Air Raid sirens

by liberal japonicus

Seems like we need an open thread. Below the fold is what I came to mind with Biden and Zelensky ignoring the air raid sirens. Apologies for the crappy quality and the fact that it is starts late. Was it just me?

Comments

[wj]

Zelensky has the same indefinable something that Churchill had for rallying his nation in time of war. For which their countries can be truly thankful.

Ignoring the sorts of (not yet imminent) risks implied by initial air raid sirens is what war leaders need to do. "Keep calm and carry on" seems to characterize Ukrainians today, much as it did the British during the dark days of WW II. And it takes a special kind of leader to inspire that.

From what I've seen, Biden might have the potential to be that kind of leader as well. (Hard to tell, but there are glimmers.) But not in an environment where a big chunk of the population lives in a fantasy media bubble. Nobody could overcome that -- good thing we aren't in a shooting war with an external enemy at the moment.

[liberal japonicus]

I thought this piece by Ezra Klein about Biden was pretty good

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/opinion/biden-campaign-2024-2020.html

Behind a paywall, save the page as html and open it in your browser.

[hairshirthedonist]

If only I had known that easy method of breaking down the paywall sooner. (The private browser window seemed to stop getting past it some time ago.)

[wj]

Still struggling to wrap my head around the revelations in the Dominion Voting Systems suit against Fox.

Not at the opinions of Trump, and of the MAGA base, that people at Fox expressed. Not at the fact that they (including Carlson, Hannity, et al.) knew damn well that their allegations were false. But at the fact that they, so many many of them, would do so in emails and texts which provide a paper trail. How stupid was that?

[hairshirthedonist]

It's much like the stuff NRA officials were recorded saying about their membership after Columbine. At least they were recorded secretly and didn't knowingly commit their words to something potentially subject to later discovery.

[Pete]

Open thread, so can someone tell me why the most important thing going on in the world right now is the Murdaugh trial? MSNBC and CNN have been streaming it live for at least an hour and change and I'm having a difficult time figuring out why this has been elevated beyond the B-level CourtTV schlock outlet it barely deserves.

[Pete]

Behind a paywall, save the page as html and open it in your browser.

Or just turn off/disable javascript and refresh the page.

[JanieM]

Or just turn off/disable javascript and refresh the page.

I keep scripts turned off in one of my browsers all the time. That trick works for some paywalls but not others. lj's has worked for even the most stubborn one i've encountered. Thanks, lj!

[Pete]

lj's has worked for even the most stubborn one i've encountered.

True. It's a few extra steps tho and I mostly use the JS disable for the FTFNYT. ;-)

[Michael Cain]

I use Bypass Paywalls Clean. It suppresses not just site-specific paywall code but also some of the generic paywall software in use. I can't remember that last time I had a paywall window pop up. Some people complain about the amount of permissions it requires, but that comes with the territory: if you want to bypass the paywall for the Times of India, you have to give the extension access to the data from the Times of India.

I no longer feel guilty about it at all. Either they have enough of their own content to make it worth paying for and using real credentials, or they don't.

[hairshirthedonist]

Whatever helps you sleep at night, Michael. ;^)

[wonkie]

The disgusting thing about the revelations about Faux is that it will make no difference to the MAGGOTs. They will keep on watching Faux and keep on believing Republican hatemongering.
The good news is that Dems are still fired up and mad--as evidenced by the turn out in Wisconsin's critical Supreme COurt race.

[wj]

The disgusting thing about the revelations about Faux is that it will make no difference to the MAGGOTs.

Well, they're hardly likely to even hear about those revelations, now, are they?

Although I suppose Newsmax or one of the other radical reactionary wanna-bes could decide that blowing the whistle on what Fox actually thinks of their viewers would be an effective business move. Not, necessarily, on the bits about the fraud claims being garbage. But the parts where they characterize their viewers as crazy and stupid.

[wj]

Reprieve for Taiwan! This from DeSantis appearance on Fox and Friends:

"They have effectively a blank-check policy with no clear, strategic objective identified, and these things can escalate, and I don't think it's in our interests to be getting into a proxy war with China, getting involved over things like the borderlands or over Crimea," DeSantis said.

With a chance of someone like this in the White House after 2025, it must be obvious to Xi that attacking Taiwan should be put on hold. After all, DeSantis apparently would give Xi a blank check. Just a matter of waiting.

[wj]

For those who are concerned about gun violence, a solution is in prospect!
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/1095/text?s=3&r=1
About what you'd expect from the new House majority. Wonder how many cosponsors it will accumulate.

At least it's a step . . . in some direction, if not forward.

[Nigel]

This is a remarkable report of the year long run up to the invasion.
I don’t think I’ve even read quite so frank an account of government decision making, so close to the actual events.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/24/russia-ukraine-war-oral-history-00083757

Long read, but worth it.
Quite a lot if it was new to me - both the lengths the administration went to in attempts to dissuade Putin, and the extent of the preparations for dealing with the invasion.

