Drugs and Racism.

This isn't meant to be an expansive post about drugs and racism in America, but here's the thing: When Blacks (especially urban Blacks) were suffering from drug addiction and crime, America got tough on them, but with the current heroin epidemic hitting primarily Whites (especially rural Whites) America is sympathetic to their plight.

WTF.

The Mormon Tabernacle is Fooling Itself

Last week, the Mormon Tabernacle released a response to criticism of its agreement to perform at Emperor Donodus' crown ceremony. I've changed one word, to help people understand that the Tabernacle is fooling itself in an effort to alleviate their cognitive dissonance:

"The choir's participation continues its long tradition of performing for German presidents of both parties at inaugurations and in other settings, and is not an implied support of party affiliations or politics. It is a demonstration of our support for freedom, civility and the peaceful transition of power."

If this were 1934, most people couldn't discern the threat of Adolf Hitler's election as German President, either, except for those who were already targets of Chancellor Hitler. Like 1934, the economic populism of 2016 was focused on nativist racism mixed with nationalism. Like 1934, many people who either voted or ignored the existential threat looked for ways to alleviate their cognitive dissonance.

That is what the Mormon Tabernacle is doing in 2016.

One year ago, cognizant of the real threat of Emperor Donodus, the LDS Church specifically highlighted Joseph Smith's actions in 1841 in the Illinois city of Nauvoo, in passing an ordinance:

"Be it ordained by the City Council of the City of Nauvoo, that the Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Latter-day Saints, Quakers, Episcopals, Universalists, Unitarians, Mohammedans [Muslims], and all other religious sects and denominations whatever, shall have free toleration, and equal privileges in this city."

If people remember their American history, within a few years Smith would be lynched by a mob and the Mormons would discover their own Exodus. When you are under existential threat, you see the world quite clearly; when you're not, it's easy to ignore the threat to others.

That is what the Mormon Tabernacle is doing in 2016.

Why bring this all up? Because a singer from the Tabernacle has resigned from the choir. In her words, following an extensive examination of her conscience, she concluded that while she certainly didn't have to attend the inauguration, staying in the choir would betray both her morals and dishonor her father.

"When I first auditioned and entered Choir, it was to follow deep personal impressions, and to honor my late father, who was among the best of men. Now I must leave Choir for the same reasons. My father ( who was an expert airforce bomber) hated tyranny and was extremely distraught over the holocaust. He and Mom both loved people greatly."

I am not under any illusion that she is anything other than a conservative, but as Evan McMullin showed us, many conservatives could see the threat of Emperor Donodus.

You know right from wrong. You know.

5 Thoughts for December 29, 2016

1. The Bloggers You Should Be Reading: If you want to cut through the bullshit of the news media and its piss-poor coverage of the real stories in politics, you'll want to read Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo and Kevin Drum at Mother Jones. On a daily basis, you will learn more about what's going on in politics and the truth behind the lazy headlines from these two guys, than from watching an entire day of broadcast news. Don't forget to read the comment sections! There are some particularly astute and extremely smart folks who engage in regular conversations. No one is 100% right, but through these blogs and their related discussions, the knowledge imparted will greatly increase your IQ by osmosis. Mind you, there are a lot of other blogs out there that are important to read, but they do not offer the daily churn that these two do.
2. Let the Emperor Take Credit: Emperor Donodus, in all of his glorious narcissism, has been trying to take credit for market movement and job announcements. I say let him. When the guy wants to take credit for the market, he's only thinking about the publicity of the 'now'. As I've said repeatedly, we're already reaching the tail end of the longest (time) economic expansion on record as we're now closer than ever to full employment (peak business cycle); by taking responsibility, his "actions" will now have "consequences" that he and the GOP have no means to disown. I'll do a separate post on this issue, later.
3. Summary of Russia Hacking Evidence: US Intelligence released its report and the two basic takeaways from it are, (1) The Russian hacks followed the same methods as previous ones (full diagram of the process); (2) They got lazy / sloppy and left bits of code that were the "signature" of prior hacks by the Russians. If you were paying close attention to all this, you'd realize that this isn't exactly new -- Crowdstrike basically offered up the summary a while back, but lacked some of the specifics included in the US Intel report. With the new, specific details released, Emperor Donodus will undoubtedly have to switch from offering up excuses (aka lies) about who did the hacking and outright defend the hacks -- Emperor Donodus, after all, must defend his foreign hacker allies as they were the ones who had his back.
4. College Basketball Rules: This is how retarded college basketball rules are: An Oregon State men's basketball player stomped on the leg of a USC player who was on the ground, and got called for a technical, but an OSU player who left the bench (5 feet away) got booted from the game. Is that nuts or what? In college football, both players would have been ejected.
5. Brother Printer: My printer is pretty good, except for one particularly gnawing issue: It auto-cleans so often that I've wasted an entire set of ink cartridges even though I haven't printed more than a couple dozen sheets at most within the past year. I think it has to do with keeping the printer in standby mode instead of just turning it off.

