In Tenure Veritas: Libations From The Ivory Tower

 Black is white, up is down, left is right, and Kevin McCarthy is now advocating the leftist dream of decades.  For those paying insufficient attention to the debt ceiling hostage game of 2023, here is Kev's current position.  Kev' will not raise the debt ceiling without spending cuts.  He has not specified the spending cuts, of course, because that is not how the Republican Party plays this mind-numbingly stupid, self-destructive game.  He has, however, insisted that Social Security and Medicare are off the table.  Social Security, Medicare, defense, bond payments, and everything else individually is chump change.  If you insist that the country will pay its debts, and maintain Social Security and Medicare (because it would be political suicide to go after them), then the money must come from defense.  Moreover, in the era of the Trump-Putin alliance, when the neo-paleo-GOP has decided that Russia should be allowed to march across Europe and take...

 I think I have a new and healthy reading practice.  After any modern, woke science fiction/fantasy novel, I go back and read something old.  Like my old stand-by, Stanislaw Lem.  I love this guy.  Problem being, I've already read his stuff, but it stands rereading, and occasionally a new opportunity presents itself.  Lem wrote a few books with Ijon Tichy as the POV character, although Tichy is hardly a character.  Mostly, he is the center of whirling chaos of a particular variety, and a few years ago, a version of Memoirs of a Space Traveler: Further Reminiscences of Ijon Tichy  was published with the first English translation of "Professor Donda."  So, despite being half a century old, the story was new to me!  Hey, new Stanislaw Lem!  Kinda.  Hey, I don't speak Polish, nor am I fluent in the other languages into which it had been translated.  So let's have some fun. The compilation has a few other nice pieces, including...

 As promised, I have a variety of observations on the current issue of House committee assignments.  It is an ugly mess, and more complicated than one might think at first glance.  Of course, the entire House of Representatives might be characterized as an "ugly mess," but this is uglier and messier than even the general tenor of the chamber.  So what happened?  The normal process, to the degree that anything is normal in the House, is that each party gives committee assignments to its own members.  It is highly unusual for the majority party to strip a minority party member of committee assignments, although the majoritarian nature of the chamber gives the party that power.  Why have majority parties been so reluctant to use this power, even when faced with some real shitbags?  Consider the prisoner's dilemma, as we so often do. Hey, it has been a long time since I have fallen back on this cliche.  Gimme a break.  I am a game theorist, ...

 Shawn Lane, "Get You Back," from Powers of Ten, Live .

 The current hullaballoo in Congress is that McCarthy is refusing to seat several Democrats on committees, among them, Ilhan Omar.  This is retaliation for Pelosi's similar moves on Marjorie Taylor Greene, and some other Republicans.  I will have some comments this weekend, in long form, on the nature of revenge, punishment and equilibrium, but for today, I simply make the observation that I have been saying for years that the Democrats needed to deal with Ilhan Omar.  McCarthy's refusal to seat Swalwell and Schiff is unjustified.  It is partisan retaliation, as they have done nothing wrong in any objective sense.  One can disagree with them, but they have not crossed any real lines.  Ilhan Omar is another story.  Ilhan Omar is an antisemite.  She spreads antisemitic conspiracy theories, but her party looks the other way for two reasons.  First, she has "intersectional" characteristics that let her get away with anything she wants, ...

 Joe Biden's classified document debacle just keeps getting worse.  Over the weekend, the FBI searched his home, and found more classified documents.  They did not need a search warrant because Biden did not spend a year trying to withhold documents nor block their access.  Now consider that comparison, because it cuts both ways.  I am not the only one arguing that Biden's document scandal-- and yes, it counts as a scandal-- ensures that Donald Trump escapes any legal punishment for the Mar-a-Lago Papers.  Yes, what Trump did was far worse along every dimension, but no Republican juror will ever vote to convict Trump when there is a Biden document scandal, even if the cases are not comparable.  The Biden case just needs to exist .  Now, look at this from another direction.  It is only because what Trump did was so  much worse that Biden looks comparatively innocent.  Take away Trump, and Biden would look so  much worse right no...

 Yes, George Santos is somewhat mesmerizing.  He does not have mesmeric powers, although some of his con victims might beg to differ.  Rather, the dumpster fire that is George Santos, and the spectacle of a party indifferent to lying while trying to manage a House majority of only 222 seats has all the hypnotic effect of a campfire on a balmy, summer night.  I still have no great insight into Brigadier General Santos, and the challenge for commentary on the topic is that at the end of the day, he's just a damned liar in a party of moral cowards who are afraid to confront lies in any circumstance, much less when facing the possibility of seeing a House margin go from 222 to 221.  There's just no insight there.  So we turn to a novel.  I have been meaning to read Sarah Gailey's Magic For Liars  for quite some time, but we all have overflowing "to read" stacks.  The main reason this one did not really rise to the top for me is that while it rece...

