Gin and Tacos

If nothing else, this presidency is teaching the public about some of the less prominent parts of the Constitution. I never thought I'd see a day with features in major newspapers about the 25th Amendment.

With Bob Corker's semi-public semi-meltdown still causing a few faint ripples in the Beltway pond, it is clearer than ever that even the people who go along with and enable this disastrous farce see it for exactly what it is. It seems like there are more than just a handful of prominent Republicans who really would like to be rid of this guy. Unfortunately they'd like to be rid of Trump in the same sense that most of us would like to lose weight or save more money; that is, we want it consistently but apparently not enough to do anything about it. Bob Corker is me talking about how I need to eat healthier and take better care of myself as I wait for the bartender to bring me another order of hot wings.

Everyone on the right who hasn't chugged the Kool-Aid seems to want to be rid of Trump, sincerely, and they all have some kind of fantasy about how it will happen without Republicans in Washington having to do anything. Maybe Comey will take care of it somehow! And then there's Mueller, Mueller can probably find some way to indict him or something! Or maybe the 25th Amendment! The Cabinet is unelected, so they can do that 25th Amendment thing and absorb the political fallout! Oh hey look here's General Kelly – he's tough or something, look at his uniform! He'll straighten this all out, probably! Hey what about resigning? Is that plausible? He looks and sounds miserable, so maybe he'll just quit? Yeah that could happen! And if all else fails, the guy's 71 and fat and always exploding with rage. Maybe an aneurysm will do our constitutional duty for us!

It appears never to occur to these people, or at least it fails to do so in any way that sticks, that as sitting members of the United States Congress there is in fact something they could do about this. They seem to speak from some alternate reality in which they are expecting us to sympathize with them, each of them on the verge of turning to the camera like Jim Halpert and making the "Do you see this shit I have to deal with?" face.

Yes, we see it. We are living it. We are all too aware of it, probably even moreso than members of Congress since their power and money insulate them from much of the real life the rest of us can't avoid. Stop expecting the public to see you as some sort of helpless victim and wailing about how you wish upon a star that someone would come along and fix this.

Either shut up and admit that you're happy to enable it with silence or shut up. Nothing is more frustrating than listening to someone talk (for the nth time) about how much they're suffering when experience demonstrates that they refuse to take any action to improve the situation. Thanks for airing your true feelings, Senator Corker, but there's no way to get out of this without breaking a sweat. Put on the big boy pants and do your job.

Once America had a president who wrote the following:

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,–

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Now look at us.

I'm mildly sad that the recent Nation piece about Columbus now has a correction.

In emphasizing that there is no obvious historical connection between Christopher Columbus and colonial America at the time Columbus surged to popularity, I pointed out that Columbus set foot in no part of the United States as it is today while other explorers of his era did. This is not technically true. On a subsequent voyage (not his 1492 "discovery" one), Columbus landed in Puerto Rico.

Now. Allow me to be defensive for a moment. I'm good at it. Point to follow.

Part of the issue here was where and how I did my research / fact-checking, focusing (obviously too much) on the famous 1492 voyage. And, as the editor kindly agreed, this factual error did not subvert the argument in the paper. Nobody in 1770s America thought of Puerto Rico (which would not become part of the US for more than a century) as Columbus's claim to American soil. Chances are they didn't even know Puerto Rico existed.

But. More importantly, I did something that the vast majority of Americans probably do a lot: I forgot about Puerto Rico. That's all there is to it. I looked at it at some point, going over lists of Columbus's voyages and landings. And I simply did not register "United States" when I saw "Puerto Rico."

I feel badly about this. Not only for making an error in a piece people actually saw, but for consistently forgetting about the people who live in parts of the United States that are not states. Perhaps I'm projecting, and in reality you think about Guam and the Virgin Islands and the CNMI all the time. I suspect not, though. Hell, there are people in elected and appointed positions in the federal government who forget they exist on a regular basis.

Intellectually I know Puerto Rico residents are Americans. If you asked me, I would say yes without hesitation. But the point is, I obviously haven't internalized it well enough in 38 years for my radar to pick it up when I'm scanning a list of place names for parts of the United States. Even with PR in the news constantly for the last few weeks, I/we still think about it as Not Quite.

Maybe it's time to do something about the second-class status of the island, which might help the rest of us not treat it like a second-class citizen. Part of me thinks I'm making too big a deal out of missing something on a fact check, but there's something subconscious at work here. I had to have seen it, so why didn't I see it?