[Nigel]

DeSantis is as dangerous as Trump, IMO.

Note also the recent story of his involvement in an attack on free speech.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/ron-desantis-news-media.html

[wj]

DeSantis is as dangerous as Trump, IMO.

Worse. Trump will hire incompetents, who will mess up his attempts to screw things up. DeSantis is far smarter, and so could actually do the dumb things Trump only talks about.

[CharlesWT]

Weird...

[hairshirthedonist]

Does this mean there's a market for anti-racism weight-gain shakes?

[nous]

What a strange set of assumptions about asians. There are many ways that I can usually guess fairly well if a particular asian student* is a domestic or international student, but weight is definitely not one of those.

And the Gen 1.5 students really throw all that for a loop most of the time, anyway.

*Also true for international students of other ethnic backgrounds and phenotypes, though with different markers.

[Michael Cain]

Trump will hire incompetents, who will mess up his attempts to screw things up.

Maybe. His second round of appointees, at least in the areas where I pay attention, were much more competent, so much more dangerous, than the first round.

[wj]

His second round of appointees, at least in the areas where I pay attention, were much more competent, so much more dangerous, than the first round.

Agreed. Although I think a better characterization would be "much less incompetent." And even so, I expect DeSantis would get better (from the MAGAts perspective) appointees still.

[wj]

This area (Northern California suburbs east of Oakland) is generally pretty calm about the hysteria of the day. But this week saw a moment of unusual interest.** Someone had reported, falsely, that they were required to read a book with an LGBT theme for class. Which led to the school board's meeting getting into the issue.

dozens of people, many of whom did not have students in the district, flooded a discussion on the district’s book acquisition and complaint policy. [Emphasis added]

Why am I not surprised by this?

It's one thing if parents of students have concerns, however misguided. But outsiders? I'm just not willing to give them the benefit of the diubt. Especially when they are trying to ban books from the library.

** I can explain the phrase, if anyone's really interested.

[bobbyp]

Open thread? Well, OK:

I remember when Kootenai County was a great place:
Incredible natural beauty, Wobblie loggers and hard rock miners, catch and release trout fishing, hilarious stories by Bert Russell. Now? Not so much.

[nous]

The Christian nationalist redoubt looks remarkably similar to the white nationalist plans from a couple decades back, but on a larger scale, and further along.

Exactly what I continue to worry about with Michael Cain's partition. How do you solve a problem like 3%er Maria after federal law enforcement fractures and all the extremists go home to reinforce the locals?

[wj]

I remember when Kootenai County was a great place. . . . Now? Not so much.

MTG has no chance for her break up the country plan. But a limited area like this seceding? Seems far more plausible. Won't be allowed to happen, of course. But I can see the most extreme wingnuts deciding it's their fallback scenario.

[bobbyp]

Won't be allowed to happen, of course.

However...

[Michael Cain]

Exactly what I continue to worry about with Michael Cain's partition. How do you solve a problem like 3%er Maria after federal law enforcement fractures and all the extremists go home to reinforce the locals?

I have consistently said that a partition over the urban/rural divide, or cultural issues like abortion, doesn't work. It will take problems that create inter-regional divides, not intra-regional. Climate change is the obvious one. For example, Southeasterners dealing with more and bigger hurricanes, more flooding, threats to the TVA's dam systems may identify more with each other than with Westerners that harp incessantly on fire and drought and the need to get rid of the damned thermal power plants.

[wj]

Hmmm. From bobbyp's link:

proponents of the plan think eastern Oregon is more politically and culturally aligned with Idaho than Oregon’s larger progressive cities in the western part of the state.
...
There are several potential and major stumbling blocks in the way of moving the borders, including major policy differences between the states of Oregon and Idaho on sales tax, minimum wage, school funding, abortion rights and marijuana.

So, perhaps not all that closely aligned after all....

[nous]

Michael Cain - I have consistently said that a partition over the urban/rural divide, or cultural issues like abortion, doesn't work. It will take problems that create inter-regional divides, not intra-regional. Climate change is the obvious one.

wj - Won't be allowed to happen, of course. But I can see the most extreme wingnuts deciding it's their fallback scenario.

When I worry over things like the American Redoubt, I'm not worrying about it as a movement that could succeed on its own and achieve its stated goal. I'm looking at it within the context of the other things that we've been discussing.

When wj says that it won't be allowed to happen, I wonder who it is that will enforce compliance. And when Michael Cain says that he believes climate change policy will be the wedge that partitions the states, I can see the reasoning behind it.

Why I keep worrying and asking these questions, though, is not about this political moment, but the next. Right now the feds can prevent the American Redoubt from achieving its goals. That's what happened with the white supremacist version of this in the 90s.

