Trump using lame duck period to settle old scores and force through a few more pet projects

Have you ever wondered why there is such an unconscionably long delay between an American presidential election and the new president's inauguration? The election was on November 3rd; Joe Biden's inauguration will not be until January 20th, a full ten weeks later.

To us non-Americans, it seems ridiculous, and a recipe for potential disaster as the old president plays out his "lame duck" period, still with full presidential powers. Of course, the US Constitution was not designed with a spiteful and unpredictable character like Donald Trump in mind, but why is it even like that?

Well, supposedly, the period was instituted as a deliberate measure to allow a smooth changeover to occur (ha!), at a time when communications were poor in a large and still developing country. In fact, the very first election, in 1789, allowed for SIX MONTHS from election to official inauguration. It was rapidly realized that this was too long, so it was changed to four months. This period continued until 1932, when Herbert Hoover's dithering at the height of the Great Depression persuaded Congress that even that was too long, and it was changed to the current two-and-a-half months, through the passing of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, so that President-Elect Franklin Roosevelt could come in and actually do something.

Fast forward to 2020, and Trump is using the period to sow doubt and mistrust, doing his level best to stage a coup. as well as to pass a bunch of measures that will only have to be reversed by the new president. 

He has already started, including firing a bunch of people in Homeland Security, FBI and CIA and installing his own people, selling off oil drilling leases in the protected lands of the Arctic National Refuge, cutting military troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and continuing to undo as many key environmental regulations and safeguards as he can. He is known to be planning to make a slew of ill-advised judicial pardons (as all presidents tend to do). There are rumours he is even planning a military strike against Iran, which could foment all-out war. Given that even he must know that he only has a limited period in power now, this could prove to be the scariest part of his whole administration.

And it's not only Trump that is abusing the system. Israel's Benjamin Natanyahu (something of a lame duck Prime Minister himself) is using the interim period while he still has an ally in the White House to push through more (many more) illegal settlements on the Palestinian lands of the West Bank and Golan Heights, as well as agressively attacking Iranian military targets in Syria. It's anyone's guess what others among Trump's dictator and populist friends (Putin, Erdoğan, Kim, López Obrador, name your favourite unpleasant leader here) may be planning.

Time for a new Amendment to the 20th Amendment?

Why we need to lock down hard, not pussyfoot around the pandemic

Globe and Mail columnist André Picard hit the nail on the head in his column recently, including snippets like, "If you want to halt the spread of a pandemic illness, half measures are not sufficient", "You can't slow the spread of the coronavirus by loosening restrictions", and finally, "As long as we have high levels of circulating virus ...  the economy won't thrive". 

Then, in a later article, Picard drives his point home even more forcefully: "They [the politicians] have to justify why they are  ignoring sound advice, and bear the consequences", and, "If your position is that businesses must remain open at all costs, and infections, hospitalizations and deaths be damned, then say so". Ouch!

So, here's how I see it.

I think everyone understands that locking down hurts the economy, so we have to be ready and willing to support it (probably at the federal level, as they have access to more, and cheaper, borrowing), in full knowledge that we will be paying for it for years to come. People also understand that a lockdown has mental health implications for some people - anxiety, depression, PTSD, even suicidal thoughts - and we need to be ready and willing to deal with that too, as well as possible (particularly the avoidance of suicides). And it too will cost money. But what would you prefer a month or two of highly subsidized economy followed by relative normality, or a year plus of subsidized economy (which is what we are staring at now).

These repercussions, though, are of unknown magnitude and seriousness, and arguably easier to deal with than a long-term out-of-control pandemic, with all the deaths and long-term health problems that will necessarily accompany it. These are known unknowns, to borrow a phrase.

No-one is really going to be happy with the kind of low-level, simmering economy we have at the moment. And even that level of economic openness is still enabling a rapid rise in COVID cases and constant deaths. And in the meantime, people are still suffering from anxiety, depression, and other mental problems. This is not a situation we should be looking to continue. If our half-hearted semi-lockdown situation is causing economic malaise and psychologic trauma, then we should try and minimize it by a few weeks of really hard lockdown, and a return as soon as possible to near-normal.

