Reposting my Planetary Ecologist blog here too.

FROM MY other blog:

The Planetary Ecologist: Examining SARs-CoV-2. 

SARs-CoV-2 and the cost of social distancing

Currently there is a vocal minority movement, supported by forces within the Conservative Party and fanned by news cycles that cannot help but be drawn to conflict, whose aim is to open the US economy quickly and with few restrictions. There is even a movement within this movement seriously protesting the wearing of masks in public. These protesters say the economic costs of social distancing measures to the US will kill more people than COVID-19. “It will kill the economy.” They may be right, but I have seen very few predictions of how this might come to pass, based on actual data, or even on reasonable economic models. While I have not seen any good data-based projections for how a four or five-month program of social distancing will result in lives lost due to economic depression (damage to businesses, job loss, reduced family incomes etc), I have some data-based projections for how lives lost from Covid-19 might translate to a monetary cost based on known death rates and economic valuations of human life.  I’ll be using Maine to draw example numbers from, and assuming a time frame of however long it would take for the disease to spike and fade without intervention or mitigation, which is basically what the “Open up Now” contingent is asking for.  

The Back of Maine’s Envelope. A tale of two fatality rates. (Case Fatality Rate will often be abbreviated CFR)

One of the data points used to make these calculations in the Case Fatality Rate (CFR), which is the number of people dying from COVID19 divided by the number of people infected with COVID19.  For the following exercise I’m going to produce two sets of numbers for Maine. I’m first going to use the South Korean case fatality rate of 2.368%.  In the second model, I’m going to use Maine’s numbers as they currently stand. While the South Korean numbers may tell us something important about how deadly the virus is in an environment with a robust response program, Maine hasn’t had that response, nor has the rest of the US as a whole. The Maine numbers, while they skew higher, may tell us something important about how Maine will fare with COVID-19.  

Using South Korea’s case fatality rate, what could the Pine Tree State expect from SARs-CoV-2? Assume just a third of Mainers get the novel coronavirus. That is probably on the low end. Angela Merkel suggested Germany might face 70% infected, rather than the 33% this model is using. I worry my model will be dismissed as alarmist if it assumes a larger percentage of infected people. Hence the 33%. It is important to remember, my model is not intended to predict actual disease trends or epidemiological outcomes. The purpose of this model is to demonstrate that lives lost to COVID-19 also have real economic costs. As my model will show, these economic costs can be quite daunting.

Maine has a population of 1,344,212 people. Assuming 1/3 of Maine gets infected, that would give the state 448,070 people with COVID-19. With a 2.368% CFR that gives us 10,610 dead. This would be the number expected if the disease only infected 1/3 of Mainers with the South Korean case fatality rate. No time frame, mitigation or further contagion is assumed.  At present and with mitigation, we have only lost 65 people and our actual documented cases are massively well below 448,070. I haven’t been able to find the hospitalization rate for South Korea, so we will leave that aside. What would 10,610 deaths cost the Maine economy? 

The US government values a US citizen’s life at $10,000,000 USD. With that in mind it is pretty simple to derive an estimate. 10,610 deaths would represent a $106,000,000,000 loss to the Maine economy (10,610x $10,000,000). Even with South Korea’s smaller case fatality rate, this cost would be quite significant. The Maine GDP last year was 59,255,000,000. The economic cost to Maine at the South Korean rate dwarfs our state’s GDP.

Maine’s case fatality rate is 4.9% (calculated on May 8). Maine’s COVID-19 hospitalization rate is 14.9%. Want to update with today’s data? If these numbers are closer to Maine’s case fatality rate, and hospitalization rates, how many deaths, and hospitalizations can Maine expect with 1/3 of the population infected? 

448,070 x .049 = 22,153.3 deaths. Economic cost to Maine = $221,530,000,000 

448,070 x .1443= 64,656.5 hospitalized. 

The economic cost to Maine’s economy of widespread hospitalization due to COVID-19 is harder to calculate, but lost productivity, lost discretionary spending would have to be enormous burdens on Maine’s local economies. 

These kinds of numbers are interesting but what do they mean when set against the Maine economy itself?  Maine GDP for 2019 was $59,275,000,000 dollars. Now that we have a couple of estimates of COVID-19 cost based on different case fatality rates, we can make some simple comparisons. 

South Korean CFR economic cost $106,000,000,000 > $59,275,000,000

Maine CFR economic cost $221,530,000,000>>$59,275,000,000

Even the current small number of Maine’s COVID-19 fatalities, (65 as of 13 May 2020) amount to a hefty $650,000,000 cost to Maine’s economy. 

These are two examples, of course, and with this template one can examine a wide range of consequences by adjusting the CFR. I encourage everyone to play with these ideas. Personally, I would like to believe that the actual fatality rate for SARs-CoV-2 is much lower than any of the CFRs we have seen. We won’t know more until testing in the US becomes much more reliable and accessible. 

What is the actual case fatality rate of COVID-19? 

There is an argument about what the real CFR is.  So far, scientists don’t really know. Many people believe that SARs-CoV-2 is already wide-spread, not reflected in the confirmed cases’ because testing large swaths of the population hasn’t been possible. That would mean the actual pool of infected people (the denominator) is much larger, and thus the actual case fatality rate much lower than what is deduced from confirmed cases.  This hypothesis almost certainly has some truth to it. We know there are asymptomatic cases. Given that we don’t know the true depth of infected cases, how can we proceed? How should we proceed?

We should proceed cautiously and empirically. There are open questions to be sure, but the data we do have doesn’t give us a lot of reason to just assume COVID-19 (more specifically SARs-CoV-2) has a fatality rate below 1%, as many people posit. It may be. So far no one has been able to demonstrate that it is below 1%. I think, for the time being, we are stuck using the case fatality rates on offer, as wide ranging as they are.  Above, I chose to use the South Korean case fatality rate of 2.368%. I think their rate is going to be closer to the actual fatality rate of COVID-19. This is certainly an assumption, but my reasoning is as follows. The South Koreans tested aggressively, isolated infected people and did robust contact tracing. Their health care system was never overwhelmed, and never experienced the reductions in quality of care present in overwhelmed systems. From the outside looking in, South Korea was able to keep infections low, find and isolate enough cases to keep transmission down, and manage treatment of patients with the full force of an unburdened modern health care system. I also chose the South Korean numbers because, on the low end, they seem conservative. Using the South Korean numbers is not wildly optimistic (by which I mean it doesn’t assume incredibly low fatality rates that have yet to be demonstrated). The estimate also isn’t high like the numbers in the UK or Sweden, which seem to be outliers on the high end (14.327% and 11.148% respectively- as of 13 May 2020), given that so many other places have case fatality rates in the 3-5% range. 

