Obsidian Wings

Romans and Greek elections

by liberal japonicus

The title comes from Harold McMillan's line about the British being the Greeks to the US Romans. He said it several times, probably to make sure that we understood it, here is a longer version from a letter to Richard Crossman (whose diaries inspired the Yes Minister series)

We, my dear Crossman, are Greeks in this American empire. You will find the Americans much as the Greeks found the Romans—great big, vulgar, bustling people, more vigorous than we are and also more idle, with more unspoiled virtues but also more corrupt. We must run AFHQ as the Greek slaves ran the operations of the Emperor Claudius.

So this is a thread to talk about some elections I heard they had over there.  Παρακαλώ!!

And a short postscript, here is the BBC piece explaining what Hung Parliaments are.

Liberal, Conservative, Whatever – Open Thread

by wj

We are way overdue for an open thread, and this is it. No doubt it will go off onto the testimony from ex-FBI Director Comey, once that gets going. But perhaps it will give those of you in earlier time zones (which is pretty much everybody else) something to talk about before that starts.)

Over the past few decades, we have seen increasing divisions in our country. Team/partisan divisions. Liberal/conservative divisions (which largely overlap, but are not really the same thing). But this year, we seem to have moved to a three-way division.

We have liberals, conservatives, and a group which, for lack of a better term, I will label the latter-day Know Nothings. I will cheerfully put words into their (your) mouths, specifically on the subject of President Trump.

Liberals (including several here): Trump is an incompetent nut case and an embarrassment. We disagree with pretty much everything he says and does. In fact, there are only two positive things to be said about him:
1) He is keeping out folks energized, where otherwise they would probably be sitting brooding in the corner.
2) His incompetence is such that, while he says horrible stuff, he is failing to actually get a lot of it done.
A President Pence would probably be able to actually enact far more stuff that we would dislike. But at least we wouldn’t have to worry that he would launch a major war out of pique or something.

Conservatives (including several here): Trump is an incompetent nut case and an embarrassment. Sure, he has said some things we agree with (subject to change at any instant), and even done a couple of things we approve of. But a President Pence would actually do lots better on both fronts. And he wouldn’t embarrass us by association -- not to mention making major losses in 2018 less likely. Plus, he would refrain from offending our allies left and right, while embracing scumbag dictators at every turn.

Know Nothings (of which I haven’t noticed any here): Trump is our boy. He says things that we have long wanted to say, but have felt constrained from saying. And, as a bonus, offends a lot of folks who have been disrespecting us. He isn’t actually getting much done, and some of the things he says he will do would hurt us if he did do them, but we don’t care. He says things that are obviously untrue, and we still don't care. He makes us feel like we matter; like we are important again. And that’s enough.

No doubt many of you can come up with more for all three. But I think that sums up much of their position. And the position of the Know Nothings suggests that, contrary to a lot of hopes/expectations from the left, Trump actions which hurt his base aren’t likely to significantly erode it. As long as he keeps spewing bile, they’ll forgive almost anything.

Abigail Adams and Me

by JanieM

Some years ago I read Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams, by Lynne Withey, and John Adams, by David McCullogh, in quick succession. Unexpectedly, I ended up thinking a lot about communication.

John Adams took John Quincy to France when JQ was about ten years old. The trip took more than three months, then it took three more months for a letter to get back to Abigail saying that her husband and son had been safe and well in France as of three months before she got the letter.

By contrast, during the five years when my son lived in China, we could talk via Skype every day if we wanted to.

With video.

For free.

California -- What Happened?

by wj

California has a reputation, especially from far away, as a liberal bastion. But while it definitely is a solid blue state today, how accurate is that liberal image really? Yes, there are highly visible liberal areas: Los Angeles (city, not metro area), San Francisco, Berkeley, West Hollywood. But overall?

First, a bit of history. For the first 40+ years of my life, there were two paths to becoming Governor of California. You could be named Edmund G. Brown (Sr. or Jr.) . . . or you could win the Republican primary. Earl Warren or Ronald Reagan . . . Republicans everywhere you look. Republican Presidential candidates routinely got California's electoral college votes. And, for most of that time, one of California's US Senators was a Republican as well. (There were a couple of years when both were Democrats; an equal number when both were Republicans.) In short, not really your stereoytypical liberal blue state.

But then (circa 1990), something changed. Or, perhaps more accurately, a threshold was crossed by an on-going trend. The Republican Party, which had been getting steadily more conservative, went xenophobic as well. A Republican-driven ballot proposition (Prop 187) established a citizenship test for public education, non-emergency health service, etc. (NB: it was eventually found to be unconstitutional.) The proposition was endorsed by the Republican Governor.

Since then: the Governor generally has been a Democrat**. Both Senators have been Democrats. Both houses of the state legislature have overwhelming (over 2/3) Democratic majorities. All of the statewide elected offices are held by Democrats and have been for over a decade.

