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Three Paths

One of my least favorite sportscasters of all time routinely spewed all sorts of claims about what was going to happen in the game, then inevitably told us how it worked out like he said.  Of course, if your prediction is that team A is going win, lose, or there will be a draw, you are never wrong; but your predictions don't carry a lot of weight.  For my own part, I made a lot of predictions about Trump just as he took office like:  Trump's a destroyer and all he can do is tear stuff apart, Trump thinks lying is his magic power because he knows it disorients other people, Trump is inherently dishonest because he thinks that his edge in business, and Putin has something on Trump, probably related to debts, so he is going to sell us out.  (Mostly I think this turned out to be true) 

At the moment, I do not feel I can make an accurate prediction about what is going to happening, but I think there are three possible paths with respect to our democracy.  We reached a historical moment where a sitting President (Trump) used the power of his position and the help of multiple broadcasting networks to attempt to overthrow a duly elected new President (Biden).  We were fortunate to avoid having the Vice President and various other members of Congress assassinated.   Rather than recoil in horror about the situation, the majority of Republicans (at least in polling) and their elected officials have aligned with the President.  

As broader background, I will repeat an anecdote and recap various things I have read or heard on the news recently.

"CEOs are like mob bosses"

Over the last decade I have been close or part of the sale of a couple of companies.  In each cases, the CEO was switched out in short order and all the management was replaced with "friends" of the new CEO.  Some of these people were qualified and some were disastrously unqualified.  I was talking with another senior officer at another company and he dropped the prophetic line that "CEOs are like mob bosses, the always bring in their friends to have their back."

Trump mostly dumped anyone who was not a yes man at the national level and kept his family close.  At the state level, Trump purged many state GOPs of the old school Republicans and replaced them Trumpists.  This is why Wyoming and Arizona and trying to cancel their own elected officials.  The GOP of just four years ago has literally been taken over and replaced with friends of Trump.

This is probably not the full mind of all traditional GOP voters, but a large majority are already pre-disposed to Fox/Trump/Evangelical Nationalist view points at this point.  

What this means is that the old GOP is either dead forever or not coming back for a very long time.  The GOP is not a big tent party any more and it has gravitated towards a violent race-oriented nationalism.  Of course, if you have been fed a diet of grievances, and the demonization of Democrats, other races, other countries, other religions, and government in general; it is much easier to listen to the hate than it is to think about getting along with your neighbors.

If I had to make a prediction about this, it would be that the GOP will continued to shed some portion of voters over to independents and find it very hard to grow any more.  In particular, the college educated suburban voters who were alright with things so long as they were not a target themselves and it was not too blatant could let it slip.  Those people drove Biden to victory even though Trump turned out new GOP voters.  The GOP has so highly delineated itself they will not be able to turn around.  Not sure what this means to Liz Cheney in the short term.  Still - Trump turned out a big surge in GOP voters - it was just smaller than the big surge in Democratic voters.  I just do not believe these people will turn out if Trump is not on the ticket (like GA giving us to Democratic Senators).

A not so difficult prediction is that the GOP will continue to focus on further anti-democratic methods like voter suppression techniques such as restricting who can vote, how you can vote, and implementing more severe gerrymandering.   (Though hard to see how you could gerrymander states like NC more severely).  Without the original gerrymander of the Senate through the Electoral College and gerrymandering in general, the Democratic would have easily controlled the House, Senate, and the Presidency in this last election and would have more power at the state level.

Anti-democratic tendencies have been built into the GOP strategy for years now, because they had turned inward for so long.  Trumpism will not make this better.

Confronting Cult Members only Strengthens their Beliefs

A number of posts have been written about the difficulty on reaching individuals such as diehard QAnon believers.  Individuals so strongly identify with their group that being confronted about their beliefs they will only close down even more.  If you doubt them, then you are simply part of the broader conspiracy against them.  Or something like that.

If you hope for them to get better, your best approach may be able to get them to relate to you on human terms, outside of anything in their main belief set where they cannot tolerate disagreement.  One of the best things, if it is possible, is to remove or limit their ability to hear more reinforcing information.  Without constant feeding, people are able to return to a standard set of reference (e.g. facts, friends, and family) and move away from the cult/conspiracy beliefs.  So, there is no quick fix for the state of the GOP, and, they have to be treated like snowflakes to avoid triggering their violent leanings.  Reinstating the voter protections, anti-gerrymandering rules, and getting social media magnets to purge the worst is probably what we can do.

