Maxwell and Manson

Maya Angelou said it, many others have repeated it since, but apparently not enough have heard it and understand it and act accordingly.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Americans (maybe the entire world?) seemed pleasantly surprised that a jury found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty on five of six counts related to years of sexual abuse of dozens of minor children. One would think the general pattern of techniques used by Epstein and Maxwell are very familiar. Literally scoping out teenagers in poorer areas facing economic hardships and / or abuse in their families. Whisking them away to experience short bursts of the lux life, partly to entice them, partly to disorient them. Then introducing inappropriate conduct with an older woman to explain it away and normalize it as the level of abuse escalates.

Any sense of justice from hearing that verdict was quickly tamped down as a different story came to the forefront again, courtesy of a story in Rolling Stone magazine about Brian Warner / Marilyn Manson.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/marilyn-manson-abuse-allegations-1256888/

The title says it all: Marilyn Manson: The Monster Hiding in Plain Sight

The essence of the RS story is that over twelve women have come forward with nearly identical stories of abusive physical and psychological treatment of women around him since before his first album in 1994. Details range from use of a home-made vocal recording booth an apartment as a human cage ("no one can hear you scream"), what was likely a pretty warped home life as a child (leading him to first label his "art" as "beat up your mom music"), an early stage act featuring simulated physical abuse of a woman on stage, etc.

That's warped enough. Recollections from the twelve women (and some men) go far beyond that. Warner kept illicitly recorded video of nearly every sexual encounter AND PLAYED IT for others in his circle over time with more and more footage. After breaking up with a girlfriend, he recorded a song in 2009 called "I Want to Kill You Like They Do In the Movies" and filmed a video for the song featuring a lookalike for the ex-girlfriend. A later girlfriend after the fact described his behavior as "love bombing" -- overwhelming you with adoration and attention to race past normal relationship milestones while exploiting inner "neediness" to assist.

Stop and think for a moment about these two extremes of the same psycho / sexual abuse coin.

At first glance, the Epstein / Maxwell tact seems almost fairy tale like (at least a Fractured Fairy Tale) in comparison to the Brian Warner modus operandi. Mid-40s / 50s people in stylish clothes driving through your neighborhood in a luxury vehicle offering to give you pay for favors in a rich guy's condo on the beach? Later, you find out you "get" to fly on a private plane? To a private island?

Compared to... A creepy 20 year old made up like a retreaded Gene Simmons playing dissonant heavy metal noise with lyrics talking about killing and rape? Who behaves much the same way off stage? Who shows off an isolation chamber AND TELLS YOU WHAT IT'S FOR on your first date? Or the same guy doing the same thing in his 40s?

Are these scenarios really different from each other?

If you have been raised in America, it should be readily apparent that our society has not organized itself around the concept of reaching across multiple class boundaries and routinely giving a hand up to those closer to steerage. If it happens, it happens in a very organized, controlled sense -- usually through church groups, organized charities, scholarship programs, etc. That hand up doesn't EVER come from a random rich dude driving down your street in a Mercedes offering $200 for an afternoon of "chores around the mansion." People who own private jets have ZERO interest in offering free rides for fun to awkward teens to private islands. Forty year old music stars don't invite teenagers over for launch parties for their new album or sleepovers at the ranch. Something ELSE is ALWAYS going to be expected. People who employ those trappings to create relationships are very adept at tailoring those techniques to the psychological weaknesses of those in their sights.

Is this self delusion only limited to people around entertainment meccas or enclaves of the idle / evil rich?

Hardly.

Here's an odd story from personal experience.

About five or six years ago, I had taken some vacation days and decided to have a late breakfast at IHOP before getting started on my time-off chores. It's a weekday (Thursday) but apparently some local school had a holiday or staff day because within a minute or two of me being seated, two high school aged girls were immediately seated to my left.

I do my best to stay engrossed with perusing the news and deleting useless work emails on my phone but the girls began talking from the moment they sat down. And they talked. And talked. Their table was only two arm lengths away from me so it was impossible to NOT hear the conversation.

It started off with normal school stuff… After-school activities, softball practice, conflicts between different sports team practices (teens are HIGHLY overscheduled, BTW), college applications, parties...

Then they started talking about this one guy who is like TOTALLY the class Brad Pitt OMG OMG who goes to the same church they go to and is active in some youth church organization and was like pressuring me to go to a party sponsored by the CYC and I didn't really want to but he got real adamant about it and it had me really conflicted cuz like I'm not that religious and I didn’t' like being publicly pressured like that but he's like really cute but I think he might be a racist but he's like such a nice guy and so popular in school...

At that point, I put my phone down and just stared off into space to my right.

Amid that long, uninterrupted chatter there was that little phrase tossed in there... "I think he might be a racist." Just tossed into the larger description like it was a harmless personal choice like "cargo pants versus jeans" or "French fries versus onion rings."

