Ah,Yes,There Was Indeed Collusion!

Yes, there was unquestionably collusion between Trump, the key people in his campaign, and Russia. The Treasury Department report which just was released, makes that more than clear. Trump’s campaign, through Paul Manafort, fed voter data to Konstantin Kilimnik, who gave it to Russian Intelligence, which then was able to target particular locales and demographics with a torrent of lies and fake news stories, to either keep them from voting, or get them to vote for Trump.

We all knew this, it was beyond obvious. It was not some byzantine plot that only our best agents, or the modern-day equivalents of Holmes or Poirot, could figure out. It was not hiding in plain sight. It was not hiding at all. Trump is not Professor Moriarity. He is a gangster who bludgeons his way to what he wants. We knew about Manafort’s long ties to Russia. We learned about Cambridge Analytics. We heard Manafort boast, “watch Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.”

Brad Parscale was communicating directly or indirectly with Russian officials in a dual strategy to precisely identify where Trump should campaign, on a daily basis. This was all written about, and particularly in the year after the election. But it did no good, which was always the point of the criminality; once you rob the house or plunder the coffers, you’re got the money, and that’s all that matters.

Having good analytics is not a crime, but it is depressing enough to think that this is where our electoral system has devolved. Conspiring with a foreign power to get a person elected who is most favored by that foreign power, and who is guaranteed to do everything he can to let them do whatever they like geopolitically, is a crime of the highest order.

Trump used the term “collusion” under advisement. There is nothing in criminal statutes about collusion, so that was their protection. Focus on the term which was not a crime But there are statutes against criminal conspiracy. And treason is a high crime, and it is punishable by death.

I took a quick look at the Bing search engine headlines, the ones you can see up there even today, if you search “collusion.” All those stories Bing and its parent company AOL were anxious to put up, about “No collusion found by Mueller,” “Trump victorious,” “Senate acquits Trump, finds no collusion.” The more recent stories of the last few days tell a different tale. But of course it comes years later than it should have.

I criticize the media extensively. It is wearisome, because it is both obvious and fruitless, at least to a major extent. I don’t want to go through the list of media figures, including the New York Times, which fronted for Trump during 2016; and then all the TV anchors and analysts, from Chuck Todd, to Ken Dilanian, who were either unbelievably obtuse, blatantly incompetent, or in Trump’s hip pocket. Or perhaps better put, the mouthpieces of the networks which employ them, and which did everything they could to help Trump win. But we remember it, and how enervating and infuriating it was to see hour after hour of it. And it did not stop after Trump “won,” it continued through the hamstrung Mueller investigation, and the impeachment.

The Republican leaders all knew that there was criminality. Kevin McCarthy knew early on. Paul “Let’s keep it in the family” Ryan knew. Richard Burr knew. McConnell certainly did, maybe years ago. Ron Johnson and Lindsey Graham knew. Those eight Republican senators who incredibly went to dinner in Moscow on July 4, 2018, knew. Jill Stein went to a dinner in Russia before that, she was part of it. Michael Flynn helped orchestrate it. Trump pardoned Flynn and Manafort, and Roger Stone, who was in close contact with Assange regarding Wikileaks data dumps., to both reward them, and keep them from ever telling the story.

The 2016 election is over, but its consequences will never be over. It was the lowest point in American history, in my opinion, until the 2021 Trump-planned and fomented insurrection at the capitol occurred, which of course was also a consequence of the treasonous campaign of Trump in 2016 .

What is perhaps most indelible is the sure knowledge that Republicans didn’t and don’t care. They would do it again in a flash. Abraham Maslow, the famous social psychologist, constructed a “hierarchy of needs” pyramid chart, to describe his theory about how people need the basic necessities to be fulfilled, before they can go on to have their other needs met. So at the bottom of his pyramid are Physiological needs, like food and water Above that are Safety needs, then Belongingness and Love needs, then Esteem needs. At the top of the pyramid, the need one can only be predominantly motivated by when all the other needs are met are Self-Actualization needs: reaching your full potential, being the best you can be.

The Republicans’ pyramid would be much different. It would have Winning at the base. On top of that, Keeping Power, and above that, Stealing as Much Money As You Can.. Their pyramid probably ends there, they do not seem to have any other values. Do anything to win, keep that power, and then take the spoils. All the rest of it is just bothersome noise to them, to be ignored and scorned.

And they did win the election of 2016, because Trump conspired with Russia. In a different time, there would have been hangings. But in this era, Republicans were able to use their vast monetary power, plus a media which was either on their side, or obsessed with a “both sides” mentality and practice, to simply block, deny, mock, invert, and keep it at bay. There was no way that Trump was going to be convicted in the Senate, the fix was in. Republicans were never going to convict him of anything. They just needed a few phrases to pretend that they were being sober and judicious. What they were actually doing was, putting their team over anything else; and protecting themselves, because many of them were in on it.

Even so, the truth will usually come out, even though we knew it long before this, and when it could have made a major difference. It was so obvious! We waited and waited for some major entity to lay in out in black and white, but they never did.

All that effort and travail: following along, listening to testimony at hearings, the various charges by Mueller’s team against Russian operatives. Hoping that Rick Gates would reveal the whole story; that Manafort would go to jail and stay there. Waiting for something really big, which never came, not in the way that the public needs, to really believe in it. There was no Walter Cronkite to go to Vietnam and then say on TV that the war cannot be won. There were just various talking heads arguing with each other. And then Barr to grab the Mueller report, and mischaracterize it before it came out. And Ken Dilanian saying, “The top line is that he found no collusion, and that is a very big deal.”

