The question Republicans must dodge.

Question: "Who won the 2020 election?"

Answer: "Ma'am, we know that President Joe Biden was sworn into office."

The scene was the Senate confirmation hearing of Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), nominee for secretary of homeland security. The question came from Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI).

 
Republicans have a dilemma. There is a question they must not answer directly. The Biden-was-inaugurated response tries to make irrelevant the issue of Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Trump is adamant that Republicans not contradict his assertion that he won the 2020 election. If the Republicans answer to the question acknowledges reality, he becomes a RINO, a Republican in name only. RINOs are traitors to Trump.

It is the classic "The Emperor has no clothes!" problem. Republicans are forced to deny their own eyes. Republicans might be watching to see who is non-compliant. 

To be a Republican in good standing, one needs to ignore evidence that would normally be dispositive. The 2020 votes came in just as predicted by a variety of polling firms, including the Republican-oriented Fox and Rasmussen polls. Votes for representatives and senators, for governors, for down-ballot races, all conformed to a pattern of a 2020 blue wave in jurisdiction after jurisdiction, red states, blue states, states with Republican election officials, states with Democratic election officials. Counts and recounts, many done by Republicans, confirmed the votes. Joe Biden received some 81 million votes to Trump's 74 million. 

The Biden-was-inaugurated line is a way to assert that the issue is past and gone. It isn't past. It is a litmus test of political loyalty and character. It exposes people who cannot be trusted to do their duty regarding democratic elections. It shows that the Republican is willing to tread the party line if he is put under political pressure by his party. He would suspend belief in audited and recounted ballots not to acknowledge the election of a Democrat. 

Trump is already supplying the excuses for Republicans to use to deny the midterm election results: There may be mailed ballots, the wrong people may have voted, machines may have switched votes, or the votes may be reported inaccurately by election officials. A Republican who uses the Biden-was-inaugurated line demonstrates that he cannot openly acknowledge an election victory by a Democrat, if that is demanded by his party.

There are multiple choke points and veto spots in our election machinery. Legislators will be put on the hot seat and urged to refuse to do routine ministerial acts. I have observed Oregon's state Senate races in my district, District Three, a seat currently held by Democrat Jeff Golden (yet another college classmate). It is a light blue district, but one that elected a strong Republican candidate in the past, Alan DeBoer. Recent Republican candidates have lost elections to Golden because he was a well-respected candidate and because his Republican opponents sabotaged their own campaigns. They could not resist the million-dollar-plus campaign help from the state Republican Party, which served up red-meat Republican orthodoxy.  

This cycle's Republican candidate for this district, Brad Hicks, was a career Chamber of Commerce executive director. He is well connected to the local business establishment -- a mixed blessing. (Forty-five years ago I won election as a Democratic county commissioner because I advertised that I was NOT part of that good ol' boy network of businesses getting government contracts from the very people whose campaigns they fund. I was the "drain the swamp" candidate.) Hicks could be a plausible candidate, but he is stuck with being neck-deep in the swamp and a member of a party that cannot admit that their leader lost an election. If elected, Republicans in the state Senate would be under enormous pressure to deny certification of any election victory by Democrats if Trump demands it. They have a ready-made excuse for mischief: We have mail-in ballots in Oregon. 

It is not easy to be a Republican in this era of Trump. They cannot escape Trump being Trump, with all his strangeness, and all his MAGA supporters. Trump and the GOP demand compliance and they are harsh on heretics.

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Guest Post: Why Are There So Few Fat People in France, and None in China?

I had not expected to do a second post on GLP-1 drugs or food.

I thought my post on Sunday would be a one-and-done, a short off-topic "Easy Sunday" diversion. After all, there is so much "news" happening.

But everybody eats, everybody observes one another, and everybody consciously and unconsciously absorbs an idea of what is a normal, reasonable weight. Jim Stodder wrote me saying that weight isn't about appetite. He said that Americans have grown larger because we have normalized being larger and we conform to that expectation.  

When this photo of comedian Jackie Gleason was taken in 1953, Gleason was noteworthy for being uniquely overweight. He would be less conspicuous now. Americans have changed what we think of as "normal." Bigger is OK now in the USA. But that isn't true world-wide.