I did not try to factor in effects of mitigation or the effects of overwhelmed healthcare systems on the numbers, in part because I don’t want to make more assumptions and in part because I have no idea how to credibly add such effects to my model. By demonstrating that lives lost also have significant costs, all I really want to offer  is an estimate of the economic cost of opening the economy too soon, causing more deaths than would otherwise happen, using a hopefully reasonable estimate of case fatality rate, and the empirically derived rate for Maine.  At the end I will offer a sketch of what I think the implications for the numbers would be with and without mitigation efforts. I’m not factoring in population demographics (and fatality rates really shift a lot depending on age, economic status, and health related risk factors, so bear that in mind). This model is also uncomplicated.  I hope, though, that its pared down simplicity helps people think about the problem clearly. 

A note about fatality rates.

The case fatality rate and the actual fatality rate are not the same thing. The case fatality rate is a number derived from known diagnosed cases vs deaths from diagnosed cases. It may overestimate or underestimate the threat of a disease-causing pathogen. How close this estimate (CFR) is to a pathogen disease process’ actual fatality rate will depend on how reliably that disease process leads to fatalities. For instance, a CFR will massively overestimate deaths if a pathogen is actually widespread but not very prone to actually causing symptoms or killing people. For instance, if it turned out that most of the world was already infected with SARs-CoV-2, the current CFR would be massively overestimating the lethality of SARs-CoV-2. 

The actual fatality rate of a pathogen is much harder to derive. To discover this requires more intense and often more difficult investigation. In addition to knowing the CFR, epidemiologists must find out who has the disease, who has symptoms, who dies from the disease, who gets it and who doesn’t. This kind of estimate requires massive amounts of work. In relation to SARs-CoV-2, that detailed work is only just beginning. The bigger picture won’t be known for some time. For an examination of the case fatality rate, click this text. Crude as the case fatality rate may be, it is the most reliable data we have.

A few notes about the back of Maine’s COVID-19 envelope

This is a simple model. I haven’t accounted for time frames, or contagion rates, mitigation efforts, or no mitigations efforts. My total deaths simply assume the disease runs its course and infection doesn’t extend beyond 1/3 of Maine’s population. These assumptions were meant to simplify the model. In reality the spread of the disease could be much greater than 1/3, or much lower. The fatality rate for SARs-CoV-2 will undoubtedly be refined as more data is gathered, as will COVID-19’s CFR. I think both will skew downward. The former because I expect we will find significant percentage of infected persons who present with no or mild symptoms, the latter because doctors, nurses and an army of medical scientists are going to figure out better ways to treat COVID-19. 

We can, even with this paucity of data, infer a few things, and posit a reasonable course (that can and should be corrected as new data comes in). 

Given that the projected losses of life, as well as the costs associated with that lost life can be quite high, keeping as many people as possible from getting SARs-CoV-2 must be a policy goal. The other thing that seems obvious even if the CFR of COVID-19 is only as high as South Korea’s, is that it would be much better for the economy if Maine, the US, and world as a whole, spread those losses over a longer period of time so no one financial quarter absorbs the bulk of the losses.  Additionally, a slower disease spread over a longer period of time would mean that health care workers would have greater resources, time, and space to treat sick people as they come in.  This would almost certainly mean a lower death toll than any projected in my simple model. If that humanitarian argument doesn’t move you, it is also true that lower overall deaths would mean lower overall economic costs.

Plenty of Quibbling Room

There is plenty to debate in my model. Which estimate is likely to be closer to COVID-19’s actual fatality rate? Is a US life really worth ten million dollars? Does life devalue with age? Some might argue that earnings go down with age, but on the other hand, older people also spend a lot of money in the economy. How do population demographics affect fatality rates? Why are CFRs different across countries? The questions are endless and should absolutely be explored. The purpose of these back of the envelope numbers is more to frame issues in a more quantitative way. I want to present an argument in opposition to “Keeping Maine under social distancing will ruin Maine’s economy forever,” and “More people will die from social distancing than from COVID-19!” 

The “Open Up Now” crowd rarely offers numbers to support their hypotheses. The discussion offered is consistently without links to economic analysis of reduced economic activity. We should definitely pay attention to the concerns of those who want to open up the economy immediately. However, those concerns, subjective as they are, can be hard to set into a robust economic analysis. One of the goals of this piece is to encourage anyone one considering the disease management issue to think more quantitatively and less qualitatively. Hyperbole gets us nowhere. Vague worries don’t help either. Quantitative thinking bolstered by facts and trends in the data can lead to much more fruitful discussions. They can help us see each other points and concerns much more clearly. 

As to what the economic costs of continued physical distancing might be projected to be, there is at least one comparable event, the 1918 flu pandemic, which seems to deflate the qualitative arguments of the “Open up now” contingent. The 1918 flu, which was also mitigated with physical distancing programs which were certainly economically costly, and came on the heels of a costly world war. However, a Planet Money analysis of a city by city approach to physical distancing (shorter less strict vs longer more strict) and the economic costs found that, "We found that cities that intervened earlier and more aggressively actually experienced a relatively stronger bounce back in their economy in 1919, the year after the pandemic.”

It appears that at least in the 1918 flu pandemic, physical distancing did not equal financial Armageddon. 

Important considerations.

In Maine we currently don’t see widespread infection, or overwhelmed health care systems. There are only 65 deaths and, it seems, limited disease spread. Currently the Maine infectious rate for SARs-CoV-2 is 1.08 and not the 2.4 found in COVID-19 hotspots. This is incredibly good news and seems to argue against some of the more dire financial and human costs in the model offered. An infection rate of 1.08 does mean that the number of infected is still growing in Maine, but at a substantially slower rate (down from a March 8, 2020 peak of 1.58). It is entirely reasonable to wonder if Maine would ever see a third of its population infected SARs-CoV-2. Maine seems very nearly to have plateaued in infection. We most certainly want to avoid the exponential growth of which this virus is clearly capable. 