So many institutional failures showing us how weak or corrupted so many of those supposed bulwarks of democracy now are. On the better news side, we did win the 2020 election. And the collusion story may still be told in greater detail, and more justice might be done. But of course nothing can undo the 2016 election, where Trump, funded by Russian oligarchs for years, was pre-selected by Russia to run for President, and then given the full support of the Russian government, which hacked data, and worked with Trump campaign heads to target key voters with a massive network of internet trolls, fabricated stories, and the techniques of thought control. And we can add the social network heads like Zuckerberg, who played a large part in it, too.

It was a plot, a conspiracy, a treason against the United States government. We figured it out, we studied what we knew, and learned; and interpolated and extrapolated our way to the essential truth. That is something we can be proud of, even if we never were able to get the media to see it, or to somehow get Republican loyalists to put the country over their own tribal partisanship, greed, and totalitarianism.

Design Tragedies.

Lighthearted stuff this morning.

This is the view from my front window:

It’s gorgeous. I live on one of the nicest streets in Pittsburgh. The neighbors are nice, except for the church lady Trump Nazi next door, but we ignore her if we can.

Every year, I have this loveliness to look at through my front window except I really can’t look at it from my front window. Why? It’s because the previous owners put this behemoth bay window on the front of the house. This problem has plagued me since the days of the traffic cone orange countertops. (I fixed the kitchen. It’s always going to be a bowling alley but the Orange is now cost effective and nicer looking butcher block.)

Here’s the problem with this window and why it breaks my heart from both sides of the wall:

1.) It doesn’t match the era when the house was built. My house is mid century. That was the era of flat picture windows. So what?, you may ask. What’s wrong with a bay window?

2.) It’s disproportionally large for my house. I mean, it’s YUGE. Don’t get me wrong, I love natural light. But because it is a bay, it needs its own roof and the one that’s built onto the front of this house is also big and takes up a good chunk of the front exterior of this house. It’s not a giant McMansion. It’s a modest 3 bedroom. (Plenty big for a family of 4 but still not Versailles) Basically, this window looks like a giant wart hanging on the front of my house. It gives me a sad everytime I drive up to it.

3.) (and this is the stupidest part) Whoever picked out this window got the one with the blinds built into the glass. BUT the blinds can only be tilt adjusted to let light in. They can’t be retracted in any way. I can’t make the blinds go away. So I’ve been living here with days like today, looking out – through blinds. Short of breaking the glass (I’ve considered it) the blinds are a permanent feature. Who does that?? Oh, yeah, probably the person who picked the Orange laminate countertops.

4.) The frames are unpaintable. I mean the grilles are unpaintable. Someone must have been thinking, “oh, this wood grille looks so expensive (it doesn’t). Let’s not get painted grilles”. I’ve seen design noobs on YouTube who get apoplexy whenever someone paints wood. This is what I imagine happened with this window’s former owners. But now I’m stuck because unless I paint the grilles, which I can’t do without breaking the glass because they are also between the panes, no other color painted wood is going to look right from the interior or exterior. Painting the interior trim white will make the grilles looks kind of dingy. To prevent that, I have to leave everything else unfinished which looks, well, unfinished.

I’m assuming the original window owners discovered this too late as they painted every other trim surface in the living room but the window sash and frame. I hope they took a moment to appreciate how stupid it looks.

I’ve gotten some windows companies to give me quotes. I’m thinking of three simple double hungs with grilles and no internal blinds. The prices aren’t too crazy though with a retention wall to fix, it’s going to hurt (there goes replacing my laptop this year)

But every time I get one of these companies to give me a quote, they make a BFD about how much they LOVE the bay window. That’s because they have no design taste and can’t get past the fact that the previous owner spent about $14K on this ONE window. Oh, and the seal is broken. Gotta fix that. Great! Can you fix it by, you know, removing the window and replacing it with something more reasonable?? Then they look at me like I have two heads.

Then I want to get all Karen on their asses and shriek that the person who put the damn window in had more money than taste, no interest in the historical style of the house, bought blinds that can’t be retracted and I want to speak to your managers because I absolutely do not want another {{expletive deleted}} $14k bay window to replace it.

Meanwhile, the years go by with me staring out at the lovely street in a partial vision seat.

I’m ready to take a sledgehammer to it to force a replacement.

It’s going to happen one of these days. {{insert image of RD with goggles and sledgehammer going at it and screaming “DIE! DIE! DIE!” as wood splinters, roof shingles and glass fly into the air in a fountain of glittering shards. It will be my performance art piece.)

Will take pics.

The Search For Attributions

The social psychology theory known as Attribution Theory was developed by Bernard Weiner, around 1980. I got to take a graduate class from Dr. Weiner several years after that. He was good-natured and unpretentious, and I enjoyed the class, which covered his own Attribution Theory, and other related topics.

I like this theory so much, because it is intuitive, and is very applicable to real world situations. When I was first delving into social psychology, something I had never studied as an undergraduate, and I was learning about all these theories, one of my professors ruefully admitted that “these are never really replicated outside of the lab.” They do not provide sure-fire or shortcut guides to understanding behavior. And they usually relate to perceptual and subjective matters, not subject to rigorous scientific validation. But the best theories, like Cognitive Dissonance, and Attribution Theory, are insightful, and have import.

The basic concept of Attribution Theory is that attributions that people make as to the reasons for something happening, will have a great influence on how they will approach future situations. Attributions, in this context, are simply the cause that we attribute to a result; the “why did this happen?” that humans are always trying to discern.

I believe that Dr. Weiner briefly said that the two parts of the newspaper where you most see attributions, are the stock market pages, and the sports pages. We know how the network and sites which closely follow the stock market, seem compelled to provide “a reason” for why the market went up or down. And sometimes there well may be that reason, but there usually are other reasons, too.