If you doubt that the rightwing has a strong cult-like presence, you need not look further than their extreme intolerance of anybody that has a different view point.  Just watch Liz Cheney getting treated like an apostate because she is a Republican questioning Trump's behavior, the sometimes violent (verbal or physical) response to having to wear a mask in stores, the burning desire of so many to "own the libs."  Irony will never be dead when a Republican talks about "cancel culture" at the same time the call other Republicans RINOs or seek to cancel a fair election.

In short, the GOP has very many strong cult like characteristics.  I realize this is not all Republicans, the majority of them still believe the last Presidential election was corrupt.  It was fair and you know that because even with all the power the Presidency, the Trumps lawyers literally never brought forth any evidence in court.  The reason was that lying in court gets you in legal trouble.  Another reason to think that a systematic corruption of the voting machinery across the many different states and voting is monumentally difficult, especially when all states have lots of rules and mechanisms to ensure the vote is counted.  One systematic attempt at voter fraud I know of in this era took place in NC and naturally involved a Republican and it did not go well.  That kind of voter fraud is hard. 

There are other ways to sway the vote, like robocalls and giving out false voting information which are hard to trace.  The best way to do steal an election is through gerrymandering and voter suppression.

QAnon is a Fascist Organization 

Fascism is a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.  Mirriam-Webster.

QAnon is focused on implementation of a Trump lead autocracy that posited the violent overthrow of the left.  I would not profess to the know all of the details because it seems to bind together racial and religious stereotypes.  It is pretty easy to see what white nationalists and Christian nationalist groups are looking to recruit from the QAnon ranks, they actually may have a more coherent world view. 

Trump hardly seems to have started QAnon, but he was more than willing to fan the flames and eventually like the fuse on January 6th.  Trump spent four years trying to implement himself as a dictator and a large number of Republicans seem totally OK with that.   

Control of the narrative is crucial fascist governments.  QAnon and the broader rightwing news industry have effectively been able to dictate a narrative to the right.

Three Paths  

Barring a single prediction, there seem like three paths:

Fascism Wins:  Democracy takes willing participants.  It does not require a majority to overthrow a democracy.  It is possible that enough people will simply give up on democracy and for them to have enough power.

Paralysis Wins:  There is enough division in the country that it is does not coalesce one side or the other.  In this path, the United States will continue to weaken as international force and will remain a tale of two countries.  It will also be weakened economically.   I do not think this is sustainable forever, so it would like go one way of the other.

Progressivism Wins:  Democrats, engaged independents, and some Republicans respond to COVID and other issues by competently leading the nation and using government to rebuild the country.  This leads to a marginalization of Trumpism which slowly fades.

If I had to bet, it would be half paralysis and half progressivism, but it might well be any of these.

[12 Feb 2021] I made some editorial fixes to this.  I think the country would mostly like to be center right and the reason I do not see us going there is that the so-called RINOs that represent that area have been too marginalized by the GOP.   Independents and conservative democrats will not organizing themselves in group capable to seizing that political space.

Biden Day 1, Extraordinary Evidence

Random bits

Michigan beat Maryland handily yesterday (19 January 2021) in basketball.  The Michigan Women's basketball team is also a top 10 team and currently undefeated.  Go Blue.

I worked less than 10 hours today, but it was still a long day.  

Biden Inauguration

This evening I watched the presidential election and it was struck by what a different vision of the United States it was.  The only positive about the 'rona is that the evening broadcast was it allowed for a highly polished virtual celebration in the evening.  My son probably could see the fireworks in DC, so I am a bit jealous about that.  The production was very much in line with the Democratic convention but smoother and more studded with A list stars.   I would not be surprised to see this repeated in the future.

This Digby's Hullabaloo post a nice piecing together of key snippets of the actual inauguration.  The Amanda Gorman poem was my favorite part.

The evening "concert" is such a different vision of America than the January 6th siege crowd that it is hard to think they co-exist ... if we did not all know a Qanon fan boy or girl and realize that Fox probably didn't cover it at all.

Extraordinary Evidence

In the run up to 2016 my brother-in-law's wife's father, an evangelical, trying to get into a discussion about the secret cabal controlling everything.  It was straight up Protocol of the Elder's of Zion stuff (racist hate-justifying bunk).  Given his age I tried to basically say I did not really for that kind of conspiracy theory stuff and we have not spoken too much since then.  Suffice to day he believed that "Trump was going to be a game changer."   Admittedly, he was right about that. 

