GOP Arrogance and Disrespect for the Rule of Law

“Today's Republican Party...is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government. The Democratic Party, while no paragon of civic virtue, is more ideologically centered and diverse, protective of the government's role as it developed over the course of the last century, open to incremental changes in policy fashioned through bargaining with the Republicans, and less disposed to or adept at take-no-prisoners conflict between the parties. This asymmetry between the parties, which journalists and scholars often brush aside or whitewash in a quest for "balance," constitutes a huge obstacle to effective governance.” ― Thomas E. Mann, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the Politics of Extremism

The New York Times is reporting that the White House is blowing off criticisms that the president's blatant use of government resources for his personal political gain is illegal under the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act prohibits federal employees from engaging in political activities while they are working in an official capacity. It also prohibits civil servants from running for political office or using their titles in political activities. The White House just does not care. The NYT writes:

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,” Mark Meadows, President Trump’s chief of staff, said in an interview with Politico. “This is a lot of hoopla that is being made about things mainly because the convention has been so unbelievably successful.”

Mr. Meadows made his comments the morning after the Republican National Convention aired two official ceremonies staged earlier on Tuesday on the White House grounds — a pardon performed by Mr. Trump and the naturalization of new citizens performed by Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, as Mr. Trump watched and chatted with them.

During the convention, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gave a speech from Jerusalem, in an apparent violation of separate State Department rules, and the first lady, Melania Trump, delivered a speech from the Rose Garden.

Arrogance, irrationality and untruthfulness

Meadows assertion that nobody outside of the Beltway really cares is arrogant, irrational and not true. Some people still do care about respect for the rule of law, even if the president and most of the GOP leadership does not. Clearly, the president and his administration do not. Meadows was also quoted as saying that “you can’t break the law — you shouldn’t do it,” but then suggested that the Hatch Act was outdated. That seems to imply that breaking the law somehow isn't breaking the law because it is allegedly outdated. The irrationality of the Meadows ‘rationale’ is obvious and undeniable.

Apparently, Meadows and the president are both unaware of the facts that (1) an outdated law is still the law, and (2) outdated laws need to be repealed or amended by congress, or invalidated by a court of competent jurisdiction. They just blow that off and break the law as if it no longer exists and pretend that breaking it is not breaking it.

The GOP Convention: A Promise vs Delivery Disconnect?

Republicans have promised a positive inspiring convention. So far, they have delivered a tidal wave of lies and hyperbole. And based on the bits of speeches in this 1 minute video, there seems to be a major disconnect between the promise and the delivered product.

The Cognitive Biology of Hate and Racist Speech

A Washington Post article includes a couple of comments on some research into the biological effects of hate and racist speech.[1] These are worth a mention, even if folks here are aware of these biological effects. The WaPo writes:

There is a wealth of research out there that frequent exposure to hate speech (what else would you call Trump’s racist appeals and personal attacks?) makes us, as one paper from 2017 put it, “less sensitive to hate speech and more prejudiced toward hate speech victims than their counterparts in the control condition.”

Richard A. Friedman, a psychiatrist, wrote in 2018 that “politicians like Mr. Trump who stoke anger and fear in their supporters provoke a surge of stress hormones, like cortisol and norepinephrine, and engage the amygdala, the brain center for threat.” He continued: “One study, for example, that focused on ‘the processing of danger’ showed that threatening language can directly activate the amygdala. This makes it hard for people to dial down their emotions and think before they act.” In layman’s terms: All that anger and fear can make you less rational.

From what I can tell, the main point of dark free speech is to make people less rational and more emotional, intuitive and negatively biased. That is how most (~96% ?) demagogues and tyrant wannabes rise to power.


Footnote:
1. I call speech like that dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)

Regarding Voter Suppression

The president claims that there has been and will be massive voter fraud in the 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. If he wins in November, he might tone that rhetoric down some. All the evidence so far of voter fraud amounts to not much. Despite that, the radical right constantly but falsely claims that voter fraud is a major problem. So far, that is false.