Did California abruptly get more liberal? Having lived thru it, I would have to say no. Or, at most, marginally. And most of that was more tolerance for (especially) ethnic diversity than anything else.

What happened was that the GOP went for ideological purity -- their candidates have been a mix of way far right of center with a leavening of the manifestly incompetent. And so they have lost. Even against someone as far left of center as Senator Boxer, they have contrived to lose repeatedly. Meanwhile, the Democrats went "big tent". For instance, my state senator is a Democrat who was originally elected as essentially a one-issue candidate -- the one issue being strong opposition to strikes by public employee unions (his prime opponent being the ex-head of the state teachers' union). Not exactly your stereotypical liberal position.

The future, however, could be different. Recently, a couple of special features have been added. First, as a result of a ballot initiative, we went with a non-partisan (and, more importantly, non-politician) body which draws district lines for the state legislature and for Congress. And yes, contrary to assumptions I have seen posted here and elsewhere, it really is a non-partisan body. As a result, we don't have the kind of classic gerrymander district shapes you see in, for example, North Carolina District 12.

Second, (again as the result of a ballot initiative) we have converted to a "top-two" primary system. That is, the two highest vote-getters in the primary, regardless of party get to the general election. In 2016, a couple of dozen state legislative and Congressional races, plus the US Senate race, saw two candidates from the same party pitted against each other.

The result of these two changes could be an increased premium on moderation. If you want to win, it isn't enough to appeal to the base of your party. You increasingly have to be in a position to attract voters from the other party. That means more moderation from the candidates. And we are already starting to see exactly that. There may not be any visible change in the probability of California's electoral votes going to the Democratic Presidential candidate. But that says more about who is likely to win the Republican nomination via party-only primaries elsewhere than it does about where California's voters are at.

In my more optimistic moments, I wonder if (hope) that we will eventually see something similar at the national level.

** The one exception, Arnold Schwarzenegger, won initially in a free-for-all to replace a recalled (Democratic) governor. There were actually 135(!) candidates who qualified for the ballot -- of whom a half dozen were actually serious contenders. Under the rules, a plurality was sufficient; no run-off required. A serious name recognition advantage, and major unhappiness with the incumbent Democrat, got the job done . . . without a majority. And note that Arnold was substantially more moderate/liberal that the other Republicans on the ballot. To the point where I doubt he could have won a GOP-only primary.

A start of the week thread with an invitation to decloak

by liberal japonicus

Earlier, I suggested we have an open thread with an invitation to delurk. So here it is. Of course, people who aren't lurking are welcome as well.

Apple Blossom Time

by JanieM
I was going to write a post about grandmas, but it veered off into something else.

The Wikipedia entry on Samhain says this:

Wiccans believe that at Samhain the veil between this world and the afterlife is at its thinnest point of the whole year, making it easier to communicate with those who have left this world.

You might well ask why I’m thinking about Samhain in May, and there actually is a reason…

…connected to these lines from one of Bilbo’s poems, lines that float through my mind now and then:

I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.

Maybe it’s a side effect of getting older and being grateful for every new springtime I get to see, or maybe it has to do with living in Maine, where spring is the annual reward for making it through a season when twenty degrees feels like a heat wave. Either way, the weeks from early April till late May are my favorite time of year, black flies and all. (Black flies were put here by God, or the Universe, to remind us that nothing is perfect.)

The spring peepers wake up in early April and sing their hearts out every night, looking for frog love. Around the same time – though it varies wildly from one year to the next – the ice on the lake starts to sport a blue fringe, then gradually recedes until it is no more. By the third week in April the grass is greening, and in early May there's a perfect unmown carpet all over everything. Around the time when some people (in a hurry) mow the grass for the first time, the trees are budding out, and the whole world has a skim of greens, mostly pale and delicate, that evolves from one day to the next until the trees are in full leaf, if not yet at their full summer shades.

That's where we are in Maine right now.

I drove to town yesterday and was reminded yet again – every year is new! – that lilacs are everywhere. My theory is that the early European settlers in this harsh landscape didn't have time for flower gardens, but they liked lovely things as much as the next person, and lilacs and daisies were the answer to that. You could throw some lilacs into the ground and then neglect them mercilessly, and yet they'd survive and persist and give you a week or so of beauty – and that scent! – every year. Daisies of all kinds thrive here without a lot of care, so says a gardener friend of mine. And maple trees were here before you, and could be tapped to make syrup and strategically placed to make shade. So there was the stalwart trio of growing things on the old farmsteads: maple trees, lilacs, and daisies. They're everywhere, to this day.

Also: apple blossoms.

And that's where Samhain comes into it. I've been drinking in springtime over these weeks, as I always try to do, appreciating every beautiful day as if it will be gone tomorrow. And for some reason, that line about the thinning of the veil keeps popping into my mind. I didn't originally read it in a Wiki entry; it's probably a remnant of Starhawk's novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, or maybe of conversations with Wiccan friends I used to know. In any case, it's been popping up so relentlessly that I had to stop the other day and try to figure out why.

