Oh yes, I like this idea very much. But what if I change my mind?

There is a fellow introvert on the Sephora customer experience team who deserves A RAISE RIGHT NOW pic.twitter.com/4Aan7lUyVD

— Cami Williams (@cwillycs) November 4, 2019

Erick Madrid/ZUMA

There weren’t a lot of surprises at tonight’s Democratic debate. Pete Buttigieg got dinged for his lack of experience. Elizabeth Warren has lots of plans. Climate change got hardly any serious attention. So let’s talk about Joe Biden.

Biden, as usual, committed several Bidenisms. That hasn’t hurt him before, however, and probably didn’t hurt him tonight. His performance was steady enough.

But something that struck me a little harder than usual was that Biden was almost the only one on the stage who talked like a normal person. There was a point near the end of the debate when he was talking about getting men involved in stopping domestic violence and he said that we need to keep “punching” at it. My heart sank immediately. I knew that everyone would smirk at that. I knew that the twitterati and the analysts would tut tut. Ol’ Joe is just out of touch! He doesn’t know you can’t use words like that.

Meanwhile, every non-political junkie watching the debate thought there was nothing wrong with this. Biden was just using ordinary language, not worrying too much if it was fully approved by the woke brigade.

It was the same when Biden said he “came out of the black community.” Smirks and Twitter ridicule. But it was pretty obvious what he meant, and I imagine most people, both black and otherwise, understood it perfectly well.

And the closing statements! Nine of the candidates gave scripted, bog ordinary statements. Biden’s was scripted too, but it was completely different. The United States is great! We can do anything if we put our minds to it! Stop being so downcast!

We sophisticates might roll our eyes at that, but I’ll bet most people don’t. That’s exactly what they want to hear, and Biden is the only one giving it to them. His final minute was basically a bid to be the Democratic Ronald Reagan, and I suspect it worked.

As always, I’ll add a caveat: I’m trying to guess about how other people reacted to things, and maybe I’m wrong. But for those who continue to be confused about how Biden retains his poll standing, this is probably it. Most people don’t care very much if he sometimes offends the tone police. They know perfectly well what he meant, and they’re OK with that.

This is the Rio Palmar in Colombia where it crosses the Ubaque-Chipaque road a few miles east of Ubaque. For various reasons (wrong turns, road closures, etc.) I passed this point four or five times, and on my last pass it finally occurred to me to take a picture. I don’t know what the mountain in the background is, or whether it even has a name.

A few days ago David Harsanyi wrote a piece for National Review saying that since none of California’s gun laws stopped the recent Santa Clarita shooting, there was hardly any point in Democrats pushing for similar laws at a national level. “The reaction of [Sen. Chris Murphy] and others reminds us of two things,” he wrote. “1) Stricter gun laws don’t stop mass shootings. 2) There will never be enough laws to satisfy Democrats.”

I responded that, by definition, whenever any crime happens—murder, robbery, rape, carjacking, whatever—you can say that current laws didn’t stop it. What’s more, although California’s laws are fairly substantial by US standards, they’re fairly feeble by any other standard. This is because of both Republican opposition and Supreme Court rulings. Harsanyi responded yesterday, but I didn’t quite understand his point:

“[M]urder, robbery, rape, carjacking” are criminal acts. A gun is a tool, not an act, and owning one is a right. If laws passed to alleviate “murder, robbery, rape, carjacking” limited the liberties of victims but empowered criminals, we’d be paying attention.

Then Charles Cooke jumped in, saying that Democrats routinely overstate how effective their proposed gun laws would be:

The trouble with this line of argument is that it bears no relation whatsoever to how Democrats, gun-control activists, and pro-regulation journalists actually characterize their coveted laws. Why do conservatives point out that the current set of laws didn’t stop “this particular” shooting? Why do they note that nothing that has been proposed would have prevented it either? Simple: Because those who want to change the rules invariably claim otherwise.

I don’t usually spend too much time going back and forth on well-worn arguments, so why am I doing it in this case? I just got curious, that’s all, and I started to wonder whether California’s gun laws really did make any difference. As it turns out, there’s no real way to say, since many of the strictest laws were passed fairly recently and the sample size of mass shootings is pretty small when you get to the state level. Still, thanks to the Mother Jones database of mass shootings, here’s the number of incidents in a sample of representative states over the past five years:

This doesn’t really tell us much, does it? Illinois has fairly strict gun laws and Texas has pretty loose laws, but they both have about the same level of mass shootings. California is in the middle. Ohio and Maryland are also on different ends of the gun law spectrum, but both have lots of mass shootings. In any case, the raw numbers are so small that the error bars on this chart are huge even if it’s meaningful in the first place. Which it probably isn’t.