I hypothesize that the part of that excellent trend is a product of Maine being an early adopter of physical distancing at both the government level and at the level of individuals. I also think Maine has benefitted from the natural physical distancing imposed by the state’s lower population density. There may be other local cultural factors too that have led to a lower overall rate of infection and fatalities. Maybe Mainers don’t actually travel that much within the state. Mainers may stay outdoors a lot more and don’t, especially in more rural areas, congregate in cramped poorly ventilated areas. If trends in grocery and supply hoarding is any indication, People, without direction from the federal, state, or local governments, began to self-isolate and limit their exposure to others. It is possible, even likely, that a combination of factors has likely been responsible for Maine’s good numbers. 

Will lifting restrictions lead to a “second wave” of infections? Will the number of infected approach the large numbers assumed in the model? What effect will an influx of tourists have on Maine’s rate of infection? Given that each state in the US is, in many ways, unique, should every state necessarily adopt the exact same strategy in dealing with SARs-CoV-2? Maine’s strategy probably shouldn’t mimic Massachussetts’ COVID-19 strategy for instance.

Summary

Given that the COVID-19 CFR for Maine, and for the US as a whole, is actually quite high, and that CFR represents the only really reliable data we have, we should certainly want our pandemic strategy to move forward cautiously. The economic and human costs associated with even moderately high CFRs make basing COVID-19 management policy on optimistic estimates of the actual SARs-CoV-2 fatality rate potentially quite dangerous. What we know means that letting SARs-CoV-2 run rampant through populations is irresponsible and unwise. The disease it causes is incredibly dangerous. There is no shortage of evidence that COVID-19 outbreaks can be very bad indeed. In the US we have several examples from places like Washington state., Gallup, New Mexico, and New York City.  The first known US citizen infected with SARs-CoV-2 arrived from Wuhan China on January 15, 2020.  In only about four months, COVID-19 has killed, in the US, 82,461 people (as of 13 May 2020).   We have no reliable treatments beyond symptom management. There is no vaccine to prevent it and no medicine to knock it down, or to reduce the severity of COVID-19. Remdesivir looks promising, but more work needs to be done to establish how effective it is in the treatment of COVID-19. There is also no herd immunity to insulate the vulnerable from the virus. A SARs-CoV-2 infection widely spread through the Maine population, even assuming a low COVID-19 CFR, would crush Maine’s economy. A prudent strategy, especially given the documented dangers as well as the many unknowns, would be to seek to limit the spread of SARs-CoV-2., while continuing to refine our understanding of SARs-CoV-2/COVID-19. 

Maine is poised to be one of leaders in testing capacity. Within the week (13 May as of this writing), anyone who’s physician wants them to be tested for COVID-19 will be able to do so without needing to present the telltale symptoms. We are still a long way off from reliable antibody testing, and not just in Maine, but everywhere in the US. Maine, along with the rest of the country, must increase the ability and reliability of tests for COVID-19 antibodies. Current anti-body tests have a great deal of cross-reactivity (Abbie Smith personal communication). This means that the current tests have a great deal of trouble distinguishing between SARs-CoV-2 antibodies and antibodies from other coronaviruses. Accurate antibody testing would provide a much more accurate picture of how deadly this novel coronavirus actually is. It would reveal where it has been and give a better idea of who has had it, crucial since we know a significant percentage of those infected with SARs-CoV-2 have either no symptoms, or only very mild symptoms.  Robust data collection could answer many questions that remain to be answered while driving a much more precise response to COVID-19, one reminiscent of the very successful South Korean model. 

Brunch Book Review: The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

A Brunch Book Review: “The Call of the Wild” by Jack London
(Link takes you to Amazon)

Brunch Book Review: The Call of the Wild by Jack London

I owe a lot to the previews for the new big screen adaptation of Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. The movie looked interesting to me, both Harrison Ford and the CGI enhanced dog looked adorable in all the right ways. The film didn’t look too maudlin, always a plus as far as I am concerned. After a few trailers for the film I was committed to seeing it. However, I also decided I needed to read the book, a classic of modern literature, before seeing the movie. I could not remember if I had ever read it. I thought that it might have been some required reading in high school. If I had read it, I could remember not a single detail. Thus, was a reading project born. 

Jack London didn’t have to work very hard to please me. I am exactly the target audience for wilderness adventures set in the Northwest Territories, or Alaska, of adventurers, dog sleds and abundant wildlands. One of my favorite books ever, is A Naturalist in Alaska, by Adolph Murie (which probably deserves its own review). That book is about one of the great 20^th Century wildlife biologists and his studies in Alaska. So, London was, as the saying goes, pushing at an open door. 

The Call of the Wild is an adventure told from the point of view of a big dog named Buck. This is not an anthropomorphized animal adventure in which all the animals are given human voices, human inclinations, and are generally just humans in animal guises. That can work, as host of animated films, books and even comic book demonstrate. That is not how London approaches the adventures and trials of Buck the dog. London tries to get in the canine head of his appealing hero and explain Buck’s life through a lens filtered deeply by the genus Canis. Specifically, London’s pays a great deal of narrative attention to the things that would, and clearly do, matter to domesticated dogs. Buck’s world is chiefly focused on understanding and predicting human behavior, as well as the dominance hierarchies that drive all dog life.  Both of these behavioral drivers become all important when Buck is conscripted into the life of a sled dog. There is a third thread to London’s narrative, and it may the most tantalizing part of the book. That thread is the meditations the narrator has about the very nature of a dog’s behavioral and mental life. These meditations form the core of London’s call of the wild, which is a tug I suspect London thought many domesticated beings felt. 

Buck represents a dog who, perhaps like many dogs, really feels his wolfish origins deep in his sturdy frame. The further and longer Buck is kept in wildlands and left by the dog handlers to manage his own safety among the other sled dogs the more he seems hear an ancient part of his nature. He is, after all, behaving quite wolfish so how could the ancient rhythms encoded in his genes not help but be awakened? Buck seems to feel this call more than his pack mates. Most of them are actually sled dog breeds and seem born to life in the sled harness. They live to pull and will try to do so even when injured or too old to manage. The sled dog is as neurotic and obsessive in its way as is the herding dog, that lacking cattle or sheep to herd, will try to keep its family in a tight group on a walk or a hike through the woods. Buck is not a purebred dog. He is the product of a mixed breed pairing. Like many mutts, Buck has benefitted by having a robust phenotype, without showing many of the problems of dogs that are the product of long lineages characterized by excessive in-breeding. Buck demonstrates none of the neuroses of his sled dog fellows. He is huge, fast and smart. And while we never hear a direct anthropomorphized word from him, he is an interesting and engaging hero.