To the old man's point, I did posit that there was also the impact of money and control of the media that did give people a lot of control of the narrative which allowed them to control people's beliefs.  I had in mind Fox and the highly funded bubble it had created; and how that provided enormous control of people's beliefs.  The January 6th coup attempt was the ultimate metastasis of the the right wing bubble.  The US may yet fall to a right wing fascist regime, but it was averted for now.

The Qanon stuff is one I've never quite understood. In the beginning Fox very craftily shaped the narrative about what was going on and intermixed it with factual reporting.  That selective reporting and messaging about intent is very potent. On the surface, the Qanon conspiracy requires accepting very extreme beliefs that are pretty out of the range of common sense explanations of events.  When I hear those kind of things, my first reaction the easiest explanation is usually the correct one.  Common sense frequently rules - even in complex modeling situations.  It always brings back Carl Sagan's position on aliens:  extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.   Show me a captured Bigfoot, show me live alien, otherwise kindly don't try to kill me or people like me.  Find a better hobby.

After Trump won, I was asked what I thought about Trump.  It was January 2016 and I said, Trump is a destroyer.  HIs gig is contradicting everyone else, lying, and seizing on the fact that most people are not used to dealing with that all of the time.   Of course, I also had a boss that did the same stuff and I was forced to quit my job to get away from it.  I was proven profoundly correct.  

I did get a "smart" response that "sometimes you have to destroy stuff to make it better."

I guess that could be true if the problem is a group of people trying to overthrow the government in a coup who also believe in racial purity and killing everyone else.  

Our government is more like a bridge across a river that allows people to get together and supports all sorts of positive benefits.  If you destroy the bridge, all you are left with is nothing.  Terrorists blow up bridges.  Trump was really nothing more than a terrorist who spent 4 years trying to tear about our nation.   But, you watch enough Fox and Newsmax, and there you go.

Today was so much about the believing in a common good and the value a functional government.  Of course, I'd like to be hopeful, but much of the mechanics of the the last 30 years of the right have not changed just because Trump inspired extremists attempted a coup.  (Of course, there was no real Qanon seizure of power and Trump isn't some kind of secret genius spy.  You'd have to provide some pretty extraordinary evidence for that when a lying sociopathic grifter is the common sense explanation.  I'm pretty thankful for that since I'm a Democrat and I'd hate to be killed in part of some societal purge).  

But may be, just may be, we will see some discussions of policy and compromise in the coming year.  You know, the kind of thing you'd expect in a democracy.

Everyone stay safe.

PS - There was some talk about CA pulling a hold on a lot of Moderna COVID vaccines.  That seemed to disappear, but it was simultaneously good see epidemiologic principles of tracking in use and bad to hear about a potential issue with one of the vaccines.   I'll have to research it a bit more I guess. 

Howdy World

I hope everyone is doing well.  With some luck I managed to get the email back for this blogger account.  That makes 8 years.  A lot happens in 8 years... my last post was about Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign against Barack. 

It is a little bit like getting back in touch with a High School friend.   So much time has past that you can't help but be curious to see how they have fared.  

I analyze data for drug companies, devices, diagnostics, and similar such stuff.  I've been meaning to do this on Facebook, but I kind of  boycott Facebook because it is used to spread lies and hate messages for the profit of Mark Z.   So, ah, no.

So my public service work is to point out that when the FDA approves something it publishes a summary basis of approval or a summary of safety and effectiveness.  They have varying levels of details and often results will be included in the labeling materials for a product.  The FDA is kind of picky about what makes it into a label, so typically you can look for publications with the main study results for clinical trials.

The work done on clinical trials is regulated.  The study sites that participate in studies can be audited and sanctioned if they are not following rules well enough.  If you work on trials in the US, the government can show up and audit you.  If you happen to be involved in the analysis of data for a pivotal clinical trial for publicly traded company and it looks like there is suspicious trading, the government can ask you to share the names of everyone who knew the results before they become publicly shared.  I'll skip the other rules that are in place to make sure what the FDA is getting honest data and honestly reporting the results, but the point is ... the information the FDA is providing goes through a lot more vetting and rigorous protection than most of the stuff that shows up on the web.  Especially the dark web and internet chat boards.

In my work, I have worked on many approved products and in all of them the FDA's summary documents replicated the analyses tables that were provided to them.  There was never anything going on.  The same goes for publications in medical journals of the study results.

The Moderna Vaccine Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is here.