So I guess this was pointless. But whenever I gather data like this, I promise myself that I’ll post it regardless of whether it strengthens my position or not. So here it is.

UPDATE: The chart was originally titled “Incidents per 10 million population.” It’s actually incidents per 100 million.

Devin Nunes, California's most embarrassing member of Congress.Shawn Thew/CNP via ZUMA

Marcy Wheeler comments on today’s impeachment hearings:

Nunes interrupts to say whistleblower whistleblower whistleblower.

What a moron.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) November 20, 2019

Republicans are desperate for the name of the whistleblower to become public. But why? All the allegations in the whistleblower’s complaint have long since been confirmed by testimony and firsthand reports, after all. It no longer matters what the whistleblower said.

Here’s the explanation: Republicans all know who the whistleblower is. What’s more, a couple of years ago they had a minor run-in with this person on an unrelated issue. Since then, they’ve compiled a 40-page dossier on the whistleblower and they’re practically bursting with impatience to unload it all over Fox News. As you can imagine, there’s nothing of real substance in this dossier, but they figure there’s enough smoke and smears to distract attention from Donald Trump’s crimes for a while.

But first the whistleblower’s name has to become public. None of the Republicans have the guts to just get up in the well of the House and say the name, and they’re endlessly frustrated that no one else of any stature has said it either—nor is any mainstream news outlet willing to say it. The name is basically common knowledge, but for now it remains public only in the undernews.

Anyway, that’s the story. That’s why Devin Nunes keeps saying “whistleblower whistleblower whistleblower.”

SEC chairman Jay Clayton favors a policy that restricts the rights of dissenting shareholders. And guess what? So do ordinary folks! According to a pile of letters Clayton produced, anyway:

But a close look at the seven letters Clayton highlighted, and about two dozen others submitted to the SEC by supposedly regular people, shows they are the product of a misleading — and laughably clumsy — public relations campaign by corporate interests.

That retired teacher? Pauline Yee said she never wrote a letter, although the signature was hers. Those military vets? It turns out they’re the brother and cousin of the chairman of 60 Plus Assn., a Virginia advocacy group paid by corporate supporters of the SEC initiative. That single mom? Data embedded in the electronically submitted letter says someone at 60 Plus wrote it. That retired couple? Their son-in-law runs 60 Plus….Then there’s the public servant Clayton mentioned. Marie Reed’s letter has sharp words for proxy advisors, firms that counsel fund companies on how to vote at shareholder meetings. But when reached by phone in California, the retired state worker said she wasn’t familiar with the term. She said the letter originated with a public affairs firm that contacted her out of the blue.

Welcome to Trumpworld. Always lying and always favoring corporate interests. That’s about all you need to know.

Caroline Brehman/Congressional Quarterly via ZUMA

It appears that Gordon Sondland has decided that he doesn’t want to stand trial for perjury after all:

Gordon D. Sondland, the Republican megadonor turned ambassador to the European Union, told the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that he and other advisers to President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Democrats “because the president directed us to do so.”

….“Secretary Perry, Ambassador Volker and I worked with Mr. Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine matters at the express direction of the president of the United States,” Mr. Sondland told the committee. “We did not want to work with Mr. Giuliani. Simply put, we were playing the hand we were dealt.” With no alternative, he said, “we followed the president’s orders.”

Mr. Sondland confirmed what has already been known, that there was a clear “quid pro quo” linking a coveted White House meeting for Ukraine’s president to the investigations Mr. Trump wanted. And he said he was concerned about “a potential quid pro quo” linking $391 million in security aid that Mr. Trump suspended to the investigations he desired.

I’m not sure how many people have to testify about this before it becomes a simple fact, but it’s obviously a simple fact. Donald Trump wanted a public announcement that Burisma and the Bidens were being investigated, and only then would he release Ukraine’s military aid and agree to a White House meeting with Ukraine’s president. He tried to leverage American foreign policy for personal gain, and that’s about as impeachable as it gets.

This is a small cluster of star chickweeds growing by the side of the road along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.