The two girls kept talking and the conversation didn't slow down to reflect a SINGLE SECOND of cognitive dissonance registering in either of their minds. A student leader of your CHURCH group MIGHT be a RACIST? Getting ANGRY with you after initially pushing back on attending a party you clearly don't want to attend?

I live in an area where no new homes are being constructed for under roughly $450,000 and probably average $650,000. I'm pretty sure the public school district was in session that day so I'm pretty sure these girls attended a private high school. In other words, these were NOT disadvantaged youth with one might stereotype as empty "bad school" educations. They were both college-bound high achievers attending expensive private schools with every conceivable advantage.

Yet both had become seniors without developing the appropriate radar to spot looming problems like their racist Christian hunk. No adult in their life had sat them down for "the talk." Not about the birds and the bees. They probably learned that in third grade on the internet. I mean "the talk" about recognizing behaviors and attitudes so far beyond what anyone should see in public behavior from strangers that they act as GIANT RED FLAGS to stay the hell away. No one apparently had "the talk" about sexual boundaries, not only pertaining to physical behavior and when but even DISCUSSIONS about sexuality on an ongoing basis - a CONTINUOUS basis.

When things appear MILES out of the ordinary -- either in an unexpected good way or a reprehensible bad way -- SOMETHING IS UP. Get the hell out of there and stay away.

It seems very clear that social media is worsening this psychopathic feedback loop. Perpetrators use free media to normalize deviancy and fan their fame while millions are exposed to people flaunting the good life and great abs and bikini life that destroys self esteem making people so much more vulnerable if they ever cross paths with a manipulative psychopath. Until THAT cycle is broken, adults (teachers?) need to urgently rethink discussions about these matters with their children (students?). Maxwell and Manson won't be the last horror stories in the news reflecting this problem.

WTH

BOOK REVIEW: The Code Breaker

The Code Breaker -- Walter Isaacson -- 481 pages (536 with notes and index)

The Code Breaker is the latest book written by Walter Isaacson that extends themes covered in many of Isaacson's recent books on Leonardo da VInci, Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, et al related to specific technical innovations and the mindsets of the people leading those innovations. His da Vinci book focused on synergies between medicine, mechanics and art that da Vinci leveraged in his works. His Jobs book explained how conceptual technology background and a mix of liberal arts combined with a maniacal and often mean / arrogant personality became instrumental in three different companies leveraging computer technology for consumers and entertainment. The Code Breaker uses the same blended analysis of personalities and sciences to explain how COVID vaccines were created in such a short time and provide different ways of thinking about the ethical questions raised by the underlying technology.

The Book Review

The full title of the book is The Code Breaker - Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race, reflecting the three key areas of focus within the book. However, Isaacson spends relatively little time on "wayback machine" narratives about the lives of key figures as they were growing up, etc. Unlike other authors writing similar books, there is no prose that recounts inner dialog in people's head as they prepare to cross the street to head into a crucial meeting (in other words, complete fabrications the author could not possibly know or verify). Isaacson writes predominately in the present tense but he does often break the "fourth wall" of the book and state his own opinion in the first person. He is also not one to rely on subliminal foreshadowing. When a term or technology is introduced that will come back later, he states directly, "we will come back to this later." He also writes in very short chapters with subsection headings within them, making it easier to remember how the content will be tied to the larger outline. In general, Isaacson is a very concise writer and the technical explanations tend to click.

The areas where first person prose comes into play most heavily involve discussions about the societal concerns about the technologies being discussed and the ethical questions raised by their use. The book covers debates held in the medical and scientific community over the years at a variety of locations covering these topics but this material only accounts for roughly 160 pages of the larger 481 page book, including Isaacson's own personal opinions which are well separated from those of the figures in the narrative.

In general, the book is well organized and provides a clear explanation of how unique study and career choices by Jennifer Doudna to focus on RNA biochemistry produced insights that leveraged decades of work in multiple disciplines to provide the treatments needed to contain what is still a huge medical threat to the world. The material also explains how a different type of managerial intelligence exhibited by Doudna as her career involved from a gifted individual contributor in a lab to a lab director responsible for selecting team members with the best mix of intelligence, competitiveness and collaboration was VITAL to the success she and her teams experienced.

All worth $21.49 and a few hours of time to read.

But -- as they say -- that's not why I'm writing...

The Real Value of The Book

The real value of reading The Code Breaker is it provides a clear understanding of the science involved in the COVID vaccines that came from nowhere and by describing that work, makes it clear that the technology wasn't rushed out of nowhere but builds upon nearly 35 years of work dating back to 1984. It isn't likely reading this book will change the mind of a militant anti-vaxer. However, it summarizes the vocabulary, technology and milestones that make the process easier to understand for average citizens and explains why the mechanisms are essentially programmable, making it MUCH simpler to match on new virus threats with less regression testing in clinical trials. Having more laypersons with this vocabulary and understanding might raise the level of debate enough to provide a better starting point for the next pandemic -- or even the next wave of the current pandemic.

