesake's), the future William V just might want to look into opportunities for making a living (like his little brother has) — but he'll have a hard time getting legacy/donor preference to attend Stanford (or USC) business school. Schade.
• Meanwhile, the (ex-)commies over in Ukraine are demonstrating that they've learned the right lessons from prior atrocities in their region. Yes, war is a contact sport — but at least throw a penalty flag on late hits out of bounds, ok? (And definitely no running into the stands to demonstrate one's martial arts "prowess," guys.)
• The world of internet piracy has taken a couple of hits. First, a major anime/manga node (source for a number of sites) went dark. Then Brewster Kahle's arrogant selfrighteousness, his reductionism of all "original expression" to "mere information," got far more credibility than it deserved at the Second Circuit and still got trashed (large PDF). And his little dog, too!

  I'll have far more to say about this at another time. Of course, my position shouldn't surprise anyone at all… why yes, the choice of repository source was entirely intentional, with malice aforethought, and really does concern "fact" and not "original expression"; did you really need to ask?

• It appears that artificially-stupid large-language-model "AI" programs aren't hallucinating. Neither are they lying. They're just… bullshitting. I suspect that The Blues Brothers (1980) was an essential source work for all of the major large language models — that's why they can spew forth about that Picasso.

The Devil We Don't Know

This election season is a funhouse¹–mirror image of another election, in another land. One that I had a somewhat-sideyed professional interest in observing: Chile, 1988. That election wasn't competitive between candidates — it was a yes/no referundum on continuing Augusto Pinochet in office.² Pinochet had little support in urban areas, but considerable (often terrorized) support in rural areas, meaning that the referendum was largely considered a toss-up before the actual election. We'll leave aside, with our 20/200 hindsight, the very real threat that Pinochet intended prior to the vote to ignore an unfavorable result — and would have been successful in doing so.

Even in the poorer areas, where most people live in modest wooden homes and battle to get by on salaries as low as $2.50 a day, voters indicated a preference, as one put it, for “the devil we know.” Few here have been touched by the civil rights issues that arouse emotions in Santiago, the capital. Young people seem as likely as older adults to vote “yes” in the “yes” or “no” poll to decide whether the 72-year-old Pinochet should remain another eight years in power.³

So we have a choice this fall: The devil we reallyreallyreally know, and the devil we don't know very well at all. And in some states, the second-generation devil derided by the other devils as stupid (but he at least admits that worms ate his brain), not to mention a passel of devils less powerful or tempting than Wormwood. Partisan politics — between party apparatus and fundraising imperatives — gives us only devils to choose from.⁴ It's critical to remember that when one chooses the lesser evil, one is still choosing evil.

Anyanka You trusting fool! How do you know the other world is any better than this?

Giles Because it has to be.⁵

Acton was fundamentally wrong: It's not power that corrupts, nor absolute power that corrupts absolutely, but the striving for power that corrupts (and the striving for absolute power that corrupts absolutely). This would have been obvious considering his first name: "Lord." So, I suppose, we should be thankful that we're choosing among devils who didn't get on the ballot due to inheriting their initial power bases.⁶

But we're still choosing among devils. <SARCASM> Just make the wisest choice you can among the lesser of "who cares?" </SARCASM> But do choose; do register and ensure that the devils who want to take that choice away from you — the real evildoers — don't win.⁷

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1. "Fun" meaning "fouled-up nonsense"… or something sounding a lot like that.
2. We will, for the moment, leave aside the role of some… past professional counterparts… in making that referendum possible or even necessary (IMNSHO, there's an aspect of excessive even-handedness to that article, and it's still rather damning). There's a pretty obvious funhouse–mirror image here, too…
3. James F. Smith, Rural Chile Leans Toward Pinochet—'the Devil We Know', Los Angeles Times (17 Sep 1988). I heard that phrase more than once — even from (junior) officials of other Latin American nations, often referring to their own nations' dictatorships.
4. At best — and it's a really, really poor best — we end up with an on-the-surface somewhat well-meaning outsider surrounded by devilish advisers and cronies who themselves wreak havoc after not even being elected. At worst, we end up with "businessmen" and "investment advisors" — like, say, one of the current candidates for second fiddle in Nero's string quartet — whose weltanschauung of "government" has been so thoroughly warped by the combination of "modern accountancy and efficiency studies" and "the boss never needs to compromise" (not to mention self-righteous arrogance seldom seen outside the Spanish Inquisition) that those other advisers and cronies are even more in control.
5. The Wish, 3 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 9 (08 Dec 1998). That this screed cites to an entire program that was, at least on the surface, devoted to "fighting demons" should be entirely unsurprising.
6. Oops. And oops. And yet again oops. Seems we haven't actually learned all that much from our own secession from inherited power in favor of representative democracy.
7. That [representative] democracy is the worst form of all human governments that have ever been tried, except for all the others, should not be comforting. It's not supposed to be comforting: It's a prelude to work and agonizing choices, no matter what form of government there is — most especially including the bullying that inevitably results from replacing a government of flawed accountability with nongovernment strongmen (ask any refugee from the Horn of Africa in the last half century).