My questions become worries in the aftermath of something like what Michael Cain is suggesting. Were the US to partition, what becomes of the federal military and law enforcement? What institutions arise as those institutions break apart? Who prevents the American Redoubt from splitting away from the Western States Compact? There is no FBI, and the military has likely been split up. We are then in a situation like the former Soviet republics or post-Tito Yugoslavia.

What force holds everything together if it's not the federal executive? How do you enforce something like federal oversight when that enforcement has been balkanized into factions with conflicting goals.

Can we survive without a Deep State committed to preserving the union above all else?

[wj]

Were the US to partition, what becomes of the federal military and law enforcement? What institutions arise as those institutions break apart? Who prevents the American Redoubt from splitting away from the Western States Compact?

Federal law enforcement? Totally gone in the breakaway area. After all, it is part of the deep state. Theoretically, Federal law enforcement folks (FBI, US Marshals, IRS, DEA, BLM for sure, Forest Service, etc. maybe even Park Service -- assuming keeping national parks are acceptable) who lived there might be allowed to stay. But not in any law enforcement capacity obviously. So an entire new set of organizations would be needed. Plus new personnel for them trained ( by whom?) -- assuming training is acceptable at all....

Oh yes, and would Federal laws be transferred? What currency would be used? Based on what?

Military? I'm guessing we'd have to give the troops, all services and at every level, individual choice. Anything else is just asking for trouble. A lot of reorganizing required, of course, but still the best choice. Hmmm . . . wonder if the would-be leavers have given an instant's thought to where their weapons and ammo are manufactured. Because export restrictions from blue areas seem like a certainty.

A bigger question is, what happens to the nuclear weapons? After Ukraine, the breakaway area might be disinclined to let go of any inside their borders. But would they be allowed to? I suspect that, more than almost anything else, the blue areas would refuse to have a nuclear-armed wingnut state on their border.

Power grid interconnect? Depends on exactly where the borders are. That is, are the generators (especially the hydro dams) inside or outside?

One other issue comes to mind. What kind of trade agreements will there be? Do existing agreements apply to either or both of the new entities? And how long would it take to agree to new ones? Including between the two resulting countries. Could be some serious economic impact there.

[Michael Cain]

Can we survive without a Deep State committed to preserving the union above all else?

If 38 states decide they would prefer a partition, how does a Deep State dedicated to preserving the Union stop them? 38 is enough to call a Convention and write and adopt the necessary Amendments.

I started in 2012. (Note that in 2012 a partition suggestion at LG&M was laughed at by everyone; today, people there semi-seriously suggest a blue-state secession, or letting the red states go.) My time frame was 25 years before people would ask serious questions about making it work, and 50 years for it to happen. No one likes my short answer about some of the possible serious questions. Eg, "What about Social Security?" If 38 states have decided on a partition, SS questions are just accounting to be negotiated. Once the Boomers are dead, the accounting is easier.

Assorted things probably have to occur first: the dollar stops being the only global reserve currency, the deficit/debt issue gets resolved in some fashion, the US stops being a global conventional power. The first two the Republicans may deal with -- a major default would probably take care of those, painfully.

[Michael Cain]

Power grid interconnect?

The Western Interconnect/Eastern Interconnect separation will not be seriously breached. Within ten years, the Western Interconnect will make heavy use of a region-wide bulk transfer network. One of two architectures: one would be a large ring, the other would be a hub-and-spoke arrangement with the hub in the Southern California/Las Vegas/Phoenix triangle. The latter is more likely, the California legislature and CAISO are doing the right things. In either case, look for a conflict between the western states and the federal government over control of the BPA and WPA transmission networks.

Idaho-plus-eastern-Oregon as a state is one thing. That as a separate "country" is quite another, since the first thing such an entity would have to do in terms of electricity is confiscate a great deal of federal and private infrastructure.

[nous]

Michael - I'm not sure what this question - If 38 states decide they would prefer a partition, how does a Deep State dedicated to preserving the Union stop them? - has to do with what I was exploring.

The Deep State can prevent a small separatist movement like the American Redoubt from seceding and gaining independence while the federal government still existed. My question is not about this. It is about whether any of the smaller political confederations that would form after your partition would have anything like that power to prevent the American Redoubt from gaining de facto independence - especially when Texas and other likely political entities would probably see some political gain in supporting the American Redoubt against any political entity that they saw as being dominated by the blue populations of LA, SF, Portland, Seattle, and Denver.

So it's confusing to me why you keep trying to put my questions into another context when examining them.

This is about how what cannot succeed now might come to affect what comes after.

Because the ideas that drive this movement today won't go away after a partition. And a partition will make the forces that keep them at bay today much weaker.