RIP George Michael

George Michael, like Prince, was an incredibly important pop icon from the 80s and early 90s, and like Prince, his subject matter was frequently edgy and racy. When we get older, all of our icons die, don't they?

I reiterate, 2016 is one of the worst years, ever. Gah!

Let's not dwell on his death; let's celebrate George Michael's brilliance. Here are my top-10 favorite songs from George Michael:

1. Father Figure -- by far, my favorite George Michael song of all time, it's a combination of hunger, longing and sadness.
   
   
2. I Want Your Sex -- so controversial at the time, they wouldn't air it during the day, and in the 80s interracial relations was still taboo for a lot of communities.
   
   
3. Fastlove -- a video 20 years ahead of its time, VR porn, anyone?
   
   
4. Faith -- the happy song you sing to your newfound love, when you're sure that you'll be together forever.
   
   
5. Everything She Wants -- the song you sing when the honeymoon ends and you're feeling chained down.
6. Freedom '90 -- the fashion models we all dreamed of dating, especially Cindy Crawford!
   
   
7. Careless Whisper -- the quintessential "I'm sorry for cheating" song of the 80s that most teenagers experienced.
   
   
8. Too Funky -- the first runway song with attitude (before Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy" and Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back").
   
   
9. Last Christmas -- part of the lexicon of classic Christmas songs you heard on Sunday, and it made you sad because you had heard the news about George Michael.
   
   
10. Don't Let the Sun Go Down -- how I feel right now, and hopefully, Elton John will use it to pay tribute to George Michael.
    
    

(Silent Night)

Aloha oe, kupuna.

Christmas Comfort

I'm not going to lie, this is the bleakest year I've personally experienced. Instead of enthusiasm, I have an empty hole. Instead of Christmas cheer and a festive card, I have but silence.

I know many others are feeling dispirited as well, so for all of us, I offer a song to provide some Christmas comfort.

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron,

Water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

Snow on snow,

In the bleak mid-winter

Long ago. 

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him

Nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away

When He comes to reign:

In the bleak mid-winter

A stable-place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty,

Jesus Christ. 

Enough for Him, whom cherubim

Worship night and day,

A breastful of milk,

And a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels

Fall down before,

The ox and ass and camel

Which adore.

Angels and archangels

May have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim

Thronged the air -

But only His mother

In her maiden bliss

Worshipped the Beloved

With a kiss.

 What can I give Him,

Poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd

I would bring a lamb;

If I were a wise man

I would do my part;

Yet what I can, I give Him -

Give my heart. 

11 Ways I Look at Emperor Donodus' Tariffs.

This week, reports have circulated that Emperor Donodus is considering either a 5% or 10% tariff on imports in order to boost domestic production. There are at least eleven ways I look at this:

1. Foreign producers could absorb the tariff into their prices (10% is well within normal currency valuation fluctuations) resulting in no net effect on domestic production.
2. A trade war could erupt, where other countries enact a matching tariff on American products, thus, canceling out the intended rebalancing of trade through the unilateral increase in domestic manufacturing.
3. Assuming Donodus did not apply this tariff to countries where the US has a net surplus trade balance with, countries affected by the tariff could thus ship products through those countries into the US, minimizing their tariff costs while still underpricing domestics.
4. Along with the withdrawal from the TPP, China -- the intended target of an import tariff -- has already signaled trade rapprochement with the other members of the TPP, such that the net effect would be a gain for China even as its exports to the US are decreased, and a decline for the US.
5. Eventually, the tariffs would be challenged at the WTO and they would toss out the tariffs, leading to the usual alt-reality bullshittery from Emperor Donodus about how he succeeded in something.
6. Assume that the Donodus Economic Model is correct and there is a big boost of domestic manufacturing. It would tend to strengthen the dollar and lower US exports while increasing imports, and since Total GDP = Public GDP + Private GDP + Net Foreign Trade, the offset means no net increase in GDP...or worse...
7. Assume that the Donodus Economic Model is correct and there is a big boost of domestic manufacturing. This means that prices shot up. Now, think about what happens if your boss won't give you a big pay raise even as prices have gone up. You substitute your purchases and delay others. That would tend to lead to a recession.
8. A tariff is nothing more than a discriminatory tax, but whose effects are meant to be no less than a widespread tax. Thus, the hypocrisy of someone who proclaims that lower corporate taxes will lead to greater job creation, then tells us that increasing taxes on the poor and middle class will also lead to greater job creation. Also, congratulations to those unemployed blue collar workers whose tax burdens will now increase under the Donodus Economic Model.
9. In general, the last thing you want to do when you're at or near full employment is to throw a wrench in the system; if anything, you want to keep things humming exactly where they are right now. If you throw a wrench into the system near full employment, you risk an acceleration of inflation or a recession. That's probably why most countries reflexively assert tariffs in an economic downturn and not at full employment.
10. America's international trade, as a percentage of total GDP, ranks among the lowest in the OECD at roughly 17%. A 10% tariff would likely do very little to boost total GDP, even in the rosiest of scenarios that one could possibly come up with.
11. Manufacturing is rapidly changing and those jobs just aren't coming back, period. They're being lost to automation and to geographies with even lower labor costs. If China is the intended target of a tariff, China's exporters will move their manufacturing bases to other countries or provinces with even lower labor costs in order to compete.