But we hear that “the market went up today, on hopes of a business acquisition.” But then if the market goes down the next day, we are told that there was a new matter that caused the decline. Or the old, “Buy the rumor, sell the news,” which says that the market goes up on rumors ; and then when the deal or merger does happen, they have already priced it in, so it goes down again. Or–and this is the most obvious, but rarely gets the headlines–sometimes billion dollar hedge funds buy stocks, they go up, and then they sell them back at a quick profit, and they go down. Thus the traders make the movement, not the events that the trades are attributed to.

Those of us who follow sports are always hearing players or coaches make attributions to preparation or attitude after a win. “We approached this game differently, we told each player to take the responsibility; we told them that this was a clean slate, a new start.” It sounds great, but often the team loses the game after that; what happened to the new resolve? It may well be that after the fact–the big win–the coaches and players want to make an attribution to how they practiced, what was said in the locker room, but that was basically the wish to believe that the approach led to the different level of performance., because they won this game.

Sometimes, a team’s ups and downs, or the stock market gyrations, can be looked at as “regression to the mean,’ where an undue up or down is often followed by a result closer to the established mean, assuming there is one. That sort of goes along with “the law of averages.” If there is a baseball player whose batting average over the last five seasons is always within a few points of.280, and then he starts the first half of the next season batting .320, he is likely to slump a bit and end up close to his mean. It does not always happen, but it often does. And all the other attributions as to why he went up, and now down, might really just be overreactions, the human need to find reasons for everything.

Here is a social example of where Attribution Theory is significant, and you can see the impact of attributions. I hope that no one will somehow be offended by the example; one has to be careful these days. Imagine that a man meets a woman, in some fashion, and he thinks she is attractive, and wants to ask her out on a date. So he calls her up, and asks if she would like to have dinner with him on Friday. And she says, “I can’t on Friday, but thank you for asking.’

So what does he make of that? What does he attribute her “no” to? Maybe she has a date with someone else. Maybe it is a casual date, or maybe an ongoing relationship. Maybe she is involved with someone. Or maybe she just doesn’t want to go out with our protagonist. He could ask about such things, but that is very awkward and ego-risking. So he thinks about whether he should ask her out the next week. Or whether he should wait a few weeks, so as not to appear overeager. Or whether he should just give up on going out with her. Or maybe he is wildly hypothesizing, and he should not make much of her declining his invitation.

The attributions he makes are crucial as to how he proceeds. But there is a deeper level. What if he decides that she doesn’t find him attractive ‘in that way.” And he worries that maybe this is an ongoing issue. Maybe this will keep happening. So maybe he will decide to not ask any more women on dates. That seems extreme, but it can occur, depending on the attributions he makes. Is her “no ” only specific to her, or is it more generic? And his sense of self-esteem, and past occurrences before going into this interaction, are obviously important factors as to how much he might generalize from this one situation.

Now, hopefully most people have enough self-confidence to take a “no” as not being a general indictment of them. But it can happen. Not just with dates, but with job interviews which do not result in an offer; or a couple of auditions which result in, “Next!” Or a book or song you write which does not sell like you had hoped. Do you attribute such disappointments to “one of those things,” or, “tastes will vary,” or do you at some point decide that ‘it’s not them, it’s you,”; or at least that what you are offering, is not what the public wants?

Going back to the dating example, what if a friend of this man hears about this, and he tells him that he had also asked her out, and she turned him down; and he knows three other men in the office department (or school, or political group) who asked her out, too, and she did not go out with any of them, either That would be apt to make the protagonist feel better about himself. But what if his friend just made that up, to try to help him to feel better? Was that a good or bad thing he did?

When I took this class, Attribution Theory had just been developed, so there was not much in the way of practical examples. There was a story about how some prestigious academic university back East, had tried something involving first-year students whose grades were below average. A group of them were then required to attend an event where people came in, said that they were upperclassmen, and that they also had done poorly their first year, but they had learned from that, developed better study habits, and then made Honor Roll after that. “You can do it, too!” And supposedly this group of first-year students did better the next year than those which had no such intervention. But the presenters were not what they described themselves to be; they were students there, but they had not done poorly the first year, as they had pretended for the desired effect.

Then I read that maybe this was an apocryphal story. Or maybe it is true, but their improvement could be attributed to the so-called “Hawthorne Effect,” where just the fact that someone showed an interest in helping them, improved their performance. But whatever the case, it does highlight the interest in learning whether changing people’s negative attributions might cause them to have more optimism and confidence, which by itself could lead to better results. And if so, is this a good thing, if the person or group dedicated to changing your attributions is making up facts?

I think that it is a very compelling subject. The attributions we make come from various sources. Our self esteem. Our past experiences . What other people have told us about ourselves. What our parents have told us. We rarely know exactly why something happened, and of course there may be more than one reason, intertwined with others What we take from it, may be more crucial to us than the actual fact of an event.

The media thrives on making attributions. “This happened because.” Someone lost an election. A party lost a number of elections. There are people from Mexico coming up to the border. Gas prices are higher. There are demonstrations. Someone’s poll numbers are going up or down. Economic numbers are moving. So they say that it is because of this or that. Who gave the media the power to make attributions? No one, but they are the media, we watch their stations, and they feel compelled to make them.

People in their daily life make attributions all the time with regard to a variety of things. The media makes them every day, as well, but theirs are directed outward, to other people. I do not have the sense that media reporters and executives are scrupulous in doing this, they seem to think that they have carte blanche, and that they are almost required to toss in their attributions, which are of course not stated to be such, but are often presented as truths.

And the general attributions made by media types can take hold, almost become accepted wisdom. They become cornerstones which other related attributions are built upon. “This public official is doing the same kind of thing he did before, showing the same stubbornness,” or ” he exhibits the same inability to make a clear decision.” It becomes a theme, simply based upon media’s original attributions as why some person or political party chose this or that course of action. and then their eagerness to validate their original assessment.