[liberal japonicus]

I'm not sure how this can plug into these discussions, but I did my masters at U of Oregon and the state was an interesting case. While there is a huge division between the coastal strip and the high plateau desert, those two areas really share a leave me alone attitude that papers over the substantial differences. You see that 'leave me alone' with things like euthanasia (medically assisted suicide law "Death with Dignity" was initially passed in 1994
https://www.cga.ct.gov/2002/rpt/2002-r-0077.htm
drug legalization (first state to decriminalize all illegal drugs at the user amount)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Oregon_Ballot_Measure_110
One of only 5 states with no sales tax (the others are Montana, New Hampshire, Alaska and Delaware) It is also the only state with no legal restrictions on abortion.

I feel like this deeply rooted trait is what keeps the two sections of the state together, despite the east sharing traits with Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and the west more like a liberal state.

[wj]

lj, it seems like what you are saying is that Oregon has an authentic libertarian attitude, whereas the states to its east have more of a conservative/reactionary attitude. (CharlesWT will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong on that.) That is, Oregonians are willing to try out new, even radically new, ideas in pursuit of less government. As distinct from places where they are fine with lots of government intervention -- as long as it is enforce their own views on society and culture.

[Michael Cain]

I'm not sure what this question - If 38 states decide they would prefer a partition, how does a Deep State dedicated to preserving the Union stop them? - has to do with what I was exploring.

I took the "we" and "union" in the sentence I quoted to mean the current 50-state arrangement. If you meant something different, disregard my remarks.

Discussions like this are difficult because no one agrees on the foundation view of the future. I see a situation where the 50-state US is functional, but there is a great deal of regional unhappiness about decisions made on a continental scale. Lots of reasons proposed for doing such a split: my climate concerns, groups who think they can establish a theocracy, etc.

The American Redoubt, at least as that was originally used, sees a future where the civilian government, the finance system, and the power grid have all collapsed. They're going to hide out and rebuild. There's no one organized enough to oppose that. Pretty standard dystopian fare, that.

There are lots of state realignments that get proposed, eg moving eastern Oregon to be part of Idaho. While most of these are rural areas seeking "freedom" from what they perceive as urban dominance, not all of them take that form. The most recent proposal for splitting California into several states was financed by a guy whose goal was to relieve the urban area centered on San Francisco Bay from the obligations of financial support for rural California.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"The most recent proposal for splitting California into several states was financed by a guy whose goal was to relieve the urban area centered on San Francisco Bay from the obligations of financial support for rural California."

Hard to believe that WATER wouldn't be a huge part of any scheme to split California, and the fights about such a split.

[wj]

Hard to believe that WATER wouldn't be a huge part of any scheme to split California, and the fights about such a split.

Hardly novel to have someone focused on a single point of irritation, while ignoring all the other factors which would come up if their idea was taken seriously. Especially as so many people think that things like electricity, water, etc. just arrive magically at their home or business -- so why should it stop just because boundaries shift? consider the interstate compact which splits up the water from the Colorado River**. If any of those states split, which successor gets the old state's allocation? Or does their water just revert?

** Ignoring, for the moment, the shortcomings in that compact. Which are serious, to put it mildly.

[liberal japonicus]

I'm not really sure what an 'authentic' libertarian attitude, it seems a bit like a true Scotsman. A more cynical view might be that the libertarian attitudes tend to give cover to those who do want to enforce their views. Like Ammon Bundy, who led the Malheur reserve takeover
The results of this study contravene many of the myths surrounding the People’s Rights network. Instead of a more traditional “anti-government” narrative, People’s Rights leaders have expressed a desire for governmental power to be used to protect the “righteous” against “wicked” liberals, antifa, Black Lives Matter activists, and others. Several People’s Rights leaders are running for elected office—to become the government. Absent that sort of intervention, leaders have proposed a type of armed enclave-style “neighborhood” nationalism, where “righteous” neighbors stand against the “wicked.” People’s Rights leaders have often defined the “wicked” using far-right conspiracism, racism, antisemitism, anti-indigenous, and anti-transgender sentiment.

https://www.irehr.org/reports/peoples-rights-report/

[CharlesWT]

lj, it seems like what you are saying is that Oregon has an authentic libertarian attitude, whereas the states to its east have more of a conservative/reactionary attitude. (CharlesWT will no doubt correct me if I'm wrong on that.)

In one ranking, Oregon ranks 9th in the number of libertarians per capita behind Montana, New Hampshire, Alaska, New Mexico, Idaho, Nevada, Texas, and Washington.

Which States Have the Most Libertarians? This Map Will Tell You.: Montana and New Hampshire look promising, but most of the East Coast is a no-go zone.

But two libertarian think tanks rank it pretty low on things considered important by libertarians.