Hoo boy you want to watch a really good doc / investigative reporting about a tragedy in the UK I remember being horrified by as a ten year-old, check this out. Just remember, kids: all cops, everywhere, protect their own at all costs and will do whatever is necessary to cover their own asses.

ACAB, man. ACAB.

When I lived in Indiana, I took my sister's small children on more than one occasion to the very good children's museum in Indianapolis. It is a five-story affair with a large central spiral ramp, sort of like a normal museum but with a miniature Guggenheim in the atrium to connect all the levels.

The museum came up with one of the best ideas for emptying out at closing time that I've ever seen for a facility that deals mostly with children. An employee dressed in full drum major regalia started at the top floor and loud circus / parade / marching type music started playing on the PA. Every kid in the place ran to the atrium and got something (a mask, a pennant, a yo-yo, a noisemaker, etc) to join in the "parade." As the drum major slowly worked his/her way down the ramp engaging in Antics of the kind children would like, every kid fell in behind making spectacular amounts of noise and generally running wild. The parade continued all the way down to the main lobby, then out the front door, then a short way around the block toward the parking lot…where employees were waiting to gather everyone's parade props.

The first time I saw this I was floored at how clever it was. They tricked a thousand toddlers into filing out of the building quickly and in relative order. Imagine how long it would otherwise take every parent to corral their kid in what is essentially a giant building of toys. Come on, honey, they're closing! No, you can't play just one more game! Leave the Legos there! No, get back here! We have to leave!

Instead, five minutes of the Bozo marching music and the building is ready for the night crew to clean up. Brilliant.

I keep thinking of this example as I read the increasingly numerous and alarming stories about our toddler-president and how hard the inner circle of people around him supposedly has to work to keep him from killing us all. Apparently DC Republicans are as aware that we are dealing with a child as the rest of us have been since Day One. So I, a childless man, wonder why we aren't using more of the tricks available to us for manipulating the behavior of toddlers. Apparently parents and professionals who work with children have a deep reservoir of tactics that are mysterious to the rest of us. What else have you got?

Maybe if every day the White House had a parade for Trump and everyone told him how great and wonderful and special he was, they could lead him outside and lock the door behind him. Maybe while he stuffed his pockets with candy someone could slip his phone out of his pocket. Maybe they could feed him so much cake and ice cream that he'd go on a titanic sugar binge for 40 minutes and then crash hard for hours while other people hurriedly did Governing Stuff.

What I'm saying is, we as a nation have a child. It is up to us to parent him, apparently, since life is not fair and the adults who are supposed to do it are being deadbeat dads. What are some of your ways to trick a 4 year-old into behaving well or at least being distracted? And can you send a quick note about it to Gen. Kelly?

We have a problem throughout society with allowing anecdotal evidence to overrule data. (Blank) can't be that common, nobody I know has one!

That said, there are plenty of statistics that we encounter that deserve a double take. The unemployment rate is a classic example. Does anyone really think only 4.2% of Americans are unemployed? Only one adult in 25? No, and a closer look at the methodology – particularly the trick of removing people from the workforce after they've been unemployed for six months – reveals that the true unemployment rate as most people would define the term is higher. How much higher? Hard to say. But if a rate of something like ten or fifteen percent were announced, I doubt many people would feel that was unrealistically high.

I admit to having this reaction when I saw a report that traffic fatalities increased despite "distracted driving" being down. Consider your own driving experience and tell me, honestly, does it seem plausible to you that texting while driving is actually becoming less common? I must live in some sort of anomalous bubble if this is true, because if I had a nickel for every person I see whipping down the interstate or navigating a busy city street with their eyes down and glued to a phone I'd be a millionaire.

I see the data. And there's no reason to be suspicious of the motives of the Department of Transportation since they're perfectly willing to admit that fatalities increased. But there's something going on with these numbers that explains the decline in distracted driving in some way that has nothing to do with actual distracted driving. Maybe cops handed out fewer citations for it. Maybe whatever sample they analyzed is atypical. Maybe the decrease was a small amount well within the margin of error for their study. But it's hard to believe that people suddenly decided to stop looking at their phones or in-dash screens while driving. More people with more smartphones getting better data connections suggest that if anything, it should be on the increase.

Nobody wants to go wading into methodology, but often it's difficult to make any sense of data like this without it. And the more people see data that give cause for skepticism, the more they'll justify being skeptical of all data.