Yet Again Burying the Lede

…then exhuming it, without a court order, in time for The Big Finish.

• If you really need proof that markets are not a panacaea — any more than antidepressants, for that matter — consider barriers to actual provision of care erected by the ("market-oriented") insurance industry. Which, in the core sense, isn't "insurance" at all, but is instead an implicit cost-sharing mechanism with exhorbitant losses to friction.
• After all, markets work best with competition. Well, perhaps not so much for economists (or lawyers). This has some predictable negative externalities.
• Speaking of negative externalities, I'm not in mourning for this one. Financially, B&N has been dominated by real-estate speculation issues for decades (including, but far from limited to, strong-arm lease arbitrage back to the early 1990s)… and bad taste long before that.
• I've been pondering this suggestion for changing legal education's focus and methodology for a month now, trying to come up with a pithy comment. I can't: I agree with part of the conclusion (that reinvention is necessary) and disagree completely with the suggested means. For American lawyers, anyway, the biggest impediment to change in the legal profession is state licensing, regulation, and acculturation of lawyers — and the irony that legal education, for at least the last half-century, has focused on federal and default/consensus-national state law appears to have escaped just about everyone.

  This is particularly annoying (speaking politely) when one's practice focuses on federal law; when one's client base is scattered across the nation; and conversely when one's opponents are anything but scattered, but definitely not local. And it's all mandated by law that disputes in that field — that specialty (RPC 7.2 be damned) — be heard only in federal court… unless there's an arbitration clause, which is also a federal-law thingy (even when heard in a state court). Let's not look too closely at who benefits from nonuniform procedural requirements, either… or consider who actually benefits from choice-of-forum and choice-of-law principles. When you signed up with that cellular carrier, did you have the option to establish venue where you are and choose your own state's contract and consumer-protection law? How about when you bought that computer — these days, tablet or cell phone — over the 'net?

  I'm just not going to trudge into utterly predictable state disciplinary failings and established-Bar trade protectionism today. But I certainly could… This isn't federalism, or states as democracy's laboratory; this is Balkanization that ultimately encourages people like this guy (PDF)… and this one, demonstrating that the "laboratories" give undemocratic results absent effective democracy (a predictable result of a "two-party system" that inherently enforces false-dilemma-dominated reasoning).

  So, Mr Jordan: Changing the education system won't help (much), and will be pretty illusory anyway, so long as the actual practice structure — and control over it — remains stuck in the sixties. The 1860s.

Prospective autocrats, you'd better hurry: Only seventy shopping days left to buy the captive politician of your dreams! Or at least enough gunpowder to make for an excellent bonfire.

A Run Through the Jungle

The jungle primary {partial $}, that is. What I found rather amazing was that nobody called out clear (and, to my mind for one of them, disqualifying) conflicts of interest in four of the candidates. And, to be perfectly clear: "Conflict of interest" includes "running for limited-scope office when the candidate or family is A Player within that limited scope." It's not all one faction, either…

• In an almost Kafkaesque twist, Orwell's archives may disappear, bit by bit — perhaps not into the Ministry of Information where one can dial up past issues of The Times for, umm, retrospective editing, but nonetheless to even-less-trustworthy custodians than at present.
• Unfortunately, the problems with Orwell's archives are merely symptomatic of shortsighted, standard-accounting-friendly (in an industry group for which accounting standards apply, realistically, to less than a third of its activities) inept or worse (sometimes outright corrupt) management seeking marginal advantages for corporate bottom lines without actually engaging with the material. Leadership means, first of all, that one must engage with and try to fully understand both the substance and the people…
• …like Medal of Honor winners. Perhaps that's because Medal of Honor winners, as a group, tend to disrespect draft dodgers from a family with a history of dodging the draft in multiple nations, so they don't show "the respect that is due." Even more likely, it's because that individual — consciously or unconsciously — disdains sacrifice for others. I've been unable to identify a single such sacrifice in his public biography; anything even close to it was for his own benefit more than for others. And that is the antithesis of the Congressional Medal of Honor… too, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• An opinion column suggests that students should study the arts and humanities if they love them — because (good and perceptive) employers already do. Although I agree with the conclusion, the piece aims at the wrong target. Before and at the college/university level, STEM studies are not "the enemy" of the humanities. At least until the graduate-school level, both STEM and humanities (grudgingly, most social sciences, too) are about preparation to learn more, to adapt to and improve circumstances as actually dumped in one's lap. Consider, for the moment, the utterly brilliant programmer who is unable to write coherent documentation, leading others to misunderstand and misuse her work; the claims processing civil servant (or insurance adjuster!) who spots some "common problems" but can't analyze their prevalence well enough to determine the appropriate scope of any policy change; the nine lawyers who can't understand basics of molecular genetics but opine (fundamentally incorrectly) on their partial patentability anyway.