I don’t really want to overly summarize the novel. Better for Buck’s adventures to be a surprise revealed by turning pages and reading. Buck meets a lot of people and critters. Most of them are nice, or at least not mean. A few are the opposite, and some are plain bad. London also seems to know the culture of sled dogging of the time. Most of the sled pilots aren’t mean to the animals. Many even show clear affection for the dogs. The men aren’t engaged in sport though, and sled driving is a life of serious and often dangerous work. How accurate London’s portrayal of this life and its insular culture are is a mystery to me. Whether London is accurate or exercising creative license, his writing is so strong the description of life in the snow and ice feels more than accurate. 

I want to point out London’s attempt to grapple with natural history, and, whether he knew it or not, evolutionary history. 

London, like any author of popular fiction, wants to tell a rousing and engaging tale, but at times his narrator’s voice seems almost preoccupied with deep questions about animal lives. Buck is the lever London uses to pontificate about natural history. And Buck is a fine lever indeed. Like all domesticated dogs Buck straddles two behavioral worlds. As a mutt, he doesn’t’ necessarily share the neuroses of working dog breeds. His considerable intellect doesn’t obsess over a job like the minds of many working breeds seem to. He works so hard in the sled, because he enjoys the praise of the humans. Buck works hard to be dominant with other dogs too, and one suspects he does this for the canine accolades his pack mates give him for such efforts. London suspects that the dogs suffer different mental constraints, based on their history of breeding. The sled dogs hear the call only as it extends to the maintaining and governance of canine dominance hierarchies, which is to say a pack order. The sled dog team certainly needs a leader to guide it, but beyond that, the hierarchy serves no real purpose in the dogs lives anymore. For Buck it means more, because he isn’t shackled to or overly possessed by the singular purpose of pulling a sled. Buck seems as if he could take or leave the sled. This is not the case of every dog in his orbit. Buck’s instincts are different than the instincts of his sled dog pack mates. The only clear signals of Buck’s domestication are his fondness for, and comfort around humans. But he was, from the first moment we meet him, a dog with a strong wanderlust. This trait only grows more and more powerful in Buck as gets farther and farther from civilization. 

As an adventure novel, The Call of the Wild certainly works. It hits all the beats an adventure novel should. An added bonus? There is no badly written romance. But I think it really shines when London is contemplating the strange evolutionary history of dogs in a serious way. London seems to understand dogs, and the effects a history specific breeding may have on a dog’s mind. His observations may not actually be correct, but they are plausible ideas when set against the evolutionary history of Canis lupus domesticus. The language is not the language of an evolutionary biologist but that of a person who knows quite a bit about nature, and dogs, and who seems to love them both. That said, the book is a product of its time. There is a black dog named Nig, for instance. But the casual racism that characterized the times is not as bad as it is in other novels of the same period. This is a classic you should visit, or revisit. 

10/10.

Social Distancing Projects. The Omelett.

Social Distancing has suddenly given me a lot of time to do things other than Jiu Jitsu, which has been my all consuming obsession for almost two decades. To take the sting out of that, I’ve decided to try to improve other aspects of my life. One of my current projects is to improve my range as a cook. I’m not bad around the kitchen, but I’ve always known there could be improvements. The current cooking technique on which I am focused is, the basic omelet. Here is my guide. Jaques Pepin. Here is another view of his approach as described in The New York Times. Pepin has a host of YouTube content and had a show on PBS for years called Fast Food My Way. That show is gold.  I only recently discovered it, and you should watch it. It has a host of great ideas for your Distanced Kitchen.

What are you doing during our time of social distancing? Catching up on reading, I’m sure, but what else? Put it in the comments below.

Brunch Book Review: “The Poppy War” by R.F. Kuang

The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang

The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang

R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War begins as many fantasy novels do. It focuses on the challenges and ambitions of a much put upon young protagonist. In this case that much put-upon protagonist is an orphan of war, Rin (Runin Fang). Rin was adopted by almost universally awful in-law parents. They are anxious to marry the girl off, and collect a handsome dowry, as soon as they can. Both “parents” tend to utilize her as slave labor. She works in their store keeping the books, or takes care of her adoptive brother Kesegi. Kesegi is the only person in the family who cares about Rin, it seems. In addition to the chores her in-laws demand, Rin is studying for a test, the Kedju, which will get her into the realm’s premiere centers of learning. Success on this test is the key to a better life for an orphan being raised by hateful guardians. 

Needless to say, Rin passes the Kedju. Not only does she pass, she scores the highest score in her province and has earned a free trip to the most prestigious school in her world, Sinegard. Sinegard, depending on a student’s strengths, can train people in a variety of academic and military disciplines. Martial arts are a core component that everyone must train in. Sinegard is an academy that trains the leaders -- military, academic, political -- of the nation of Nikara. As the training ground of Nikara’s future leaders, everyone at Sinegard is obsessed with a small island nation called Mugen. Mugen is a consistent source of military trouble. It may be small but Mugen’s military is strong and capable. That is probably enough background to allow me to review the book for people who haven’t read the novel.

I started out quite enjoying The Poppy War. My interest and enjoyment flagged with almost every chapter. Especially after the Sinegard portion of the book ended and the “war” section of the book began. The book itself seems to begin showing a “Mulan/Brave/Cinderella” vibe. Young woman overcomes gaslighting in-laws, and class expectations is the basic story skeleton Kuang begins with. Quite abruptly she turns the book into a quite serious war novel. There is a spiritual subplot Kuang begins during Rin’s education at Sinegard. It involves the lost art of training and developing shamans. Shamans have special martial arts powers gifted to them by their relationship with Nikara's gods. With this thread, Kuang engages in her messiest storytelling. The gods can mostly only be accessed by consuming a variety of mind-altering drugs. It is hard to know what Kuang wants us to take from this situation. Rin and her allies will be ingesting quite a lot of drugs, some more serious than others (opium, heroin, mushrooms, and numerous nameless substances). The spirit world seems almost as dangerous as the drugs. The gods can take possession of the shamans’ bodies, or fuse personalities with shamans, or something. It’s all kind of confusing. Whatever the mechanics, a person’s individuality can be subsumed, unpleasantly, into the stronger personality of the god the shaman serves. More about that later maybe.