The media is not composed of brilliant analytical minds. And even the most brilliant analysts will vary in their insights and attributions as to why something was said, or something happened. But the media are the conduit for attributions.

Imagine if there were some outside figure, or Greek Chorus, which would always interpret events for you, tell you why they happened. In the Greek plays, the chorus usually seems to be the voice of wisdom. But that is a literary device.

We are having attributions provided for us by the entities whose original job was to cover and describe events. Reporting and commentary now merge. Some people ignore this, and are capable of making up their own minds; others want to be told what attributions to make. And we should never forget that the vast empire of right wing media is always ready, often ahead of the fact, to provide their own attributions, often known as “spin,’ but nonetheless powerful in shaping the reactions they are trying to obtain.

It is something to think about, the next time you hear someone making attributions as to what caused a particular event for you, or in the society at large. They may be true, or partially true, one of several causes. They may be inaccurate, based on incomplete facts. They could be the result of preconceived biases, or reflexive reactions. They may just be the most facile responses, the ones that we are most comfortable with relying on in when we are searching for explanations. Realizing that they are just attributions, maybe insightful, maybe not, but not validated truths, is important to at least keep in mind.

To unfortunately end on a darker note, every time there is a mass shooting, there is the search for attribution of cause, called “motive.” Not to necessarily imply that it is a rational motive, but to try to find out, “Why?” The media usually drops this topic within a few days, they have other stories to cover; but they certainly dwell on it right after the event.

Sometimes I think that looking for a motive for these events is some kind of collective quest for sanity. As if, if we could only find a proximate cause, attribute it to drink or drugs or stress at work, or a violent political group, we would gain some kind of understanding which would not frighten us so much To consider that this is simply part of a societal sickness in America: no rhyme nor reason, outside of the perpetrator’s head, and the gun, and the people to shoot at; that there is no understanding, just the horror of it, and the likelihood that different but identical people, each with their own psyches and stories, will repeat it, would evoke the line from “King Lear.” “That way madness lies.” So people seek for attributions, instead.

Anglo-Saxon style? I’m here for it!

Have you seen the manifesto from the America First Caucus? It wants to return America to its Anglo-Saxon political roots and architectural styles.

Any comment, @GOPLeader? https://t.co/GZjIfSjFRE

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) April 16, 2021

Ooo! I can’t wait.

But first, I hope we don’t have to do a 23 and Me test because I’m pretty sure I’d be excluded, though number 1 child did it and says we’re whiter than most Republicans. But you know, it might not be the right kind of white. We’re mostly Irish, Scottish, English and a touch of Jewish. It’s the English part that might disqualify us. Our ancestors came from a part of England that was settled by Vikings. Yep, we’ve got a healthy chunk of Scandinavian in us but it’s the Swedish variety, not the Danish variety.

The Angles came from Denmark and the Saxons to the right of the Netherlands area. That’s totally cool with me. It was Norwegian and Danish Vikings (I guess they are the “good” Vikings”) that also settled Iceland and Iceland was the site of the world’s first parliamentary democracy- the Althing. If we do the parliamentary route, voile! (Or Thwak!) there goes that miserable two party system we’ve been plagued with for 240 years. That right there would be an improvement.

Our Puritan colonists spent a lot of time in the Netherlands to avoid religious persecution back in England. The Netherlands are known for tolerance and assimilation of diverse groups. More than 50% of its population has no religious affiliation. And have you seen their bike lanes? Amazing.

Denmark has one of the strongest social safety nets around and happiest citizenry on earth. The progressives will have a field day.

As for Anglo-Saxon architecture, I look forward to scrapping McMansions for Mead Hall Revival with long smoky hearths and sleeping platforms. Maybe they’ll bring back the shield maiden look. Or the hot blonde guys on horseback. It would be like living in a JRR Tolkien fantasy. I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life!

Let’s hear it for Beowulf!

(Wait. I have the Seamus Heaney translation. Is that allowed?)

Please, someone tell me that the Swedish thing isn’t going to turn into some bureaucratic nightmare.

Prayers and Actions

A man wearing a hood and carrying an assault rifle, went into a parking lot at a Fed Ex building in Indianapolis,, and starting shooting people. Then he went inside and shot some more people, and then he shot himself. He is dead. He killed eight people,, and at least five others are seriously wounded.

It is so depressing to write about this, or any of the other mass shootings which occur with ever-increasing frequency. CNN writes, “This incident marks at least the 45th mass shooting in the United States, since the Atlanta-area spa shootings on March 16,” It is depressing for many reasons. The loss of life, the people who were at one moment doing errands, thinking about the weekend, their families and loved ones, and then in a moment, shot dead. The fact that this keeps happening, faster and faster, and nothing is done. The apparent utter futility of it all.

The same thing happens every time. The news media solemnly and respectfully covers it. Families and friends are shown grieving. The public wants to know, “Why?” What caused this man (it is virtually always a man ) to do such an awful thing? What is his background? Are there notes on his computer? What was his political affiliation? Then this dies away, if you will forgive the phrase, in a few weeks. There are all those other news stories; and there are more mass shooters to learn about.

What in general causes some man to go to a place where there are other people walking about or sitting, and start shooting as many of them as he can, before killing himself? Some of them don’t kill themselves, they are killed by police officers, or are apprehended. But many do shoot themselves.

One could hypothesize, as if by doing so, we could get to the heart of the matter, and thus prevent more of this. That is really the only purpose in it, though there is a general curiosity about motives, almost ghoulish if it has no meaning beyond that.