Skip right to Page 20 - it covers the study disposition.  This covers the number of subjects who entered the study, were randomized, and if they completed the study.  This includes more than 30,000 subjects.  A per-protocol population was defined and included 27,000 subjects.  A per-protocol population typically excludes subjects who deviate from the planned study assessments in some significant way.

If you look at Page 29, the results of an interim analysis of the per-protocol population was completed.  This is interesting because the confirmed cases was quite low when in both arms (5 cases in 13,934 person years in the vaccine arm and 90 in 13,883 person years).  This surprised me as I expected the rates would be higher.  When Moderna reports a 94.5% vaccine efficacy they are talking about the reduction in this rate of cases).  The rate in person years is dependent upon exposure in the populations and the comparison assumes that people getting randomly exposed is similar in the groups.  Note this is a blinded trial, so participants will not know what they received.  

The final analysis was 11/13,914 and 185/13,883.   If you ever had a statistics class you will know a p-value is hovering around.  A p-value says how likely the relative difference is to occur by chance.  The p-value for this comparison was <0.0001.  That means the 11 vs 185 events would happen by chance is less than that 1 in 10,000.  Here is a link to a John Hopkins site that at mortality in COVID infected individuals.  Much of this appears higher than 1 in 100 in many countries.  Given that many people who are not symptomatic likely do not get tested, the actual mortality must be lower.  

Is it safe?  There are clearly more events and higher grade events when subjects were solicited for them and more injection site reactions.  Serious related events and deaths were similar in both arms, so from 30,000' it looks safe in terms of the most serious results by not without some additional risk of an event. Assessing risk benefit is something you should do with your doctor if you are concerned.

If you ever really want to find out for yourself what a drug, biologic or device looks like, start with fda. gov and work out from there.

Stay safe.

A brief update from the United States of Lunatics

The Tea Party House is like a spoiled brat who puts his hand over your mouth and pinches your nose until you pass out in order to get his way.  

Yes, it was just last summer that the GOP knocked the stock market down just with the threat of a shutdown, now their apparently intent on going through with it.  Too bad we all have to pay the price for their childish behaviour again.

Just so you know:

(T)he health care act at the center of this storm (will) continue its implementation process during a shutdown. That's because its funds aren't dependent on the congressional budget process.

The ACA is the law, the Supreme Court called it constitutional, and its happening anyway, even if the government defaults on paying its other bills.

Further, it would require a Democrat Senate to approve and a Obama to not veto getting rid of the ACA.  As he believes it a signature piece of his Presidency and he believes it important to try to cover the 10s of millions of people without insurance, it is completely irrational to believe that he will do away with it OR really even that he should. 

For comparison, do you think Bush would vetoed a law that would have erased the Bush tax cuts?  Of course he would, even though the tax cuts blew massive holes in our budget with little economic benefit (aside from leaving further in troubh when a real crisis occurred).

So please, if you haven't, write your Representative and Senator, and tell them to do they sane thing:  pass a no condition change in the debt limit.  

We simply don't have the time for this fantasy play.

Super G

PS   I recently sold my business of more than 15 years.  During that time I paid about $9 million in salaries, paid a ton of taxes, and still provided my employees with insurance, even in the one year that I didn't make a dime.  I think the medical device tax in the ACA is poorly implemented and a bad thing.   However, there are good things and concepts in the ACA and it is the only serious attempt to a real issue that 10s of millions of people don't have insurance.  In short, I know what providing health care is like for a small business because I did it.  Being an employer is hard work, but I never accepted and I never will accept that we so economically inept that we cannot take on healthcare, by some approximation, for all.   Fee for service medicine, the insurance industry, and the medical malpractice business have all badly warped medicine in the US, so that cannot remain the status quo.  Perhaps after the tantrums are over and the damage is done, it will shake a little sense and we'll see people actually start trying to govern.

Its all over and thanks for the fish

Of course people probably don't read The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy any more, nor is it the 80s any more.  Like we now know that tax cuts never trickle down.

Anyway, the election is over so.  You know it is really over when Romney drops all the fake "Moderate Mitt" routine and says PRESIDENT Obama was re-elected by promising free things to African Americans, Hispanics, and the youth.  No wonder it took him two weeks to walk back from the 47% video - it really was him speaking what he thought was the truth.

To think ... Romney kinda sorta of could have been President ... only he wasn't going to despite the titanically terrible debate performance by PRESIDENT Obama in the first debate.  It was momentarily disquieting but the Mittmentum had peaked just prior to the 3rd debate and it was in the bag before Sandy showed her horrific face.

