If you want to understand a little more about the rise of masculinity superstar Jordan Peterson, I recommend this piece by Bernard Schiff in the Toronto Star today. Schiff was a colleague and admirer of Peterson’s at the University of Toronto, but watched with dismay as Peterson slowly morphed into the darker, more monomaniacal man than the one he knew when he was first hired in 1998. Schiff’s essay provides a nice perspective on both the good and the bad of Peterson and how they’ve meshed to become the man we see today. I won’t try to summarize it, but here’s a small clip:
Jordan has studied and understands authoritarian demagogic leaders. They know how to attract a following. In an interview with Ethan Klein in an H3 Podcast, Jordan describes how such leaders learn to repeat those things which make the crowd roar, and not repeat those things that do not. The crowd roared the first time Jordan opposed the so-called “transgender agenda.” Perhaps they would roar again, whether it made sense or not.
Trump reminded them the crowds loved his rhetoric on immigrants along the campaign trail. Acting as if he were at a rally, he recited a few made-up Hispanic names and described potential crimes they could have committed, such as rape or murder. Then, he said, the crowds would roar when the criminals were thrown out of the country — as they did when he highlighted crimes by illegal immigrants at his rallies, according to a person present for the exchange and another briefed on it later. Miller and Kushner laughed.
This is hardly an innovative rhetorical technique. It’s been the go-to style of demagogues since Cleon. Nonetheless, successful ones are still rare and we are unlucky to be living through an era that’s seeing their rise again.
I disappointed my sister by being unable to find an excuse last weekend to blog about the royal wedding, so I’m going to make up for it today by blogging about the new coat of arms for the Duchess of California Sussex, aka Meghan Markle. As you can see, it’s chock full of California symbolism. Once again, California leads the nation in mocking Donald Trump, who will never have a real coat of arms of his own.
Last week I showed you our freshly painted patio cover—except that the patio cover was cropped out of the shot and all you could see was Hilbert. This week, both cats star in a patio cover Before-and-After. First, here’s Hopper in a rare file photo taken before it was painted:
Yuck! Not Hopper of course, who’s as beautiful as ever. But the patio cover has been torn to shreds. What happened was that the association sent over painters to paint the house, and they used a power washer to prep the wood. Unfortunately, they weren’t too careful about where they aimed it, and the patio cover got pretty badly beaten up. So we called the painters and out they came:
So fresh and lovely! And Hilbert is breaking it in with a little rolling around, which he usually does out in the garden where he can get himself suitably filthy. He was probably hoping the paint was still wet on the wood, but we were too smart for him.
The last time CBO published its “baseline” projection for the health insurance market was September 2017. Today they have a new one. Can you feel the excitement in the air?
Premiums in 2018 are 15 percent higher than they originally projected last year.
The number of people receiving subsidies for Obamacare is down by 2 million (-19 percent).
The number of unsubsidized Obamacare users is up by 1 million. (17 percent)
The number of people eligible for Medicaid is down slightly (by less than half a million, or around -2 percent).
The rest of CBO’s numbers don’t make sense to me because they don’t seem to add up. For what it’s worth, though, they also project that the number of uninsured will decline by about a million. They also project that last year’s changes will decrease the deficit by $50 billion, but that has little to do with Obamacare. It’s mostly to do with changes to employer health care payouts and reductions in Medicaid payments.
Fentanyl is an old drug, invented more than half a century ago and relatively easy to make for a competent chemist. So why is it that it’s only recently become popular?
I asked that a couple of days ago, and today drug guru Mark Kleiman answers. Long story short, Fentanyl is (a) very powerful and (b) requires only minuscule doses. This means that the difference between getting high and getting killed is only a matter of a few micrograms. In turn, this means that when you cut it for street distribution, you better cut it pretty damn accurately. If you don’t, you’re going to leave a big trail of dead people in your wake, and that’s bad for business even if you don’t get caught and tossed in jail.
But technology marches on, and today fentanyl can be cut pretty precisely—although even at that, it’s producing a whole lot of dead people:
But there’s more to it than that. Kleiman has the whole story over at his place, and it’s pretty interesting. You should read it. But since most of you won’t, here’s the tl;dr version. It starts in the early 90s, after the price of heroin had already started to drop precipitously:
Then we got hit with a wave of prescription-opioid (mostly hydrocodone and oxycodone) diversion and dependency that started around 1992….As those oxycodone users built up habits they could no longer afford, or lost access to a script-happy M.D. or a “pill mill” pharmacy, the falling price of heroin enticed many of them to “trade down.”…At the same time, people in the U.S. were learning how to buy chemicals unavailable here – banned drugs, cheap unbranded pharmaceuticals, Human Growth Hormone, you name it – by mail-order from illicit or quasi-licit outfits in China.
….It didn’t take long for some of those Chinese outfits to start making fentanyl; unlike heroin dealers, they didn’t need a source of opium. The chemistry involved isn’t especially challenging (not, for example, like making LSD). Fifty grams of fentanyl – an ounce and a half – has the potency of a kilogram of heroin, and it’s way, way cheaper. Somewhere in here someone figured out a technique for diluting the stuff with enough accuracy to reduce the consumer’s risk of a fatal overdose: far from perfectly, but enough to create a thriving market. And for a retail heroin dealer, the financial savings from buying fentanyl (or an analogue) rather than heroin, and the convenience of having the material delivered directly by parcel post rather than having to worry about maintaining an illegal “connection,” constituted an enormous temptation.