"27. Oregon"
Freedom in the 50 states: An index of personal and economic freedom (Mercatus Center- George Mason University - .pdf - page 19)

"44. Oregon"
Freedom in the 50 states: An index of personal and economic freedom (Cato Institute - .pdf - page 59)

[CharlesWT]

I think I have a comment in moderation...

fixed -- wj

[wj]

An interesting bit about libertarian vs conservative, this from Wyoming (yes, I got the right state this time):

the state House has effectively shelved a number of bills resembling proposals that have sailed to passage elsewhere and that reflect the growing GOP anti-“woke” crusade:

• A school-choice bill that would create a scholarship fund for students to attend private instead of public schools.
  
• A bill modeled on Florida’s education bill, dubbed “don’t say gay” by critics, that would ban the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade.
  
• A bill that would ban state officials from contracting with businesses and investment funds that boycott fossil fuels or emphasize political or social-justice goals.
  
• A bill called “Chloe’s Law” that would forbid doctors from providing hormone blockers and gender-affirming surgery to children.

That's folks taking libertarian seriously. And, it seems, saying rude things about DeSantis as they do so.

[CharlesWT]

Except for the school-choice bill, none of it seems very libertarian.

[wj]

Charles, the point is that these attempts at government control were rejected in Wyoming. After being implemented in various other red states.

[CharlesWT]

Except for the school-choice bill, good for Wyoming.

[Michael Cain]

Unlike previous sessions, this year the Wyoming legislature is killing off in committee almost all of the bills in the "save coal no matter how many court cases we lose or how much Wyoming residents have to pay for their electricity" category.

[wj]

I suppose it's a possible** benefit of being a one party state: legislators can do the right thing without fear of being smeared as members of the other party. We see something similar in California from time to time.

** Far from certain (see, for example, Tennessee.) But possible.

[wonkie]

A video popped up on my FB feed that is a revival of the Reagan era attempt to sell public land. It's all framed as "victimized residents of western states have no rights over their own land because coastal elites are managing everything."

Of all the evil things Republicans try to do, this cuts more deeply with me than any other issue. The public land does not belong to the selfish, entitled parasitic exploiters who have had subsidized access to it for generations. FUck ranchers. I quit eating beef decades ago because of the way they are allowed to abuse our public land.

The irony is, of course, that if federal land was sold, the ranchers would not be able to buy it. The land would go to big corporations who would either kick the ranchers off directly or drive them off by raising the costs of access. Local people would have the same relationship to the land that the poor had in England back in the days when people go executed for killing the king's rabbits.

Rural snobbery is a real phenomenon. The belief is that, for some reason, rural people are so special, so uniquely American, so very much the embodiment of real true American values that they are entitled to subsidized access to public land without restriction. I've seen forest rangers hanged in effigy in Idaho. I've seen towns where the businesses had signs up saying that they didn't want anyone who supported the forest service to shop in their store. (I gladly supported their boycott.) Hatemongering about "outsiders" is normative---while demanding and getting our tax dollars.
The line is "Outsiders don't understand us." That's the same line Jim Crow supporters used.
Anyway I think the next big thing from the Republicans will be attacks on our public land. As is normal, the goal will be to make the rich richer and feed the corporations, but the slogans will be the usual appeal to the self-pity, faux victimization, and entitlement without responsibility which is so important to Republican voters.

[nous]

Agree, wonkie. And as I remember it, the people in WI during my youth who voiced this attitude were also the people drawn to the RW militias of the time.

One of them is currently a sheriff's deputy and a big time NRA nut. He's also a sexist and a racist in the quiet midwestern way.

[Michael Cain]

Historically, the federal government either gave the public lands to the states, or sold them for nearly nominal amounts to individuals in tiny lots, or gave them to giant corporations for the express purpose of getting transcontinental railroads built. (The checkerboard pattern for those sections to avoid giving the railroads too much power still exists today.) Irregular chunks for mining. About 1905 the policy unofficially changed to drop the first and third option -- and the second largely stopped on its own because all the good land was gone. In 1976 the feds retaining ownership policy was made official, with essentially all members of Congress from western states voting against.

Granted, much of that view is based on my time working for a western state legislature. In a state that has reached the point if the public lands were ceded, and someone suggested selling it to the rural interests or giant corporations, the Front Range urban corridor -- now ~75% of the population -- would say, "Like hell you will!"

[wonkie]

Big corporations are buying up ranches and farms. THey won't stop with the purchase of private land.
Ranchers have a vested interest in NOT owning the grazing lands they use since, as long as they don't own it, they don't have to pay taxes on it, and they don't have to pay to recover overgrazed land. They don't pay for restoration of creek damaged by trampling. They often don't have to pay to put roads in or pay for the upkeep on roads they use. Much of the National Forest, BLM and Department of land Reclamation is grazed by ranchers who lease access.
Timber towns in the West get their timber from public land. Timber workers very often have the attitude that the national forests exist to provide them with jobs. They are pretty open about it, actually. SO entitled that they don't see their entitlement as entitlement.
IN western Washington, there's lots of private timber land, but the timber companies and timber towns still think the national forest is there for their use. They talk about wilderness designation or regulation to protect salmon as "locking up" the land. No, giving them access to transform forests into tree farms is locking up our land. Protecting the land means that everyone now and future generations will have access--that's not locking anyone out including loggers who are willing to behave responsibly.