Anyway - it was I predicted last year - Obama over Romney in a close election.

So I'm just saying I told you so - last year. 

I'll admit that I have been taking a somewhat guilty pleasure from watching the GOP's reaction to the Romney's fail:

Karl Rove's insane Denial on Ohio was epic.  Let alone the epic failure of Rove's $300M+ money trap for millionaires.  What was Rove's consolation for them:  if you hadn't wasted $300M+ the results would have been more one-sided.  Ha ha ha ha.  You got nothing - it doesn't matter if the vote % would have been worse because you still got nothing for $300M+. 

Donald Trump's Twitter rant calling for a revolution.  Only to be deleted.  Few proved themselves to be a bigger jack-ass than The Donald.  OMG. 

Romney's shock that he didn't win.   OK, I guess if I had spent 6 years and $100Ms running and could only pick up one swing state, I might be a bit shocked too.  But really, after the 47%, the "severe conservative," the flip-flopping, the binders of women, and the implausible $5T in tax cuts + $2T in new ships at the same time as balancing the budget, I was severely shocked that Romney was as close as he was. 

The loopy attempts to "unskew" the polls only to find out ones not based on 2004 turnout patterns (unlike Gallup and Rassmussen) were pretty darn accurate.  One of the best, PPP, had early on identified the most motivated voters were African Americans ... and, surprise, they showed up. 

"Patriotic" conservatives looking to secede from the Union.  (Man, you really are poor losers.)

Paul Ryan's idiotic contention that because the GOP still has the gerrymandered House, that the GOP didn't really lose the election and still has some kind of mandate.  (Frankly we saw enough Man Dates and Bromancing between Ryan and Romney).

I could go on . . . but you get the point. 

Anyway, I am still worried by how the close the election was.  If the GOP can manage to suppress 0.5% or 1% of the voters they might be able to budge the election results in some key states, and frankly they'll think nothing of disenfranchising any number of voters to win an election. 

So let's get on with it.  Drop the tax cuts for the wealthiest so we don't have to let all of the Bush tax cuts expire and start cutting.  Make it easy on yourselves - just aim to almost balance the budget in 8 or 10 years.  Then go ahead with immigration reform.   There are plenty of things to be done.

But please, but the hate out the gate (for Democrats, progressives, liberals, blacks, hispanics, and gays), it ain't working for you.  

Post note ... my daughter is signing her DI commitment letter this week to play women's lacrosse.  So the world keeps on turning and it is time to move on. 

Mittagedon (Thank you Mr. Romney Redux)

(I am posting a bit on dailykos.com)

A while ago I posted a thank you for Mitt in picking Paul Ryan for the VP candidate.  At that time I was hoping that the Ryan's pick would lead Romney to lay out some of the actual policies that had been stewing in the Tea Party, the public would vote them down, and the GOP might starting turning back towards the center as a result.  At least start putting Grover Norquist at a bit greater distant . . .

Things seemed to be going exactly as I had planned, but now that Mitt is proving to be the ultimate clusterf--- of a candidate things are going awry.  I now fear that when the GOP gets smoked in the election, they are just going to blame it all on Romney being a genuinely crappy candidate, drawing exactly the wrong conclusion again.  This may only lead them to spend four more years screwing the country over by obstructing anything the Obama advocates.

At least Mitt being Mitt is rallying the Democratic base. 

Romney is so generally unlikeable and Obama so vilified by the right-wing media it feels like 50+% of Romney supporters are probably just voting against Obama.   It isn't a very compelling campaign if you have to get voters to vote against the other guy rather than you.  This was why the GOP convention was just a bitch fest without real life.

Perhaps Obama has peaked too early and the eventual pendulum swing will head back to Romney.

The real downside is that I do not believe either candidate has a real plan to address the deficit and the entitlement programs.  Cutting taxes by 20% across the board is purely lunacy, but so is saying the status quo can go on forever.  A trillion dollars in deficit spending a year is an inefficient and untargetted stimulus and it can't go over forever.   The debt is the biggest incertainty faces businesses and the economy. 

I guess time will tell.  When Romney went after the 47% and Ryan's voucher plan got publicity, America by and large recoiled from them.  Hopefully this will suggest at some level to the Right, that we should start with baby steps, like reforming, rather than throwing out programs that worked well for a very long time.  But, the Romney's doubling down on Bushesque tax cuts aimed at benefiting only the richest and international posturing was so destructive that we have lost the chance for meaningful debate.

Oh well.  I thought you were serious for a moment there Mitt.