On the flip side, what about evidence of voter suppression that results form false claims of trying to  stop massive voter fraud? The Washington Post writes:

“More than 534,000 mail ballots were rejected during primaries across 23 states this year — nearly a quarter in key battlegrounds for the fall — illustrating how missed delivery deadlines, inadvertent mistakes and uneven enforcement of the rules could disenfranchise voters and affect the outcome of the presidential election.

The rates of rejection, which in some states exceeded those of other recent elections, could make a difference in the fall if the White House contest is decided by a close margin, as it was in 2016, when Donald Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by roughly 80,000 votes. 

This year, according to a tally by The Washington Post, election officials in those three states tossed out more than 60,480 ballots just during primaries, which saw significantly lower voter turnout than what is expected in the general election. The rejection figures include ballots that arrived too late to be counted or were invalidated for another reason, including voter error. 

‘If the election is close, it doesn’t matter how well it was run — it will be a mess,’ said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at MIT who studies election data. ‘The two campaigns will be arguing over nonconforming ballots, which is going to run up against voters’ beliefs in fair play,’ he said.”

Nationwide, about 319,000 mail and absentee ballots were rejected in the 2016 general election. Given postal service sabotage and chaos and various voter restrictions and requirements in many red states, a lot more than 534,000 mail ballots could be rejected next November. Republicans will do their very best to see that the rejections hit likely democratic voters than likely republicans. If there is going to be massive voter fraud in November of 2020, it will come in the form of unjustified GOP voter suppression perpetrated in the name of preventing almost non-existent voter fraud.

One more time… because I’m kinda slow

 

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While I personally experience a sense of spirituality, real or not, I’ll admit that I’m not religious in any orthodox sense.  Still, I think I do comprehend the concept of “morality” and “moral code.”  My understanding is that holy books aim to provide high standards and guidance for such. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Attn: Politically active evangelicals who support Trump

Q1: From a morality standpoint, doesn’t Donald Trump continue to be pretty much everything the Bible tells humanity it shouldn’t be: vain, selfish, covetous, mendacious, adulterous, anti-“other-ness”/our neighbors”?  My understanding is that these types of questionable activities are high on the list of “Christian don'ts,” and that being a Christian is supposed to mean a continuous striving/aspiring to the highest of biblical moral standards. Is that not true?

Q2: Nevertheless, Donald Trump claims to be a Christian.  Based on his actions, am I wrong when I, a non-Christian, see Trump as a Christian in name only? Is being a CINO okay with your God?  Why/Why not?

Q3: As a Christian, does Donald Trump’s actions offend you?  If yes, how so?  If no, why not?

Q4: If I’m completely off base here, then please explain to me what I don’t get about the Trump / Christian / Bible “non-sequitur.”  Please help me understand the disconnect between what Christian Trump says, and what Christian Trump does, because I still (after all these many years) don’t get it. :(

Whether religious or not, all are invited to help me understand this personal conundrum.

Thank you.

Should Daylight Saving Time Be Scrapped?

 

Every year we complain about War Time, as Daylight Saving Time was first known, developed to save energy and give farmers a bit more light. Except the First World War is over and we now have air conditioning and artificial lighting, so it doesn't actually save any energy at all.

This year, everyone is on about circadian rhythms. Sumathi Reddy of the Wall Street Journal speaks to Dr. Till Roenneberg of the University of Munich:

“Most of our physiology is governed by a circadian clock. This body clock synchronizes to the sun time”...When you travel to a different time zone your circadian clock adjusts to a new darkness-sunlight cycle in a few days. In daylight-saving time, the dark-light cycle doesn’t change but the time does. So there is a discrepancy between your biological clock and social clock, which researchers refer to as “social jet lag,” Dr. Roenneberg said. Permanent standard time is closer to the sun’s natural time so social jet lag is reduced, he added.

