In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 As a minor story amid the ongoing chaos of American politics, the Supreme Court refused to shield Trump's tax returns from the House of Representatives.  Does this mean that we will finally  see his tax returns?  All Trump needs to do is concoct one more batshit legal challenge, and run out the clock for one month.  Then, the new Republican majority drops the request, and his taxes remain safely secret.  Or get his accountants to drag their feet... or anything  for one month.  One month of delays.  That's it.  Can his lawyers find a way to drag everything out for one more month?  Yes.  That's what lawyers do.  They don't contribute anything to society.  They just gum up everything.  You will not see those tax returns, and neither will the House, because if those returns get to the House, they'll get to us, and Trump will commit actual, literal murder before letting us see those tax returns.

 I am getting ready to delve back into some China Mieville, who requires some real commitment.  I find that it helps to have lighthearted palate cleansers around such novelists, like Pratchett.  When last we left off on Discworld, I revisited Sourcery .  Let's not bother with Wyrd Sisters  because I say so.  We'll move right along to Pyramids .  It was better.  As a refresher, Discworld is a flat world resting on the backs of four giant elephants, standing on the back of an even bigger turtle, flying through space.  It is a world of fantasy and whatever else Pratchett decided to throw into it for the purposes of humorous political/social/economic commentary.  Pyramids  takes us from Ankh-Morpork (the primary metropolis) to Djelibeybi (Egypt, which is what I will type, so that I do not have to continue typing Djelibeybi).  The POV character is Teppic, the heir to the kingdom of Egypt.  As a lad, he heads to Ankh-Morpork to train at the Assassin's Guild, but then returns when

 I do not have a Twitter account.  I do not use Twitter in any way.  I cannot contain myself to so few characters, pompous windbag that I am, nor do I care what non-windbags have to say in their attempts at pithiness.  Twitter makes even less sense to me than FaceBook.  Of course, as a general rule, my understanding and lack thereof run approximately 180 degrees from most other people, which probably explains the rise of social media, while I shout into the void on a platform that is as user un-friendly as possible, merely for the joy of writing while drinking my morning coffee.  Sumatra-blend this morning, in case the zero people reading this morning cared.  Point being, I don't get Twitter, never did, and never will. Some social media platforms have distinct, measurable harms.  By now, you have perhaps seen the data showing the increases in anxiety and depression among teenage girls associated with Instagram. Twitter?  Twitter is something else. As a general, observable phenomeno

 Today is the day we praise Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and wink at the world's historic failure to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, for some goddamned reason.  What?  No?  But...  turkey!  Ooooooh!  I  get it.  Anyway, this may be the first Thanksgiving for many with large family gatherings in what we are considering the post-COVID era, or at least, the normalized COVID era.  For many, large gatherings never went away, and for others, their return was something to rejoice, and yet Thanksgiving has always been a strange tradition.  Let's set aside the historical blatherings and simply note that the cliche is for family members to argue about contentious topics, such as politics, and ruin the whole, damned thing.  Depending on the degree of conformity within a family, enforced or otherwise, this may or may not be a thing, but it is at least a cliche, even before getting into Festivus-style airings of personal grievances. Yet consider politics.  The politics of this country had been

 Douglas Murray, the iconoclastic British writer, has been making the following observation.  There is at least one historically important and lionized racist whose vile racism will never lead to cancellation, removal from college course syllabi, nor anything of the sort.  Karl Marx.  Karl Marx was really, really, really  racist.  Why will he never be canceled by the left?  Because the segment of the left that engages in cancellation is the Marxist and Marx-adjacent tradition rather than the classical liberal tradition of John Locke through John Stuart Mill.  You cannot align yourself with the founder of your school of thought, and then cancel him.  You can cancel the founder of your country if you declare your country fundamentally racist and evil, but it doesn't work that way if you cancel your intellectual founder.  Hence, Karl Marx will never be canceled.  Have you read  " On The Jewish Question ?"  Worth reading.  Yet in the modern, American context, consider someone

 My pre-election commentary going into the midterms was that we were doing something strange and interesting.  We were holding the 2024 presidential election early, by selecting those who would select the president in the 2024 election.  Donald Trump is still the most likely GOP nominee, although the slim gains made by the party probably did diminish his chances somewhat.  Nevertheless, he is the presumptive nominee.  If the economy is in poor shape in 2024, he wins legitimately, and he takes back the White House fair in square.  Whether or not Republicans cede power again becomes an important question, but he could quite reasonably win legitimately.  The question is what happens if he loses? Trump's most loyal supporters across many states were quite vocal in their embrace of his 2020 conspiracy theories, and would likely take any measure to overturn a Democratic win in their respective states.  Hence, states were effectively holding the 2024 contest early, by determining whether

 Merrick Garland would still have to approve any decision to prosecute Donald Trump, and nothing will ever quell the Republican charge, fed to them by Trump, that every accusation is a "witch hunt," so why bother?  Shit, or get off the pot.