Jim Stodder is a college classmate, an economist, and a retired professor. His guest post comment notes that his BMI (body mass index) is under 30, meaning that he is not obese, as defined by the medical establishment's charts on healthy weights.

Stodder

Guest Post by Jim Stodder

Why Are There So Few Fat People in France, and None in China? 

OK, it’s not literally true that there are zero fat people in China, but you could get that impression walking around Shanghai. From 2006 to 2013, I taught economics in China every summer, usually in Shanghai. Shanghai is sometimes called the New York of China. Besides finance and skyscrapers, they both have subways with would-be entertainers.

I took the fast ,modern subway to Fudan University every day, and there was sometimes a guy who billed himself as “The Fat Man”, a stand-up comic in both languages. He gave me his card, English on one side.

I didn’t think he was too funny. Another thing I didn’t think, at all, was that he was fat. This guy was about 5’8”, maybe 180 pounds. No one, I mean no one in the U.S. would look at this guy and think “fat.” “Stout,” maybe. I must have passed several thousand people on Shanghai’s bustling streets and I never saw anyone fat by U.S. standards

Look at World Health Organization (WHO) data in a map on Wikimedia Commons: Countries are ranked by obesity, defined as the percentage of adults with a body-mass index over 30. The data are here.

There are three patches of dark-green – fewer than 10 percent of adults have a BMI of 30 or more: Central Africa – where they don’t get enough to eat, France – where they’re slaves to fashion, and a big swath of South and East Asia, from India to Japan. So what’s going on there?

Being on the brink of starvation is one thing, but France, Japan, and South Korea are rich countries, and they eat very well – better than Americans, many would say -- just not as much. Bear in mind, this WHO data is from 2022, so well before the advent of Ozempic, WeGovy, etc.

Aside from brute starvation, I’d say it’s a strong awareness of one’s social image. One can be a fashionista, as in Paris or Hollywood. But it doesn’t have to be just vanity. In a more traditional society, it was a norm of not looking greedy, of not taking more than your share. Like that old Bolshevik poster with the fat capitalist in a tuxedo and top-hat.

An old way of distinguishing Asian cultures is to call East Asia a “shame” culture and Western Europe a “guilt” culture. The idea is that in the first, social values are enforced collectively, while in the second enforcement is internalized.

Social pressure and the need to cut a good figure can also apply in the West. It’s hard to imagine a truly fat U.S. president, and the U.S. has not had one since William Howard Taft. But outside of Hollywood, the C-Suite, or politics (Hollywood for plain people), what works for most people? A firm consciousness of the social consensus, which is much more important in East-Asian societies -- ones I will call Buddhist-influenced. A Japanese friend of mine says it’s like rice -- Americans like their kernels firm and individually separate. In Japan they like them soft and sticking together.

I’ve made a list of 14 countries with a Buddhist majority or strongly Buddhist-influenced by history: Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. India is only one percent Buddhist today, but Buddhism was born and flourished there, with thousands of monasteries. Call these countries post-Buddhist.

Here are some stats, using the same WHO source as that map. For those 14 Buddhist-Influenced countries, the average share of population with a BMI over 30 is just under 11 percent. For all the rest, the average is over 23 percent.The highest obesity rate among the Buddhist-influenced was 24.3 for Mongolia. For the rest, the world highest was American Samoa, at 75.2 percent. (The U.S. clocks in at 42 percent.)

The Japanese say one should build the habit of putting down the fork when “80-percent-full.” They even have a saying for it, “hara hachi bu” – word for word, that’s “belly eight parts.” I try to follow this rule, and my BMI is under 30. One can cultivate an aesthetic sense, the good feeling of being more "on your toes" rather than stuffed and ready to sleep.

This is one race where America is in close to last pace. Look at those bright red countries on the map. GLP-1 drugs are great, and they seem to have healthy side-effects. But it’s clearly possible to do it free-style, and there are huge successful cultures where most people do -- eating well and enjoying their food, but with restraint and the satisfaction of looking and feeling good.