Very excited about a Columbus Day themed piece that I got into The Nation. Rather than rehash the fact that Columbus was a bastard – which I think is fairly well established at this point, or at least there is a substantial quantity of content out there that makes that point well – I wanted to look at how and why Columbus became a Thing in the first place. There certainly is no obvious reason we should celebrate him. He was Italian, he sailed on behalf of Spain, and he landed in the Dominican Republic and Bahamas. And Europeans were known even in his day to have seen or set foot in North America before he did.

The politics of the American revolution and some bad historiography are largely to blame, and I get to throw in a bunch of historical arcana along the way. Which is kind of my favorite thing to do.

So, enjoy. There were considerable efforts to present this as a "Columbus was a prick" piece for reasons of internet appeal, but I am happy with the extent to which the things that make it unique and interesting were preserved.

There is real hope that the Supreme Court could deal a blow to partisan gerrymandering schemes during this term, which bodes well for the aftermath of the 2020 Census.

But it wouldn't be 2017 if I let you get excited. Don't get very excited. This isn't going to end gerrymandering or even partisan gerrymandering; it may put an end to partisan gerrymandering so blatant, so "Ha ha fuck you what are you gonna do about it" bad that when the map is rejected in Federal court one can only say, "You could have gotten away with it, but you got greedy."

Look. Gerrymandering is no longer an art. It is a science, thanks to GIS software, massive data mining of social and demographic data, and bitter partisanship. People who are good at this sort of thing could gerrymander a Republican majority in the Illinois State Legislature (which is currently 2/3 Democratic). If you think I'm kidding, trust me – I'm NOT an expert and I can do it. As long as one throws shame out the window and is willing to draw the most patently ludicrous districts without any reference to reality or legal precedent, it can be done.

The era of party bosses eyeballing wall maps and drawing districts with a marker are gone. This is block by block, house by house precision. The technology has made political power and sheer gall the only impediments to gerrymandering the hell out of a state.

Turning 45% of the vote statewide into 60% majorities in the state leg as Wisconsin Republicans did may no longer pass muster if the Court does rule against the state. However, defining what is and isn't "partisan gerrymandering" will not have a clear definition. Like many things dealing with this topic it will have to be treated on a case by case, "I know it when I see it" basis. The Courts have long recognized that race is a relevant factor in redistricting, so…I mean, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to draw districts in a way that favors your party while using "Well, we were just keeping Communities of Interest together!" as cover.

A favorable ruling would be a rare bit of good news in this otherwise abysmal year, but go into it with your eyes open. This is, at best, going to end only the most comically over-the-top abuses of the redistricting process. All of the ordinary gamesmanship and attempts at system-rigging will putter along. That would be a net positive, but certainly no reason to have a ticker-tape parade.

Bill O'Reilly is the only right-winger who is honest about the whole movement's position on the 2nd Amendment.

This is the problem in a nutshell. "The price of freedom." It doesn't matter how many people die. The rights of every impotent old white guy who needs to hoard guns in order to Feel Like a Man are more important than human life. The rights of suburban commandos to stock up on guns to fend off the Young Black Bucks or the Thugs or whatever euphemism is currently in fashion are more important than human life. The rights of some guy to indulge his hobby (Can I make chemical weapons in my basement and call it a "hobby" as long as I don't use them to kill anyone?) are more important than your right to leave the house and be reasonably certain that you're not going to get shot at random.

Mass shootings are to the modern US what human sacrifices were to some societies, but replace the sun with 2nd Amendment and the bountiful harvest with Freedom. If 58 people have to die so that we may enjoy the freedom to own 35 guns – the killer had at least that many – that is a sacrifice white America is prepared to make. YOU are a sacrifice they are prepared to make. You don't matter. Nothing matters. All that matters is Larry Limpdick's need to feel tough or manly or important or strong or ready for the Race War he and everyone else in the comments section of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is certain is coming because BLM or campus libtards or something.

We have so thoroughly normalized a completely demented, paranoid, conspiratorial, afactual right-wing worldview that a man can buy 35 guns and not only are there no meaningful obstacles to doing so but the fact isn't even considered especially noteworthy or out of the ordinary. The very fact that we live in a society where a person can announce that they own 10 or 25 or 50 or 100 guns and the overwhelming, immediate response is not "What in the living fuck is wrong with you?" followed by a psych evaluation is the definitive proof that this will keep happening over and over and over again.

It's not merely acceptable, it's normal. And it's not merely normal, it's a sign of patriotism and masculinity. You don't like guns? What's wrong with you? You queer or vegan or somethin'? Don't you love your country?

This will never stop in a society that thinks there is nothing abnormal about fetishizing and stockpiling something that has no purpose – "fun" doesn't count here, sorry – other than to kill.