  The enemy is monomania, not any particular field of study, although I'd probably make an exception for marketing and "business administration" — even more than the athletics department. Of course, as a holder of degrees across the curriculum I would say that, wouldn't I?

"It's Only Treason If You Lose…

"…and I didn't lose, it was stolen from me."

— Teh Orange Menace

• When one builds and maintains organized crime's favorite no-questions-asked low-commission-per-transaction fencing operation pawn shop, one'll eventually have to answer to Dah Man. This miscreant is either lying through his teeth, or so morally/ethically defective, that some "corrective action" is necessary; the key question is what corrective action, and that's a hard question thoroughly deflected by everyone's public posturing. Distillation of a certain compound from castor beans is a kewl kitchen science experiment… and potential terrorist act and war crime; the former is no justification for the latter, only a post hoc rationalization.
• This guy might be next. OK, probably not next; given the timeline of the previous sausage link, we should look for hints of investigations (into something criminal or quasicriminal) and such some time in early 2031 — mark your calendars now! In this instance, the main deflection is a single word: "Learn." They keep using that word; I do not think it means what they think it does (for electronic processors, especially Von Neumann-pipelined processors however massively parallel-linked). Or, more likely, it does, but they're either intentionally or unconsciously in denial (PDF); that just leaves bargaining, depression, and acceptance to go before the grieving can begin.
• I might well grieve for opportunities lost, but I won't grieve for the gatekeepers thrown out of work as literary festivals and nineteenth-century-commercial-model periodicals of all kinds disappear. Nobody is asking the obvious question: cui bono (hint: probably not the kneejerk reaction)?
• The pretense of nonnormative evaluation of facts, of the apolitical/nonpartisan nature of searching for answers {freewall}, actually does nobody any good. "Searching for answers" is inherently normative in that it implies that what is already known (and, more to the point, assimilated) is not a complete description of reality. IMNSHO, that's a good normative baseline; in the eyes of theocrats and those whose power (and often personal identity) are directly tied to avoiding change, not so much. But in this sense, the laws of thermodynamics are "normative" — and it really helps to understand, or even just acknowledge, the fuzzy boundary between "technology" and "science"…
• The problems with illusory neutrality in the search for knowledge pale next to illusory knowledge in the search for power. The key assumption behind this remarkably ignorant editorial is simple: That there are clear, unmistakeable, and most importantly policy-directing answers to be had in the first place — and that these editorial writers have them (even if they're not revealing them yet). As (fictional character) Lord Marbury said, "It is about religion, and I can assure you that they do not share our fear of [thermonuclear] bombs." Or of bigotry.

  Unless and until the West — and, most especially, the descendants of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century England, and France, and the Ottoman Empire, and to a lesser but still significant extent Czechia and Ha'am — acknowledges that the map is not the territory, that Jerusalem is the City (and the City), the illusion that some single, superior solution exists will remain disturbingly persuasive. The argument will remain which one, when the real problem is the underlying religious bigotry overlaid with ethnic disdain — and the inherent failed-state destiny of every theocracy ever (including all religion-restricted governments not headed by formal members of religious hierarchies). It's important to remember that ethnographically, all descendants from the Levant are "Semitic," despite the self-defeating reflexiveness of how that term is used in the West; thus, my advocacy not of a two-state solution, or a one-state solution, but a zero-state solution. Merely establishing a recognized polity does nothing regarding the underlying problems, especially when the previous/inherited "solution" involved intentionally creating more problems for someone else while deflecting attention from one's own… antisemitism. An eighteenth-century imperial midset led to failures of imagination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

  Echoes of calls to prioritize the interests of "Real Americans" (largely based upon whose Protestant Caucasian ancestors were allowed to immigrate and when) are entirely intentional. So is the calling out of the descendants of Col McCormick for the same.