Essentially, the Donodus Economic Model relies on fairy tales and wishful thinking.

There are other points to make on this (gov't spending, corporate taxes, etc.), but they depend on Donodus sticking around long enough to effect wide-ranging policy changes elsewhere. I still maintain the expectation that Emperor Donodus will be out before the end of his term. His life has been documented with a long list of criminal and civil violations, including this past year. His proclivity towards impulsive behavior is what gets him into trouble and it's what will earn him infamy, surpassing Nixon.

The Responsibility of the Electoral College Electors.

As the Electoral College electors are being bombarded with emails, letters and phone calls, you can tell that the chosen Republican electors are looking for ways to alleviate their cognitive dissonance. On the news, the most common excuses have been that they've signed an oath of faith or are otherwise bound to their state's presidential choice. Both excuses are probably constitutionally illegal.

There is but one responsibility for the Electoral College electors: Vote your conscience.

The First Amendment protects you broadly to cast your vote based on your conscience, unbinding you from your state's presidential choice or your party's oath of allegiance; in fact, forcing you to vote for a specific person is unconstitutional, else the 12th Amendment is completely worthless. If brought before the US Supreme Court, it is almost a guarantee that these oaths and state laws will be overturned; no government or party may force you to vote against your conscience.

Make no mistake, there will be a backlash against your vote of conscience, but you should also be aware that there will be a large majority of Americans who will be celebrating your name and supporting you, after the fact.

It will always be your choice, but your choice has consequences either way.

I am not one of those liberals who believes that your only choice is to vote for Hillary. While I would embrace the Electoral College's choice of Hillary as President, the existential threat here is Donald Trump becoming the next President. I'm not kidding: I would gladly see Mike Pence become the next President over Donald Trump. Trump presents a danger unlike any we've seen in the history of the United States. Many foresaw the danger he presented and tried to warn voters.

If you nonetheless alleviate your cognitive dissonance by sticking to your oath or state laws, remember that it does not actually absolve you from your choice. If you vote for Donald Trump, you chose Donald Trump. If he destabilizes the country's and the world's foundations, that is on your conscience. It is written in the Bible, Revelation 11:20:

The time has come for judging the dead,
and for rewarding your servants the prophets
and your people who revere your name,
both great and small—
and for destroying those who destroy the earth.

Your fielty to party or state has no relevance to God Almighty. When called to testify to your actions in this life, will you plead ignorance?

Right now, this may all seem like hyperbole, but in his brief time as President-Elect, he has already destabilized relations across the world and threatened the livelihood of those who did not agree with him. We have seen the rise in attacks against people and groups of people he'd spoken out against. A person whose tyrannical acts force people to react in fear is a person who does not understand the importance of our democratic republic and what it means to be a leader of the free world.

We are either free or we're not. Donald's threats against those who oppose him have already begun to crumble American society.

You should choose America over party and state.

"Russia" is a Logic Test.

Who hacked the US political infrastructure? Russia, of course. By deduction, the odds are highest that Russia was the culprit.

You can play the game of finding a plausible, alternative explanation, but it most likely fails Occam's Razor. Does this mean that all plausible alternatives are necessarily implausible? No, but it means that you've been forced to make far more unproven assumptions than the primary conclusion and therefore, you're offering a weaker substitute.

Saying that the "US has pulled out its Russian card" does not disprove the deductive reasoning that was first laid out by security researchers who initially investigated the DNC breach, and in fact is usually a red herring. The allegation of using a "Russian card" is itself fraught with counter-bias -- your implicit bias.

Suggesting that a lack of public proof is itself reason to distrust the conclusion, requires an assumption that, because the proof is not public it, therefore, does not exist. Yet, we have seen bits and pieces of it, whether from security researchers or hints as to the source of the evidence.

Downplaying the action by citing the false equivalence of "we do it, too", also does not reduce the importance of the conclusion.