Of course, none of that stops them from everlasting bitching about too much government regulation intended to keep the "multi" in multi-use management of the public land they lease.

[nous]

If that land gets sold it will be sold to millionaires who will buy up huge parcels and designate them as conservation easements that are protected from any commercial concerns. This lets them write off the land for their taxes to offset their income and also drives up the value of their own developable wilderness property by reducing the amount of land available for new development. Lets them keep out the riffraff and feel good about all they have done to protect the environment.

You see this all over the place in the ski resort meccas - especially in WY because of their state tax policy.

TLDR - hello again, feudalism.

[Michael Cain]

Assume a transfer of the federal public lands to each of the individual states.

In all western states where I'm aware of the details, grazing fees on state lands run about 5x the federal grazing fees. Federal grazing fees have been held artificially low by ag interests in other parts of the country.

In Wyoming, despite there being more coal on private and state land than on federal land, most of the coal produced has been from federal land. Why? The federal taxes are lower and the environmental restrictions are much lower than the state taxes and restrictions.

In my western state, I have no fear that somehow millionaires are going to acquire much of those lands so long as the state has control. Nor in most other western states as well. I refer you to Colorado College's ongoing State of the Rockies opinion surveys of the Interior West.

The reason that right-wing conservatives have become fond of trying to push sovereignty* to the county level in the West is because they know they've already lost the public land fight at the state level.

* Mildly interesting side note. When I worked for the state legislature, one of my side assignments one summer was documenting a century of cases where counties tried to claim sovereignty in Colorado. Slapped down, every single time.

[wj]

The reason that right-wing conservatives have become fond of trying to push sovereignty* to the county level in the West is because they know they've already lost the public land fight at the state level.

If you can't get your way at the Federal level, rant about "states' rights." If you can't get your way at the state level either, go for county sovereignty. Not sure where they go when it turns out that doesn't work either....

[nous]

I'm not worried that federal lands will be transferred to states and then be bought by millionaires. I'm just saying that all the people who are mad about the feds (i.e. taxpayers) owning all that land and thinking it should belong to people have very little chance of getting ahold of any of that land, and that their chances of getting it for grazing are worse if it was in private hands. All that land would end up completely out of their hands if it were to become privately owned. All of that land would become private reserves.

Hence my feudalism comment.

[bobbyp]

In 1976 the feds retaining ownership policy was made official, with essentially all members of Congress from western states voting against.

The bill was introduced in the Senate by a senator from Colorado (Haskell-D) and passed 78-11. The House vote was remarkably bi-partisan, but over 100 members sat it out, including Don Young (R-baked Alaska).

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/94-1976/h1020

You don't see those kinds of votes any more.

[GftNC]

I thought this, in today's WaPo, was interesting about the need for Dems to seize this moment (the revelations about the contrast between what Fox hosts were saying on air and what they were saying in correspondence about the Trump election narrative) to really drive home to as much of the electorate as possible the role that Fox has played in knowingly disseminating false propaganda. Rupert Murdoch's testimony really helps.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/02/fox-news-texts-rupert-murdoch-democrats/

If anybody can't read because of firewall, say so and I will copy and paste.

[ral]

Here is a
gift link

[GftNC]

And how delightful it is to see that Chuck Schumer, for one, is already running with this. Here's hoping it cuts through to most of the electorate (although the Dems will have to do a lot to ensure it does - they still have not managed to convince the electorate of Biden's undoubted achievements. All that seems to stick are his failures, which just goes to show how efficient is the RWNJ noise machine.)

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/chuck-schumer-fox-news-chris-hayes_n_6401af22e4b00de96ad92b19

[nous]

Homeland Security; Science, Space, and Technology.

[GftNC]

This book review of Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity by Sander van der Linden was in today's Times (a Murdoch paper, lest we forget, which makes the following paragraph, the first, particularly striking). It sounds like an interesting book; the subject is certainly interesting.

The timeliness of this book was brought home to me several times in the past few weeks. Not least by events in America, where depositions in the case being brought by the makers of the Dominion voting machines against Fox News revealed, in essence, that the station had acted as a conduit for misinformation concerning alleged ballot-rigging. And had done it while knowing it to be false. Since executives at Fox News appear to have acted partly out of concern for their ratings, while confiding among themselves that the principal accuser, Donald Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell, was nuts, they provided an illustration of the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Believing her own theory, Powell was guilty of misinformation; not believing it, they were guilty of disinformation.

