Fiction, Philosophy, and Folderol*

Good morning, starshine

We’re saying, “Hell no.”

You twinkle above us,

we stinkle below.

              * * * * *

It wasn’t the best of times, it wasn’t the worst of times. But it was close.

                                * * * * *

George Grosz: The Pillars of Society

“We have . . . plunged into a twilight of a peculiar existential disorientation . . . . hectic and perplexed, enterprising and discouraged, caught in the middle of everything, alienated from history, unaccustomed to any optimism about the future. Tomorrow assumes the dual character of inconsequence and probable catastrophe . . . .

     “Against the principle of hope, the principle of life in the here and now rises up. . . . The late and cynical feeling of the times is . . . stretched between irritable realism and incredulous daydreams . . . . Some are ambitious, and others just hang around. More than ever, we wait for something corresponding to that feeling of better days, that has something has to happen. And more than a few want to add: It doesn’t matter what. We feel catastrophic and catastrophile, bittersweet and private, if it is at all possible to keep the nearby area free from the worst. With some things we feel dismay but with most things we can’t really give a damn,”

     though we do try to, we pretend to, we pretend very, very hard. And we convince ourselves, we do give a damn . . . but we don't. We can't afford to.

_______________

*With assistance from James Rado and Gerome Ragni, Charles Dickens, and Peter Sloterdijk.

How do you solve a problem like Scalia? - II

The Legacy: Walmart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes.  The Supreme Court denied 1.5 million women the ability to bring a class action against Walmart for unequal pay or promotions on the basis of sex. The women could not proceed as a class when they could not show that they would receive “a common answer to the crucial question, why was I disfavored?”

How do you solve a problem like Scalia?

There's no one way. The first of two George Washington's Birthday cartoons by m ball. The first, How ethics works:

The Gray Boys of Wall Street

« I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons. I am not 

   alone; most bankers owe their careers, and their wealth, to them. Over 

   the last 25 years they – with the Clintons it is never just Bill or Hillary –      

   implemented policies that placed Wall Street at the center of the Demo-

   cratic economic agenda, turning it from a party against Wall Street to a 

   party of Wall Street. »

        – Chris Arnade, “I worked on Wall Street. I am skeptical Hillary 

           Clinton will rein it in.”

Shiny black shoes, shiny red or blue ties, suits that cost my last year's salary.
The Gray Boys of Wall Street by m ball

The Guardian has a number of interesting articles on the Clintons’ and Wall Street. Read Arnade’s story here.

Well-meaning friends

. . . send me all kinds of crap. Today’s two:

          Scalia's false assumptions: that he could know what it really meant, 

          that he did know what it really meant, and that only he knew what it 

          really meant  – and Clarence Thomas, he could too, if Nino could brow-

          beat him into agreeing.

                    Patton's false assumption: that war can be won.

But I love you guys. Keep those cards and letters coming.

Mathodicy*

In his Wonkblog article in yesterday’s The Washington Post online, “What Obama stilldoesn’t get about American politics,” Max Ehrenfreund uses a lot of graphs, because that’s what wonk-bloggers (who do get it) do. (That’s how they get it.) This one, for example, proves† that “as voters have polarized, the disagreements among American legislators have sharpened.” The result: “More and more votes are cast on party lines, political scientists have found. Republicans, in particular, have become more ideologically committed.” Voilà.**

Right. Though let us see, please, how Messrs. PolScentifiques Poole and Rosenthal generated the math that generated the graph.

_______________

Glossary of terms:

     theodicy – attempt to justify God’s goodness given the evil in the world
 (because God ought to be good).

   *mathodicy – attempt to make numbers prove what you think they ought to.

     generate – diddle into existence

     political science – a contradiction in terms

(Elsewhere in the article available political science links not to a political science lab or an article in a peer-reviewed journal of science detailing a laboratory experiment but to another WaPo blog post from the “Monkey Cage.” Not by Darwin.)

†As dropping an Alka-Seltzer tablet in a glass of water proves that it dissolves stomach acids.

**We should add that if Mort Sahl had drawn the diagram, using the same data(!), it might well have looked like this:
 

 

Democratic math

Yesterday we showed you how far the overwhelming leader in the Republican presidential race, Donald Trump, had come. After the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, he has 17 (seventeen!) of the 1237 delegates he needs to win the nomination. He is 1.4 per cent of the way there!

Today, we’ll highlight the Democratic race for delegates in which* Hillary Clinton has garnered approximately 180,578 votes in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary (combined) and Bernie Sanders has amassed 236,394 votes. (That is, of the approximately 417,000 votes cast for the two leading candidates, Sanders has 56.7% and Clinton 43.3%.) This translates into 42 delegates for Sanders (of the 2,382 he needs to win the nomination) and 394 for Clinton (and we’re assuming she needs the same number).

As promised, we’ll highlight . . . not explain.

______________

* This assumes 171,000 voted in Democratic Iowa caucuses; the exact figures have not been released that we know of.

Counting

Lest we get carried away – or since we’ve gotten carried away . . . . First the numbers: Donald Trump has 17 of the 1237 delegates he needs for the Republican nomination for President; Ted Cruz has 10 of the 1237 delegates he needs for the Republican nomination for President; Marco Rubio has 7 of the 1237 delegates he needs for the Republican nomination for President; John Kasich has 4 of the 1237 delegates he needs for the Republican nomination for President; Jeb Bush has 3 of the 1237 delegates he needs for the Republican nomination for President (the same number as Ben Carson); Chris Christie has 0 of the 1237 delegates he needs for the Republican nomination for President (or one fewer than Carly Fiorina). So, Iowa and New Hampshire, here’s what you’ve done. (A visual for the numerically impaired. Scroll down slowly.):

Republican code cracked

Cover up engineered by m ball.

Line of the week – and it’s only Monday. Dan Balz in the The Washington Post on line:

 LONDONDERRY, N.H. — This was supposed to be the
strongest Republican presidential field in memory, but
with two days remaining before the New Hampshire primary, cracks are showing.

White lies, black lies, and math lies

from Democratic candidates exhibit a new ferocity in last debate before N.H. vote by Anne Gearan and Karen Tumulty in The Washington Post online:

“But Sanders kept bringing the argument back to her ties to Wall Street. Through the end of December, the financial industry had given at least $21.4 million to support Clinton’s 2016 presidential run — more than 10 percent of the $157.8 million amassed to back her bid, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings by The Washington Post.”

Actually 136 percent more than 10 percent! Here’s how to do the math.

If you’re a Post subscriber, you may want to check your bill, though the mathletes in billing are surely isolated from the takeastabatitaletes (and don't round up 3.56 to 5, because that would be a more accurate approximation, if you're going to approximate) on the reporting side. (The math was repeated in Tom Hamburger’s “Clinton blasts Wall Street.”)

middle-of-the-rubio

“After months of turmoil and jaw-dropping polls, media coverage and
debates, the race could now settle into a predictable pattern — the far
right insurgent Cruz against the middle-of-the-road Rubio . . .”
                                             – Jennifer Rubin in the Washington Post