Now I have read this six times and it makes no sense, this difference between the biological clock and the social clock. In real solar time, Boston and Detroit are 45 minutes apart. Berlin and Madrid are 90 minutes apart. Which is running on biological time and which on "social time?" The Doctor continues:

“Daylight-saving time means that we virtually live in another time zone without changing the day-light cycle,” Dr. Roenneberg said. “The problem is the misalignment. The circadian clock is trying to optimize our physiology. Now suddenly we have to do things which are not at the biologically appropriate time.”

If one is going to make the case that there is a biologically appropriate time, then we not only have to get rid of daylight saving time, but we have to get rid of time zones altogether, which I proposed a few years ago, calling for local time. Noon used to be local, with over 300 time zones in the USA.

 

Then along comes the transcontinental railroad, and Sandford Fleming (the guy in the tall hat standing behind Lord Strathcona who is driving the last spike) figured out time zones so that everyone would be able to figure out where the trains were supposed to be. But we are not trains; noon should be noon wherever you are, not at 11:34 in Boston today and 12:42 in Detroit. What works for the convenience of Sandford Fleming and the railroads (and later, Walter Cronkite and the TV networks) doesn't work for our bodies.

If the science finds that there truly is a biological time, then the answer isn't just to get rid of DST. In this era of streaming entertainment and smart watches, it's time to run the trains and planes and conference calls on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), and everything else on local time, noon where you live. 

Does the time change cause heart attacks and car crashes?

We have noted that these time changes are really bad for your health, including an increase in the number of heart attacks and car crashes. But according to Paul Taylor, writing in the Globe and Mail, the research may be sketchy.

The research into the increase in the number of crashes was done by Stanley Coren, Ph.D. of the University of British Columbia, studying the rate of crashes on the first Monday after the switch. When he wrote his letter to the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996 it was still common to say accident instead of crash so I will not change that:

© Stanley Coren via New England Journal of Medicine

These data show that small changes in the amount of sleep that people get can have major consequences in everyday activities. The loss of merely one hour of sleep can increase the risk of traffic accidents. It is likely that the effects are due to sleep loss rather than a nonspecific disruption in circadian rhythm, since gaining an additional hour of sleep at the fall time shift seems to decrease the risk of accidents.

Others disagree with Dr. Koren and question the results; a doctor at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto looked at 16 different studies and concluded: “Looking at the sum total of evidence – and not just one cherry-picked study – my impression is that, if there is an association, it is modest.”

Then there is the question of heart attacks, which we have discussed before, which is based on a Swedish study which found that "heart-attack cases increased by about 5 per cent in the week after the clocks were adjusted – both in the spring and the autumn." Taylor questions that one too:

In particular, many studies that fail to show an effect don’t end up in the medical journals. “We tend to publish only the stuff that is interesting and will catch people’s attention. The papers that don’t find an association are less likely to be published,” [cardiologist Dr.] Ko says. That can lead people to conclude certain things have a greater impact than they actually do. Ko says he thinks the association between the daylight time switch and heart attacks is real. But, he adds, that risk is likely small and probably affects only those with existing heart disease.

Fine. But anyone with kids and dogs knows that this time change is totally disruptive, and really doesn't serve any purpose. Pick one and just keep it year round. Or even better, just go local time and forget about running on War Time, Railway time or Cronkite time, and go with Your Time.

Does the time change save energy?

It's that time of year when we lose an hour of sleep and turn our clocks forward thanks to the introduction of Daylight Saving Time, which probably made a lot of sense back in 1916 when it started as a fuel-saving measure in World War 1. Every year we look at this change and every year find more evidence that it really should be scrapped already, and that thanks to the prevalence of air conditioning, it now actually increases energy consumption.

 

Is the time change good for business?

© JP Morgan Chase/ Shedding Light on Daylight Savings Time

One of the justifications for maintaining DST is that is good for business; it has been thought that the extra light in the evening meant more people in stores. This was recently studied by JP Morgan Chase in Shedding Light on Daylight Savings Time, where they compared sales receipts in Los Angeles, where there is DST, to Phoenix, which is in one of the few states that does not switch to DST.