A personal gotterdammerung? Someone decides to end his life in a blaze of carnage? He thinks this will make him famous, even in death? He thinks he is making a statement of some sort, expressing his anger, hatred, frustration at the world? He is in some cases trying to kill specific people at a place he worked at or did business at, and then kills a bunch of other people, too?

It is chilling to contemplate how the media, trying to do the best job in these situations, has all this speculation about motive, then there is some followup when the police release a bit of information about the killer; then it sort of disappears. Does anyone remember the various motives of the 45 mass killers of the last month? Do they not all merge together in a tapestry of madness? Can anything be learned or gleaned or extrapolated from, to help to prevent these killings?

In this case, we now have learned that the mass killer had likely worked at the Fed Ex store last fall. We also leaned that his mother had contacted law enforcement last spring, saying that she was afraid that he was going to commit “suicide by cop.” They went to his home, found a shotgun and seized it. They interviewed him, and did not assess that he evinced Racially Motivated Violent Extremist (RMVE) tendencies. There were no criminal violations, so they didn’t pursue it further. Obviously he purchased another rifle, killed at least eight people with it, and very likely did not do it for racial extremist reasons.

Of course, there are other types of psychopathy besides RMVE. The net is cast too narrowly, and that may be a political choice, because of the threats the FBI has uncovered over the last few years. The shooter’s mother apparently tried to prevent this, but she did not get the help she needed. The nineteen year old man just got out of his car and started shooting, according to police.

If you are that mentally disturbed, you may not even have the capacity to realize the horrible pain you will cause to others. They have a lot of shootouts on TV, and they don’t too often deal with the aftermath, I do not think. Given the dreadful results, it would have been better had he just shot himself first, but for some reason, he wanted to strike out, maybe a form of projection, or to go out like in the movies. Who can know, and who can say how we can stop the next one of these?

Clearly, there is either not enough money, and not enough personnel, to deal with the kind of calls his mother made to law enforcement. While we are understandably horrified at the recent fatal police misconduct, not having enough personnel and dedication to stop mass shootings before they happen, is no answer to that. That his mother was that concerned, and then the police just let it go, is almost unfathomable, except to consider that there are an increasing number of men like that now; plus, if they start arresting all of them, there will be lawsuits galore against them. Why he was not put on a list preventing him from ever buying another gun, is another outrage, but of course, assault weapons are virtually flying out of the stores now, partly attributable to the people who were running the country and owning most of the media

Beyond obvious, the consistent thread is access to weapons of mass destruction. Twisted minds, distorted psyches, people ‘snapping,’ have always existed, although certainly the modern world, with its stoked anger, social media-propagandized outrage, and sense of anomie, causes more of it. But even so, having a weapon which can kill many people within seconds, before anyone can stop it, is what is at the center of these horrible events.

Anyone who can’t or won’t see this, is almost beyond hope. There are far too many guns, and far too many places for seriously mentally disturbed people to kill many people within a minute or two. Why are these kinds of weapons being made and sold? Why is everyone either so afraid of the gun lobby, or so mentally twisted themselves, that they fetishize and worship these things, as if the only way they can evince potency is to have many of them, and wave them around proudly, and dare someone to castrate them, by taking their gun away? It is a sickness at the soul of American culture, and what is the vaccine for that?

We are either going to do something drastic about this, or it is going to be a fact of life. Wherever we go, there could be a person armed with one or more assault weapons, ready to kill as many people as he can. You can’t go in the supermarket, you can’t go to a Fed Ex office, or a nightclub, or a synagogue, or a church, or a school, or anywhere else, and feel safe?

The United States has five percent of the world’s population. It has thirty percent of the world’s mass shooting events. Forty percent of firearms sold are in the United States. It sounds like insane “gun culture” to me. Eradicating that would be an almost impossible task. There are so many people and organizations and political leaders who figuratively have blood on their hands, for either stoking anger and violence, or absolutely refusing to allow any gun laws to be passed.

We used to have some laws to at least curb the ability of people to obtain guns, particularly assault weapons. We passed an assault weapons ban under President Clinton. President GW Bush let it expire. At this point, it seems almost impossible to imagine that we could pass another one. The Republicans in Congress, beholden to whomever they think elects them, and/or as rabidly against such legislation as their donors and base are, absolutely will not pass anything close to that.

It is possible that some minor legislation might get through, something like a red flag law, defined as “a law that permits police or family members to petition a state court to order the temporary removal of firearms from a person who may present a danger to others or himself.’ One can immediately see the very limited value of this, almost a fig leaf to hide the fact that the gun violence epidemic will not even be slowed down, much less stopped.

The only hope would be removal of the Senate filibuster, and then passage of an assault weapons ban, but we’ve got two Democratic senators who are absolutely opposed to getting rid of the filibuster, which has turned the Senate into a place where a bill cannot even get to the floor, unless 60 senators vote to override the filibuster. And even if somehow such a bill got to the floor, it would likely not get 50 votes to pass. This country is being paralyzed, if not actually run, by a minority of people who control enough of the levers of power under our anachronistic electoral system, to block any legislation that its fanatic and gun lobby bases do not want.

What else can be said? We are either going to stop these mass killings, or we are going to live with them. The rest of it is sound and fury signifying nothing good for us. This is America, we like to think that we can do anything we set our mind to. Then we must set our mind to this, unless too many people believe that fifty or more mass shootings a month is the cost of “American freedom,” which they do not think includes the freedom to be safe while shopping, or learning, or enjoying a cultural event, or praying. The gun lobby worshipping Republicans are very much about prayers, after the fact.

Natural Selection of Refuseniks?

I got the latest update on the number of Covid cases in Allegheny county. There are some interesting patterns emerging.

As expected, the number of cases for those over 65 is smaller than during our previous spikes, reflecting the number of people in this demographic that have been vaccinated.

