Author: Muttrox

That’s “Democratic” as in “Democracy”, not the political party.

As a systems guy, I tend to look at problems with our Democracy as being natural consequences of the systems where it is embedded. I have come to settle on a few aspects of our system that have outsized influence. These changes are all big. But they aren’t as big or well known as many other focus areas.

The Hastert Rule

This is a little publicized rule that entirely neuters the minority party and bi-partisanship. It says the Speaker of the House will not a bring a bill to the floor if it doesn’t have the majority of his own party, regardless of support or not from the other party. Thus, it is often called the “majority of the majority” rule. This is not actually a rule in a legal or parlimentary process sense. It is a policy that the Speaker of the House chooses to employ or not.

Consider the overall makeup of the electorate. Democrats and Republicans are in roughly equal numbers around the country. The Republican party is now majority crazy (or close enough). The crazies are not the majority of the country, not even close. But they are the majority of the Republicans. That’s how they win primaries and lose general elections.

It’s the same in the House. The GOP majority in the house is controlled by the nutjobs. Centrist Republicans cannot join with Democrats to pass a bill, because the Hastert rule will never allow that vote to happen. A bill could have over 70% support and never get voted on. It is a fundamentally anti-democratic heurestic that has led to the worst parts of the GOP taking over the house and policy making. In many ways it is worse than the dreaded filibuster.

Would is surprise you which party uses the rule and which doesn’t? Probably not. It was started by Newt Gingrich, labeled by his successor Dennis Hastert, as well as John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and of course pledged long ago by Kevin McCarthy. That is every Republican Speaker since 1995. On the other hand, “Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to use the Hastert rule in managing her caucus. Pelosi wanted Republicans to be part of the process and sought broader support for major legislation.”And is so often the case, you find Newt Gingrich headlining the “make everything worse” side of the argument. If he’s for it, I’m against it.

This rule explicitly says the Speaker of the House is not to represent the American People, he/she is there to represent their party and their party only. Hastert believed the role of a speaker was, in his words, “not to expedite legislation that runs counter to the wishes of the majority of his majority.”

What is partisanship? In my mind, it is when someone puts the needs of their party of over the need of the population. The Hastert Rule is partisanship in one of it’s worst forms, and yet another way that Republican party seeks out partisan advantage as the expense of democracy.

Harrods is amazing. We ended up going three separate times. We thought it was just a big department store and could not understand the appeal. Boy, were we wrong! It was incredible. They claim they can get you anything that is for sale in the world in 48 hours. We believe it.

There was original art by Warhol, Picasso, and Chihuly. There were some silver sculptures we really liked by a sculptor named Lorenzo Quinn: A woman holding the earth with a ribbon, a man holding a woman with extended arms. We had wandered into that room because it was nearby another destination, a piano made from emeralds. Wow.

The toy room was wonderful. After two hours, we barely made it past the first section. It featured a “toy” sports car and Humvee that go 20 mph. They could be yours for a mere $40,000 each! The kids were shocked to hear that our two grown up cars put together were worth one of these.

The store is all about the experience; there are people everywhere demonstrating. They are extremely knowledgeable about their products, they are true experts. We met a magician who showed us light and card tricks. He told us there is another magician who works there who is truly famous in the magic world (we saw him later). We came to realize that every Hollywood movie with a magic toy shop is based on the wonder inspired in Harrods. Have you ever seen the movie Toys, or Mr. Magoriums Emporium? They both just start with Harrods and add a bit of real magic to the plot.

Ever the food court impressed, they had every kind of food you can imagine. I got caught double-dipping in the hummus. We had delicious pressed chicken tikka sandwiches on naan.

They had autographed works from presidents, kings, every celebrity imaginable, and a vintage Apple II signed by Steve Jobs ($150K). Other notables in the autograph section: A single frame with autographs of the first 20 presidents, all the Apollo 11 astronauts, and a King George writ.

The prices were crazy. Harrods has amazing selection and experience, but you sure pay for it. The boy asked me why Harrods had so much stuff that costs such huge amounts of money. “Here’s how it works. The world isn’t fair. There are a lot of people in this world who have too much money. Harrods is around to help solve that problem.”