The cover of the book was well blurbed. It has garnered praise from critics at the Washington Post where it was, in 2018, rated one of the “top 5 science-fiction books of the year.”. A critic at Booknest said, “I have no doubt this will end up being the best fantasy debut of the year.” Wired magazine, called it, “…. this year’s Harry Potter.”

Needless to say, I don’t share any of these opinions. After seeing Rin’s resourcefulness, and kindness in her home village and her resolve at Sinegard, I liked her less and less as the chapters moved into the war story. Kuang seems to take every likable attribute of any character in the novel away from the reader. This leaves readers very little to hold on to. My interest in both the characters and their challenges diminished inversely with their increasing meanness. Rin, who begins the story strong, smart, and resourceful, devolves into a whiny, somewhat lovesick, increasingly stupid, and less than moral teenager. As this change happened, it became harder and harder for me to return to the novel. The challenge of returning to the book was made even more difficult by the depressing tone of the last part of the book. To be clear, Kuang leaves us with the following scenario at the end. The shamans can mostly only utilize the powers of the gods by becoming hopelessly addicted to hard drugs. The gods also don’t care about their champions or humans generally. They will do things for humans, but there always seems to be a price. The gods are assholes. The heroes are moody, morose assholes. The country this group of heroes fight for is very nearly lost to the forces of Mugen. Nikara is also led by a queen who commands total love, awe, and respect (she is a powerful shaman after all), but her chief mode of maintaining power is to betray her citizens and sacrifice them (and the occasional loyal soldier) to Mugen ambition. Strangely, this betrayal comes as a shock to Rin late in the book, despite the fact that at Sinegard Rin herself had reasoned that Nikara had sacrificed a whole people to affect peace with Mugen. “NO IT CAN'T BE” seems like a wrong-headed reaction from a person who has already deduced that her country would strategically make genocidal sacrifices.

After the novel’s Part One, I was never satisfied with any of the story elements. Many reviewers, both professional and amateur, commented on the epic world building Kuang does. Sadly, I did not see evidence of this. I was knocked out of the story over and over again by Kuang’s clear allegory. Kuang is dealing in the obvious and it detracts from the work. Nikara is China, Mugen is Japan. The Poppy War is the thinly allegorized history of the conflict, quite old, between Japan and China. Kuang clearly thinks Japan is the historical villain and makes this allegorical proxy as bad she can. Nikara (China) is the better half in this conflict (though not wholly great it has its social issues and civic challenges). Obvious allegory is maybe the worst thing a writer can do. The more obvious and heavy-handed the allegory, the more it denies the reader freedom to just appreciate a story as it is. Allegory can also damage the literary quality of timelessness. No matter where a writer sets an allegorical tale, it will always be about a specific time, a specific place, a specific event. A reader even mildly “up” on the allegorical subject matter will be unable to avoid said subject. For me, Kuang’s allegorical approach was simply too much. It also lacked nuance. Its allegorical Japan were almost horror show villains. The behavior of Japan’s government and military during WWII (and other times) has been far from wholly honorable, it’s true. But China also has its own fairly damning history of its own when it comes to authoritarianism, brutality, colonialism and Imperialism. The Poppy War sometimes felt like propaganda.

Added to this allegorical mixture is the fact that almost with each passing page, the likeable characters become more and more unlikable. Most of Rin’s school days nemeses become worse too. The net effect being almost no likable or relatable characters for almost two thirds of the book. That makes for some tough reading. 

The appreciation of art is pretty subjective. My reaction to the story elements may not be your reaction. There are no really mechanical flaws in the book. It’s solidly written. It’s not overly saccharine, though there is a love story that seems more YA than adult reading. But that could also just be me. I find most love stories in most genre and media to be annoying, badly conceived, and bizarrely simpleminded. They almost never seem to imitate the way real people fall in love. Tastes vary of course, as do experiences. So, if you like reading about awful people, and depressing conflicts in which no honorable or kind action or impulse is ever rewarded The Poppy War may be the book for you. Kuang herself has said she wanted to make something that would appeal to Game of Thrones fans. I’m absolutely sure she has done this. Full disclosure, I also detested Game of Thrones. The Poppy War is dark and depressing but it isn’t poignant, enlightening or insightful. Its villains are wicked, violent, awful and utterly without compassion, but so too are most of the book’s protagonists. In the right hands a depressing book can be a good and worthy read. In the wrong hands reading is an unpleasant slog.

6-7/10

Attorney General Barr’s Summary and the Need to Publish the Mueller Report

Attorney General Barr crafted a fairly, though fairly subtle, partisan summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. You can read the text here or here. My hot take on Barr’s hot take is this: It deliberately omits the massive findings and successes of the Mueller investigation, highlights the clearance on a Trump Campaign and Russian government conspiracy, and discusses the obstruction section in a deliberately obfuscatory way. Barr came to his conclusions in a relatively quick way that seems to impugn the credibility of the analysis he offered the Senators. Forty eight hours is a pretty short time to issue conclusive statements and prosecutorial decisions given a report that details twenty two months of deep investigation. AG Barr’s summary cannot be the end of the story, and it shouldn’t be his decision on whether or not congress gets to see the report.

Analyzing Barr’s Summary
From the letter:

The Attorney General
Washington, D.C.
March 24, 2019

• The Honorable Lindsey Graham

• Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary

• United States Senate

• 290 Russell Senate Office Building

• Washington, D.C. 20510

• The Honorable Jerrold Nadler

• Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary

• United States House of Representatives

• 2132 Rayburn House Office Building

• Washington, D.C. 20515

• The Honorable Dianne Feinstein

• Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary

• United States Senate

• 331 Hart Senate Office Building

• Washington, D.C. 20510

• The Honorable Doug Collins

• Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary

• United States House of Representatives

• 1504 Longworth House Office Building

• Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Graham, Chairman Nadler, Ranking Member Feinstein, and Ranking Member Collins:
As a supplement to the notification provided on Friday, March 22, 2019, I am writing today to advise you of the principal conclusions reached by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to inform you about the status of my initial review of the report he has prepared.

All pretty boilerplate and reasonable, though, any honest observer of Senator Lindsey Graham over the past two years will question the honorific “Honorable.” That will seem like a partisan sneer, but I don’t think it is, given how many centrist Republicans have also lost respect for Graham. Minor quibble and the language is unavoidable in any event.