Losers!

Non-demicentennial

Fifty years ago today, a coarse, egotistical, mean-spirited, (probably) irredeemably-corrupt asshole demonstrated at least some commitment to distinguishing himself from the office he held. At least some understanding that the exercise of power through sycophants who did not actually speak truth to power — all later "rehabilitation" of the White House Counsel and others to the contrary — had limits.

The Republic was saved…

…for a while. A hair short of half a century later, sycophants denied (PDF) almost every significant aspect of the distinction between "office" and "officeholder," among "policy objective" and "official duty" and "acceptable means of asserting either."

The Republic is in jeopardy. And on 05 November, all American citizens eighteen years old and above (who have not been excluded from voting by aspects of felony convictions — which, curiously, includes a much higher proportion of "other Persons" than descendants of "free Persons") have three fundamental duties. And privileges.

1. Register (on time) to vote; or, if already registered, confirm the accuracy of your registration.
2. Consider both the policy preferences embedded in party designations and the characters of the individuals appearing on your ballot.
3. Vote, including using write-in capabilities as provided by law and mandated by conscience and point 2 above.

I have my obvious preference at the top of the ballot: That we do not have our own Glorious Revolution, reify another House of Orange via Divine Right, and set the stage for another revolution. But I will engage only in peaceful persuasion — not violent insurrection or slightly less overt voter intimidation.

All the while, I will curse the disloyalty of six sycophants to power. That, however, is all that I will do, because means used shape the ends achieved. Would that those six individuals had paid attention to TV screens (during school holiday periods, no less) half a century ago, when a member of their own partisan faction/tribe displayed that he had at least some [expletive deleted] understanding of that.

Two Guns of August

Well, at least we're assured an elected member of the executive branch who has done national service this time around. Maybe it's time to get up off the couch and help govern…

• About four decades too late, D&D is removing "race" from the basic character attributes. That was a topic of some griping in my gaming group back in the day (you are not supposed to ask about that heavily-annotated-in-the-margins three-volume set and copy of Chainmail over on the bookshelves, including the corrections of the measurement typos).

  However, it led, and continues to lead, to a broader question that both the gaming community and speculative fiction have generally refused to confront: Given that the subjects of both are exceptional individuals engaged in exceptional acts/quests/etc., exactly how much sense does it make to turn the rest of the milieu back to Valdosta in 1832 (unless, that is, one is gaming the rural antebellum South — into which orcs would be a tough fit, and it was decades too early for Grand Dragons)? Doesn't that sort of stereotyping actually undermine and devalue the central characters, and for games the players themselves? Do rhetorical questions with obvious answers provide any relief from the ongoing political campaigns?

• As to that last, I'm afraid not. We just had a jungle-primary election here. Results are still coming in, but it looks like at least one of the White Walkers won't be on the fall ballot. Which is a good thing; this is Seattle — rain is coming.
• Speaking of quasizombies, Utah is banning books (again). Not just demanding proof of adulthood, but actually removing them from libraries. This pisses me off. This is unAmerican, and demonstrates that those in power in Utah have no shred of common decency. Callbacks entirely intentional… but it won't be long before books that might enlighten those in Utah about it will themselves be removed from libraries…
• Quips and improvised attempts to be/seem clever have a tendency to reveal some ugly defects in the speaker's worldview (I cannot invoke even illusory absolute immunity) — and especially from politicians. When a candidate proclaims that only those with children should be listened to because only those people have a stake in the future of the nation — and then tries to revise the plain/original public meaning of what he said by retroactively claiming he had an entirely different purpose and target, despite the dearth of supporting evidence (and despite his failure at the time to so state, when he had plenty of opportunity to do so) — one must wonder. <SARCASM> Foster and adoptive parents clearly aren't worth listening to because those aren't their biological offspring. Those who learn of their own genetic issues (or chemical exposures) and won't inflict the defects on children obviously care nothing for the future. Those who lose their only child also care nothing for the future. </SARCASM>

🦉

Calendar-Driven Link Sausage Platter

In three days, I'll be starting my quadrennial punishment by rewatching all of the most fantastical TV series to ever get seven full seasons on US broadcast TV: The West Wing. It's enjoyable in many senses, but simply not credible because everyone — even the (domestic) "bad guys" — believes in and struggles toward good government. Their differences are on policy or personality, or sometimes on method.

