SocraticGadfly: 8/11/24 - 8/18/24

August 17, 2024

So, it's Butch Ware as Jill Stein's Veep? Update: It was Ayoub first, then Noura Erekat

That was the news yesterday, that she had picked Butch Ware, professor at Cal-Santa Barbara, over any of the two Arab-American names she floated two weeks ago via Al Jazeera as three potential Veep picks. The two Arab-Americans were also both from Michigan, the state with the largest Arab-American population and where the "uncommitted" movement in Democratic presidential primaries started.

Per that second link, a previous blog post of mine? Was she afraid of actually costing Kamala is a Zionist Cop the state of Michigan, and in a close presidential race, thus possibly tipping it to Donald Trump? Given that her 2016 recount, based on fake news, started in Michigan, and that Stein is in many ways an AccommoGreen, the Green equivalent of a ConservaDem, none of this would surprise me. Luqman, the third name floated, is from DC and so just wouldn't have been a broader needle-mover. Also, as of 2020, she was affiliated with Sputnik Radio. Given attacks on Stein as a "Russian agent," by #BlueAnon engaging in the worst of #Russiagate's wrongness, that would not have flown. But, was Stein thinking that way? If so, why was Luqman on the list in the first place?

And, why am I assuming Stein actually plays 11-dimensional chess, or thinks that deeply?

==

Big set of updates to the original post, via Green Party candidate Jason Call and people he had retweeted, with a huge amount of backstory to this.

First, Stein had yet other people in mind besides that list from Al Jazeera, apparently. Or she was forced to, rather, after her first choice, from that list, spit the bit. More on that below.

One of them, her first fallback, was Noura Erekat, who, thank doorknob, per this tweet

Pulled out.

The "terms of campaign"? This:

As I noted in quoting

And in responding to someone else who quoted:

The GP doesn't need that shit. Stein should have seen that Erekat's history, including being of legal counsel to a House committee, might have been .... iffy.

Serious, that SCREAMS "duopoly" to me. Did nobody vet her?

Nor does it need the shit of Nathan J. Robinson, socialist pretendian, stanning for the left hand of the duopoly

And, stan he does.:

He'd semi-headfaked earlier this summer, but, now we're seeing the mask back off. 

As I told him?

What else is there to say? Well, other than Robinson wants the Green Party, en masse, to be DSA Roseys.

Per that semi-headfake mentioned above, I had had hopes that he might actually be looking beyond the duopoly this year, mainly over Gaza, but also for other reasons.

Beyond the headfake, the naivete or whatever it is that he's exemplifying?

Nathan, have you been gaslighting the outside world, yourself, or both, about how much you understand about political machinations?

Back to the Erekat pick.

To pick up from near the top of this post? Elsewhere, Jason Call notes that the original call was Abed Ayoub, the top candidate in the Al Jazeera leak (yes, a deliberate leak) but he backed off due to family illness.

Erm, wasn't this known in advance? The family illness? Surely, unless his wife had a near-fatal heart attack less than 24 hours before Stein officially tapped him, this didn't come out of nowhere. In this Aug. 12 story, in which Ayoub is grateful to be under consideration, there's no talk of health issues with himself or family. Per Facebook, his one grandmother died Aug. 15. It's true, that could have been sudden, but given her apparent age and that most her siblings were already dead, it's more likely not that sudden.

And, if he did spit the bit, why not Amer Zahr or Luqman, off that original list of names?

(My original post on this didn't get updated after that Al Jazeera piece, as I was operating off IPR. Still.)

To go back to Luqman? I think Putin would want somebody more organized than Stein as a Russian asset.

And, to offer a new update?

I tweeted this post Saturday night to someone named TurboKitty, who had been retweeted by dyed-in-the-wool Green David Bruce Collins, calling the process a clusterfuck. Turns out said person is co-chair of the Nevada Green Party steering committee.

I'll be here, and was on Twitter, charitable to their first response to me, and assume they were honestly thinking I was talking about the "big reveal," not the process behind it. I told them politely but firmly, no, I meant this process.

I wasn't charitable to their second response:

With my reply:

And, I'll further fight fire with fire as desired. 

I "get" the tribalism behind the response. I don't accept it.

And, I'm going to keep taking receipts. One Pourz11, who's actually a follower of me, but it's not mutual, jumped in. Their second comment was:

To which I said:

Then added that, per the end of that comment, no one that mattered to me cared about their present.