We know that, as cases continue to rise and the hospitals reach saturation point, a full lockdown is going be needed at some point. Surely, it is better to do it now, before things get any worse and an even longer lockdown becomes necessary. If we just muddle along as we are now, cases and deaths will continue to rise, and we will be stuck in this for MANY MONTHS more.

If we are worried about how a lockdown impinges on people's civil liberties - this is Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's line: "A lockdown constitutes a massive invasion of the exercise of people's fundamental rights" - well, sometimes we need to trample the rights of a few in the short term to ensure the rights of the many in the long term. Right now, MY rights (and, more importantly, the rights of medical personnel and essential workers) are being compromised by those individuals who insist on pretending that everything is normal and that parties and crowded bars are acceptable. 

The other conservative argument we hear a lot is, "I trust the public to do the right thing, and they don't need nannying". Even Justin Trudeau echoed this sentiment when talking to these very same premiers. How is that working for you Alberta? Manitoba? USA? Some of us have been doing the right thing since Day 1 (although even we have found ourselves taking some sloppy shortcuts in the absence of strong, clear, enforced rules), but some people feel that their own personal needs and way of life is more important than the general good.

But it can be done, with good simple messaging and strong policing. If the notoriously independent and individualist Australian people are willing to submit to a lockdown like the city of Melbourne imposed recently - and what a resounding success that was: ZERO cases for two weeks now, after a spike in cases almost as bad as Canada is now experiencing, with no riots, only minor protests, and the politicians involved are now riding a wave of popularity - then I'm sure Canadians can manage it. And yes, it will cost money too (the financial safety net instituted by Australia is significantly more generous than that available anywhere in Canada). The residents of Melbourne, and the rest of Australia and New Zealand and a handful of other proactive countries, are living a near-as-damn-it-normal life right now. If you need an inspiring story, then read that one.

So, we need to return to a much more serious lockdown than we are seeing currently. (In fact, this should have been done way back in early September, when it was clear that a second wave was starting.) Pretty much the whole medical establishment is in agreement on this, other than a few outliers of the Barrington Declaration persuasion. Yes, we're all suffering from "pandemic fatigue", but if my analysis is correct, we're just going to have to suck it up and go for it, otherwise this thing will go on indefinitely. A vaccine, which we may or may not get sometime in the next year or so, may or may not help long term, but we can't put all out eggs in that basket (and don't even get me started on herd immunity).

This does, however, require substantial political will and leadership, and we are just not seeing that from the current crop of conservative premiers in Canada (and the federal government understandably does not want to cross swords with the provinces on yet another major issue).

We are back to the "old" Doug Ford just when we can least afford it

Doug Ford has officially lost the plot and, with it, the credibility and authority needed to lead a province through this COVID-19 pandemic.

To be honest, he has not been as convincing in this role as many people had hoped earlier in the virus, when he seemed surprisingly empathetic, even if not very effective. People talked about the "new" Doug Ford, which was certainly an improvement over the old one that was voted into power, and that spent his first several months frantically undoing any good and progressive changes the Liberals managed to introduce during their tenure.

Ford is a populist who relies on dog-whistle politics and short-term gratification with no thought for the future, although he is certainly no Donald Trump, and I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. On the coronavirus, he genuinely seemed to get it for a while, talking about "following the science" and "flattening the curve", and expressing incomprehension and outrage at the "yahoos" who weren't willing to follow the rules and do their bit towards breaking the transmission of the virus.

He might have retained the goodwill of a good proportion of Ontarians, but I think that most people (apart from the more hardline business types and those of a more libertarian bent) have come to realize that he has lost his way during the second, and much more powerful, wave of the virus. He seems to be bending away from the medical community, and towards his more conservative and business-orientated base, perhaps concerned about his positioning for the next provincial election. 

His most recent pronouncements on how to deal with the huge and accelerating increases in case loads in Toronto and Peel region (and to a lesser extent the surrounding areas of York, Halton and Durham) have been way off the mark according to the medical authorities. The Ontario Medical Association (OMA) does not beat about the bush when it says: "It is clear the new tiered framework is not enough to control the virus, which is spreading among more and more people". What the new system designates as a "red zone", for example, actually allows for a significant relaxation of current restrictions, not a tightening of it. 