• I really wish that Leo's lament about the candidates on offer didn't reflect an improvement on the choices actually offered by the Внутрипартийные аппаратчики (regardless of Party label).¹ That one side would deny the validity of any election it doesn't win, would impose precisely the kind of authoritarianism cloaked in high rhetoric claiming "superior civilization" against which the Colonies revolted in the eighteenth century only makes that party the greater evil. (Not just here, either.) One must remember, always, that when one chooses the lesser evil… one is still choosing evil.
• It's not only public office that has election problems. At that, this year's Hugos (the misconceived poll-tax-encumbered, egregiously mistimed election for "best" works and achievements in speculative fiction) are a considerable improvement over last year's. But these are just amateurs: They got caught.
• That's almost an improvement over overt, intentional abuse of dispute resolution systems. That abuse might be negotiated treaties. It might be improper filings in courts that don't have jurisdiction (and know it). It might be attempts to impose dead-hand control contrary to a century (or more) of skepticism. It might just be inordinate, inexcusable delay (that would be entirely unnecessary if the US treated health care as being an enabling right and not a paid-for privilege).
• Oh, that's all much too gloomy. How about some music, carefully preselected for you? Naturally, while managers are busy stealing from the "artists" who followed those rules. Meanwhile, major corporations have trouble counting to three (oops, that was mass-market fashion, not music).

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1. No sour grapes here: I'm thoroughly unsuited for electoral politics.

Standard of Review

Justice Kagan has mused that perhaps — just perhaps — the Supreme Court's mild suggestions on ethics should be enforceable, and perhaps inquired into by a "special committee" of seasoned, respected lower-court judges. Naturally, the Mouth of Sauron the WSJ editorial board is vehemently opposed. This particular board includes not one lawyer (or even holder of a law degree who never practiced); not one individual who has ever been part of a corporation's special litigation committee evaluating a lawsuit (or personnel matter) involving conflicts of interest by one or more members of the full board; not one individual who has ever been part of an organization (such as, but far from only, the US military) with an effective, independent Inspector General system. They clearly don't understand that an IG, which is what Justice Kagan describes (albeit not by that name), doesn't make final decisions, but instead makes recommendations of varying strength based upon the facts discerned in particular incidents. But then, given the particular biases of the WSJ and its ownership, "credible, effective government" isn't their highest priority in the first place… and they don't understand "review and recommend" and how that actually reinforces the independence of decisionmakers (nor do they care).

I have reviewed and recommend extreme skepticism regarding Judge Ho's latest extrajudicial attempt to claim victimhood — but that's all it is. Whether his remarks call into question his ability to be unquestionably impartial on matters raising issues that he has ideologically, umm, prejudged is not for me to decide; it is, however, for me to suggest that the stated factual record does not support his conclusion, particularly when it includes all of the data from the lab (let alone evidence gathered in the field).

Oops. I think I've just betrayed my own decisional framework: That when the data either fails to support prevailing decisional frameworks or even outright undermines them, continued unthinking reliance on those prevailing decisional frameworks is unjustified. Is theocratic. Is downright stupid. The scientific method cannot determine all decisions in human affairs; that way lies strictly numeric, non-context-sensitive "solutions" to the Trolley Problem (that neglect what the Trolley Problem does to those not in the frame, particularly the driver whose trolley has been diverted onto that track, not to mention the maintenance guys who know damned well that parts fail and blame themselves when they do). It's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: Determining what data matters requires some reference to decisional frameworks, like accepting that it's the feather's nonzero mass and local gravity that determine how quickly it will fall in a vacuum and not its color or species of origin or, well, featherness.

Too much decisional ideology, however, pays a lot more attention to the beautiful plumage of the Norwegian Blue than it does the bird's life status. That pathway leads to self-inflicted wounds based on the bigotry of (in-practice-unreviewable) decisionmakers.¹ And that brings us back to Justice Kagan's suggestion that appointed-for-life-on-good-behavior members of the otherwise-unreviewable court should be subject to some review short of the high crimes and misdemeanors that lead to impeachment. The precise mechanism will matter to merits and workability, but the concept is sound, particularly in a context in which judges in general do not recuse enough (let alone clearly).

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1. We shall leave for another time the self-reinforcing structures that both put unsuitable persons in those roles and exclude the Other (however well suited). Not that I'm also questioning overreliance on three or four law schools as comparable to overreliance on two (now three) military academies or anything like that, or questioning how prior stovepiping of candidates when they're 18 (or 21) can be counterproductive when considering actual decisionmaking in their fifties and sixties. Or how that early judgment of potential presumes a good basis for that judgment and the suitability of those doing the judging to do so. Oh, wait, maybe I am…

Months (Years?) Too Late

…and still a half-measure. The other guy is also too old. My generation needs to get off the ballot.

