The Marchmaine personal history of laundry would scandalize all of you... so I'll have to save it for my post-mortem memoirs.

We finally finished our Screen Porch remodel... my wife has claimed it as her attached she-shed... now my duty is to allocate funds to the decorating and furnishing thereof - but more importantly - to not have a helpful opinion on said furnishing or decorating, which is much harder. I may already have failed.

I didn't say it *would* work, I just pointed out how going through Manchin which everyone thinks is the way to go is, in fact, not the way to go.

But then, I'm not convinced the DEMs really want it to go... but if Ezra's right and maybe they do? Then that's the sort of pitch you're making to back-benchers.

Joe Manchin doesn't want it to go because it makes Manchin king... the interesting play is whether you can find an R or two who will gamble that D overreach will deliver them a filibuster free Senate and congress for 2022 and 2024.

I would be a weird pitch but it would look like this:

Schumer: Remember how we nuked the filibuster for Judicial appointments and y'all got the greenlight to keep nuking and then you got all those judges you wanted? Well, if you support us now we'll nuke the filibuster for good... and who knows, maybe you'll get to do the whole judges thing again, but this time with legislation.

Hawley: You make an interesting point, sir.

I understand; we differ on the judgment Pence rendered... I'm pushing back on the idea that Pence was constitutionally bound not to exercise that judgment.

So, to your original point, one could (and you do) argue that Pence did not deem it 25th worthy at the moment... but I would not cite that as loyalty to the constitution, but a much lower standard of his judgement of whether to invoke the 25th.

Sportball terms for Wins-above-replacement and Just-another-guy ... basically your average professional player at that position.

Right, the reality is we're governed primarily by 0's pretending they are +'s ... if the institutions are strong, rightly aligned, and pointed in the correct direction this is a recipe for ... well ... status quo.

We only really get +7 politicians maybe once every couple/few generations. They are the ones who build the movement, align the personnel, institutions and stakeholders with policies before they grab the brass ring.

On the 25th, I'll push back gently... I think there's a legitimate case to be considered.

I think that it is reasonable to suspect Trump was not mentally competent in the last couple of months. He was either pathologically lying or believed a lie pathologically. While the 25th may not have withstood a mid-term challenge, invoking it within the final 2-weeks given the erratic actions of the President seem perfectly constitutionally defensible.

Pence had to make a judgement call on that, and I'll come clean that I think he prudentially made the wrong decision, but I disagree that it is defensible on Constitutional grounds... or, more precisely, that if he reasoned that he 'couldn't' do what he thought he should do on constitutional grounds, then he reasoned incorrectly.

As the only person who couldn't be fired by Trump, a better man would have leveraged his position to greater advantage... either as an insider or an outsider frozen by the President. As such he delivered a Mike Pence 0 WAR performance... but as you say, to his credit he fulfilled the baseline of his duty to his office and by offset relief illustrated the full depravity of Trump.

Heh, sad. :-)

Thanks! One hits upon the occasional nugget and all that. Appreciate the GoT re-visits.

"This administration, staffed up with plenty of Obama and Clinton-era veterans, knows how to wield power and aren’t going to waste a second in doing so."

Personnel is policy.

Biden is Hope and Change without the Hope and Change.

But I agree with both your negative assessment of Trump (you can't do anything without building the supporting policy infrastructure of people, institutions and stakeholders) and positive assessment of Biden (He has the well worn infrastructure to work with).

I'm agnostic on whether he will 'accomplish' anything of significance ... other than not being Trump... and maybe a little pessimistic given your observation quoted first that what ever he does accomplish is pre-written and only sets the stage for disaffection from the left and right alike.

Surprise me Joe Biden.

I'm not sure I agree that transfers have been precarious. In my lifetime maybe 1968, if we squint? Then off the top of my head I could see Jackson, Lincoln and Hayes... maybe with a few lesser knowns? Otherwise a remarkable run, really.

I guess I'm suggesting sort of the opposite, that the Truce mostly holds, not that War almost always nearly wins.

What I'm noticing is that America isn't really using the language of Truce and Plurality anymore. I don't think we ever had Unity, if that's what you mean... but strangely calls for Unity these days strike me as calls for war... a Unity of elimination.

Maybe we've always been at War with varying degrees and terms of Truce.

Except I don't think there's any coherent "we" in that sentence. But I do think there's a coherent Truce.

Fair point... I've never read Marvel comics... I can't say I've discerned any sort of meta-narrative from the movies, and that makes me assume there's no coherent meta-narrative/metaphysics I need to consider. The story goes where the story goes, and where needed the story is violated (retconned) to make it go where it now needs to go.

If you told me that Marvel has an important metaphysics undergirding the entire thing that I should really grapple with first... then I'd want to grapple with that for fear of mis-understanding the movies.

Now you are probably going to ruin Marvel movies for me like I'm attempting to ruin LotR for everyone else? :-)

That's what Domestic Terrorism Laws are for.

I certainly take your point that Divorce is very impractical... maybe impossible. Are we sure the ruling out Divorce means we've also ruled out War? I'm not so sure. Not that we'd start it... they would start it, of course.

"How do you mess up people fighting against evil?"