Public Health Ontario (PHO) did not sign off on the latest colour-coded tiered regional system - despite Ford's almost Trumpian protestations that he was following their advice, and that black is in fact white - and they suggest that the criteria for relaxation of lockdown rules are much too lax, in fact four times too lax. Ford calls the PHO's opinions, "one doctor's perspective", although it seems to be the opinion of pretty much the whole medical community in Ontario. The Ontario COVID-19 modelling consensus table claims it was not consulted at all about the new guidelines, again despite the Health Minister's express claims to the contrary. Who would you believe, the doctors or the politicians?

Toronto and Peel, the hardest hit areas in the second wave, and the ones most at risk from an uncontrolled runaway deteriotation in the situation (which arguably is already underway), are basically ignoring the provincial guidelines and instituting their own stricter guidelines, making the Ontario rules all but redundant. Ford has some tame officials and enablers among the health authorities who seem to be willing to back him up (for example, the almost universally derided Ontario chief medical officer of health, Dr. David Williams), but he clearly does not have the support and the respect of the province's largest cities or the province's medical authorities.

For one thing, the new regs are way too complicated, and nobody really understands them (including the Ontario government, I suspect). And they are cetainly not strict enough, given that things are way worse now than they ever were in March, when a full shutdown was the correct decision. Ford says that he will "not hesitate for a second if we have to go further". Er, OK, now would be good. You're hesitating right now.

So, anyway, back to my original point: I guess we are back to the old Doug Ford at the very time when we can least afford it.

There was no world-dominating female chess player like on Queen's Gambit

Even though I am not a chess player myself, I have been enjoying the mini-series Queen's Gambit on Netflix. It has the air of a "based on a true story" story, so I was a bit surprised when I found out it wasn't based on a true story at all, but on an entirely fictional Walter Tevis novel.

So, the protagonist of the series, the quirky female chess prodigy who goes off the rails but then finds love, is very much fictional. This is not to say that there have been no female chess prodigies: the Hungarian Grandmaster Judit Polgár, still widely regarded as the greatest female chess player ever, became the youngest ever Grandmaster in 1991. But, even at her peak, she only ever reached No. 8 in the world ranking, and she remains the only woman ever to have so much as qualified for a World Championship tournament. (And don't me started on her and her sisters' upbringing, and their father's weird experiment to prove that "Geniuses are made, not born").

But it seems to be a fact that there are relatively few great female chess players. Only 31 out of 1,429 chess Grandmasters are female - about 2% - and there are only 2 women who rank in the top 100 (as of 2015). And even this is a very recent development: Georgia's Nona Gashprindashvili became the first ever female Grandmaster in 1978, and even she did not make the World Championship. 

Why, then, are women not able to compete with men in an intellectual pursuit like chess, and why do so few women and girls even play the game? 

Apparently, this wasn't always the case. In medieval times, women were as likely to play it as men. But this was not the same game as we have today; it was a leisurely game played between lords and ladies. All this changed in the 17th century with some important rule changes in the game, principally the changes to the queen and the bishop, which used to be relatively weak pieces with a very limited range of movement, but became powerful pieces able to range widely across the board. This (somehow) had the effect of making chess into a much more competitive and aggressive game, one considered unsuitable for ladies to partake in.

Since then, and up until very recently, it has never quite been considered a ladylike pursuit, much like it would never have occurred to 18th or 19th century women to play cricket or rugby. And male chauvinist attitudes only reinforced this, leading many to conclude that because they didn't play it competitively, they were constitutionally unable to. As recently as 1962, famous US Grandmaster Bobby Fischer opined, "They're all weak, all women. They're stupid compared to men. They shouldn't play chess, you know." Even more recently, Grandmaster Nigel Short suggested that women "just don't have the killer instinct".

At any rate, the main reason there are so few women at the top of chess seems to be that there are so few at the bottom too. Not that many girls take up the pastime in the first place, and those that do tend not to want to pursue it to a competitive level, given the preponderance of loud, aggressive and hyper-competitive boys in competitions, especially during the socially awkward teenage years. Teemage girls are more likely to abandon chess and take up other, perhaps more social, hobbies. 