The greatest number of cases now are for individuals 25-49, which represents the largest population in the report. This also makes sense as this cohort is only now getting vaccinated.

We are seeing more reported cases among children, especially K-12.

What interests me is the 50-64 age group. I need to confirm this but it looks like this number is creeping up. Here in Allegheny county, this group has been able to be vaccinated for several weeks. So, this number should be coming down.

Another interesting note is the number of women becoming infected has been more than the number of men infected. This trend has been going on for several weeks.

If I can get my laptop up and running (yes, I do all of this blogging on a iPhone), I’ll see if I can track it on a spreadsheet. But it looks to me like we are running into some natural selection among women, who tend to be skittish about vaccines, and the 50-64 year olds, who I suspect includes a higher number of refuseniks.

The b.1.1.7 variant is dominating this most recent spike. It’s more easily spread and may be more deadly because it is likely to give recipients a higher viral load.

So, if the unvaccinated are getting this variant and spreading it, they’re more likely to get sicker and end up in the hospital.

The good news is that the number of deaths is coming down. The bad news is if you get it, you’ll be sicker.

AND being unvaccinated means contributing to the continued shutdowns or reductions of certain businesses.

Mother Nature is a bitch but she’s pretty upfront about her methods. No one who doesn’t get a shot should be surprised.

Personal Liberties, and the Right to Health

At a Congressional hearing today, Jim Jordan demands of Dr. Fauci, “When are the American people going to get their First Amendment liberties and freedoms back?” Dr. Fauci tries to explain that this is not about liberty, it is about public health, but Jordan just keeps yelling the same thing. Chairman James Clyburn recognizes Maxine Waters, she tries to speak, Jordan keeps yelling. Waters tells him to shut his mouth. End Scene.

Jordan may be Speaker of the House some day. I do not want to even think about that, just about how to prevent it.

This is certainly the crux of the matter. Somehow this is the culmination of decades of right-wing propaganda put on 24 hours a day on all forms of media. Somehow tens of millions of people seem to believe that government mandates regarding health precautions are robbing them of their First Amendment rights.

There is immense case law regarding the government’s rights, whether nationally, or through the exercise of state police powers, to mandate health-related rules or restrictions. Products are taken off the market if the FDA deems them to be unsafe or dangerous. Jurisdictions have the right to enforce curfews to deal with safety or health risks. There are traffic laws, such as the requirement to use seat belts when driving, to protect health and safety.

There are of course some limits, as there always are, regarding the need for such laws to not be “unreasonable,” and to be related to public health concerns. What the U.S. Government and various states have done with regard to the Covid threat, easily pass that requirement. In fact, there are very few cases of people or businesses being fined or shut down because of not following the health protocols of masking or distancing.

Jordan is a bad guy, in more ways than one. I don’t know if all of his belligerent screaming at health experts like Dr. Fauci is based on actual beliefs, or just calculated demagoguery in order to gain power. Since he acts as if it is all based on arguments about values and policies, we have to combat them on that ground.

Does he think that any traffic law mandating a speed limit, is taking away people’s precious liberties? Does he think that laws requiring he use of safety belts in cars, are violative of personal freedom? Maybe he does, but he would never say that, because it would put him far outside the mainstream.

If I want to walk around the neighborhood and play a trumpet at 3AM, is it an encroachment on my freedoms to prevent that? What right do other people have to tell me what I cannot do with my own trumpet? And we’re just talking about noise, not health or safety concerns.

If someone wanted to walk into a restaurant,before the pandemic, and play a boom box at the table, could they tell him to stop, or evict him if he does not? If he does not wear a shirt, can they make him leave? What does Jordan think that these rights of an establishment to set dress codes or noise levels, come from? Where do the rights of a community to call an entity which releases dangerous chemicals a “public nuisance,” and shut it down, derive?

I have some tolerance for constitutional arguments I disagree with, but which have at least some semblance of rationality to them. But Jordan is not just grandstanding or trying to advance his own carer. He is spewing out a toxic brew which poisons the minds of countless people. The ones who kept going into stores and refusing to wear masks, and fighting with employees or patrons who demand that they do. The idiots who actually spit at people or produce, to scare them, or maybe to even try to get them sick, because apparently it is their right when their “precious freedoms” are under attack.

How about the freedom to be able to know that the government is doing everything it can to deal with a deadly pandemic? What about the right to walk around and know that everyone is wearing masks, at least single if not double, following the guidelines laid out by our best health experts, to prevent the spread of the virus? If I drive my car, don’t I have the right to assume that the other drivers are following the speed limit laws, and that there are police officers out there to enforce them; rather than there are some people shouting, “Freedom!” as they barrel along at 100 mph.?

If you buy produce at a grocery store or fruit market, don’t you have the right as an American citizen to expect that it has been examined and tested, so that you know it is safe for you and your family? And if very unfortunately some tainted food gets through, don’t you have the right to expect that it will immediately be pulled off the shelves?

People like Jordan see themselves as the privileged aristocrats of this Age. They have enough money and power to get vaccinated first. They go only to the best restaurants and the best markets. They live in communities where there are all sorts of rules against outsiders parking there, or making any noise, or getting within a thousand feet of their gates. There are no toxic dumps around there. They devoutly believe in social darwinism, even though they call it something else.

I don’t want to live in a country where Jim Jordan or any of those like him, are in charge. Not just because they are reprehensible people. Because they would quickly destroy any chance we would have to fix the environment, and protect public health and safety. There would be toxic dumps all over; waterways would be further polluted; there would be more catastrophes and more pandemics, and nothing to stop them. The last year of Trump should make it abundantly clear what the country would look like if Jordan or Hawley or Cruz or Rubio or Meadows or DeSantis or Pompeo or Scott or Pence ever got hold of the reins of power. Think of 14th Century London.