What certain key Fox commentators helped to propagate was possibly the most damaging conspiracy theory in a postwar democracy. As of the end of last year, 70 per cent of Republican voters still believed that the result of the 2020 election was “illegitimate”. Their belief in turn has made it very difficult for Republican politicians — who know perfectly well that the election was fair — to assert the truth. The loop is complete.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/foolproof-by-sander-van-der-linden-review-6s7gsmmwf

[Girl from the North Country]

It occurs to me that not everybody is so adept at getting through paywalls, so for anybody who is interested, this is the rest of that book review:

So how much less prone to this kind of thing are we in Britain? It is very hard to imagine Conservative or Labour politicians on the losing side in any future contest constructing a fantasy of a stolen election. But it really isn’t difficult any more to believe that a TV talk station might do it.

At the end of last year, complaints were lodged with Ofcom about the indulgence in vaccine misinformation by several of GB News’s presenters, notably the expert on the history of musical theatre Mark Steyn. In addition, at least one of its other regular presenters, Neil Oliver, has used his show as a kind of portal into the world of global conspiracism.

A few weeks ago, the chief executive of GB News, Angelo Frangopoulos, appeared on BBC Radio 4’s The Media Show to explain his (as far as I know unprecedented) decision to demand of Steyn that he pay any fines that might result from an adverse Ofcom decision. Steyn refused and departed. But what, Frangopoulos was asked, about the other misinformation regularly voiced on the channel? “Look,” he replied, “I don’t think we indulge conspiracy theories. We explore lots of different perspectives. At times, some of our presenters are, let’s say, edgy.” He added: “It’s good that there’s debate about a lot of the issues that we raise on GB News because there is clearly a market for it and the audience really engages with those conversations.” In fact these segments are rarely, if ever, “debates”.

The author of Foolproof, Sander van der Linden, is a professor of social psychology in society at the University of Cambridge — and therefore, ironically, is almost certainly set to become the target of the new breed of pandemic-induced misinformers who see behavioural psychology as a tool of the wicked establishment. I daresay you will be able to find them “debating” with each other on GB News.

Van der Linden’s work has concerned how misinformation is spread, how it gets to be believed and how it can best be combated. He is not concerned here (as we journalists and historians tend to be) with “debunking” misinformation. He knows it when he sees it and his mission is to give society the tools for dealing with it.

His first point is that misinformation spreads more quickly than correct information. To use the extended metaphor that he deploys throughout the book, it is a virus with a high R number. This rapid spread of untruth was marked enough in the days before electronic communication. He cites the example of the “great moon hoax” of 1835, in which a New York newspaper concocted a series of stories about the exotic flora and fauna and even civilisation that a British scientist was supposed to have discovered on the moon. It took weeks for the correction to take place and years before people stopped believing in the existence of a species of lunar man-bats.

No one died as a result on the moon hoax. But people certainly die today because of misinformation spread with wildfire rapidity on social media. Van der Linden instances cases of the murder and lynching of innocent travellers in rural India after rumours of child kidnappings spread on WhatsApp groups.

But what do you do about it? Here, van der Linden goes well beyond what more impressionistic writers about conspiracy theories and misinformation can manage (I raise my own hand to this one). Debunking is all well and good and necessary, his research tells him, but insufficient because it’s often just too late. It is, to use his metaphor, a therapeutic applied to the infected person when what is needed is an inoculation to diminish the chances that they will be taken in by future misinformation.

He details experiments he and his collaborators have carried out in which different groups were given exposure to the scientific consensus on climate change and to a very common kind of misinformation — a large petition of 31,000 supposed experts questioning the reality of manmade global warming (the Oregon Petition was real, in the sense that it existed and has been widely used to discredit the idea of global warming, but not real in the sense that the 31,000 signatories were not experts). In groups that merely saw both, the percentage who still accepted the scientific consensus dropped considerably. But in groups who were “inoculated” by being told that there were petitions in circulation that made questionable claims of a certain kind, the percentage held up.

An example in practice of such prebunking, the author reminds us, came in February last year when, in advance of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration warned the world to expect a flood of Russian disinformation aimed at blaming the coming hostilities on “genocidal” Ukrainian attacks. When those false claims duly arrived, almost no one believed them.

On the other hand, you might object that, in advance of the 2020 election, there were dozens of warnings from commentators that Donald Trump, should he lose, would claim the election was stolen. He’d done it before, even when he’d won. Yet when it happened again, the combination of partisanship and self-interest overcame whatever inoculative effect the warning might have achieved. It is worth noting that the democratic catastrophe this has represented was achieved without any assistance being required from malign outside actors. Americans did it to themselves. This fact should terrify all of us who look to that country as the critical ally in the face of autocratic aggression.

Even so, I found Van der Linden’s experimental results encouraging at a time when it often seems that we are fighting a losing battle against misinformation. Especially since his work also suggests that the brain, through the formation of neural networks, can form a sort of habit of seeing the patterns in misinformation and recognising it as it arrives — just as it can form the opposite habit. This argues that critical thinking and source evaluation should play a key role at every level of education, helping to instil the habit of true scepticism and not the hijacked version so beloved of misinformers.

