Annals of Natural History

Viewers inspect the domed roof of the California Academy of Sciences Building, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, March 2009

occasional delusions of clarity

My take is that, clearly, Paul Manafort was desperately seeking a sequence of loans (backed by transparently fraudulent paperwork) to pay the vig on money owed to a connected Russian oligarch named Oleg Deripaska, a serious man, who wanted $19 million or so from Manafort for a relationship they'd established during Manafort's time in Ukraine, as reported here.

This activity was going on all through late 2015-early 2016, just before Manafort volunteered his services to the Trump campaign, gratis. He got on board in March of 2016, just as his latest loan application was turned down, and by June had replaced Corey Lewandowski as Trump's campaign manager.

He saw his erstwhile client's wishes granted when the Republican platform regarding Ukraine was altered at the convention just weeks after he replaced Lewandowski.

He lasted little more than two months in the job, although during that time he did in fact manage to convince an officer of an obscure Chicago bank that he'd be named Secretary of the Army while securing a $16 million loan from said bank.

Whether his debt to the Russian has now been settled or merely postponed is an open question.

Sign of the Times

We're delighted to announce that Quinn Norton has joined The New York Times editorial board as our lead opinion writer on the power, culture and consequences of technology…

— Ari Bervacqua, THe New York Times Company February 13, 2018

Uh…

NY Times Hires, Quickly Fires Journalist With History of Homophobic Tweets

Maxwell Tani, The Daily Beast

Would have lasted longer in the Trump White House, even without a security clearance.

Soak The Rich

The time-tested solution.

I am in favor of letting Donald Trump's kids go to state colleges for free, and increasing his tax rate to pay for the free college for the rest of the kids.

—Atrios, Eschaton, Feb 7, 2018

Apply As Needed To The Affected Area

“The higher, pretentious form of stupidity stands only too often in crass opposition to [its] honorable form. It is not so much lack of intelligence as failure of intelligence, for the reason that it presumes to accomplishments to which it has no right … The stupidity this addresses is no mental illness, yet it is most lethal; a dangerous disease of the mind that endangers life itself. … [S]ince the ‘higher stupidity’ consists not in an inability to understand but in a refusal to understand, any healing or reversal of it will not occur through rational argumentation, through a greater accumulation of data and knowledge, or through experiencing new and different feelings … We may say that the reversal of a spiritual sickness must entail a spiritual cure.”

—One crucial word from How to Be a Stoic, Jan 19, 2016

This is stupidity as the willful ignorance of the unwise. Not mentally ill, no, but seriously and actively and obdurately mistaken. ἀμαθίᾳ :Amathia.

In Other Other News

Today, Devin Nunes Peeks Out From His Recusal (Six More Weeks Of Malfeasance Foreseen)