Next section: This could be titled methods and means

"The Special Counsel's Report

On Friday, the Special Counsel submitted to me a "confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” he has reached, as required by 28 C.F.R. $ 600.8(c). This report is entitled “Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election.” Although my review is ongoing, I believe that it is in the public interest to describe the report and to summarize the principal conclusions reached by the Special Counsel and the results of his investigation.
The report explains that the Special Counsel and his staff thoroughly investigated allegations that members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, and others associated with it, conspired with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, or sought to obstruct the related federal investigations. In the report, the Special Counsel noted that, in completing his investigation, he employed 19 lawyers who were assisted by a team of approximately 40 FBI agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff. The Special Counsel issued more than 2,800 subpoenas, executed nearly 500 search warrants, obtained more than 230 orders for communication records, issued almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, made 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, and interviewed approximately 500 witnesses.

The Special Counsel obtained a number of indictments and convictions of individuals and entities in connection with his investigation, all of which have been publicly disclosed. During the course of his investigation, the Special Counsel also referred several matters to other offices for further action. The report does not recommend any further indictments, nor did the Special Counsel obtain any sealed indictments that have yet to be made public. Below, I summarize the principal conclusions set out in the Special Counsel's report.

This is a tricky bit of writing. Barr states his review is on-going, but that in the interest of the public confidence he will tell the Senators his conclusions. There is no way that doesn’t seem like a rush to judgement. The summary only gets trickier from there. Barr highlights the number of subpoenas, the number of investigators, the types of investigators, number of interviews etc but then declined to also summarize the number of indictments and guilty findings because these latter details have already been made public (by, one assumes good reporting by the media). However a lot of the investigative details were also already public knowledge. This has the appearance of softening the report while also not making partisan senators uncomfortable with successes of the Mueller probe. Many of them have refused to accept that Mueller and his team have been good investigators and uncovered quite a lot. Forcing them, along with the American public to look at the number of Trump’s close associates  to have been found or pleaded guilty to criminal charges doesn’t seem like its an important point for Barr. The AG also knows this letter will be made public and it seems as if he is avoiding legitimizing the reporting of Mueller’s successes, including close associates of the President of the United States.

Barr Describes the Organization of Mueller’s Report

"Russian Interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.

The Special Counsel's report is divided into two parts. The first describes the results of the Special Counsel's investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The report outlines the Russian effort to influence the election and documents crimes committed by persons associated with the Russian government in connection with those efforts. The report further explains that a primary consideration for the Special Counsel's investigation was whether any Americans – including individuals associated with the Trump campaign – joined the Russian conspiracies to influence the election, which would be a federal crime. The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”¹

The Special Counsel's investigation determined that there were two main Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election. The first involved attempts by a Russian organization, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), to conduct disinformation and social media operations in the United States designed to sow social discord, eventually with the aim of interfering with the election. As noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that any U.S. person or Trump campaign official or associate conspired or knowingly coordinated with the IRA in its efforts, although the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian nationals and entities in connection with these activities.

The second element involved the Russian government's efforts to conduct computer hacking operations designed to gather and disseminate information to influence the election. The Special Counsel found that Russian government actors successfully hacked into computers and obtained emails from persons affiliated with the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations, and publicly disseminated those materials through various intermediaries, including WikiLeaks. Based on these activities, the Special Counsel brought criminal charges against a number of Russian military officers for conspiring to hack into computers in the United States for purposes of influencing the election. But as noted above, the Special Counsel did not find that the Trump campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign.”

I’ve highlighted the last part because I think it is a key elision in Barr’s analysis. I think until proven otherwise we have to accept the findings of Mueller’s report. By all accounts he is a committed professional, ethical guy.  Full disclosure? I think he is a kind of American hero. That isn’t to say he is perfect, or without flaw. However he seems, by all accounts to do the right thing. He ran a tight, and tight-lipped ship. Enter AG Barr. By denying people the ability to see the whole of the Mueller report Barr can highlight the lack of evidence of crime, but he denies us the ability to see what Mueller’s conclusions were about activities that didn’t rise to the level of criminal culpability but would have to be considered deeply unethical. Barr is focusing eyes on the the lack of coordination between Trump et al and the Russian government to win a US election (which would be criminal), but this glosses over the efforts by Trump allies, and perhaps Trump himself, to work with Russian oligarchs and other Russian citizens and murky assets.  This also doesn’t address the fact that such people as Russian oligarchs exist largely at the whim of Putin. Among the Russian elite, it is very hard to know where the government ends and private citizenry begins. 

We do know that Trump himself encouraged Russian attacks on his political opponents. 

"I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” the Republican nominee said at a news conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

-Trump at a press conference on his campaign trail. 

That may not be coordinated conspiracy but it does rise to the level of deeply immoral action in a US political election. If you are a Trump supporter and feel inclined to give him a pass here, ask yourself how you would feel if Hillary had asked China, or Britain to hack or steal Trump emails. After he asked this it appeared that Russians were listening, because they almost immediately started attacking and targeting Clinton. 

For a longer analysis of the episode above go here, and here.

The Don Jr Trump Tower Meeting. 

Mueller didn’t indict on this or find that it met the criteria for coordinating with the Russian government. I’d like to read the report to know what the rational was for this, as I’m sure the Mueller team looked into it. Its a complicated story, but even if doesn’t  rise to the level of criminal conspiracy, it again, impugns, mightily, the character of every single person involved. 

What we know is that it was a meeting intended to profit on alleged Russian knowledge of Hillary Clinton that would have been damaging to her. A brief summary of the events is in order.

My brief summary. 

A British music publicist emails Don Jr that a Russian pop star wants to arrange a meeting with Trump and some big Russian influencers to dish on some official Russian documents that would look bad for Hillary. British Pop music guy says that this stuff came from a meeting between Russian Pop Stars pop, and someone he called the Crown Prosecutor of Russia. British Pop guy also claims that this is part of Russia’s support for Trump.

 In the email exchanges that led to the now infamous Trump Tower meeting, Don Jr says, “If its what you say, I love it especially later this summer.” This all happens on June 3 2016. 

On June 6, 2016 Don Jr and British pop guy arrange talks. Trump calls and is called by Russian pop star. After his calls with Russian pop star, several calls ensue from Don Jr. A long one to an unknown blocked number. We don’t know who this blocked number was and Don Jr rather lamely claims to not know who it belongs to. There is some credible speculation that the blocked number is Donald Trump’s number, and that Don Jr and Don Sr were discussing the particulars of the meeting.