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The Iran mess: You pay a price for being a jerk.

"One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do. . .
'No' is the saddest experience you'll ever know"
     Henry Nilsson, "One is the Loneliest Number,"made popular by Three Dog Night, 1969

President Trump posted: "WE DO NOT NEED THE HELP OF ANYONE!"

Trump -- and the U.S. -- are getting the logical consequences of braggy, bullying behavior. We chose Trump. A great many Americans enjoyed his devil-may-care swashbuckling, kick-ass bravado. It isn't just Trump in trouble. The USA is in trouble.

Trump decommissioned minesweepers and moved them from the region earlier this year. His mass firings removed the very people in the State Department who tracked the movement of oil tankers. The reasonable presumption for Americans is that our military is highly competent in planning operations, but the evidence playing out is that our attack plan focused on the first move -- our bombing Iran -- not their likely countermeasures and subsequent steps. That is why we are backtracking, asking for help from people we intentionally estranged.  

The message from our former allies is that the U.S. and Israel chose this on their own and can get out of it on their own. French President Emmanuel Macron said they "are not a party to this conflict" and therefore “will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context.”

Canada's foreign minister Anita Anand noted that Canada "was not consulted prior to the offensive operation" and "has no intention of participating in it."

Trump lectured the world that the rules-based order was a sham, that might made right, and that the strong do whatever they want. By "they," he meant "we." International law defines shipping choke points that are international waterways, through which all ships of all countries could pass. The Strait of Hormuz was one.The U.S. undermined the legal and moral basis for claiming that free passage through the strait was a public good, something to be defended on principle by the world's navies, regardless of the interests of belligerents. Now we want our allies to defend principle.

We tariffed the world, we insulted the world, we belittled and undermined our allies, and we abandoned the principle of international law. Now we are asking for help.

I search for metaphors and real-world situations to understand Trump. I reflect on a sign that I saw posted prominently in a print shop where customers place orders requesting a rush job. I understand the "That's your problem" sentiment.

Yesterday I likened Trump to a spoiled child, and entitled rich-boy who never learned to respect the feelings and interests of others. My brother, a prison psychologist, said Trump makes the decisions of a man who avoided consequences as a child. A political pundit observed that Trump's long Truth Social post sounds like the complaint of a jilted lover. The indignant, petulant whine would be amusing if this didn't risk a region-wide war, or escalation into a worldwide exchange of nuclear-armed missiles. 

It is déjà vu all over again for me. At the beginning of my adult life, amid the Vietnam War, I wrote my college honors thesis on Randolph Bourne, who warned that "war is the health of the state." By "state," he meant the military and coercive elements of the government, as contrasted with the country's people and culture. War empowers executive coercion. Now, age 76, I am seeing this again, in Trump generally, and in accelerated form in the face of Trump's ambitions regarding Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and more. The departments of government demand conformity, insisting the media describe the war in "patriotic" ways or lose access to information, or even their broadcast license. Militarized police are rounding up and removing aliens. Trump posits taking over the states' elections. The president imposed tariffs on his own authority. He ignores trade and military treaties. He condemns the courts as crooked and unpatriotic. Bourne warned that in wartime, Americans let this happen. It did in 1918 and again now.

Wars centralize power in the executive. That is exactly what Donald Trump wants.

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Spoiled, entitled brat.

Trump brags: "We've already won."

Hegseth: "Patently ridiculous" to think we hadn't anticipated a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump requests help, while insulting the people he needs the help from: “We don’t need people that join wars after we’ve already won!”

Trump grouses that allies are hanging back: "Why aren’t we being reimbursed for that?”

Trump, realizing the situation is deteriorating and that the need has grown: “I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their own territory.” 

The German defense minister, speaking for a Europe that was not consulted about the U.S. and Israeli war, says: “This is not Europe’s war."

 

The world looks at Donald Trump and thinks, "What a spoiled brat."

How else to think about an American president who disrupted trade with our long-time allies by saying they were cheating us, by scolding them in speeches saying they didn't understand their own cultures, and by entering into a war with Iran without getting even token buy-in?