 A debt incurred is a debt that must be paid.  Do you agree or disagree?  Be careful.  One of the most important, and more importantly, replicated observations in American politics is that people do not derive their beliefs from logical first principles.  Their policy positions are not "constrained," in the terminology of Philip Converse, on the basis of which observation he asserts that most people are not ideologues by any coherent definition of the word.  In his 1964 article, he did not use the term as an epithet, but rather, as a descriptor for those who connect their policy positions across issues based on some system, considering instead "ideologues" to be more politically sophisticated than those unable to see the connections between issues.  So now, consider the principle:  a debt incurred is a debt that must be paid. Right now, attention in the political realm is returning to the debt ceiling and the tiresome yet reckless game of chicken ...

 I never could sing, but I still love this one.  It was the first piece I ever tried to learn on guitar.  Stephen Stills is a genius, of course.  RIP, David Crosby.

 Jeff Beck is ours.  Not yours.  We are the only true fans of Jeff Beck.  Nobody else who has ever listened to Jeff Beck has truly understood him.  If you try to claim him as an influence, you are wrong.  You are misinterpreting him.  You have missed the point of his string bends.  Everyone wants to talk about his string bends, but nobody ever remembers his whammy bar.  Don't you dare tell me to bend strings, you boomer!  Those are "boomer bends!"  No jazz  guitarist ever bends strings! Oh, listen to the beauty of those bent strings!  Jeff Beck was so perfect! No!  You  don't get Jeff Beck!  We  get Jeff Beck!  You need to let me lecture you about Jeff Beck!  No, don't  listen to him, just read my posts in which I tell you what you need to know about Jeff Beck!  I  am the authority on Jeff Beck, and only I can decide what is important about Jeff Beck.  Don't think that you ...

 Some novels require a sequel.  Some do not.  Some imply a sequel without requiring it.  Such was the case with The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. , cowritten by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland.  It was quite good, although keep in mind that I am a Neal Stephenson fanboy.  Nevertheless, I will acknowledge that some of his works fall short [cough cough, Diamond Age ], and some could just use some editorial pruning.  Seveneves  would have been improved by chopping off the last third, set in the far future.  That said, I do recommend The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.   The premise was as follows.  The universe follows the multiverse version of quantum mechanics, and witchcraft worked, past tense, because witches were able to reach across the multiverse and, for example, summon objects from other "Strands."  Why did it stop working?  As science progressed, and specifically, recording technology like photography, the wave form collap...

 Did you watch Lost ?  I did.  I admit it.  If you did not, and do not know the premise, a plane crashes on a tropical island on which strange things happen.  Got it?  Anyway, during the second season, much of the plot revolves around an underground bunker left behind by a scientific research group called the Dharma Initiative.  In this bunker, there is a computer station which requires you to enter a sequence of numbers every 108 minutes, and then hit "enter."  The characters refer to this process as 'pressing the button.'  When the characters discovered the bunker, they found a guy in it, doing this, for reasons he did not understand.  The characters do not know what happens if you do not press the button.  Yet they keep doing it, every 108 minutes, out of a fear that if they do not do it, some disaster will occur, as stated by a filmstrip within the bunker.  Press the button, or something very bad will happen.  Trust me...

 I shall put aside politics, economics and other matters today, and yes, I wrote about the passing of Jeff Beck yesterday, but when someone like Jeff dies, it deserves real reflection.  When pop stars and celebrities die, the country, or perhaps even the world pauses.  I generally do not care.  When the Queen died, her family deserved time to mourn, but as I oppose the concept of royalty, I just did not personally care.  I remember with disgust the world's reaction when Michael Jackson died, and people generally ignored his serial molestation of children in favor of music that I find uninteresting, but at least generally remember.  Jeff Beck's name is, to non-guitarists, perhaps something like the Queen's name was to me.  Perhaps you knew it, and you knew that a category of people prostrated themselves before him, but you never really knew why.  Also, English.  Think of it this way.  I know nothing about sport.  I know the name, "Mi...

 If you know any guitarists, and wonder why they have donned black, well, that's because they are guitarists.  But today there is a reason.  If you conduct a poll and ask the masses about the "greatest" guitarists, you know whose name will top every survey.  These surveys are silly, and the overlap between their results and the lists that would be created by aficionados of the instrument tend to be low.  Many of the instrumentalists I would name owe a great deal to that gentleman, who was a brilliant innovator, and a virtuoso who pushed the instrument forward, yet the instrument has moved forward, and that is the story of today. The story goes that when he traveled to England early in his all-too-brief career, the big guitarists of the day (who were a bunch of young Englishmen) went to hear him play at a club, and shat enough bricks to turn Hadrian's Wall into the Great Wall of China.  Their collective response was, well, fuck!   What do we do now?!...