And, setting aside her investments hypocrisy, I haven't even talked about things like her antivaxxer footsies, her 5G nuttery and more. That said, I know shit like 5G conspiracy theories and antivaxxerism (even if it was footsies, not full-blown with her) appeals to a fair chunk of Greens, as I said after in the last run-up to the 2020 race at that link. Whether it's a majority or not, I don't know. OTOH, COVID scared enough Greens that Stein doubled down on pandering there, saying she supported the vaccine but opposed vaccine mandates. Or, to put them in the scare quotes they need? "Vaccine mandates." Gee, a Rethuglican could say that. Like Gov. Strangeabbott. On the third hand, I called Stein Just.Another.Politician.™ years ago, and said Greens were Just.Another.Political.Party™. I stand by that. Sadly, and one thing that has me not locked in on Claudia de la Cruz is her Stein-like stance on vaccines.

(Some of this is notes for when I announce my "slate" in a month or so.) Per that last link above, if Joseph Kishore, the candidate of the Trots of the Socialist Equality Party, is available by write-in, that's an option.

More on the Erekat pick and her demands.

First, Noura, they weren't going to be met. If you're that dumb to think that they were, beyond the AccommoGreen in extremis, I question your political judgement as much as Nathan J. Robinson's. You must have hung out with Dem Congresscritters too much. (I also question your political alignment as much as Robinson's.)

More on that, from my perspective, snarkily?

Actually, considering I'd like to finish pushing the Green Party off the cliff, in some ways, it's too bad in some ways that Stein didn't agree to Erekat's demands.

==

Anyway, to summarize:

1. Stein's first choice for Veep spit the bit in a process that invites questions, to put it politely, is head scratching, to put it a bit more skeptically, or is questionable, to put it more skeptically yet.

2. Her theoretical second and third choices, from her original list of names, were apparently simply ignored.

3. Her fourth choice was poorly vetted, if at all. And, it's not like there wasn't time. She's mentioned in that Aug. 12 story linked above, with Zahr endorsing her. Was the Al Jazeera piece not just a deliberate leak, but a smokescreen to cover Stein's chasing of Erekat? If not, why did she pivot to Erekat? Was it knowing her duopoly ties and seeing this as a "get"?

4. That, of course, fell through and it was on to No. 5 or beyond.

At this point, Stein, if not the national Green Party as a whole, is telling Will Rogers "hold my beer" over his bon mot about Democrats and disorganization. This looks like George McGovern's Veep clusterfuck in 1972.

And, summary side notes?

1. I'm going to do something further about Robinson. Don't think you've gotten off the hook yet.

2. What's this say for the Green Party 2028? Even more than in 2020, most candidates, before Stein entered, couldn't cross the bar for party qualifications to officially run. And, after Cornel West spit the bit, nobody else of note jumped in besides Stein. Her running in 2028 would finish killing off the party. So, where's a Margaret Flowers or someone like that? A Matthew Hoh?

Nutters, flakes, vanity candidates and grifters (and there's definitely Venn diagram overlap) won't cut it.

3. Tagging Mark Lause on Facebook, whom I thought was done with the Green Party on personal support as well as activism, I find out I'm wrong there. I can't say more because I don't post as "public."

4. I also still think a la 2016, that Stein deliberately spit the bit on choosing a Veep nominee from Michigan, and an Arab-American rather than an African American, because of lesser evilism.

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at Saturday, August 17, 2024 0 comments Posted by Gadfly

August 16, 2024

Science roundup: We are not machines, night owl superiority, dreams and consciousness, LUCA, more

An Aeon piece is the headliner. It talks about the ongoing discoveries in genetics, which go beyond the fact that much of our genome is not "coding" but rather produces regulatory proteins that control coding genome, to the fact that much of the coding genome codes for RNA, and more beyond that. 

That's where the "not a machine" comes in. Having just an "on-off switch" genomically, like a bacterium, would be disastrous for a creature like Homo sapiens.

In addition, per the piece, older biologists still have diehard, last-ditch resistance to anything that attacks the "central dogma" of genetics.

That's only the tip of the iceberg of a great read. And, it's by Philip Ball.

==

Yes, I'll gloat on this second one.

The Guardian reports that night owls have superior cognitive functioning. (That said, Ben Franklin was only "early to bed' if there was a lady there waiting for him.)

And it is NOT "small survey size":

Research on 26,000 people found those who stay up late scored better on intelligence, reasoning and memory tests.

Sounds like something real.

That said, this means getting up later.

The study also notes that the best night owl performers still got a recommended 7 hours or more of shut-eye.

==

Is life sort of like a super-lucid dream? Noema has the right framing with a pull-quote graf below the header:

Recent research on lucid dreams suggests that consciousness exists along a spectrum between sleep and waking, between hallucination and revelation, between dreamworlds and reality.

Yes, indeed. 

Spectrum. That's part of what the David Chalmers-es of the philosophical world miss with their "hard problem" of consciousness.

==

Retired geology prof and online friend Paul Braterman says "historical science is the best kind of science."