Donald Trump has rich-boy disease. Trump was sent to what was known in my youth as "reform school," the New York Military Academy. It didn't fix him. I had presumed that Trump was primarily indulged as a child. How else to think about a person who bragged that he could walk up to women, kiss them, grab them by the p___, and brag about getting away with that or with shooting people on Fifth Avenue. So selfish. So inconsiderate.

My brother, David Sage, dealt with prison inmates in a 30-year career as an Alaskan prison psychologist. He told me the prisoners he encountered were not sons of multi-millionaires like Trump. But most of them, like Trump, developed bad behaviors from childhood because of what they had failed to learn. They weren't taught the negative consequences for bad behavior. 

The U.S. elected a careless person, a monumentally selfish and inconsiderate one, one blind to the damage he does, one who would be familiar to people who read The Great Gatsby.

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

David Sage

Guest Post by David Sage

I worked in both men’s and women’s prisons as a prison psychologist in Alaska for 30 years. During that time I facilitated probably 20 multi-week parenting classes. I always took a poll of what kind of parenting styles the prisoners received. The choices were neglecting style, overly aggressive, controlling style, or caring consistent style with reasonable limit setting.

Approximately 60 percent of the inmates said they got neglect-style parenting; the parents were barely there with little to no limit-setting. The second most common style -- 25 percent -- was from parents who were overly strict, controlling and physically abusing. Around 15 percent of the inmates reported that they received what they perceived as good parenting. 

What struck me from these intense discussions of the inmates' early parenting was that children need to learn to say no to their impulses. The neglected children weren’t taught to say no; they could just do whatever they wanted. The abused children never learned to say no; they just had to adjust to whatever the abusive parent wanted. 

I think there is a correlation between people who are not taught to inhibit their impulses and people who break the law and end up in jail; jail is the ultimate no. It is the no some people are forced to experience because they won’t inhibit their bad behavior on their own. 

I view Donald Trump as someone who never received proper parenting and has never really received no for an answer to his behavior. As a result he does whatever he wants and doesn’t think he should ever experience any consequences. He is the inmate who needs to be taught that, at least in jail, he either needs to behave or he will be locked down into solitary confinement. The Supreme Court could have said a decisive no to his illegal behavior, but instead it exempts him from lawbreaking. The legislative branch majority is just going along with whatever he wants. The American people could have said no by not electing him, but chose not to do so. Now the world is beginning to say no and he acts outraged and surprised. It is a lesson he has needed for a very long time. Too bad he didn’t receive that lesson when he was three years old.

 

Update, 8:55 a.m. Pacific Daylight time, the new version. Now we don't need you after all:

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Piling onto Timothée Chalamet

"Politics ain't beanbag."

Hollywood isn't beanbag either.

USA Today

BBC

The "politics ain't beanbag" comment is familiar to Americans as recognition that politics is a rough game. I have likened current politics to professional wrestling. Trump is the premier practitioner of smashmouth vitriol. Like a good anti-hero professional wrestling character, Trump dishes it out and then acts indignant at the injustice of insults being returned. Trump isn't good, but he is interesting and he commands an audience. Hollywood knows how to play the audience-attention game.

I had never heard of Timothée Chalamet until three days ago when I read that he said something dismissive about opera or ballet. Apparently Chalamet is a big name in Hollywood and he is currently dating another big name, a woman who appeared last night at the Oscar awards event in a see-through dress. Nothing new in that. What was new to me was the delight the Academy Awards host, the audience, and the media took in tormenting Chalamet for his comment and failure to win the "Best Actor" award. They piled on with glee. I thought it was excessive, but I am a softie, and I am not a fan of professional wrestling.

College classmate Erich Almasy is a former management consultant who lived in Canada and now lives in Mexico. He writes guest posts about the expat experience. He enjoys the fine arts that Chalamet dissed. In a civil but snarky tone, he shares his thoughts.

Almasy

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

Opera and Ballet are Still Relevant

I don’t know much about Timothée Chalamet. He’s 31 and holds dual French and U.S. citizenship. He’s very busy and has appeared in a number of successful films, of which only one registered with me, Dune. He has four Academy Award nominations to his credit, including one this current Oscar season for his role in a movie about ping pong. He may be best known for his three-year relationship with the youngest Kardashian, Kylie Jenner.