The book explains the components of "gene editing" capabilities and resulting vaccines in three related areas:

Biochemistry -- Studying underlying biochemistry allows the behaviors and interactions of various biochemicals to be analyzed with less variability and more certainty about causes and effects. There are dozens of proteins acting as information bearers and dozens of enzymes acting as catalysts to trigger specific reactions which can be tested rapidly and accurately outside the context of actual living cells.

Crystallography -- Knowing the atomic composition of a protein or enzyme isn't enough to deterministically identify its function. The SHAPE of the material and arrangement of atoms within the overall structure affects how it interacts with other chemicals. Crystallography simplifies studying the physical topology of biochemical components by freezing them. As they freeze, the chemical topology triggers crystal lattices in the material around them to form that is easier to see than the underlying chemical structures but uniquely identifies the underlying structures. Imagine a complex protein suspended in water at room temperature. You can't see the protein clearly at room temperature in a liquid. If you slowly freeze the water and the ice structure takes on a cubic lattice, that might signal an underlying structure of something in flat strands. If the lattice takes on a parallelogram pattern, that might signify a strand with two folds in it.

CRISPR - Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindrommic Repeats are a term for a pattern identified in the DNA of many strains of bacteria which repeat a common pattern on a regular basis throughout the larger DNA strand. Additional research also found specific enzymes located adjacent to these repeating rungs on DNA helixes not found anywhere else. These were termed CRISPR-associated or Cas enzymes. By analogy, imagine a DNA strand as a roof ladder with 3 billion rungs with each rung consisting of a pair of proteins from a universe of four proteins. Genes represent combinations of maybe thousands or millions of rungs in a group. In that ladder of 3 billion rungs of UNIQUE information, CRISPRs are collections of rungs scattered throughout the larger ladder whose A/B pairs act as the chemical equivalent of "unused memory" with a signature that tells other processes that the space is available if needed.

How did these areas of research coalesce?

In 1996, Doudna published a paper with her team at Yale (including her husband) describing their use of crystallography to identify every atom in an RNA thread and explain how it creates the ability to "cut" itself at specific links and attract nearby compounds to self-replicate. Until then, it was not clear that a RNA strand could perform cut and splice operations without the influence of outside enzymes. This finding essentially showed that RNA demonstrated the most flexibility for driving reactions throughout cells, not just in the nucleus.

CRISPRs were first discovered in 1986 then triggered additional research between 1990 and 1997 and were more officially described in papers published in 2001 and 2002. The first scientist who discovered CRISPRs noted them in his paper but because they appeared tangential to the core purpose of his research, they were not pursued. Another scientist independently studying bacteria found the same pattern, initially thought his data was wrong, then kept finding the pattern and eventually found the 1986 paper. At that point, he realized nature would not "waste" encoding capabilities in DNA for no reason. Subsequent research found that bacteria containing CRISPR in their DNA would fend off infections of specific viruses. Bacteria without CRISPR "blanks" would not fend off infections by the same test viruses. As more research was conducted, scientists found that the CRISPRs acted as placeholders and actually allowed the bacteria to learn new DNA patterns from incoming viruses and encode that information into the "blank" CRISPR sections. The Cas enzymes next to the "blank" CRISPR sections allowed the new encodings to be surgically spliced into the DNA for future use and the sides of the DNA helix to be reconnected after inserting the new encoding.

By 2008, additional research conducted by Doudna and her team found not just one variety of CRISPR associated enzyme but many (eventually, more than 12). Each Cas enzyme demonstrated different capabilities for cutting and slicing DNA and RNA components. Most importantly, this research found that a specific Cas variety tagged Cas1 was found in nearly every variety of bacteria and had a unique fold that allowed it to target CRISPR areas and fold in proteins from invading viruses, allowing the CRISPR areas to be turned into "memory" to allow cells to defend themselves from future infections of the same virus. Research also found that these same enzymes create shorter strands of RNA with special enzymes attached that essentially seek out viruses matching their "programmed" pattern. When encountered, the Cas enzyme variant (termed Cas9) on these abbreviated "CRSPR RNA" strands (called crRNA) interact with the virus and essentially chop it into pieces, rendering it harmless.

Interestingly, much of this progress was aided by research conducted by two scientists working to improve quality for a yogurt manufacturer. The manufacturer had detailed records on its bacteria cultures back to the 80s showing exact dates on which samples had been taken, allowing the scientists to trace how the cultures reflected changes in DNA in CRISPR areas that came from a common branch, thus confirming how flexible the underlying biochemistry was.

(You can see where this is going...)