I don’t usually do current music. It’s very rare for me to like the same music as my co-workers and kids. Here’s a big exception. Olivia Rodrigo is incredible. She’s a great songwriter, a great singer, and a great lyricist. The style has modern touches and tones but is firmly based in melody and harmony and chords — ya know, music.

The whole album is about one universal topic we can all relate to, being in love, being dumped, dealing with all of it. Listening to her music reminds you what it was like to be a teenager trying to figure out love and life, and feeling everything so strongly the pain was overwhelming. If you don’t get an emotional response from her music, there’s something dead inside of you (Saturday Night Live gets it).

Which song to pick? The whole album is great. Drivers License (the main single) is excellent, but not the tops for me. Here are my two favorites. (These songs are better enjoyed without video. Press play, go to another browser window while listening. There’s nothing particularly bad about the videos, but neither is so great either.)

Deja Vu: A weird part of getting old — artists you grew up with being referenced as obscure acts from the historical past by current acts. Still, a great Billy Joel namedrop!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cii6ruuycQA

Favorite Crime: What a lovely little fingerpicking pattern. The vocals kill me when she comes back from the break. Every teenager experiments with breaking the rules. You don’t have to be an actual criminal, or dated one, to feel the pull of doing bad things with someone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FaCO7pNx08

Since my readers are overwhelmingly my demographic, what do you all think of her? Do your kids like her, do you?

Watching the GOP try to govern is so fun and so sad at the same time. What a sorry excuse for a political party.

This was meant to be a warning the elderly might be moving slowly across the street. But maybe it’s a warning to look out for aged pickpockets?

There is nothing more English than the obsessive puttering around the garden. Our next door neighbor was usually out all morning futzing with her roses. One night we returned to our flat late and heard clipping. I stopped.

Me: Are you clipping her hedges at night?

Her: I am.

Me: How can you see what you was doing?

Her: I can’t, but it is the only time cool enough to get the work done!

I found that immensely funny. Who does yardwork in the dark?

These crazy Brits and their gardens. It is all the weirder because most of the gardens are terrible. Most of them are ugly, poorly laid out, and have no color. These Britons are crazy!

I found random notes from our family trip in 2014. At the time I thought they were blog-worthy, let’s find out. Our first installment is about bathrooms!

This bathroom reeks of class. Easily the most sophisticated entrance I’ve seen. I loved the books all around it. Sadly, they were fake. It would have been even better if there were really books you could read while on the john. Something about this feels like Bruce Wayne’s library.

This is from the Wesley Chapels bathroom. This has been preserved in it’s original Victorian form. Not as bad as you might expect! And some interesting trivia about Thomas Crapper, clearly one of the most fitting names ever.

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

Old Danish saying (not Niels Bohr or Yogi Berra)

I have been inspired by Philip Tetlock and Matt Yglesias about the value of making public predictions. Predictions should include a degree of certainty. Predictions must be specific enough to be measurable (at the end of 2023, it must be clear if a prediction was correct or not). Because they are probabilistic, success is not any one prediction. Success is that if we look at just the predictions I gave an 80% probability score to, about 80% of them actually occurred. (It seems like 70% is my default.)

In that spirit, here are Muttroxia predictions for 2023:

1. Biden officially announces his re-election campaign (90%)
2. Donald Trump doesn’t spend any time in jail, house arrest etc. He lives the year free. (90%)
3. Congress passes no significant legislation about immigration (90%)
4. Muttroxia will not have any months with over ten posts after January. (80%).
5. The NBA MVP will be Jokic or Giannis (80%) if the Celtics don’t win the championship. Luka, you don’t make your bad team any better and no one likes you. Hard to win an MVP that way. As good as Taytum is, if he doesn’t win the banner, all his stats will be discounted (“He just had a better team”).
6. Donald Trump doesn’t have any final civil judgements found against him personally (that is, no fines or consequences) (70%)
7. Inflation is below 4% by the end of 2023 (70%)
8. Average Gas Price ends the year below $2.50. (70%)
9. The Justice Department does not charge Donald Trump personally for anything related to Jan 6^th. (70%)
10. Celtics make it to the Eastern Conference finals (70%) (Yes, I’m keeping this low, there are a lot of good teams in the East. Things go wrong, winning is hard.)
11. Electric car sales top 10% in the USA. (70%) They are currently at 6%, this would be almost a doubling of share in one year.
12. UGA will repeat as college football champs. (Sorry Michigan, I gotta call ’em like I see ’em.) (60%)
13. With abortion policy at the state level, there will be some further degradation, but generally there won’t be a massive rollback of abortion rights. (60%, but don’t know how to measure this.)
14. DeSantis generally has more support than Donald Trump, and is “winning” the GOP campaign. (70%, not sure how I’ll measure). Nah, I’m gonna back off this one.
15. Joe Biden is not impeached (The House does not formally approve and bring impeachment charges to the Senate.) (60%)
16. By the end of 2023, I’ll forgot I made this post and need a reminder (80%).