==

Related? Interesting new research claims on the purported Last Universal Common Ancestor, mainly that it developed and existed earlier, and was more complex, than once thought. That said, the early origin claim, especially, is not uncontroversial, namely, the claim that it was before the early heavy bombardment of Earth by meteorites and such. OTOH, not all paleo-astronomers think the early heavy bombardment was that severe.

at Friday, August 16, 2024 0 comments Posted by Gadfly

August 15, 2024

Texas Progressives talk Uvalde, more

The City of Uvalde has released the additional documents it promised to after the settlement of a lawsuit. There's nothing hugely dark in there, just more on the general shittiness of the Texas Department of Public Safety and bossman Steve McCraw. Speaking of, why won't the DPS, Uvalde CISD or the county follow the city's footsteps on document release?

Texas still is intransigent about refusing to fix foster care, right on the wake of the feds' findings about its juvenile justice craphole.

Strangeabbott wants hospitals to find out if they're treating Ill Eagles. Texas Hospital Association is reviewing his executive order, which sounds like it violates HIPPA, not that that's ever stopped Texas wingnuts before.

Odessa schools are Exhibit A on how the Lege fails to fund education.

Barbers Hill ISD got a softball ruling vs Darryl George.

Fracking wastewater, or produced water, can travel a dozen miles or more from its injection site. Proof positive that Permian fracking is blowing geysers in old abandoned wells.

The fix is in on the state's maternal mortality committee re mothers at risk of taking babies to term.

Shock me that Havana Ted is lying about Imane Khelif.

Nothing says "country" like Grand Prairie! In reality, Texas Monthly is moving Texas Country Festival to there from Waxahachie for one thing: $$$.

Off the Kuff provided a couple of updates on the CD18 nomination process. 

SocraticGadfly talks about the pending end of an era at Southwest Airlines, and whether this is going to be just the first domino in a whole set of changes.

The Church of England officially calls for an end to Israel's occupation of Palestine.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project said Harris County Republican Sheriff nominee Mike Knox is clear how far to the right he is, and it is up to us and local media to make sure everybody knows.

Raise Your Hand Texas explains why school districts are running budget deficits. 

Cesar Hernandez shares what it's like to be in an un-air conditioned Texas prison in the summer.

The Lone Star Project finds our state's worst Sheriff.

Houstonia and the Fort Worth Report talked to some chefs about the Michelin Guide.

Therese Odell checks in on the Trump campaign.

Finally, the TPA mourns the death of old-school progressive blogger Steve Timberlake, known in the blogosphere as Linkmeister.

at Thursday, August 15, 2024 0 comments Posted by Gadfly

August 14, 2024

Once again, Democrats aren't democratic

Current and former Green Party voters have seen this play out before, not only in attempts to block presidential candidates like Jill Stein, but in North Carolina, particularly egregious, trying to block people like GP Senate candidate Matthew Hoh in the past.

And, we've seen it here in Tex-ass, so none of this is a surprise here. Nor is the 2024 version.

Brainworm Bobby is officially on the Tex-ass ballot. Kuff "loves this," of course, even linking to a story that Tex-ass DemocRats might sue to keep him off the ballot. I've let him know that this is nothing new in hypocrisy from the left hand of the duopoly. Speaking of, Brainworm Bobby just won his suit against North Carolina Dems. But now, Maine Dems are suing him and Cornel West.

DemocRats are now trying to block Stein, or at least her electoral slate, in Wisconsin. 

at Wednesday, August 14, 2024 0 comments Posted by Gadfly

Declining Rio Grande reservoirs aren't all Mexico's fault

They're Texas' as well.

Note to Strangeabbott et al? It's called climate change.

As for the degree this might have been New Mexico's fault, before a Texas-New Mexico settlement that a 6-3 SCOTUS majority rightly nixed?

Note to Tiffany Lashmet Dowell, who I thought was better than this? The feds rowing their oar in on the Texas-New Mexico Rio Grande deal is not some new version of Agenda 21 or something.

Given that the Texas-New Mexico water settlement could affect "deliverables," which in turn might affect treaty obligations, even if the Supreme Court ruling in the case didn't explictly mention the US-Mexico treaty of 1944 covering both the Rio Grande and the Colorado, it DID mention the nation of Mexico, and thus, the empirical issues behind that treaty. The majority opinion was the right one.

Blame the special water master for not looping the feds in from the start, as the feds had requested.

To use an analogy? And to take it from conditions on that other river of international treaty?

Assume, hypothetically, that there are still portions of the All-American Canal that are not lined by concrete. Picture the state of California claiming that leakage water flows into Mexico. (It probably flows more into the Salton Sea, if there is any, but play along.) Picture, whether as part of negotiations to extend and update the Colorado River Compact, or just a unilateral California declaration, it telling the other six states in the compact that it thinks that water should count as part of US deliverables to Mexico under treaty and so it will increase its take.