Two additional keys to the puzzle are tracrRNA ("tracer") and cas9. The term tracrRNA was created to describe a different type of RNA strand called a trans-acting crRNA that creates the main crRNA compound and also helps attach the crRNA to matching viruses to allow the cas9 enzyme to chop up the virus. By 2011, the behavior of these components was well understood and researchers led by Doudna realized the process was driven by DNA patterns so simple to identify that the process could be arbitrarily rigged to target ANY arbitrary DNA target.

The final technical optimization devised by Doudna and others involved reviewing the structure of both the crRNA (containing the target encoding) and the tracrRNA (providing the binding mechanism to allow the Cas9 enzyme to chop up the attracted virus DNA) and combining them into a single RNA strand they termed the single-guided RNA or sgRNA. Doudna's team devised a way to create this single RNA component and the results were published in 2012.

As of 2012, the biochemistry of this capability was well understood and could be replicated at will on proteins in a lab. The next step was proving the technique would work on genes within the nucleus of human cells. The logistics of getting a modified RNA component into a CELL are not necessarily the same as getting it into a NUCLEUS within the cell. Competing teams in multiple labs across the US conducted additional experiments and confirmed the sgRNA approach would work within cells. By 2019, CRISPR based technology was being used in trials for gene therapy for sickle-cell anemia.

When COVID-19 hit, the technology was used first to devise testing capabilities that could produce results faster than older PCR (polymerase chain reaction) techniques first devised in the 1980s. By 2020, an additional Cas enzyme dubbed Cas12 had been identified that not only "attacked" matching DNA signatures of viruses but would chop up any other single strand DNA components nearby. Scientists realized that other "tracer" DNA compounds unrelated to the virus could be combined with the "programmed" sgRNA containing the "target encoding" and the "hatchet" mechanism. If the sgRNA found a target virus, it would not only destroy the target virus DNA in the sample but cut up the "tracer" DNA compounds. The team chose a DNA compound that would fluoresce if cut up, providing an easy visual signal of a positive match.

The net-net of all of this boiled down is this...

In the mid 1990s, scientists identified simple DNA based memory functions in bacteria that lack sophisticated immune systems that allow bacteria to update their own DNA to remember patterns of viruses and create compounds that can chemically seek out such virus patterns, attach to those viruses and shred their DNA. These "blank memory" areas in DNA were termed CRISPRs.

Biochemical research conducted between 2001 and 2008 solidified understanding of the core protein and enzyme chemistry that drove CRISPR behavior for virus detection and disarming.

Research between 2008 and 2012 confirmed the biochemical behavior could be used in human cells with equal targeting specificity.

Research between 2012 and 2019 confirmed the technology could be used to alter human genes, not just DNA of unwanted external viruses, and the technology was incorporated into initial therapies for multiple diseases.

COVID-19 broke out in December of 2019 in China. It was first detected in America by January 2020 and by mid-January 2020, leaders at both Moderna and BioNTech were contacted by officials watching the spreading of COVID-19 and both committed to using RNA based technology already under development to model the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to trigger an immune response. In the case of Moderna, Isaacson states that Moderna had the RNA pattern identified and recreated within TWO DAYS after getting a sample of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Within 38 days, they had test doses ready to ship for clinical testing.

After reading The Code Breaker, the impact of an outbreak like COVID prior to this technology being available is sobering to contemplate. In America, the number dying of COVID prior to vaccine availability has been eclipsed by the number dying SINCE vaccine availability. When those vaccines have been verified to have 99% efficacy at avoiding hospitalization and death from infection and 0.0022% death rates as vaccine side effects, the argument that people "don't trust the science" is simply appalling. And correctable.

WTH

Flawed Science and Social Media

The Atlantic published a short piece on the flaws common to many of the articles published on Ivermectin that have spread like wildfire through the moronosphere.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/ivermectin-research-problems/620473/

The most important insight from the story is that there is little difference between the quality of scientific studies and publications regarding Ivermectin versus other key medical studies conducted in the last twenty years. As the story puts it, many of the studies were designed to be published but not to be read. In the publish or perish world of academia and commercial science and a shift from actual printed publications to online publications of dubious quality, more junk science is being published with most sophisticated scientic consumers blowing them off in the absence of more rigorous verification.

Unfortunately, this junk science is still floating around online like intellectual space junk, ready to appear in the search results of anyone able to type a few buzzwords in a search engine and wanting to spin deeply flawed statistcal analyses of poorly structured clinical studies into the next wonder cure or diabolical conspiracy.

This problem isn't unique to covid treatments and won't be going away.

WTH

Afghanistan: Missing Questions, Wrong Answers

Americans are expressing disgust and amazement that the Taliban managed to recapture control of Kabul, Afghanistan overnight after the Afghan "government" and military forces literally evaporated. It's damning enough that America wasn't smart enough to avoid this morass in the first place after having a front row seat to watch the Soviets fail to control the country from 1979 to 1989. It's worse that we didn't figure out we were dealing with dishonest allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan when Osama bin Laden managed to escape from caves in Tora Bora and (eventually, as we found out) live in Pakistan for almost ten years. To not understand how the collapse came so quickly? You're really not paying attention.