Living while Black

This is what it’s like:

license plates were visible (Lt. Caron Nazario). I will be careful to follow all traffic rules (Philando Castille), signal every turn (Sandra Bland), keep the radio volume low (Jordan Davis), and won't stop at a fast food chain for a meal (Rayshard Brooks). I'm too afraid to

— George#VotesBlueAlways (@Numbers28) April 14, 2021

Check out the whole thread.

You’re not even safe in your own house in your own bed.

Risk Tolerance, Risk Aversion, and the Vaccines

I first encountered these terms, “risk aversion” and “risk tolerance,” in a mathematics class, but to my disappointment, it was just a brief sidebar in the book. I think the concept is fascinating. Of course it has different imports in a variety of areas, such as probability theory, gambling, stock investing, or just daily subjective “decision tree:” choices.

I am sure that experts in any of these fields would have a more precise understanding of the advanced mathematics part of it. But I certainly understand the concept: that people vary in their appetite for, or fear of, taking a risk.

Obviously, it depends on what you are risking, what the reward is, and what the penalty for being wrong is. Let’s look at a rather benign gambling example. Let’s assume you are dealing with a fair coin, and a legitimate device which flips the coin high in the air, turning over a few times until it comes down. Another person tells you that if the next toss comes up heads, he will pay you $5, and if it comes up tails, you will pay him $3. Most people would take that bet, you are getting 5 to 3 odds on a perfectly even proposition. If this were played a thousand times, the odds are that the results would be fairly close to 500 heads and 500 tails, so you would take in $2,500 and pay out $1,500, and you would net $1,000. Even if the results varied to where it was maybe only 480 heads and 520 tails, you would win $840. Any reasonable person would take a bet like that.

Now, if this were only flipped once, would you still take it? Probably; the odds of 50-50 are still the same but of course probabilities play out over a larger sample. But it is still a good deal., and of course you are only risking $3.

What if he said that he would pay you $500 if it came up heads, and you would pay him $300 if it came up tails. Would you do it? Many would not, because even though the odds are very positive for you, if there is only one flip, you have a 50-50 chance to lose, and $300 is a lot of money. If it were flipped a thousand times, and no one had to pay until the flipping was completed, you probably would do it, because the odds are very large that you would win money. Even if it somehow came up 600 tails to 400 heads, which is virtually impossible with a fair coin, you would win $20,000. If it came up 500 each way, you would win $100,000.

But what if the bet were, you get $5,000 for heads and you pay $3,000 for tails, and only one flip? Most would not do that, though a professional gambler would, or someone with a lot of money. Of course, this begs the question as to why someone would give you such a great gamble, but we will ignore that for these purposes, and just assume that the other person is a wild gambler. The point here is, that there is a level at which a person will opt out of the risk, even if it is in his favor, because the cost of losing is too great.

We can test this for each person, by simply asking him or her which bets they would take, and which they wouldn’t. At $5 to $3, and only one flip, almost everybody would, At $50 to $30, and one flip, many would. At $500 to $300, many would not, and so on. One could derive a graph of a person’s tolerance for, or aversion to, risk, as the amount risked increases. It does vary with people, in many aspects of life.

Those are mathematical examples, where the probabilities can be calculated. In other areas, they are more subjective, and so one has to try to make the best guess as to the probabilities, and the risks of good or bad outcomes. But you cannot actually verify them, and so your calculations are susceptible to misperceptions, positive or negative biases, and speculations. Humans are not machines. Even so, we make subjective mental calculations all the time, trying to figure out the relative risks and rewards for choosing among various alternatives.

Back to the more mathematical decisions, we have poker, sports betting, stock market investing/gambling, where we must make the best probability assessments we can. Hopefully, people who do this have a certain level of risk aversion at the higher stakes. Betting your life savings on a hand or a game or a stock buy, is never the right thing to do, even if you think the odds are significantly in your favor. Now, there are some gamblers who will indeed wager immense sums when they think they have the edge, but that is not the vast majority of people.

That was just a little background on the concept of risk, which I thought that you might find interesting. Now, to move to the immediate and crucial matter where this comes into play, Riverdaughter just wrote about us learning that the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine has been found to be connected to a rare and severe type of blood clot, so far in six persons, out of all those vaccinated with that vaccine. RD estimated this at .0001%, or one out of a million, which certainly seems accurate. Of course, that is only based on the data so far, but there have been many vaccinated, so that the probability percentage should be pretty reliable.

So what is the decision tree for assessing whether you should get this vaccine? I can understand someone wanting a different vaccine, but that may not be possible right now. If your only choice is to get the J&J vaccine, or not to get any vaccine, what is your positive result vs. negative result choice? You could get a blood clot, which is very dangerous. But the odds are so small, though not nonexistent. If you don’t get the vaccine, you have a much higher risk of getting Covid, and that risk may go higher as the variants get worse. So it would seem obvious.

But I am not making the decision. I have gotten two shots of the Pfizer vaccine. I am not an unvaccinated person making the choice, and it is always easier for someone to decide for other people. But If I had not been vaccinated, I would try to get one of the other vaccines. If I simply could not, I would take the risk of this vaccine. If it is pulled off the market until more data comes in, that is understandable, and the choice has been made for people’s protection, because there are other alternatives. The worst choice for anyone to make in this calculation, is not getting vaccinated,

Each risk choice comes with a different set of circumstances and significance. It would make little sense to use the same analysis in each situation, and there is the very important question as to whether the risk is yours alone, or you are putting other people at risk. There is a lovely museum near me, the Getty Museum. The only issue is that to get up there from the parking lot, you have to take a tram up the winding mountain road, which takes you around the edges of the mountainside. The trip is about two minutes. I am uneasy around heights, particularly where cliffs are concerned. I know that there has never been an accident on this tram, but I was very hesitant to do it. Interestingly, when they had reopened the downtown Angels Flight tram ride up the steep hill to the restaurant, I remarked to a colleague as we walked by it, that I would still not be eager to go up there, and she agreed; and then a fairly short time later, there was a fatal accident on it, and they closed it down again; I did not follow whether they redid it again, or gave up. So there are never no risks.