[wj]

critical thinking and source evaluation should play a key role at every level of education, helping to instil the habit of true scepticism and not the hijacked version so beloved of misinformers.

Which is, no doubt, why the reactionaries are trying so hard to destroy the education system. If kids are taught how to evaluate sources, and how to do critical thinking, poof! there goes the reactionaries future as politicians, grifters, etc.

[nous]

I'm prepping for my writing research class that's starting in a month. I teach (in large part) the CML Media Lit Kit:

https://www.medialit.org/sites/default/files/01a_mlkorientation_rev2_0.pdf

The Five Core Concepts

1. All media messages are constructed.
2. Media messages are constructed using a creative language with its own rules.
3. Different people experience the same media message differently.
4. Media have embedded values and points of view.
5. Most media messages are organized to gain profit and/or power.

It's been developed by the Center for Media Literacy in association with the Association of College and Research Librarians.

Librarians are under just as heavy a barrage of RW threat as are teachers and drag queens:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/02/culture-war-stacks-librarians-marshal-against-rising-book-bans/

This is all going to get uglier and more violent than the last round of McCarthyism.

And never forget that T. Rump's mentor was McCarthy's lawyer.

This is all at the core of the modern RW identity.

You can teach media literacy, but it does no good to do so unless you can also convince people to slow the fuck down and not leap to conclusions or get distracted by all the shit they are flooding you with.

You have to break the social media confirmation cycle at the first input loop and do your media literacy questions there before getting caught in the Gallop.

[nous]

It's too bad that Foolproof is 368 pages, and thus awkward to teach as a text for a writing course.

[ral]

My money is on the librarians.

[wj]

Librarians are under just as heavy a barrage of RW threat as are teachers and drag queens:

We have seen that here, just in the past week. RWNJs (mostly not even from here) at a school board meeting demanding that the schools remove various books which offend them from the school libraries. Note that these were not books which students were assigned to read for class. Just books which were available to those who were interested to read them. (And likely available from the public library as well. Albeit a touch less conveniently.)

So far, the school board has listened politely to the would-bebook burners, and to those (including various students from the district) who oppose them. And decided to leave the books where they are.

My money is on the librarians.

Mine, too. But then, my family runs to librarians. Both school librarians and in public libraries.

[Girl from the North Country]

Ah, John Stewart, how good he can be. I got this two minute segment from BJ:

https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1631686514101895169

[GftNC]

Ah, John Stewart, how good he can be. I got this two minute segment from BJ:

https://twitter.com/TheTNHoller/status/1631686514101895169

[Girl from the North Country]

JON Stewart!

[Michael Cain]

Haven't commented for several days. Last week we got my wife installed in the interim memory care facility while we wait for the place we want her long-term to finish up assorted permits. To give credit where it's due, my daughter got her installed and is doing daily visits. If I visited today and my wife said, "Take me home," I would even though it's the wrong thing to do. Even though her family, our family, our friends all tell me that it's the wrong thing.

I spend part of each day cleaning up the large clutter that has accumulated over the last two years. Some parts of it I can deal with, although how many worn-once socks can be stuffed in odd places? The part that really rips me up is the mountain of notes she wrote to herself -- and promptly misplaced amongst the piles -- trying to keep track of random memories. You can trace just how much worse she's gotten over that time.

[JanieM]

Oh, Michael....

What a hard thing. Thanks for updating us -- I've been meaning to ask you how things were going with your quest, and now we know. Good luck holding to your resolve.

Your daughter visiting every day reminds me of my brother visiting my mom every evening when she went into "rehab" in the fall of 2019, at the age of 96. They would chat and watch Jeopardy, and my mom told me on the phone that my brother was doing a lot of little things for her, "even things a woman would ordinarily do," like hang up my mom's clothes. (To her credit, my mom never told me that a girl wasn't supposed to like math. But she certainly had a lot of other strict notions about gender roles.)

My brother kept to this routine every night for six months. Then Covid came and there was no more visiting.

[Girl from the North Country]

What Janie said in her first two paras. The notes reminded me of a poetry anthology I found between my poetry-loving father's first and second strokes, with his painfully strange and almost illegible pencilled marginal notes. The deterioration of a loved one is so very terrible, and something almost all of us will have to deal with, sooner or later. Sometimes I wonder about the phenomenon of our modern, elongated lives.....

[wj]

Michael, I can definitly sympathize.

I've just gotten my younger brother into an assisted living facility (and that is only Parkinson's). 6+ months to sort thru which things in a two story house can fit in a 1 bedroom apartment. Repeatedly watching someone who was so active spend a minute or more struggling just to get into a car is rough. But at least his mind is still sharp. Your situation has to be orders of magnitude harder.