Earlier this month, Chalamet drew my attention with the following comment, "I don't want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it's like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though it's like, no one cares about this anymore.'" My negative reaction to this totally asinine statement could have been from the infantile use of “you know” and “like” (twice) in the same sentence. If you cannot speak English, best shut up.

However, my sensibilities were most hurt by his apparent lack of any understanding or empathy for cultural art forms that have entertained, educated, and employed millions for centuries. It made me wonder if he has ever seen either in person. My father grew up in Vienna, Austria, where, as a teen, he watched composer Richard Strauss conduct one of his works at the State Opera House. It was a highlight of his life.

I served on the board of the Canadian Opera Company for nine years, during which we built a combined opera and ballet house and staged the first Wagner Ring Cycle in Canadian history. The house was built from the inside out with acoustics as the primary architectural feature. It has a sprung floor to aid ballet dancers. The Canadian Opera and the National Ballet are both world-class and are well-supported by the Canadian public and provincial and federal governments.

The difficulties of American arts organizations are well-documented, especially the current issues facing New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Unlike European countries, where government subsidy is universal and supported by the public, the United States government makes little or no cultural commitment. Vienna and Berlin both have three opera houses, which are typically sold out.

Opera and ballet feature strongly in our appreciation of the performing arts. Classical composers such as Beethoven and Mozart also wrote operas, and the music of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky is fundamental to ballet. I don’t believe that I am a minority when I say that certain arias give me goosebumps. Solos and duets from works such as Bizet’s Norma and Carmen; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, La Boheme, Turandot, and Tosca; Verdi’s Rigoletto and La Traviata; Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute; Wagner’s Ring and Lohengrin; and so many more. The lyrical beauty of ballets such as Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Rite of Spring, Giselle, and La Sylphide have enchanted me and remain truly timeless.

Is my position elitist? I don’t believe so, because standing-room audiences throughout Europe, over 100 professional opera companies in the United States, and over 175 ballet companies worldwide suggest that at least a few people still “care.” Perhaps Monsieur Chalamet might do well to remember that before him came Anna Pavlova, Joan Sutherland, Rudolf Nureyev, Maria Callas, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Luciano Pavarotti, Margot Fonteyn, and Enrico Caruso. If I’m allowed to be slightly snarky, Timothée, please wipe that smirk and smudge off your upper lip. It makes you look twelve - or maybe that is the idea. Life is truly better with art. Even yours.

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Easy Sunday: My up close experience with GLP-1

I like it.

I am having a good experience with the GLP-1 drug.

I feel fully, comfortably satiated all the time. The drug turned off the background "food noise" that has been with me my entire life.

Zepbound, by Lilly

The thimble-size vial containing a few drops of liquid

Let me start with the disclaimers:

--  I  am not a doctor. I am not giving medical advice. I am just someone sharing his own experience and observation.

--  GLP-1 may not be right for you. You might have side-effects or contraindications. I don't appear to.

--  I have have been taking an GLP-1 drug for less than three weeks, so I am describing my own before-and-after experience as a new user. I am in awe of how dramatically it changed my relationship to food.

I had seen the advertisements: Retired tennis pro Serena Williams and retired NBA player Charles Barkley praised it. They lost weight, buying it through Ro.co. (Note: dot co, not com) I was curious. I had presumed that it mostly affected how a body absorbed nutrition out of food. That is incorrect. The drug works primarily on signals to the brain. Within hours of the first self-injection, GLP-1 eliminated my food appetite. I felt comfortable and satiated even though I had not eaten for eight hours. I did not feel "full," exactly, because my stomach was mostly empty. But instead of an empty stomach being a matter of gnawing discomfort, I felt fine just as I was, stomach empty. Comfortable. I had no particular desire to eat. That feeling has persisted throughout each week that I inject the drug.

A person can lose weight because small portions or skipped meals feel just fine when one's food appetite is gone.  