June 7 2016, Don and Goldstone (British pop music guy) confirm meeting. They will meet on June 9. Don Jr says, he will probably be with Manafort, Don Jr brother and of course Don Jr.
At the same time Donald claims he will be making major speech about what he has on the Clintons. While not conclusive, it does lend support to the Cohen testimony that Trump Sr was in the loop, and was anticipating a pot of Russian gold.  Given that the meeting didn’t actually produce much and Trump never gave that Monday take down, the worst interpretation of the Trump Tower meeting seems at least credible. Trump knew about the upcoming meeting, and was anticipating damaging content to deliver to the press.

The meeting gets pushed back, and Manafort and Kushner are getting forwards of the email exchanges with Goldstone. This is now more people close to Trump in the loop.  This increases, not decreases the likelihood that Trump Sr himself was also in the loop. It strains any semblance of verisimilitude. It seems unlikely in the extreme that all the people who knew about it were extremely close to Trump and that none of them discussed the meeting with Trump Sr. It could have happened that way. But given Trump Sr’s tendency to badly micromanage everything, that doesn’t seem very probable. Trump is in the building for three hours before the meeting, and no one mentioned to him that there was going to a major meeting with Russians to get Kompromat on Hillary?

The meeting fails to produce dirt on Hillary as the Russians mostly wanted to complain about sanctions and the Magnitsky Act. Does any of this rise to the level of criminality? But given that the press had to shame Trump et al into being somewhat honest (ironically, the press had the emails) about the whole event doesn’t bode well for a high ethical bar being crossed by the Trump campaign team. From a legal layperson’s perspective (mine) it all looks like an attempt to coordinate with the Russian government to attack a political opponent.

There is more we could say on this meeting, but Barr prevents anyone from having to deal honestly with what is at least an ethical breach by focusing on Mueller’s finding of no conspiracy with the Russian Government. 
Analysis of the decision to not indict anyone for the Trump Tower Meeting.
The Wikipedia Entry on the Trump Tower Meeting

It looks like AG Barr has spared or is trying to spare the Republican Party a broader reckoning with the full picture, denying Congress, the body that must decide what to do with Presidential malfeasance that same full picture, as well as denying the American public its own oversight privilege.

Barr almost praises Mueller for the work the Special Counsel did on uncovering and describing the vast Russian effort to influence the US 2016 presidential election. This is a bombshell that Trump supporters, President Trump chief among them, refuse to acknowledge.  Trump and his allies have been denying the US Intelligence and Federal Law Enforcement consensus that Russia intervened in a major and concerted way to upset US democracy (as it done to democracy across the world) almost since Trump’s election. The Special Counsel investigation has exposed those lies, deceptions and spin efforts.  Trump was either wrong or lying about Russia attacking the US elections. Given that he gets briefings and has had intelligence people telling him since before he was elected Russia was officially trying to help him, we can only assume he was lying. This finding by Mueller is was the central pillar of his investigators mandate, and with his report, he corroborated almost all of the reporting on Russian influence attacks. This makes a sham of the terms “witch hunts,” and “fake news.”

Below I’ve highlighted some key points in bold in AG Barr’s summary of obstruction.

"Obstruction of Justice.

The report's second part addresses a number of actions by the President – most of which have been the subject of public reporting – that the Special Counsel investigated as potentially raising obstruction-of-justice concerns. After making a “thorough factual investigation” into these matters, the Special Counsel considered whether to evaluate the conduct under Department standards governing prosecution and declination decisions but ultimately determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment. The Special Counsel therefore did not draw a conclusion - one way or the other – as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction. Instead, for each of the relevant actions investigated, the report sets out evidence on both sides of the question and leaves unresolved what the Special Counsel views as “difficult issues” of law and fact concerning whether the President's actions and intent could be viewed as obstruction. The Special Counsel states that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

The Special Counsel's decision to describe the facts of his obstruction investigation without reaching any legal conclusions leaves it to the Attorney General to determine whether the conduct described in the report constitutes a crime. Over the course of the investigation, the Special Counsel's office engaged in discussions with certain Department officials regarding many of the legal and factual matters at issue in the Special Counsel's obstruction investigation. After reviewing the Special Counsel's final report on these issues; consulting with Department officials, including the Office of Legal Counsel; and applying the principles of federal prosecution that guide our charging decisions, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction-of-justice offense. Our determination was made without regard to, and is not based on, the constitutional considerations that surround the indictment and criminal prosecution of a sitting president.²

In making this determination, we noted that the Special Counsel recognized that “the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference," and that, while not determinative, the absence of such evidence bears upon the President's intent with respect to obstruction. Generally speaking, to obtain and sustain an obstruction conviction, the government would need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person, acting with corrupt intent, engaged in obstructive conduct with a sufficient nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding. In cataloguing the President's actions, many of which took place in public view, the report identifies no actions that, in our judgment, constitute obstructive conduct, had a nexus to a pending or contemplated proceeding, and were done with corrupt intent, each of which, under the Department's principles of federal prosecution guiding charging decisions, would need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to establish an obstruction-of-justice offense.

Status of the Department’s Review

The relevant regulations contemplate that the Special Counsel's report will be a “confidential report to the Attorney General. See Office of Special Counsel, 64 Fed. Reg. 37,038,

² See A Sitting President's Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution, 24 Op. O.L.C. 222 (2000).”

Again the AG crafts a carefully worded summary that fails to summarize the President’s action, by referring to the reporting on those actions. This is sort of funny in the sad way so much of American politics is funny these days. To cite the public reporting is to credit it as anything but “fake news.”  AG Barr must know full and well that the partisan Republicans he is addressing will not bother to look at those well reported actions by the president. We know that Manafort and Stone have been charged with obstruction and witness tampering. How likely is it that Trump is unlike his peer associates. Perhaps that is an unfair question. 

AG Barr is almost certainly correct that obstruction is a hard charge to prove because you must be able to establish the intent of the charged. Mueller left the question open, without recommendation, which may have been a mistake. Many legal scholars seem to think he wanted the decision to pursue that question left to Congress, whom he thought would read the full report. Barr has an extraordinarily narrow view of of obstruction of justice and extraordinarily broad view of Presidential power.

Barr steps in it though, by electing to exonerate the president himself, despite the fact that even he admits that the Mueller report “fails to exonerate” the President of obstruction of justice. He makes the claim, sure to be challenged, that since the Special Counsel did not make a recommendation on whether a crime had occurred, it fell to him to make that determination. It seems unlikely that this is the case, given that crimes can only be established in a court of law and are not declared by Attorney Generals, or Prosecutors. 