Agency... a'la Ents. :-)

A Good point. I suppose it depends. As pure plot/spectacle the movies are 'close enough.' But I'm not sure books are simply plot/spectacle devices. So if one is interested in more than the base narrative, then it's important to get the meta-narrative aligned.

As I note below, I think this is the primary deficiency of GRRM and why, ultimately, his novels *only* work as subversive narrative... they assume we know the meta-narrative. GRRM fails once it is necessary to square the narrative with the meta. See also LOST.

I can certainly appreciate a movie maker who is 'grappling' with a work and makes some conscious decisions that we as participants can contemplate and grapple with as well.

A fun little example of this was the most recent Emma... which I think is very well done indeed (despite dubious editorial choices) but precisely because I can see that the makers are grappling with the fact that they don't really like Emma. It's an anti-Emmma... and that's ok as far as Art goes. But precisely because we can discuss how and in what way its *not* Emma and not trying to do Emma and getting it wrong.

Now, your movie goer who has no Idea who Emma is? They should not watch this movie without first learning about Emma.

Its certainly true that it happens more often than not; but there are many movies that are as good (a few better) than the books. It's possible, but by far the exception.

That why, I think, the critique stands... because we have seen movies that adapt the book so the failures demand explanation.

For me, I'm fine with Jackson's editorial choices (and his artistic/stylistic choices) but I draw the line when he changes the narrative such that it does violence to a character and/or philosophical point in the book.

A simple example is having the Ents arrive at the wrong conclusion in the movie... to be corrected by Merry/Pippin. There's no actual Plot reason for this... nothing added, nothing gained. Simple deviation for no commensurate good.

Agreed... that's where GRRM really shines... we *love* teams and cultures and archetypes. We love the *idea* of Honor-bound Northmen wielding large weapons plus knightly duchies and exotic spear wielding southerners who might (or might not) be subtle practitioners of poison.

And of course their buildings, their climate, their environs and their culture all inform how they fight, rule and scheme... That's world-building 101. Even Terry Brooks could do that (well, as long as he had someone to copy he could).

That's what makes his books delicious... but its also why he couldn't finish (I surmise). Once you've run out of places to describe and machinations to weave you have to land the story... and that requires a meta-narrative about why tropes were subverted and what is verted in its place. GRRM couldn't vert.

If I futilely attempt to avoid being 'that guy' by citing Kristen's early post about D&D just driving from event to event... that's the problem with the Army of the Dead. Jackson wanted the CGI more than he wanted the tale.

The Oathbreakers weren't that numerous nor all-powerful (among their weapons were fear...) Aragorn used them to lift the siege of Pelargir to bring reinforcements, human reinforcements. It also subverts the Theseus theme where Aragorn sails to Gondor with the Black Corsair ships of Umbar - which is the event that drives Denethor to his final despair. Denethor is the archetype of despair... he knows all, but abandons hope... so when he sees the Black Sails it is confirmation of the Destruction he foresees (with the Palantir) so he abandons hope and the moment hope arrives. Turning Denethor into a Daddy issue is such a Boomer thing. And these are the sorts of subtle errors that ... "well, it was necessary for the plot" ... just plain misses. Not to mention the ever-present problem of scale... everything in the Jackson movies is just too numerous... too big... too, well, despair inducing.

Riffing on InMD and Michael's comments about LOTR and Dune... my change-up would be that both of those books are fundamentally books exploring metaphysics and the plot is driven by that. GRRM's failure (and almost all modern fiction) is precisely this point... they don't have the metaphysics aligned so their plots fall apart.

Which is to say, if you just default to what's familiar like England, Kings, Lords and Ladies, then it doesn't make sense to have an Ice King and R'hllor... to have a Church where everyone is a skeptic... yet the day-to-day world is suffused with miracles that would make the Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett drop to their knees and worship on the spot.

So while I've read all of GRRM's GoT books, he's at best 2nd tier because he thought making fun / subverting the Metaphysics would free him from it, but in the end it defeated him. Incidentally, this is more or less true of Brian Herbert and his pet writer... they get the plot but not the point.

I remember *not* liking Rocky & Bullwinkle when it was 'age appropriate' and wondering whether the age at which it might be appropriate was wrong.

For this weekend I'm trying to get our young contractor to multi-thread instead of single thread... the project is nearly complete, but he's being overly cautious about certain things being 100% complete before working on some other thing... which leads to total inaction without commensurate gain.

What's this new Scrum technique all'y'all are talking about?

We're so modern we had a second, warm water well dug last year ;-)

Our one major vulnerability on the homestead is water... if the power goes out for an extended period (like 3-weeks) we're sunk and all the animals will be gone one way or another. I keep looking for Solar and/or hand pumps to augment the well, but I'm in that bad place where I can see the engineering specs, but can't build the engineering specs... and can't find someone who will.

At night when no one is looking, I get paranoid about all or our assumptions regarding electricity and it's omnipresence.

The area I work in tech is adjacent to "sentiment analysis" ... I hear it's come a long way in the past decade, but from what I hear, it still seems that sarcasm's a bitch. Should be using SarCaptcha.

I'm much too young for this to resonate on a household basis... but man, winter, water, farm, and animals give me some feels. The self draining pump was a great invention.