 In the history of the House of Representatives, some Speakers have been particularly important.  We remember Speaker Cannon primarily for having provoked so much ire that the House voted to strip him of authority.  There was Reed.  A few others before we get to the modern era, but I can make the case, as some other scholars do, that whether by modern, or even historic standards, few have been as politically adept or influential as Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).  Not all Speakers get their due, and I believe that Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) was also among the more politically talented Speakers, yet he was saddled with a particularly difficult situation, so he is not seen as favorably as Pelosi by many observers.  Yet Boehner, like Pelosi, was a brilliant and civic-minded servant of the public good.  He just did not leave as much of a mark on public policy, nor the institution. Times and her caucus, though, gave Pelosi the opportunity to leave as important a mark as any Speaker.  Machiavelli wr

 Your first reading assignment is the DSM-5.  Just kidding.  As we have seen in modern American politics, one can be as cognitively blinkered as possible, and still succeed.  Keb'Mc, who is nowhere near as cool as Keb'Mo, will not necessarily be held back, even though he should have been held back for his intellectual deficiencies.  Rather, he faces an impossible structural problem.  Here are two books. The Theory of Political Coalitions , by William Riker.  1962.  Yes, his name really was William Riker, and he was a total badass of a scholar.  The key observation in this book was the idea of the minimal winning coalition.  If you are building a coalition strategically, there is a threshold for passage.  Say, 50%+1 in the House (or frequently 60 in the Senate, but we're discussing the House).  In order to maximize your utility, you make no more concessions than are necessary to get to 50%+1 because each additional vote you add into the coalition requires a sacrifice.  If yo

 The news from overnight is that with Nevada going Democratic, the Democrats will hold onto the Senate, regardless of what happens in the Georgia runoff.  The House is still quite close, although the numbers and the odds favor the GOP.  For whatever PredictIt is worth, the money is 4 to 1 GOP for the House right now .  Still, the fact that the Democrats have held the Senate, and that so many of Trump's picks have been losers might create the following narrative.  Donald J. Trump is a loser.  He lost his party a lot of seats in 2018.  He lost the White House, and he lost his party even more seats in 2020.  He remained the center of the party instead of going away like a normal politician, and his party's gains in 2022 have been, shall we say, Trump hand-sized.  Extra-small.  LO-ser!  Quite the narrative, for the guy who promised to make everyone sick of all the winning, and whose default insult is, "loser," right?  If there is a way to take a Vaudeville hook and drag h

 Tuesday was quite a pleasant day here in northern Ohio.  Unseasonably so, as though summer would continue endlessly.  Yet all things come to an end, summers included, and the search for a perfect wave, red or otherwise, will come to nought but skin cancer, sand rashes and eventually, the need for an adult-ass, fucking job.  This morning, we untangle the riddled knot of a bad metaphor of a... oh, fuck it.  Where was that red wave?  Um... did you see me  predict a red wave?  No.  Well, perhaps you did, but if you did, you were hallucinating.  I made no such prediction.  I predicted Republican gains, which we saw.  I made no assertion of a wave.  Yet somehow, a red wave became a default prediction, and I must now address why it didn't happen.  It should never have been anyone's default prediction.  Let us elaborate. The first basic observation here is that a wave election is a deviation from the norm.  It is unusual.  Your baseline expectation should never be a deviation from the

Ibrahim Maalouf, "Everything or Nothing," from Diagnostic .

 Apparently I need to explain this in detail.  A wave election is a deviation from the norm.  It is an unusual event.  Your default expectation should never be the deviation from the norm.  It should be the norm.  Your expectation should be not  a wave.  Did anyone see me say, "a red tide is coming!"?  No.  Why not?  Because that would have been a deviation, not the baseline.  I will elaborate this weekend on baselines, deviations, and predictions, along with the actual conditions behind the wave elections of 1994, 2006 and 2010.