Afghanistan is perhaps uniquely suited to serving as a cauldron for brewing up problems in a modernized industrial world. It all starts with one obvious physical reality.

IT'S A LANDLOCKED, MOUNTAINOUS DESERT. There are no ocean beaches to draw tourism. There are a few lakes and rivers but temperatures range from -11 degrees (F) in the winter to 122 degrees (F) in the summer. Sure, some say it may have a trillion dollars worth of gold, copper, uranium, etc. but logistical problems abound. It's tough to power mining and refining equipment when Taliban insurgents bomb high voltage power lines, dropping a third of the country into darkness. Tougher still to get output to markets when the 10,000 miles of roads the US spent $3 billion to build have also been pitted with bomb craters, making ninety five percent of those miles undriveable. (I guess 10,000 miles of bombed out roads are better than what the country had in 2001 -- a total of 50 miles of paved roads). Of course, there's one reliable sector of the economy that delivers consistently... Poppy farming, which feeds a worldwide narcotics supply chain and provides billions in cash to bad actors across the globe. Poppy farming is thought to generate $2.1 billion in revenue per year, in a national economy of roughly $19.3 billion. That's 10.9 percent of the economy traced to illicit drugs. (Incidentally, $19.3 billion dollars doesn't even put you on the Fortune 500.)

In short, it is a location which more closely resembles the moon than any traditionally habitable place on earth. No one from any "civilized" society is going to want to live in such a hell-hole and the biggest source of economic activity is linked to highly organized, extremely violent narcotics traffickers. Unfortunately, the same factors making the country economic and social kryptonite to most on the planet creates something else... Lots of open space for bad actors to assemble, indoctrinate, train and plan.

The Russians entered Afghanistan in 1979 attempting to prop up a communist regime that took power in 1978 then failed to stifle unrest from various mujahideen tribal sects. After those sects banded together to chase the Soviets out by 1989, they continued fighting amongst themselves with the Taliban as one of those sects eventually gaining the upper hand. By 1995-1996, the Taliban gained complete control, began bombing ancient historical sites as an affront to Islam, disbanded schools for children and generally took the country back to 700 AD. No rational person on the planet wanted to spend time in Afghanistan.

But al-Queda adherents had no qualms about residing in Afghanistan. The Taliban were just as crazy as AQ was. The country provided them the space they needed to recruit and indoctrinate future terrorists and a place to draw in key strategic leaders from across the globe for planning. Fly into an adjacent country, come in via the mountains, return the same way. Untraceable. Completely off the radar.

And because there is so little in the country of "value" to a traditional western industrial economy, attempting any war in such a country inevitably produces asymmetric warfare. We have fighters and smart bombs but what exists of conventional tactical or strategic value that can be blown up to change behavior? Nothing. Go ahead. Drop a $500,000 bunker buster bomb on me. You know how much I spent on the cave I was hiding in? Nothing. And since the society is so corrupt, I was tipped off that you were tipped off so us bad guys got out way ahead of you. You just spent $500k to kill a few women and children and bounce some rubble around.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to win a war in this environment. Unless you are willing to drop nuclear weapons on the entire country and wipe everyone out leaving a big Mr. Yuck sticker on the entire country for the next 300 years (I'm not making that argument, just setting a rhetorical extreme for context…), it is virtually impossible to change this dynamic using ANY traditional definition of war. America didn't lose the Afghan war when it ended. America lost the war the day we declared it. It was lost when Bush failed to focus on rooting out bin Laden in the caves at Tora Bora, letting him escape to Pakistan, and instead decided to establish a democracy in Afghanistan.

In 2001, few American leaders asked why we suddenly became fixated on nation building without accomplishing the primary missing of killing bin Laden.

In March 2003, few American leaders asked why we were ramping up a SECOND war in Iraq when Mission #1 (Kill bin Laden) was still not accomplished and we had not yet made the streets of Kandahar safe for Starbucks and Costco.

In December 2003, no one seemed to be doubting the nation building rationale in Afghanistan, despite the fact that the capture of Saddam Hussein and unraveling of Iraqi society was proving Americans were lied to by our government about the entire rationale for the war (weapons of mass destruction and / or manufacturing facilities for them) and the immediate conversion of Iraq into another beacon of democracy overnight.

In 2006, no one seemed to second guess the continued slog in Afghanistan, despite a resurgence in Taliban attacks throughout the country.

It turns out, people IN the military WERE asking questions and raising concerns but, as reported today in The Washington Post, those concerns were not communicated at top leadership levels.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/afghan-security-forces-capabilities/2021/08/15/052a45e2-fdc7-11eb-a664-4f6de3e17ff0_story.html

In fact, according to documents obtained for the forthcoming Washington Post book "The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War," U.S. military officials privately harbored fundamental doubts for the duration of the war that the Afghan security forces could ever become competent or shed their dependency on U.S. money and firepower. "Thinking we could build the military that fast and that well was insane," an unnamed former U.S. official told government interviewers in 2016.