For law enforcement, the parcel-post approach makes a hard problem nearly impossible….On top of that, the “technology” of illicit retail drug distribution has been transformed by the introduction of mobile phones. Thirty years ago, illicit retail drug transactions were characteristically carried out…in low-income, high-crime urban neighborhoods….Having to travel to such a location – risking arrest or robbery – constituted a significant barrier to illicit acquisition….But with mobile phones, texting, and social media, transactions can now be arranged electronically and completed by home delivery, reducing the buyer’s risk and travel time to near zero and even his waiting time to minimal levels. In the recent Global Survey on Drugs, cocaine users around the world reported, that their most recent cocaine order was delivered in less time, on average, than their most recent pizza order.
So there you have it. Legal opioids seemed safe because they came from doctors or friends, and opioid addictions eventually led some people to heroin. Then Chinese outfits figured out how to make relatively safe fentanyl, and it was so compact they could just ship it to the US via ordinary parcel post that’s all but impossible to detect. Add in cell phones so customers don’t have to wander around sketchy neighborhoods at dark, and the cycle is complete.
Oh, and fentanyl is far from the most potent synthetic opioid out there. Getting high on fentanyl typically requires about 100 micrograms. Carfentanil requires about 1 microgram. You could ship that from China in an ordinary first-class letter. It’s a brave new opioid world out there.
In a milestone for the #MeToo movement, disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein turned himself in to New York authorities Friday morning…. Weinstein was charged with rape in the first degree, rape in the third degree and committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree for alleged forcible sexual acts against two women in 2013 and 2004, Manhattan Dist. Atty. Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said in a statement. Prosecutors and authorities have withheld the women’s names.
On Friday morning, Weinstein was led into a courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back. He did not speak during the brief appearance.
….Speaking to reporters after the court appearance, Weinstein’s attorney, Benjamin Braffman, said the former producer will enter a plea of not guilty and continues to “vehemently deny” any criminal acts….“Mr. Weinstein did not invent the casting couch in Hollywood,” Braffman said. “And to the extent that there is bad behavior in that industry, that is not what this is about. Bad behavior is not on trial in this case. It’s only if you intentionally committed a criminal act, and Mr. Weinstein vigorously denies that.”
“Mr. Weinstein did not invent the casting couch in Hollywood.” JFC. I get that the guy is a lawyer and his only job is to get his client off, but does he really think this is helpful? Pol Pot didn’t invent genocide either, but that hardly counts in his defense.
Can we start a new hashtag, #FuckYouToo for crap like this? In the meantime, I look forward to the trial. I hope it will be televised.
Why yes, I am blogging a little later than usual. Thanks for noticing. Because I had two days of chemo in a row, that meant two days of dex in a row, which in turn meant that I was awake for 40 straight hours without even a little bit of catnapping. So what would happen when bedtime rolled around? Would I stay up all night again? Or would 40 hours plus a sleeping pill be enough to vanquish the dex?
The sleep debt plus the pill won. Hooray! This is useless knowledge since I’ll never do this two days in a row again, but really, is any knowledge ever truly useless?
Jorge Garcia hugs his wife and children at Detroit Metro Airport, moments before he boarded a flight to Mexico. Garcia was being deported to Mexico after living in the U.S. for 30 years.Niraj Warikoo/Detroit Free Press via ZUMA
The last time the National Guard was deployed to the border — in Texas in 2014 and borderwide in 2010 — troops assumed Border Patrol posts on the front lines, easing the workload, Judd said. Although National Guard members were restricted to an “observe and report” role and couldn’t detain migrants, they still aided patrols. “They were allowed to do a lot more than they are under the Trump administration. They were allowed to be in lookout and observation posts. They were allowed to be out grading the roads and mending fences. They were allowed to be our eyes and ears, freeing us up,” Judd said.
This deployment, he said, has proved to be far more limited — despite the Trump administration’s claims. “They’re not allowed to be in the public eye. They’re not allowed to be in our lookout and observation posts, even in Texas,” he said, the busiest area of the border for migrants and drug smuggling. Judd said agents had complained about the restrictions to National Guard commanders, but “they just ignore the concerns.”
This is yet another example of Trump talking big but accomplishing little because he has no idea what the issues really are and what kind of actions to order. He just tweets out a command to deploy the National Guard to the border, basks in the applause, and then assumes everything will just work out.
A top official with the Department of Health and Human Services told members of Congress on Thursday that the agency had lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children it placed with sponsors in the United States, raising concerns they could end up in the hands of human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as relatives.
….From last October to the end of the year, officials at the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement tried to reach 7,635 children and their sponsors, Mr. Wagner testified. From these calls, officials learned that 6,075 children remained with their sponsors. Twenty-eight had run away, five had been removed from the United States and 52 had relocated to live with a nonsponsor. But officials at the agency were unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475 children, Mr. Wagner said.
Things like this would give any normal person pause about how they handle children who have crossed the border. But not Trump. A few days ago he ordered that children who crossed the border illegally with their parents would be separated from them. John Kelly explained the plan: “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.” So not just cruel, but incompetent too. They obviously don’t give a shit: it’s just something that’s theatrically inhumane enough to satisfy the bloodlust of Trump’s base. Once again, it’s big talk that accomplishes nothing. It’s all Trump has ever been good at.
If you meet up with an Evangelical white Republican man with a high school diploma—the main Fox News demographic—he’ll be almost certain to think we should tell these folks to fuck right off. If you meet up with an atheist black Democratic woman who has a PhD—the Fox viewer’s greatest fear—she’ll be almost certain to think we have a responsibility toward the world’s most destitute.
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