 Has there ever been a worse debate performance than what we saw from John Fetterman?  I do not think so.  True, he had a stroke rather than innate stupidity or some other condition, but he did put on the worst debate performance in national political history.  And he still won.  What have we learned from this?  My metaphor remains as follows.  Suppose job candidates show up for interviews at a law firm and they are handed violins.  They are required to play the Brandenburg Concertos as part of the interview process.  (Side note:  why Brandenburg?  I just kinda like Bach.)  Would this make any sense?  Of course not.  There is no connection between governin' and debatin', just as there is no connection between lawyerin' and fiddlin'.  Fortunately, debates don't matter.  They are irrelevant.  They do not affect electoral outcomes. Can we please cancel all debates going forward?  Enough of this.

 Well, here we are.  I have a few assorted observations, none of which constitute a fully realized argument, so I shall put them in list form. 1.  I hope nobody expected to know about the Senate majority by now. 2.  Reactions to the House shift seem strange.  The Republicans are picking up seats.  How many?  Enough for a majority, probably.  What was your expectation?  Mine was "enough for a majority." 3.  The relative paucity of the GOP House gain seems to be treated like something that Dems can celebrate, and a thing for GOP hang-wringing.  Um... Dems?  You lost.  GOP?  You won.  (Again, probably, but the Democrats went into this thing with such a narrow majority that a mouse fart could hand the House to the Republicans.) 4.  Did the GOP gain less than one might expect?  Q2 GDP growth was -0.6%.  Yes, inflation is terrifying, but inflation is a poor statistical predictor of election results.  Regardless, one might have expected larger gains. 5.  If the GOP picked up fewer H

 Yes, tomorrow the country holds the 2024 presidential election.  You may have read otherwise, but that would be from those who are either not paying attention, or refusing to comment on the Emperor's rather unusual fashion statement.  Tomorrow, the country will vote on those who will decide what to do in 2024.  If enough Trumpists are elected to enough positions, then whatever happens in two years will be unimportant.  A Biden/whoever victory won't be certified, but a Trump victory will be certified.  It will be heads-I-win, tails-you-lose.  So let us consider, if briefly, the concept of indirect democracy. Recall that the president was originally conceived to be a position elected, not through the crazy vote aggregation scheme that we call "the electoral college," but by a group of electors called, "the electoral college," who were to be selected by the states.  You were to vote at the state level, and those state officials would choose those who would sel

 Yes, we have the midterm elections this week, but I'd like to take a moment aside to grumble about another book that bugged the crap out of me.  Oy, was this a stinker.  I know, with the possible end of democracy staring us down, it may seem petty to whine about a bad novel, but that's actually the point.  The stakes are lower, so I do not feel as alarmed.  Let me have this.  Would I rather the novel have been good?  Yes.  Could I have put the book down at any time?  In theory, yes.  But at least I can grumble.  So grumble, I shall.  Do I recommend The Light Brigade , by Kameron Hurley?  Have you been paying attention? Anyway, the title is obviously a reference, but the novel is about as deep as the title and that reference.  It was one of the 2020 Hugo nominees for Best Novel, and... no.  Arkady Martine won for A Memory Called Empire , which was a far superior novel (although I think Tamsyn Muir's Gideon The Ninth  was a better book).  By 2020, though, the key to a Hugo n

 It is almost time.  Almost time for the ads in my youtube feed to be blessedly free of those goddamned Tim Ryan/J.D. Vance inanities.  I do not watch television, so I am sure that many in my vicinity are subjecting themselves to even more, and perhaps worse ads, but my students and I occasionally commiserate on the annoyance of those youtube ads, as nobody under the age of 25 actually watches a "television."  (Hipsters and kids apparently have more than a few things in common.)  So what is going to happen?  It is going to be a normal, political science-y election.  The aftermaths of many elections may be not-normal, but Tuesday and the counts?  They will be normal.  We have returned to baseline, by my assessment. I write this for several reasons.  First, a little while ago, I wrote about the issue of polls, events and forecasting models .  There was a period of time during the summer when it looked as though the Democrats might be pulling ahead of the baseline fundamentals. 

 Bireli Lagrene, "Change Partners," from Gipsy Trio .