So what is the $2 trillion dollar political, military and moral question that isn't being asked now?

What can and should a civil, global world do to address the horrific abuses that will arise again from the Taliban? What should be done

• knowing women are going back to the 700s?
• knowing thousands will be murdered for collaborating with outsiders?
• knowing children's education will be virtually eliminated?
• knowing Afghanistan may return to acting as a haven for nationless terrorist organizations?
• knowing one country (or two or three) cannot go it alone and achieve victory?
• knowing military strategists have a 60-year track record of dishonesty?
• knowing the military-industrial complex wins even when the house loses big?

Answering that question is difficult because there are MANY situations where the "right" thing to do can't result in a net-positive improvement, only a "least-worst" scenario where the best action may be to do NOTHING. The Afghan war killed 2448 American service personnel, 3846 (mostly) American contractors, 66,000 Afghan forces, and 47,245 Afghan civilians -- not counting 51,191 Taliban fighters. Would staying out of Afghanistan entirely since 2001 still have resulted in the Taliban killing 113,000 innocent Afghani people? We'll never know but the answer seems likely to be yes. If the answer was yes, American might have been better off staying out entirely, keeping $2 trillion in our taxpayer pockets and keeping 6200 Americans alive.

Suppose the argument is that societies with power have an obligation to TRY to halt these slow-motion human atrocities. If so, what is the tipping point in the ratio between these numbers?

• local good guys killed by local bad guys without intervention
• local good guys killed in the fog of a war launched by foreign good guys trying to kill local bad guys

If trying is a moral obligation, who should be making that decision? The leaders of the foreign good guys or the actual foreign good guys who might also do some of the dying?

The biggest problem is that no politicians are even publicly ASKING these questions to trigger legitimate debate, much less attempting to answer them. At this point, it is very clear our political and military leaders are 0 for 3 in the last sixty years at answering any of these questions correctly.

Perhaps the first thing America should focus on is killing the open-ended Authorization for Use of Military Force enacted in 2001 that led to these catastrophes. No President should have the power to commit trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives without concrete limits on time, place and enemy. No Senator or Representative should escape their responsibility of holding a President in check regarding war powers.

And as with everything else, the American public ultimately owns all of this. We voted these liars into office, repeatedly.

WTH

Sexual Harassment and Brown M&Ms

Perhaps THIS is the reason Andrew Cuomo chose today to announce his resignation.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/andrew-cuomos-war-against-a-federal-prosecutor

I suspect if the truth ever comes out, we'll find the timing of today's resignation had nothing to do with sexual harassment allegations. The above New Yorker piece was published online BEFORE Cuomo's announcement. The story itemizes a variety of cases where he bullied staff and perceived opponents alike not about sexual harassment but about ripple effects from a state level commission Cuomo himself created to investigate political corruption within New York State only to shut it down when it began digging up information on Cuomo's dark money donors and his dealings. Andrew Cuomo even called Valerie Jarret in the Obama White House in 2014 ranting about the conduct of Preet Bharara. Bharara was the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) and issued orders for commission participants to preserve material gathered by the commission after Cuomo shut the commission down.

Attempting to call in a favor to push a US Attorney out of their post while they are potentially investigating you is kind of a big deal with people who enforce laws. If the events reported in this New Yorker story pan out, Cuomo's legal problems are going to be far more significant than a workplace sexual harassment charge or two or three or eleven.

Which brings me to the brown M&Ms.

I have a theory...

Sexual harassment laws are becoming the legal equivalent of the infamous "Brown M&Ms" clauses in Van Halen tour contracts.

Hear me out...

After the band Van Halen started filling arenas and stadiums in the early 1980s, a copy of the band's boilerplate contract was leaked and generated scorn when people learned a clause buried WAAAAAY in the back of the contract demanded that a large bowl of M&Ms was to be made available in the dressing room prior to each show and that all brown M&Ms should be removed from the bowl. If brown M&Ms were present, the band wouldn't play, the promoter would forfeit the ticket sales to the band and they would fly to the next city.

Most people hearing of this clause jumped to the conclusion that this was just an example of arrogant rock stars (they were...) being, um.... jerks (they were...). HOWEVER, the actual purpose of this clause was to provide an instant confirmation to the band if the local promoter had READ the entire contract and ACTED upon what they read in the contract. To the letter. Even on the less important stuff. Cuz if the promoter cannot be trusted to do the easy stuff like picking out the brown M&Ms from the bowl, can the band trust the promoter on the BIG stuff like flying 5,000 pounds of PA speakers above the stage without them crashing down on the band?

Sexual harassment rules are a lot more important than removing brown M&Ms from a bowl but they seem to have a similar effect in corporate and public life.