I was RIF’d that week.

This movie did not age well. Almost nothing in it makes sense anymore.

Doesn’t that movie title sound quaint? I don’t anybody who actually works 9 to 5, do you?

The casual sexism and subordinate abuse is not gone, but hardly there. My kids didn’t understand why they didn’t just get HR and lawyers involved. Good work #metoo!

American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, by Colin Woodward. Books like Hillbilly Elegy have had breathless reviewers salivating over how they explain Donald Trumps support. Poo on that. If you want to understand what is going on in the USA (and some of Mexico and Canada), read this. What groups settled what parts hundreds of years ago and how their culture acts in the ‘melting pot’ continues to play out to this day. America is composed of eleven “nations” that continually joust for power and influence. My mind was blown consistently every few pages.

For example, I am from “Yankeedom”, roughly described as “Founded by Puritans, residents in Northeastern states and the industrial Midwest tend to be more comfortable with government regulation. They value education and the common good more than other regions.” That’s me and my attitude towards government in a nutshell. I find it appalling and unfathomable that so many people are anti-government and willing to blow the whole thing up for relatively small partisan gains. But now I see it, most parts of the country are not from a culture that believes in the power of good government they way mine does. So read the book and learn more about our country. You’ll see why Donald Trump may be from New York, but is clearly of Appalachian mindset.

11/22/63 (Steven King): This was recommended by the most prolific Muttroxia commenter. He was correct. There is not a lot of horror in this tome, but there is a lot of good writing about a man trying to figure how to block the Kennedy assasination. Mrs. Muttrox also read it and loved it. Mrs. Muttrox does not give her approval lightly!

East of Eden (John Steinbeck): If you want to read John Steinbeck, you should start with The Grapes of Wrath. As Mrs. Muttrox says, if you aren’t moved by this book, you are dead inside. And East of Eden is also quite good!

Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns (Jon Bogle): Jon Bogle is the founder of Vanguard. This is a short book, a quick read in plain spoken language about the benefits of long term investing, mutual funds, and index funds. If you like to play the market you should this book so you’ll be convinced to stop. The most powerful part of the book is the intro to each chapter. In each one, he asks a titan of finance (Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, Paul Samuelson, Burton Malkiel etc.) about how they invest their own personal money. Not that money that has been entrusted to them to invest, but their own money. They all believe the same thing, read the book to find out.

Because Internet (Gretchen McCulloch): What happens when a linguist turns her eye on the internet? A fascinating exploration and history of how we communicate online. As a parent who grew up at the same time as many of these communication quirks, it was amazing to put it in a larger context. I found it very helpful to communicate with my own children (who have the arrogance to argue with me about the meaning of “trolling” or “lol”). It was worth the read to understand the difference between “Okay.” “okay”, “k”, and “kk”. Yes, there are differences to the new generation!

Prince of Thieves (Chuck Hogan): Look, if you don’t read much, you can skip this. Ben Affleck made a movie out of it, The Town. He stayed pretty close to the source material. That’s a good thing, the book is wonderful! By the way, fans of the movie will enjoy this oral history.