The guy who did this is not scary because he is insane or mysterious. He is scary because he is normal. All of us know probably a half-dozen of this guy. Because we live in a society that tells itself that it's perfectly normal for a person to stockpile enough weapons to outfit a brigade of paratroopers. Despite the insistence that this is a perfectly normal and healthy thing for a human being to do, it is not. It is fucked up. And until we drop the "mental health" canard and admit to ourselves that the problem is we have allowed a deeply violent, paranoid, and twisted worldview to become so ordinary as to attract little notice, these sacrifices will continue on a more or less regular schedule.

This is (gasp) almost four weeks old, but it's important and it kept getting pushed back.

Around Labor Day the New York Times ran a terrific piece comparing the difference across time in the same basic, stereotypically Lowly job – being a janitor – for a large company in 1980 and today. Surprisingly (or perhaps not) the salaries are almost identical; I tend to assume, obviously wrongly, that jobs characterized as menial tend to pay less now than in the past. Marta cleans Apple headquarters for $16.60/hr (before you flip out, remember that salaries are inflated in Cupertino) and Gail earned only slightly less inflation-adjusted to clean Eastman Kodak's offices 35 years ago. But the difference, which I'm sure you know from painful experience, is…

Ms. Evans was a full-time employee of Kodak. She received more than four weeks of paid vacation per year, reimbursement of some tuition costs to go to college part time, and a bonus payment every March. When the facility she cleaned was shut down, the company found another job for her: cutting film.

Ms. Ramos is an employee of a contractor that Apple uses to keep its facilities clean. She hasn’t taken a vacation in years, because she can’t afford the lost wages. Going back to school is similarly out of reach. There are certainly no bonuses, nor even a remote possibility of being transferred to some other role at Apple.

Yet the biggest difference between their two experiences is in the opportunities they created. A manager learned that Ms. Evans was taking computer classes while she was working as a janitor and asked her to teach some other employees how to use spreadsheet software to track inventory. When she eventually finished her college degree in 1987, she was promoted to a professional-track job in information technology.

Less than a decade later, Ms. Evans was chief technology officer of the whole company, and she has had a long career since as a senior executive at other top companies. Ms. Ramos sees the only advancement possibility as becoming a team leader keeping tabs on a few other janitors, which pays an extra 50 cents an hour.

They both spent a lot of time cleaning floors. The difference is, for Ms. Ramos, that work is also a ceiling.

This sort of "domestic outsourcing" receives far less attention than the kind involving the more conveniently targetable foreigners, and it is completely out of control. I see ads daily on public transit for "local outsourcing" of IT, which is a slick marketing term for firing all your IT employees and paying piecemeal, an hour here or there, for IT help. The hourly rate is probably crap, but that's not the point. The point is that the hourly rate your company pays Local Outsource Bro Startup (LOBS) is your soup-to-nuts cost; that's it. No payroll tax – that's LOBS's problem. And no benefits, sick time, paid vacation, and so on. Not because LOBS is responsible. Because there are none.

Academics recognize this as the trend toward hiring adjuncts, who work on one semester contracts without benefits, to replace tenured faculty who are owed annoying things like health insurance and can only be forced to teach the number of classes for which they are contracted. Professionals like accountants recognize this in the myriad apps and online services that centralize, piece out, and otherwise package their services in tiny bits for consumers. Even doctors are now being harnessed into "seeing" patients via webcam or replacing specializations like radiology with off-site services that require only an internet connection.

But let's not kid ourselves. It affects us all, but it is hitting hardest among people with the least economic power and with the most replaceable skills. Your massive companies of today are no longer hiring their own security guards, drivers, janitors, warehouse grunts, and the like. Add in tasks that have been effectively eliminated by technology (the typing pool springs to mind) and you have a workforce in which the Gig Economy reigns.

There is a tendency in the professions where this is not the case to shrug and wonder why one should care. The answer is simple: because this economic model will come for you too, someday. Yesterday the janitors, today the payroll department, tomorrow the "Creative Talent" or whoever near the top happens to think of themselves as somehow unique or irreplaceable. If you're lucky, your specific field can hold out until you reach retirement age or the sweet release of death. In time, though, it's inevitable. I've spent almost two decades repeating the same thing on here and any of us who live long enough will eventually discover that it is true: the forces unleashed in the 1980s will not, and probably cannot, rest until every last one of us is paid hourly with no benefits. If you think a postgraduate degree or a Management Position immunizes you, just wait.