Don't I miss having an appetite for food? Doesn't GLP-1 take away one of the great pleasures of life, eating tasty food? Maybe a little. Food still tastes good, but that never-quite-enough appetite was more a burden than a joy. We are surrounded by wonderful foods -- sweet stuff, salty and savory chips, and of course healthy foods, too -- but without the constant brain signals saying "more food would be great!" I can eat a reasonable amount of food if I want to. Or not. I mostly feel relief.

The injection needle is less than a quarter of an inch long. It is like a mosquito bite. Self-injection is no big deal.

The drug costs me $250/month, paying totally out of pocket. I didn't want to fool with Medicare or insurance or fight with anyone over whether I was overweight, way-overweight or whatever. 

Because this is mostly a political blog, I will conclude by observing that this drug, in its various formulations and delivery systems, will have enormous public health consequences. It has the potential to bring down health care costs as it reduces obesity in the country. With less diabetes, lower blood pressure, and better cardiovascular health, Americans may live longer, healthier lives. That is good, right? Yes. Mostly. But realize that there are downsides to this. We might start living as long as people in do in Japan, a place where obesity is rare, and that would stress the Social Security and pension systems. 

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The Rogue State Era

Sometimes you know a moment is a turning point in history. 

Sometimes you only know it when you look back years later.

The classic recognize-it-now case is December 7, 1941, that "day that will live in infamy." It moved the U.S. from a neutral bystander into a belligerent. September 11, 2001, is another, a day that shaped the past quarter-century of our relations to the countries and religions of the Middle East.

Some turning points are evident in hindsight. Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique, comes to mind. Published in 1963, it identified something in the cultural and economic environment: the dissatisfaction of American women with their roles. It was a catalyst for the enormous repositioning of women in American life. At the time my attention was on other things: Black civil rights, the Vietnam War, the Beatles. The giant impact of feminism was evident only later.

I expect histories written 50 years from now to understand Trump's second term as a turning point and the beginning of a named era.  The "postwar world" that established a certain role in the world for the U.S. is over. Trump ended that. In hindsight, named eras makes sense of the noisy confusion of current events. 

This might simply be "The Trump Era," and it may last for a decade or more. If things work out very poorly, in 50 years it might be described the way the Chinese describe the disastrous turmoil of their Cultural Revolution with an indirect term, "The Troubles." If events bring us to a nuclear exchange with Russia or China, historians who survive may call it "Pre-War." If the republic survives and the Constitution stays as written, but under a system where its words are interpreted to allow essentially unitary government by the executive branch, it may be understood as "The Strong Man Era." 

Historians may cite events of the recent news.

-- The Supreme Court disallowed Trump's unitary tariffs, but Trump immediately reestablished tariffs citing a different law. The executive can no longer be constrained by courts.

--  They can cite Trump's open grift, with multimillion dollar gifts, with the Trump cryptocurrency, and his flagrant pay-to-play use of presidential discretion to reward business allies. They will note that Congress was silent. This means that in practice the executive can take whatever he wants for personal use.

--  The strike against Venezuela may be understood as part of a series of acts of hemispheric hegemony, the precursor of the actions against Cuba and Greenland. Trump said at his inauguration that the U.S. should grow in territory. 

--  They may cite Trump ignoring international law and traditional rules of warfare. They could cite the unapologized-for bombing of the girls school. They will cite Secretary of War Peter Hegseth:

No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives, as the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties.

--  The U.S. started a war but did not consult with our allies and affected nations. The closure of the Straight of Hormuz was an obvious risk to the world. Retaliatory strikes against hotels and civilian infrastructure in our Gulf State allies were predictable. We acted anyway, on our own. We could, so we did. 

I doubt that historians will cite this as the Golden Age predicted by Trump in his inaugural address. This doesn't feel like a golden age. My guess is that historians will understand this to be an era when the U.S. abandoned "global thinking" and global leadership. Trump thinks that is a fool's game. It is a us-versus-them world, and always has been, and the U. S. stands alone, heck with anyone else. 

Trump has rung that bell and it cannot be un-rung. It will take a long time to repair the damage it caused. We are living in "The Rogue State Era."

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