SF/Fantasy:

• Ted Chiang: His two short story collections are so wonderful and so diverse in their thinking I don’t know how to describe them. The movie Arrival is an adaption of one of the stories. Just go read them. Then leave a comment agreeing!
• Broken Earth Trilogy (NK Jemisin): Every once in a while you stumble on an author who just gets it. They get how to construct a story in a world and being you along for the ride. Anything by Jemisin is good, the Inheritance Trilogy stands out as well. The Broken Earth trilogy won three of her four Hugos in three successive years, which has never been done before or after. I especially want to recommend her after I un-recommended many other female SF writers.
• Blindsight (Peter Watts): Everything good science fiction should be. This is hard science. Watts takes a lot of current science about conciousness and perception and turns it into a story like none other. Mind breaker. Massive amounts of accepted current science taken to a logical extreme you didn’t see coming.
• Red Rising (Pierce Brown): I did not think this would be good. It looks like a Hunger Games ripoff. It shares many themes with Hunger Games (young man growing up in dystopian world, competes for power in games that impact the real society), but it’s done a much more adult level. A rollicking adventure tale.
• Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky): Among other things, this is an exploration about how intelligence works in non-human species. To what degree is the prison of our bodies and perceptions what drives how we see the world? How is evolution of our physical bodies related to our view of the world and cognition? This is embedded in a psychological thriller thrown onto a ‘last chance of humanity’ colonization effort. I am halfway through the sequel right now.
• Neal Stephenson: Some day I’ll do a whole post just about his work. He is my favorite author. Snow Crash is where most people start. His best work is Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and SevenEves.

(Sorry if there are any duplicates from past recommendations. It’s hard to keep track of these posts.)

(Rules: Song must be in frequent radio rotation, or were in frequent rotation for a long time. Hating random deep cuts doesn’t count.)

Freefallin’ (Tom Petty): She’s a good girl, crazy about Elvis. Good lyric. But it all goes downhill from there. Over-processed guitars, stupid chorus and stupid lyrics. When I found out it was written by Jeff Lynne (whose high point was Don’t Bring me Down – Bruce!) I was not surprised.

Man on the Moon (R.E.M.): It’s not just Shiny Happy People (which Stipe correctly hates). Everything R.E.M. did after Out of Time ranged between mediocre and crap. What’s the Frequency Kenneth and Night Swimming are just awful.

And you are not a cowboy Mr. Stipe. You are about as far as is humanly possible from being a cowboy.

Glory Days (Bruce Springsteen): Those insipid keyboards, the nothing chorus… what’s to like? The video didn’t help. I dislike baseball and don’t particularly need to see Bruce’s ass in bluejeans. (Are there good baseball songs? Centerfield is junk as well. Best baseball song I can think of is Paradise by the Dashboard Lights, and that’s a stretch.)

Walk of Life (Dire Straits): More stupid keyboards, more nothing lyrics and groove.

White Room (Cream): Cream is a vastly overrated band. Once you get past Sunshine of Your Love (written for Jimi Hendrix), there’s not much there. If I agree that all three musicians are very good at their instruments will you please just turn it off.

Wrapped Around Your Finger (The Police): Although I admire the lyrics (which use “scylla and charybidis”, “Mephistopheles”, and “alabaster” successfully), it’s still a terrible song. And who convinced him to do this awful dancing? You should listen to Synchronicity I instead, that thing rocks. And, by the way, casually uses “Spiritus mundi” as a lyric.

If I win the election I will gladly show my tax returns.

Donald Trump, 2016

Should Trump have released his tax returns as every other presidential candidate did? I think so, but there’s no law. He was within his rights to say no.

Should the House (Ways and Means Committee) have demanded and fought for those records? Yes. There was legitimate reason.

Should he have fought the House trying to get these returns. Legally, no. Tactically, yes, since of course they don’t paint a great picture.

Should the House have publicized the lack of mandated tax audits for Trump? Yes. There’s clearly something corrupt going on here, and that should get attention.

Should the House have released summaries of notable information found? Yes. Information like this deserves to be publicized.

Should the House release aspects of the taxes that are likely criminal, and forward these to law enforcement as appropriate? Yes.

Should the House have released the full tax returns? I’m less sure. What is the vital public interest here that overrides the right of a private citizen to hold on to their private information. Why does running for office mean that your financial life has to be made public? As noted above, there is no law about what candidates must release, only tradition.

I’m pretty sure I’m wrong about this, but not seeing it!