Shane T. Mccoy via ZUMA

It is said that Bill Barr, once a mild-mannered conservative in the George HW Bush administration, spent the following 20 years of his life marinating in the world of Fox News, Drudge, the Starr Report, ultra-conservative Catholicism, and tea party philosophy. Here is the new, fully reeducated Bill Barr:

In any age, the so-called progressives treat politics as their religion. Their holy mission is to use the coercive power of the State to remake man and society in their own image, according to an abstract ideal of perfection. Whatever means they use are therefore justified because, by definition, they are a virtuous people pursing a deific end. They are willing to use any means necessary to gain momentary advantage in achieving their end, regardless of collateral consequences and the systemic implications. They never ask whether the actions they take could be justified as a general rule of conduct, equally applicable to all sides.

Conservatives, on the other hand, do not seek an earthly paradise. We are interested in preserving over the long run the proper balance of freedom and order necessary for healthy development of natural civil society and individual human flourishing. This means that we naturally test the propriety and wisdom of action under a “rule of law” standard. The essence of this standard is to ask what the overall impact on society over the long run if the action we are taking, or principle we are applying, in a given circumstance was universalized – that is, would it be good for society over the long haul if this was done in all like circumstances?

For these reasons, conservatives tend to have more scruple over their political tactics and rarely feel that the ends justify the means. And this is as it should be, but there is no getting around the fact that this puts conservatives at a disadvantage when facing progressive holy far, especially when doing so under the weight of a hyper-partisan media.

This certainly explains why Barr is willing to do and say anything in defense of Donald Trump. Not only does he believe in a strong executive in the first place, but he literally thinks he’s conducting a holy war against the Democratic Party and the moral decay of America. This is the kind of apocalyptic language you find in chain email letters from people who think Breitbart is too mushy to win the war against godless liberalism.

Anyway, isn’t this “perfectibility of man” stuff way outdated? Has any progressive since, say, FDR even come close to espousing this old chestnut? I suppose there are bound to be one or two, but this is basically lunatic talk.

Speaking for myself, I believe that we humans are aggressively non-nonperfectible, which is precisely why I’m a liberal. Given our fallen state, the goal of politics should be to rein in our worst excesses and do the best we can to provide dignity and decent basic care to everyone. Generally speaking, we combine empathy for others with exciting things like cost-benefit analysis and RCT trials to figure out what legislative proposals seem most likely to take us a step forward to a fairer and more just society. If this counts as “willing to use any means necessary”—well, we liberals sure have stunted imaginations.

Outside of the most wackaloon corners of Congress, I have never heard a high-ranking government official say anything even near to Barr’s virtual declaration of war. Some others might believe it, perhaps, but they don’t say it out loud. Barr did.

Richard B. Levine/Levine Roberts/Newscom via ZUMA

Emily Baumgaertner of the LA Times takes us down memory lane in the cigarette biz:

In February 1973, a researcher at Reynolds saw a conundrum: While cigarettes had wide appeal to adults, they would never become “the ‘in’ products” among youths. For a teenager, the physical effects of smoking were “actually quite unpleasant,” Claude E. Teague Jr., who is now deceased, wrote in a confidential internal memo.

….One of the company’s top researchers, Frank G. Colby, pitched a design late in 1973 that would secure “a larger segment of the youth market” by packing “more ‘enjoyment’ or ‘kicks’ (nicotine)” and softening the chemical’s harsh effect on the throats of young smokers.

By boosting nicotine, the addictive chemical, the company could generate faster and more intense addictions among the youngest clients, securing decades of business. But a key challenge was to make nicotine palatable: Combine the high-pH nicotine with a low-pH acid. The result was a neutralized compound called a salt — nicotine salt.

So clever! Guess who benefited from this research 40 years later?

Juul’s salts contain up to three times the amount of nicotine found in previous e-cigarettes. They use softening chemicals to allow people to take deeper drags without vomiting or burning their throats. And they were developed based on research conducted by the tobacco companies Juul claimed to be leaving behind.

….Taken together, the evidence depicts a Silicon Valley start-up that purported to “deconstruct” Big Tobacco even as it emulated it, harvesting the industry’s technical savvy to launch a 21st century nicotine arms race.

So Juul used research specifically designed to make smoking palatable to teenagers, and then produced a product with lots of fruity flavors. And during their first year of operation, they explicitly marketed their product to teenagers. So what does Juul have to say about that?

“We never designed our product to appeal to youth and do not want any non-nicotine users to try our products,” a spokesperson for Juul said in a statement to The Times. “We are working to urgently address underage use of vapor products, including Juul products, and earn the trust of regulators, policymakers, and other stakeholders.”

Raise your hand if you believe a single word of that. These people deserve to be given forced lobotomies and then set free on the streets of San Francisco with big tattoos on their foreheads.