I'm afraid history is repeating itself, this time with a geriatric with clear cognitive difficulties (that didn't hurt in 1984, though) versus a sociopathic narcissist with all the maturity and temper control of an underfed toddler. This cartoon is from 24 years ago, when I was thoroughly disgusted with both candidates — and didn't that work out well…

…but other, older history could still repeat itself:

• The Democratic National Convention is in Chicago
• The sitting Democratic President announced his decision not to run for reelection well past the end of "primary season"
• The sitting Democratic Vice-President (and most-probable Democratic replacement) is polarizing as much for "identity" reasons as policy or fitness for office
• The Republican Presidential candidate is a former elected member of the executive branch
• The Republican Vice-Presidental candidate is new to national-level politics and known for outrageous pandering/coded statements
• There's a foreign conflict dragging US interests in elsewhere that has drawn widespread international condemnation
• The economy is delicately balanced and overconcentrated among those who are aggressive passive investors (family trusts then, hedge funds now)
• The generation in political power is refusing to do anything gracefully, whether "step away" or "mentor possible successors"
• Election day is the fifth of November.

  Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
  Gunpowder, treason and plot.
  I see no reason
  Why gunpowder treason
  Should ever be forgot.

  (The irony that the nation that gave us that particular ditty — and inspired our own "treason" not quite two centuries later — had its own Election Day this year on 04 July, and threw the rascals out, is a bit much.)

It's not really 1968 any more. What could possibly go wrong?

Qui Prodest ab Arte?

I'm afraid it's an ever-present and seldom-answered question.

• In a somewhat positive squashing of some leeches, the Copyright Office has made one aspect of streaming-music royalties less egregious. The real problem here is the contracting practices — not to mention the administrative nightmare — that resulted in the "termination"/revocation morass in the first place: "Life of the copyright" is an inappropriate duration for a contract.
• At least the streaming services were making some payments to some stated rightsholders, though — unlike these guys and contrary to the efforts of these guys. Eligibility for the DMCA safe harbor depends upon having a "reasonably implemented" policy for dealing with repeat infringers. That is, part of your First Amendment rent is internalizing externalities, notwithstanding adverse effects on short-term profitability (aside: that lawsuit has been going on for a decade, and the service provider has lost at every turn…).
• And at least streaming (and pirated!) content doesn't need to get a visa — a problem/concept with which I have profound disagreements, as particularly in music the "protect local performers" impulse exposes the failure of supporting the arts both commercially and governmentally while simultaneously imposing localist near-bigotry as a "solution." Not cool. The sole criterion for artists crossing borders should be "is the art worth it?" but the politics are, well, snarled at best.
• The problem of "the original" in the arts, and in museums, is a two headed coin. On one side, there's the improper and unjust denigration of accurate reproductions as appropriate for public display when the public isn't allowed to handle the piece in the first place. The other side of the coin is what to do about damage to "the original," especially when it was politically motivated and intentional; even more to the point than "what to do" is "who decides." The object-worship forming the body of the coin deserves more attention than it gets.
• But the real coin trick in the arts is effort by the Right Kind of People to avoid paying the creators. Stop kidding yourselves, moguls and auteurists: You wouldn't be able to charge hefty admission fees to your museums, nor celebrate your creative curatorship as primary above all other aspects of your art, without having screenplaysart to display in the first place.
• So both England and the US are looking for new men's national team coaches ("managers") after allowing incumbents to remain in place for too long. There won't be many questions raised about either the process or the people involved in doing the hiring in the first place or approving extensions later on, though; and that's the real problem. The parallels to H'wood mogul treatment of screenwriters are a bit too obvious, aren't they? Especially when trying to determine who profits?
• I have nothing much to say about the shooting at the RNC this past weekend. That there were obvious security system failures (details to be confirmed) fails to engage with the inherent dangers of pro-gun culture, the impossibility of perfect security, and the dangers/price of trying for perfect security. Nonetheless, I disapprove of the impulse to kill one's political opponents (or even political allies with whom one has differences, or ulterior motives, or whatever) as much as I disapprove of sycophants treating misconduct as inherently outside the rule of law. The law of unintended consequences always prevails in the end… right, Mrs Iselin? How about a nice game of solitaire?