Even if he was correct it seems AG Barr is the last person who should be making an adjudication on whether obstruction occurred given his well publicized hostility to the Mueller investigation and his commitment to the position that a President cannot be guilty of obstruction. This legal commitment makes Barr singularly unfit to render a decision to recommend or fail to recommend prosecution regarding obstruction. Mueller apparently laid out evidence for and against the case for obstruction. What was that case? We don’t know, and neither Barr, nor Trump or his allies want to us to know. 

The only path forward, I think is to release the Mueller Report, not only to Congress but also to the American People. Congress voted almost unanimously to release the report. In the senate, one of the most partisan Republican Senators, The “Honorable” Lindsay Graham doesn’t want it released, and clearly doesn’t want Congress to exercise its co-equal oversight powers. He is joined by many other hyper partisan Republicans. That smells as bad it looks. Transparency would give was all a chance to adjudicate on the actions of our representatives while allowing constitutional processes of checks and balances to move forward.

Release the Mueller Report.

An open letter to the US Senate: Why you should vote no on Judge Brett Kavanagh

Dear Senators, 

I’m writing you to urge you to vote no on the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States. He has, almost since the moment of his nomination by President Trump, betrayed a troubling tendency to bend the truth or lie when is suits his purposes.

Judge Kavanaugh faces some serious and credible accusations about his past behavior. Leave those allegations to one side. We may never know, to our satisfaction what the truth is in those allegations and good, honest people can be agnostic on the question of did he, or didn’t he. However, while we may not ever be fully satisfied we know the facts of his past, we are confronted with his present behavior. This present Brett Kavanaugh should not inspire confidence in any one that he has the right intellectual commitments or temperament for a position on the bench of the highest court in our land. 

I will give only a brief over view of the lies and dishonesty that we have seen from Judge Kavanaugh.  The list won’t be exhaustive.

1.    When he accepted the nomination to the court he praised President Trump in the following way. “No President has ever consulted more widely or talked with more people from more backgrounds to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.” For any other position this kind of dishonest flattery might not matter. In a future Supreme Court Judge whose judgments and pronouncements must be measured, logically sound and evidence based, such a statement is ill fitting, and indicative of a comfort with disregarding the truth. It seems unlikely that a President who detests reading, spends most of his time watching television news, according to credible reporting, did a great deal of research or talked very widely. In any event there is no way Kavanaugh could possibly presume to know such a thing, and yet before the nation, and directly in front of the president and his own family he made such a statement.  

2.    He appears to have lied under oath several times. He stated he had no connections to Yale and got in by “busting his tail.” However, he did have connections to Yale. His grandfather attended and Judge Kavanaugh would have been a Legacy student. That isn’t a crime, or even indicative of a lack of qualifications.  However it was a demonstrable falsehood, under oath no less. How can we trust the integrity of someone who lies about something so verifiably false?  He said, “I have no connections there [Yale].” While in fact he did. He may have worked hard, and been qualified, but he definitely had a connection to Yale. He lied about this. In addition to this, he was referring to his getting into Yale Law School. He went to Yale as an undergrad and that definitely would have had an effect on his ability to network and get into the Yale law school. None of this is bad, or illegal or unsettling. What is bad about all of this is his lying about having no connections to Yale while under oath. The job to which he is being appointed is not as a short order cook, but to the highest court in the land.

3.   Kavanaugh has tried to paint himself as a kind of choirboy. Why he has elected to portray himself this way I couldn’t guess. However his friends from both high school and college along with many of his own accounts flatly contradict this image he originally tried to paint of himself. When questioned about this past he has not been forthright, only grudgingly conceding the truth if he had been caught out. Under oath though he would not admit to what “Devils’ Triangle,” or “boofing” was (instead he offered definitions his classmates at the time quickly shot down), what he and his friends meant by “Renate Alumnus.” Judge Kavanaugh’s attempt to suggest that it was a kind of affection for a friend is belied by the other entries he and his friends had about Renate. They seem to specifically be referring to sexual conquest. Again, it isn’t a crime to like sex, or drinking beer (the underage drinking Kavanaugh engaged in would have been a crime-but one for which most of us would be found guilty). It isn’t even a crime to date a person who is known to have sex pretty early in a relationship. That is not what is troubling about Kavanaugh’s youthful errors. What is troubling is his inability to tell the truth about his past. 

4.    “Beach Week Ralph Club- biggest contributor. Judge Kavanagh seems to contradict his own words when he told the Senate Judiciary committee that entry in his high school yearbook that was a reference to his “weak” stomach. He is certainly in conflict with the recollections of his friends at the time, who say he wasn’t know for having a weak stomach, but rather for being a sloppy drunk. Again, Kavanaugh wouldn’t be the only person in Washington DC to have been a sloppy, belligerent drunk in their youth. He does seem to be unwilling to tell the truth about that past though, whether under oath, or not. 

5.    He as a history of being a partisan player, and has worked most consistently as a person whose raison d’etre is to see Republicans triumph over Democrats, to see a very specific brand of conservatism win at all costs over any liberal ideas. This isn’t a crime either. His angry ranting display, the disrespect, and hostility he showed Democratic Senators, his refusal to answer their questions must cast doubt on his ability to objectively perform the duties that are supposed to be above mere party affiliation. Judge Kavanaugh is a person who, according to David Brock, mouthed the word “Bitch” whenever he saw a picture of Hillary Clinton. Such partisan commitments are also no crime, but they can’t be part of a Supreme Court Justice’s deliberations. The Supreme Court is supposed to be a non-partisan place where our best and brightest examine the law, and let that knowledge of the law guide them. After Kavanaugh’s angry ranting, and his history as a partisan player, do you think he can set his party affiliation aside and objectively parse the law?

At the end of the day, we will probably never know, to our satisfaction, whether or not Ford or Kavanaugh are telling the truth, or if they both are, or if the truth is more complicated. The events in question are now decades in the past. What we can assess, and what you Senator must honestly assess, is whether Judge Kavanaugh’s behavior in the here and the now reveals a person brimming with personal integrity, and deep personal commitments to honesty and truth, or if his behavior reveals a character deeply unfit to the highest court in our land. We live in a deeply partisan world, but don’t let the specter of losing an election, or being criticized by the President or members of your party stop you from making the right choice. History is watching, as is the nation. Do the right thing and vote no on Kavanaugh.