Pointing to whatever Julian Assange is saying, is beyond pointless. Long before his Wikileaks began leaking DNC emails, I identified his naivete and simplistic idealism as a sign of immaturity and weak logic -- he is, and always will be, a useful idiot. Any utterance from his lips carries the weight of being both uninformed and self-centered.

Sure, I could be wrong about everything.

But I've previously said on the record that Guccifer was lying when he told Fox News that he'd hacked the Clinton server, by pointing to the odd assortment of tools that he'd highlighted, none of which were useful in hacking the Clinton server from overseas. We thus learned that, in fact, by his own admission to the FBI, Guccifer was lying.

And I've previously written about how Guccifer 2.0 is obviously not a single person by citing the method of communication, the timing, details about their language syntax, and false leads. We've recently discovered that security researchers are convinced that Guccifer 2.0 is not who he says he is.

I trust the security researchers who have built up long histories of the means and methods of the different hacking groups. I've read some of their white papers.

Doubters have tortured explanations.

Pulled Over by the Grammar Police.

Yesterday, I got pulled over by the grammar police for intentional misuse of an antonym. I pleaded with irony, but then the humor police arrived and demanded that I hand over my writer's license.

I panicked and ran over a sentence as I tossed out my excess commas. Yeah, I deliberately abused that antonym and I'm not apologizing for it, even if you catch me.

True story.

Electoral College: America's Last Chance.

It's the fourth quarter with just five seconds left in the game and America's down by 4 at the 50-yard line. The call from the sideline comes in: Weakside bunch formation, all streak patterns with a tailback screen to the strong side. She knows the call is stupid and won't work since the defense is already in a dime package all sitting 30 yards off the line. She calls an audible for a hail mary from the bunch formation in streak pattern with max protect.

Electoral college voters: It's time for that audible to a hail mary.

You know how Cam Newton likes to taunt the losing team in their face? Donodus has shown that he's much worse than that. Upon the blow of the whistle Donodus is going to fling his feces in your direction, then laugh at how stupid you were to lose to his lame team, just as he presses the red buttons with his tiny fingers to shoot off a bunch of fireworks. He said that he wouldn't do any of these things, and yet what are you going to do when his poop hits your face or the sky turns red -- complain that he lied?

Think about it: If he was good enough to win on his own merits, neither Russia nor Wikileaks seemed to believe it; through their actions, they subverted the election process to get their desired outcome, although I must admit to viewing Julian Assange as more of a useful idiot than a plain antagonist.

And you really shouldn't assume that a Republican-led Congress will impeach him for violating the Constitution or the US Code. He's telegraphing every constitutional and criminal violation he's planning to commit, yet the GOP has done nothing to signal their opposition.

So how do you want to go down in history -- the people who couldn't do the right thing and contributed to the collapse of the United States, or the people who stopped a tyrant? It's your choice, so choose wisely.

The LA Coliseum's Peristyle

Well over a decade ago, I had one important request of bequeathment to my father: That I get to keep all of his slides and negatives. No one else in the family shared the same passion for photography as we did, so I knew that no one would object. I grew up around his workplace, much of the time in the dark room, so I was probably the only one who fully appreciated the extent of his photographic interest.

Over time, I'll get to posting more images from his body of work, but I thought I would share this one image taken in the late 50s, of the Los Angeles Coliseum's peristyle. Notice the ziggurat of City Hall in the background?

He used a Rollei and 6x6 / 120 film most of the time, but also used a series of Nikon cameras. I regret that he never gave me his Rollei, but he did give me his Nikon FE2 in 1984 -- the start of my lifelong pursuit of photography.

This is Totally Me.

via Invisible Bread

RIP Dad

I regret to say, last week my dad passed away at the age of 92 years and 7 1/2 months. I was, literally, the last family member he saw, and I would have missed my opportunity to see him while he was still alive had it not been for my sister's concern that I could miss my chance to see him.

Though he was born in the Year of the Rat, he was pure Dog inside. He sought and received loyalty, was often wrong, incorrigible, loved to play, stubborn, and always wanted to do things his way. He was also reliable and supportive, and when asked for help, he came running.

When my prior dog fell gravely ill at the age of 5, he immediately flew up here and stayed for weeks, calmly and quietly being the rock for us. Only another Dog would come running at the sound of trouble to offer support. I am hardly the only one in the family who benefitted from his deep love and support in our most dire time of need.

I am, as you might expect, a reflection of my parents. From my father, I gained my creativity and interest in photography and sculpture. He wasn't the type to offer high praise, but I knew that he was both impressed and pleased at my creativity, evidenced by his constant support for my endeavors.

For everything, thanks, Dad.

Dad, 1924 - 2016