The six other states would, in general, laugh. Well, Aridzona would get irate, not laugh.

The feds would also laugh — and then row their oar into the issue. The analogy is complete because both the Colorado River Compact and the original Texas-New Mexico deal on the Rio Grande were completed before the US-Mexico treaty.

There's also the framing issue. Below El Paso, this isn't "Texas" delivering water to Mexico; it's the US. I didn't really care for Dowell going there; it felt close to Texas exceptionalism. The analogy holds here, too. Below Yuma, it's not Aridzona delivering water to Mexico, it's the US.

And, Lashmet also doesn't tell you, which NPR does (though ignoring why Mexico is holding some bits of water) that it has one full five-year cycle after a current one when it's behind the curve to make up a water deficit. As for that why, otherwise? Mexican president Lopez Obrador has been water-stingy since Strangeabbott started putting the razor wire in the river.

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at Wednesday, August 14, 2024 0 comments Posted by Gadfly

August 13, 2024

Green Party has a new Georgia branch; old memories of when the GP went downhill

The Unified Green Party of Georgia has been accepted by the Green Party US, per Independent Political Report, which has several links of note. They replace the Georgia Green Party, disaffiliated by the national party in 2021.

This wasn't the only reason the GP lost me; as I noted in March 2021, Howie Hawkins' 2020 campaign, especially his lies vs reality on how the Chinese were treating the Uyghurs, was a big factor.

Facebook censorship didn't help.

Finally, I got tired of the twosiderism, and yes, from both the GaGP, with much of its sex essentialism bad biology, and the Lavender Greens, with much of its bad psychology tribalism. That on that side includes Kool-Aid peddling, and slurs, outside the Lavenders by the likes of Fernando Mercado. But, that's matched, along with the Facebook censorship, by the former GaGP's list-serve ban. For the latter, as I told them repeatedly? I've read the likes of the Mayo Clinic for when puberty blockers are indicated AND contraindicated. They had/have not.

at Tuesday, August 13, 2024 0 comments Posted by Gadfly

#DementiaJoe vs the Queen of San Francisco

In his first extended comments since stepping away from seeking re-nomination and re-election, Joe Biden has officially blamed Nancy Pelosi for pushing him out.

True indeed.

But, whether it's Dementia Joe, Irish Alzheimer's or some mix of that and other things? The rest is not so true.

The TL/DR is that Biden apparently still doesn't think his campaign was in trouble to the point it was taking on almost as much water as the Titanic. Rather, Biden claims it was the impression Pelosi and other national Democratic elected officials and thought leaders had that they thought his campaign was in trouble, and that this would be a growing issue going forward, that caused him to step aside.

The Post links to an old Politico story from late July in which five Anony Mice rather claim that Biden indeed accepted there was a good probability he couldn't win. That said, that piece doesn't have the Mice or Biden claiming that the chatterings of Democratic leaders were part of that problem.

In addition, neither piece cites the donor class, who are the ones who were really making the push behind the scenes.

at Tuesday, August 13, 2024 0 comments Posted by Gadfly

August 12, 2024

Meh on the Olympics

And, my mehness has been growing for years.

I've not watched extended activity in any sport and have watched nothing beyond ESPN-level 90-second clips.

I had to Google a week ago to find out what this 400-meter mixed relay was. Pass.

And, it was already in Tokyo. I missed that.

Three-on-three hoops? Meh. Beach volleyball? Also meh. That said, this year's US teams are medal-less.

There's no major competitive league in either, but both were pushed by the U.S. Doesn't India have some national game from the pre-Raj world? China? Can we bring back to life the ancient Mayan quasi-basketball sport?

After all, breakdancing is in this year. Oy. Per that link, so is skateboarding. Well, IOC, I hope you're attracting that younger audience; you've lost me.

I have little doubt Merikkka will push for pickleball to be included in 2028. Maybe MMA?

Or, let's skip the line on that and go to the ancient pankration.

What about chariot races? They were an ancient Olympics sport. Or, substitute an Olympics Formula 1 race.

Or we could have a contest to see who can best imitate the ancient Olympians, like the Paris Feast of Dionysius event that led to fauxtrage from the US religious right, followed by a piling on by pseudoleftist John Helmer, sporting some of his worst knee-jerk anti-Western claims. God I'm glad I dropped his blog from my blogroll. What a doorknob.

Another reason to say meh? The politicization. Russian athletes can't participate under the Russian flag but Israelis can under theirs? Wingnuts like Havana Ted lying about Imane Khelif can politicize in other ways?

And another? The Chinese are right in calling the US doping hypocrites.

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at Monday, August 12, 2024 0 comments Posted by Gadfly
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