Of course, if I did not choose to take the tram ride to the Getty, all I would lose would be the chance to see great art. The exhibit that I wanted to see was a rare JMW Turner collection, and he is my favorite artist, so I did it–but I walked down the hill to get back to the parking lot; once was enough of going around the cliff edge! But I would be very unusual in that regard, and of course I had choices, and whatever I chose would not risk others.

With regard to the J&J vaccine, there seems to be a much worse risk if you do not get the vaccine. But again, this becomes a perceptual thing. We know that there are millions of Americans who are refusing to get any vaccine, which seems incredible, but we know the reasons for it. Such people are going to use the J&J information to validate their refusal to be vaccinated, which is very bad for the population as a whole. Even worse, they are going to use it to proselytize others not to be vaccinated.

This is where probability calculations; risk tolerance vs. risk aversion, become more complicated.. One’s decision about whether to get vaccinated or not, is not just going to affect that person’s health, it very well may also affect the health of many people, maybe even everyone. More variants are originating, and we do not know if we can stop all of them with the vaccines we have. And others will arise, if too many people are not immune through vaccination. If the virus keeps being passed among tens of millions of unvaccinated people, there will likely be a series of variants, and we may get one which is far scarier than even the original form. It is imperative for all countries to have everyone vaccinated, or at least as close to that as possible.

So it is not just about real probabilities, but people’s perception of them, and how those affect other people. We all take various risks, hopefully not too high; but every time we get in a car, we do, and there are other things we do which carry some short-term or long-term risk. This particular choice is one of those where one person cannot just accept the personal consequences of his or her decision, there is unquestionably a more widespread effect.

The question of whether a society thus has the right to protect its citizens through the use of health protocols and even mandates, seems both crucial and established. I would be inclined to want there to be a government order for everyone to be vaccinated, but of course that would never be accepted in this country, where freedom now seems to include the right to risk everyone’s health or safety, to suit one’s own preferences. Should any one person get to possibly choose the entire society’s collective risk, if his calculations are simply self-indulgent and wrong?

J&J vaccine. Let’s take it down a notch.

The J&J vaccine has been put on hold because it appears to cause blood clots in some women.

Let’s put this in perspective. There have been 6.8 Million doses of the J&J vaccine administered so far. The number of serious blood clots is…

…wait for it…

…it’s worth the wait…

6.

Yes, that’s right. The number of women who have gotten the J&J vaccine that have gotten serious blood clots from the vaccine is 6 people, and possibly 3 others.

Is this serious? Yes, especially if you are female and happen to get a blood clot from the vaccine.

The good news is that this reaction is extremely rare. Do the math. (6/6,800,000) (100) = approximately .0001%.

Yes, it was good to hit pause because the blood clots show up 13-18 days after inoculation. So, there are probably more clots that will be discovered. Still, you’re chances of dying from Covid are 2000 times greater. (200 times greater? Somebody check my math for me please but I think that’s right. Anyway, it’s a lot.)

There is some good news. We partially know what’s causing it. There is an association between the likelihood of getting the clots and low platelet counts, which seems counterintuitive to me but what do I know? I’m not a hematologist or cardiovascular expert. I’m just a humble ex-Labrat who can explain the excruciating minutiae behind the structural changes for the variants. And no one wants to read about that.

It should be noted that the J&J vaccine is built on older technology. It’s an adenovirus vaccine with a synthesized DNA sequence that encodes for part of the Covid 19 protein. I think it’s just the spike protein. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines also result in the production of the spike protein but they use a direct introduction of mRNA. The thing that might be driving this may be the adenovirus- plasmid thingy method of delivery itself though I have no idea what the mechanism might be. Since the astra-Zeneca vaccine uses similar technology and is also triggering blood clots, it looks like there *might* be a trend.

This kind of news is to be expected. It happens with the best of FDA approved therapeutics. You can only do a reasonable sample size on any drug to gather the data you need for an approval. The number of tests in a safety profile has increased substantially over the past few decades. This has resulted in much safer drugs and a whole lot of researchers out of work. (It’s a complicated relationship. I’ve written about it before. Let’s just say that no R&D professional goes into this kind of work expecting to create dangerous drugs.)

It’s unavoidable that once an approved therapeutic gets into the general population, someone, somewhere, with just the right combination of genetics and/or medical factors is going to have an “adverse event”. I think that once the medical professionals identify what may be triggering the blood clots, there will probably be screening prior to vaccination. We’ll just have to see what form that screening will take. Or maybe they’ll offer the J&J vaccine to men and the other vaccines to women. Who knows? I’m not an epidemiologist.

What I do know is time is of the essence with the B.1.1.7 variant spreading like wildfire so I’m betting that this “pause” will be short lived. We’re going to have to wait at least another 13-18 days for more data to come in.

By the way, there is already a question about whether you are on blood thinners before you get the Covid vaccine. It was on the form to get the Pfizer vaccine even though there is no association between mRNA vaccines and clots so far. I still don’t want to hear about your reasons for not getting a shot. You can always get one of the two mRNA vaccines until the J&J issue is resolved.

Oh, look, they’re already on it: Why Would a Covid Vaccine Cause Rare Blood Clots? Researchers Have Found Clues.