Most of the rules aren't even that complicated.

Don't call anyone "honey."

Avoid any contact beyond a handshake or a covid-era elbow bump.

Keep "it" inside at all times.

Don't even talk about "it."

Don't display or discuss pornography at work.

Pretty simple stuff, right? If you cannot be trusted to follow even simple rules like these whose impacts provide a more equitable work environment for everyone, you probably cannot be trusted to control the police, the courts, schools, public safety, etc. And we don't even bury these rules on page 39 of a 48 page contract to find as an Easter egg. We summarize them all together and make you watch them in a 10 minute video on your HR department's internal training web site, often during your first week on the job.

And it's the damndest thing... There seems to be a nearly perfect correlation between Neanderthals who cannot follow these simple sexual harassment rules and Neanderthals who refuse to follow other important rules. The kinds of rules geared towards preventing much larger problems for much larger groups of people.

WTH

America the Meaningless

It seems clear that the ignorance of basic math, history and economics produced by forty years of policies decimating education and decades of political discourse contaminated by unlimited corporate speech have produced a society where words are completely meaningless.

One example...

Ex-President Trump is battling a local zoning commission regarding his living arrangements at Mar-A Lago. In 1993, Trump signed an agreement that limited club member stays at the facility to no more than three weeks in a calendar year. A lawyer for Trump at the time stated at that time that Trump was a member of the club and would not try to "live" at the club.

Fast forward 28 years... Trump argues he is the OWNER of the club and an EMPLOYEE of the club and has the right to live there without restriction.

He is exactly saying he DIDN'T say what he agreed to and what his lawyer clarified at the time.

Another example...

Trump argued EVERY day after the 11/3/2020 election that his win was stolen. He filed 61 bogus procedural objections and lawsuits in jurisdictions all over the country that were laughed out of court by judges of all political stripes. He was recorded directly soliciting a Secretary of State to manufacture a change in results to deliver him a win in a single state that alone wouldn't have swung the Electoral College in his favor. Trump implemented post-election management changes in key departments to place Trump-friendly officials in charge over functions related to DOJ and DHS security positions who failed to share information about threats with local police. His post-election political fund gave money to individuals and groups who organized the protest in Washington D.C. on 1/6. Personnel from his Administration participated in meetings to plan the 1/6 protest. Trump SPOKE at the protest, despite having access to domestic intelligence that clearly stated a material portion of the participants were threatening specific members of Congress with violence. Trump HEARD the mob yelling threats to those politicians -- INCLDING HIS OWN VICE PRESIDENT -- as he spoke to the crowd. Trump even stated that they should march down to the Capital to stop the steal and that he would follow them (then didn't). Trump didn't communicate anything from the White House or social media until 4:17pm EST -- 3 hours 24 minutes after the first barricades were breached at 12:53pm EST, 2 hours 6 minutes after the first window of the Capital building was busted by the mob.

Today? February 10? Republicans are saying it isn't clear Trump meant to encourage a physical assault on the Capital. "Fight like hell" is just heated campaign rhetoric. One pundit on the PBS NewsHour stated that Trump has been using language like that in campaign rallies since 2016. No one can take that seriously.

That's what passes for logic and morality today. On one hand, if someone says something crazy one time and people object vociferously (as many did during the 2016 campaign), we're just a bunch of pansies and can't take the heat of some old fashioned bare knuckle politics. However, if we let it slide, we have consented to any future behavior in the same vein at any multiple of magnitude.

If a President incites a mob to interrupt a key public function at the heart of our constitutional democracy and the resulting mob action directly leads to multiple deaths, we first hear an argument that we don't have to worry about impeaching him with only six days in his term, there's plenty of time for that later. When the president leaves, we then hear the argument that an impeachment can only be pursued against a sitting President, thus setting a precedent that a President is virtually untouchable in some magic window at the end of a term. A precedent which ignores most interpretations of the US Constitution and precedents from State Constitutions pre-dating the current US Constitution which explicitly allow for impeaching officials after leaving office as a means to prevent them from holding future office.

---

And here we sit. A single article of impeachment dutifully delivered by the House of Representatives to the Senate charging a President with inciting a riot in an attempt to thwart a crucial process in the processing of the presidential election with the riot resulting in multiple deaths. And the mind blowing thing is that seventeen Republican Senators whose lives were equally threatened by Trump's actions are paralyzed. Paralyzed with fear, even when the most ethical, moral thing to do happens to also be the most obvious, easy and simple thing to do. Convict.

If convicted, Trump loses any legal "juice" to continue influencing state and national influence in the Republican Party. Trump is so crooked there is no way he will successfully operate a PAC taking in millions of dollars without getting caught siphoning off cash for illegal personal benefit, triggering another round of prosecutions over election law violations.