And indeed, Los Angeles showed that the extra hour of daylight increased sales in stores by about one percent. However this was swamped the the loss of sales, a drop of 3.5 percent, when the clocks were turned back in November. In total, throughout the year, the effect appears to be more negative than positive.

The increase in spending at the beginning of DST is determined by comparing daily card spending per capita in the 30 days before DST starts, to daily card spending per capita in the 30 days after DST starts. The decrease at the end captures a similar window to compare spending in the 30 days before and after the end of DST. Most of the impact stems from responses at the end of DST, when spending on goods drops more than spending on services, and spending during the work week drops more than weekend spending. The magnitude of the spending reductions outweighs increased spending at the beginning of DST.

The shock of the dark evenings in November keeps people out of stores more than the extra hour in the spring brings them in. And now that online shopping is an available option, there is even less reason to subject people to this change, which is not very good for our health:

DST can kill you

In 2016 we reported on a study described in STAT which suggests that switching to Daylight Saving Time can kill you.

A 2013 study of nearly 1,000 patients at two Michigan hospitals compared admissions for heart attacks during the seven days after the move to daylight saving to the same days two weeks prior. In the study, which looked at data between 2006 and 2012, researchers found 17 percent more heart attacks after “springing ahead,” with a 71 percent spike on the first day, Sunday. In fact, that one day accounted for almost all of the overall increase.

It's not just heart attacks either.

Analyzing a decade worth of strokes in Finland, scientists found a brief spike in the incidence of ischemic stroke (the most common kind, caused by a clot blocking blood flow in the brain) after the clocks are turned ahead compared to the week before. The rate was 8 percent higher during the first two days after setting the clocks ahead, Dr. Jori Ruuskanen of Finland’s University of Turku and colleagues reported. But in people over 65, the incidence of stroke on those Sundays and Mondays was 20 percent higher.

 

However there is one positive effect: apparently there is a sharp reduction in street crime rates. According to Business Insider, a recently published paper shows that the extra light in the afternoon discourages potential offenders.

Results show that daily cases of robbery, a violent and socially costly street crime, decrease by approximately 7% in the weeks after DST begins, with a 19% drop in the probability of any robbery occurring. A 27% decrease in the robbery rate during the sunset hours drives much of this result.

Ending DST could solve climate change

A few years back, the transition to Daylight Saving Time happened on April 1st, so of course we calculated impact of an extra hour of sunlight had on the world and announced that ending DST could solve global warming.

TreeHugger Labs ran the numbers and has determined that If DST runs half the year for an hour a day, that is fully 1/48th of our total exposure to the sun that could be eliminated with the cancelling of Daylight Saving Time, almost 2% of solar heat gain annually.That's huge!

 

A surprising number of readers were convinced. In 2007 the Arkansas Democrat published a letter complaining about the earlier start of DST:

You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of sunlight would have on our climate. Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat.

Silliness aside, Brian Merchant looked at the issue and concluded that Daylight Savings Time actually increases electrical demand, as air conditioning has eclipsed lighting as the main use of electricity.

Brad Plumer in the Washington Post summarizes the effects of DST and quotes the same study Brian did, finding that DST increases energy consumption, can be bad for your health, has mixed effects on the economy:

Retailers love the extra sunlight — it means that there are more customers around who are willing to go out and shop. The all-powerful golfing industry is also a big fan, apparently. On the other hand, daylight saving can cut into sales for movie theaters and reduce the audience for prime-time television — people go out and enjoy the evening air instead of staring at screens inside.

Perhaps it's time to scrap Daylight Saving Time. What do you think?

Should DST be scrapped?

https://poll.fm/7866326

 

https://www.treehugger.com/should-daylight-savings-time-be-scrapped-survey-4857480