 So that was not good.  Joe Biden's attorneys found some classified documents from his time as VP sitting around in one of his offices.  In a word, "oops."  Or in two words, "oh, fuck."  How big is this?  Right now, we do not know, but take a step back, lefties and Democrats, and do a head check. The furor over Donald Trump stealing, concealing and withholding documents was partly a function of historical comparison.  The processes for managing executive and classified documents are quite strict, and when documents are mishandled, that needs to be reported immediately.  When it is not, it is a serious crime, and Donald Trump either is or should be facing serious legal jeopardy because what he did was not only take documents, but probably do so willfully, and then withhold them and lie about them to not only the National Archives, but the FBI. In contrast, if any federal employee takes home a document, notices, and fails to report it immediately, t...

 This morning, rather than science fiction, we step into the wayback machine and remember when cartoons were relevant.  See what I did there?  No, Sherman, we do not need to go that far back in time, although ironically enough, next Sunday will be another time travel book.*  This morning only requires us to set the dial for 1990.  In that bygone era, The Simpsons  was actually a good and funny show, and it was also what passed for edgy entertainment.  Bart misbehaved .  He also neglected to study (and lacked the native intelligence to compensate for not studying).  So, he flunked a history test, and only dreamed of going back in time, himself. Then he cried, and yes, he is a child, but in the midst of his crying spell, the teacher took pity on him because he mentioned some obscure historical tidbit.  Out of pity, the teacher gave him a D-, not because he actually earned a passing grade, but out of pity, and compared to his normal record ...

 Yesterday was a strange day.  Kevin McCarthy began the day with an exhortation that we watch in amazement for impending surprises, yet given his track record in producing surprises (not to mention his track record for honesty), one might have retained a healthy skepticism, and I have been bearish on his chances of getting the gavel throughout (remember how I suck).  Then a series of votes began, and the previous night's negotiations actually did manage to flip most of the holdouts.  By giving away damn-near every power and goodie available, defanging either himself or whoever would get the Speakership, McCarthy had gotten the rump, so to speak, of the obstructors.  Just not quite enough to get a majority.  Through the magic of "narrative," this somehow gets the remaining detractors to vote "present," rather than actively voting for McCarthy (translation: they either surrendered or accepted victory, depending on perspective), and Kevin McCarthy will now be ...

 There is an obvious temptation for anyone disgusted by the Republicans' downward spiral to cheer on the chaos, and even to hope that Kevin McCarthy manages to pull together a majority coalition to become the weakest Speaker in history.  Beyond the mere fact that this is funny -- and it is funny -- Kevin McCarthy is among the least competent party leaders we have seen in modern history.  One of the most basic rules of majority party leadership is as follows.  Never put a proposal on the floor unless you know you have the votes to pass it.  McCarthy has never put a winning proposal on the floor.  The only proposal he has ever put on the floor is his own Speakership, and he has lost 11 out of 11 times because the dumbass can't count.  Worst.  Leader.  Ever. So if you are either a Democrat or merely disgusted by Republican extremism (put me in that latter category, but not the former), you might actually want Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, thereby g...

 If the majority of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives wants to do something about the Freedom Caucus detractors, they have a problem.  Punishment requires a leadership team empowered to carry out that punishment.  A Speaker cannot be elected without the consent of those very same detractors.  Thus, no one can punish the Andy Biggs faction unless they allow themselves to be punished.  Nobody has any leverage with which to threaten the detractors because there is, quite literally, nobody  in a position to have leverage.  That is exactly what is at the center of this fight. So go ahead, Republicans.  Get mad at the Freedom Caucus.  What are you going to do ?  That's right.  Nothing.  You cannot do anything unless they  vote to allow you  to punish them. Conditional party government in action.  Eliminate any spaces you choose to eliminate.

 Budgetary fights have turned into games of brinksmanship that go past the brink, and into shutdowns with the problem being that there is a faction that actually likes government shutdowns.  There is a faction that wants  to force a default on the national debt by blowing past the debt ceiling.  It is that very same faction that has said it will never support McCarthy.  What does McCarthy think he is accomplishing with this?  Congress is not functioning.  Does he think this bothers them?  It only bothers them in that he is annoying them, but the concept of shutting down Congress is an idea that will strike them as a good idea in and of itself.

 There is a fair criticism of my particular corner of political science-- game theory.  We make empirical observations.  These empirical observations would seem to indicate irrational behavior.  However, in the grand tradition of those with hammers deciding that everything is a nail, we attempt to reverse engineer mathematical models in which the clearly irrational behavior we observe is actually fully rational in what pundits would call ten-dimensional chess, or some such nonsense. Yesterday was both predictable and hilarious, which is an interesting trick, because humor usually requires the unexpected.  A punchline that you can predict is rarely a funny punchline.  The humor of yesterday's chaos was, if I am honest, the joy of watching my own predictions and the obvious play out, while watching idiots gather in a circular firing squad.  I've been saying for a long time that we should remember what happened to McCarthy when Boehner was forced out....