His most adamant followers are not an economic force that can compete with the "lone Koch" and other GOP oligarchs for campaigns. If current Republican politicians continue supporting Trump, more of the 20% of "moderate" Republicans who probably contribute 50% of the cash will leave and what will be left of the Republican Party might not fill a Chuck E Cheese.

It's an easy decision and yet seventeen Republicans can't be found who believe that words matter and that facts supersede belief. Apparently, there aren't seventeen Republicans who understand that when you can get people to believe anything, you can get them to DO anything. Unfortunately, you can't guarantee such people will always do YOUR bidding.

---

When words are meaningless, virtually every aspect of life will get worse. Not for everyone. Not for the one percenters who control forty percent of the wealth in the country. Just worse for the people who need words to mean something. People who need laws to be enforced. People who need contracts to be enforced. People who need to be protected from those in power who would like to abuse power with impunity.

America isn't a place. America is an idea. A more perfect union...

If words are meaningless, the idea of America is meaningless.

This vote isn't about Trump. This vote is about the next wanna-be despot. Someone out there matches that description and is watching very carefully. And learning a great deal.

WTH

Letter to Josh Hawley

This is the email I sent to Josh Hawley on Sunday regarding his role in fanning the flames of the Nazi-esque electoral fiasco. To think I was worried about being over the top.

WTH

---

Your Electoral College Objection

Senator Hawley:

Your public statements and actions regarding the election and plots to reject the duly submitted slates of Electoral College delegates from states that didn't vote for Donald Trump demonstrate a profound rejection of legal precedents that is outright criminal. Your participation isn't merely exercising every legal avenue available for your cause or the cause of those you think you represent. Your claims have been reviewed in 31 different state and federal filings and the arguments you are supporting have been tossed out 30-1. The judges doing the tossing have been appointed by Democrats and Republicans alike -- including Trump appointees.

If You, Ann Wagner and your fellow comrades think there was something amiss in the voting procedures of these states or actual vote counting in these states, why are no calls being made to throw out the results of the Republican Senators and Representatives at the state and federal level who won in those same circumstances? Aren't those wins equally suspect? How would you react in a future election if the State of Missouri voted for Democratic candidate ABC and a future Congress voted to simply IGNORE the votes of Missouri residents because some other state wanted Republican candidate XYZ to win? Exactly who do you think you are representing? The Republican Party or the People?

I don't think you're that ignorant of basic Constitutional law or logic. You attended Stanford and Yale Law and clerked for Chief Justice Roberts. That means your motives for this legal and political charade are even more damning. You are simply trying to rack up points with the remaining Trump base that is still thoroughly disconnected from reality as well as win points with Trump himself. I'm sure you think scoring points with these blocs will help you in future elections but you've obviously not learned anything in the past four years. Since the election, Trump has bilked hundreds of millions of dollars from supporters under the guise of using it to fund these election challenges or possibly a future political campaign. Trump's only intent with that money is to spend part of it sowing dissent to keep himself in the news and to spend the rest implicitly (and illegally) subsidizing his post-Presidency lifestyle and YEARS of legal bills waiting for him in multiple states which are beyond the reach of any pardon at the federal level.

Beyond Trump, you are permanently associating your name with a literal Loser's Who Who in politics and the law:

Louie Gohmert --- filer of the lawsuit that sought to throw out the Electoral Count Act of 1887 giving the Vice President the right to throw out state-certified electors in favor of competing slates of electors. Only NO STATE has submitted a competing slate of electors.

Ken Paxton - The Texas State Attorney General, currently under federal indictment for securities fraud and the focus of state level claims of bribery and abuse of office, who is likely seeking to do Trump's bidding in exchange for a pardon for those federal tax fraud charges.

Sidney Powell -- past counsel for Enron executives, defense counsel for Michael Flynn who plead guilty to lying to the FBI about dealings with Russia and ring master for many of the laughable actions filed with states regarding the 2020 election, including a filing in Michigan about "Edison County" that doesn't exist anywhere in the country.

More importantly, your efforts in this matter are wasting the time of the courts and Congress at a point when 3000+ American citizens are dying per day of a pandemic whose impact and mitigation should be your top priority. More importantly, your actions are providing aid and comfort to forces within the country who have threatened violence against elected officials and the public in general. President Trump held another call this weekend with the Georgia Secretary of State alternately cajoling him and threatening him to find votes or processes to reverse the election results in that state. Trump and numerous Administration officials have made public comments about "wild" protests on January 6, 2021 as Electoral College results are certified. More "wild" than armed militia members showing up at the Michigan State House at the request of Trump in summer 2020?

In case those words "aid and comfort" weren't familiar, you should read Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 115, Section 2383 of the US Code regarding Rebellion or Insurrection for more context:

https://law.justia.com/codes/us/1999/title18/parti/chap115/sec2383

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Your public support of this charade not only confirms you are unsuited for any position in a law-making body but you have no business practicing law after supporting this level of mis-information being introduced into state and federal courts.