I think it's that for me the veil is thinnest not at Samhain, but at apple blossom time.

One of my grandmas lived her entire life in rural Ohio, and maybe it was her influence that taught me to tune in to the seasons in just the way I do. The seasons in rural Ohio track pretty well with the seasons in Maine, though they're offset a bit because the winters aren't so long there. But lilacs, maple trees, daisies, apple trees – they're all common to both landscapes.

My grandma lost the love of her life during apple blossom time in 1926, when my grandfather died of the ill health that had troubled him since his time in the trenches in World War I. She rarely spoke of him explicitly, but she treated apple blossom time as sacred, so that the very phrase carries connotations for me that can't really be put into words.

Here's the thing. At apple blossom time, I feel like I could walk around the corner and find my grandma as a young woman, going about her life in her usual hardworking, cheerful way. The day we moved into the old farmhouse in Maine I felt like I was walking into her movie. I wasn't, really, but I still get those echoes now and then, and they come most often in May.

The veil is indeed thin in the springtime.

KIC 8462852 Is At It Again

by wj

One of the ways we spot planets around other stars is by noticing the slight dimming which occurs when the planet comes between us and the star. And it's very slight -- which is why we only recently have been able to detect it.

Even then, mostly what we can find are rather large planets. For example, a planet the size of Jupiter coming between us and a (distant) start the size of the sun would result in about a 3% drop in brightness.

But then there's KIC 8462852 (aka "Boyajian's star", or more familiarly "Tabby's star"). This is one of those "clearly we don't know everything, by a long ways!" cases, because it dims by over 20%. We have no real clue what could cause that. As a result, we've got lots of wild speculations, but nothing that would even rise to the level of "theory."

And things are worse because the dimming is not periodic. So maybe not in orbit around the star after all. But then why does it repeat at all?

Just recently, it started to dim again. This has lead to a flurry activity among astronomers. Previous instances of dimming were detected after the fact, by looking as photos. This time, they hope, they can watch in real time, and gather a lot more data on what is actually happening. Fun times!

Please read this now

by liberal japonicus

I've never been one to say you must read something, I always assume that if I find something, folks a lot smarter than me (which is all of you) are going to find it as well. But for this piece in the Atlantic, entitled my Family's Slave, please read it.

I hadn’t come sooner to deliver Lola’s ashes in part because I wasn’t sure anyone here cared that much about her. I hadn’t expected this kind of grief. Before I could comfort Ebia, a woman walked in from the kitchen and wrapped her arms around her, and then she began wailing. The next thing I knew, the room erupted with sound. The old people—one of them blind, several with no teeth—were all crying and not holding anything back. It lasted about 10 minutes. I was so fascinated that I barely noticed the tears running down my own face.

 

We're Doomed?

by Ugh

I don't know what I think about Politico generally, they do some good reporting at times and other times it fits Charles Pierce's description as "Tiger Beat on the Potomac." That said, uh:

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus issued a stern warning at a recent senior staff meeting: Quit trying to secretly slip stuff to President Trump.

Just days earlier, K.T. McFarland, the deputy national security adviser, had given Trump a printout of two Time magazine covers. One, supposedly from the 1970s, warned of a coming ice age; the other, from 2008, about surviving global warming, according to four White House officials familiar with the matter.

Trump quickly got lathered up about the media’s hypocrisy. But there was a problem. The 1970s cover was fake, part of an Internet hoax that’s circulated for years. Staff chased down the truth and intervened before Trump tweeted or talked publicly about it.

The Deputy National Security Adviser to the President of the United States of America is "slipping" the President internet hoaxes in an attempt to influence his views in the direction she wanted and it would have worked if it wasn't for the meddling kids.  This is not confidence inspiring (other than perhaps they are such colossal fnckups it's holding them back).  Another horrific example at the link.

Of course Politico, instead of its staff grabbing their families and running screaming into the hills over the insanity, discusses this as Trump preferring an "open Oval Office with a free flow of ideas and inputs from both official and unofficial channels."  Alrighty then.  Politico is closer to the mark when they describe this sort of thing as a "seemingly endless Game of Thrones inside the West Wing."  More accurately, it's more like Mean Girls in the West Wing (I stole this but don't recall from where).

This is of course a direct reflection of our 45th President, who doesn't stand for anything but himself and can't remember what he said 3 minutes ago and/or doesn't care.  It struck me this morning that we are ruled by a needy, vindictive, narcissistic goldfish. If the hue fits...

Connections

by JanieM
Hypothesis: the following are all connected:

1. The impossibly rancorous political situation in the U.S.
2. The obscene level of wealth inequality in the U.S.
3. The increasingly scary stories coming out of the world of airline travel.

*****

People are a bad mood.

Fights on airplanes are both a tangible manifestation of and a metaphor for something larger.