There is even something called "stereotype threat": studies have shown that young girls are already so aware of the stereotype that "boys are good at chess", that they play differently against boys, less confidently and generally worse. And another study showed that, when boys play girls, they often play even more aggressively than when they play other boys, for some obscure psychological reason.

Another issue, which leads on from all this, is the lack of female coaches, and the fact that most parents are understably reticent to let their teenage daughter hang out with some older guy, supposedly playing chess all day. And neither would they want to get into the logistical issues around sharing hotel rooms (or paying for two rooms) while attending competitions. Not to mention that girls need to be coached differently (and may even need to be taught to be more competitive, unlike boys).

And then, of course, there is the whole issue of why there is such as thing as the Women's World Chess Championship, open only to women, separate from the World Chess Championship, which is technically open to men and women (before 1986, it was called the Men's World Chess Championship, and was NOT open to women). I understand the need for separate women's competitions in, say, tennis or soccer: there are umavoidable physical differences that make the two games very different. But an intellectual sport like chess? 

Sexist? Redundant? Limiting? Well, maybe, but the separate women's chess championship has many apologists who maintain that it is not an admission of inferiority. Notably, Judit Polgár always refused to play in the women's championship (although maybe her domineering father wouldn't let her!), and she argues that girls that only play against other girls end up limiting themselves and their ability to improve. Certainly, having a separate competition is not going to help those youmg girls overcome those stereotypes we talked about earlier.

AOC airs her grievance over the Democrats' election performance

An interview with the ever-outspoken Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveals her belief that the reason the Democrats did not perform better during the 2020 election was because the party is too centrist and does not have enough "core competencies", whatever that might mean.

This is in direct contravention to the complaints of some other Democrats that it was the very emphasis on Black Lives Matter and the Green New Deal by Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other candidates that hurt the party. This election has definitely not healed the left-centre rift in the Democratic Party and, now that the election is over those grievances will start to surface again.

I do agree with much of what AOC says, but I'm not with her on this one. She seems to have a very inflated idea of how radical the USA actually is. She won her own Bronx, New York, area easily, but her policy beliefs would just not fly in less radical, less urban settings. And, like it or not, the Democrats need at least some of those votes to survive.

However much I might approve of Bernie Sanders' philosophies, I don't believe that he was the right leader for the times. A much more affable, middle-of-the-road candidate like Joe Biden does not excite me at all, but if the No. 1 job was to defeat Donald Trump, then he was probably a better bet than an in-your-face hard-left barn-stormer like Sanders. I can't see many middle-class voters who plumped for Trump in 2016 converting to Bernie Sanders overnight; I can, however, see them sliding the much shorter distance to a more moderate centrist like Joe Biden, if only because he seems like a nice guy, and Americans have probably had enough of stress and confrontation for a while.

The demographics of the US election

There was a fascinating analysis of US voting demographics in the Globe and Mail this weekend (based on Associated Press' data).

It reveals the extent to which Joe Biden can thank women and black people for his slim victory, and the extent to which white Americans, particularly white male Americans, still find themselves able to support Trump and Trumpism, despite the unmitigated disaster of the last four years.

Overall, 55% of women voted for Biden (compared to 44% for Trump), while only 46% of men voted for Biden (52% for Trump). When we start to take ethnicity into account, the discrepancy becomes much more stark: white people voted overwhelmingly for Trump (59% of white men, 52% of white women), while black people voted even more overwhmingly for Biden (87% of black men and a huge 93% of black women), with Latinxs somewhere in between (59% of Latinos and 66% of Latinas voted for Biden). 

The other analysis that sticks out like a sore thumb concerns where people live. Urban voters overwhelmingly voted for Biden rather than Trump (65%-33%), while rural voters overwhelmingly voted for Trump rather than Biden (also 65%-33%). Suburban and small town voters fall neatly and logically between those two extremes. This is the main reason the American electoral map shows such a marked pattern, one that is largely repeated election after election, with the east coast and west coasts and the north solid blue, and the more sparsely-populated centre and south of the country mainly red (although this has started to change to some extent, as ethnic demographics change and states like Arizona and Georgia start to turn blue).

Conpared to these demographics, considerations of income and education levels pale into insignificance, although generally speaking the more educated the more likely people are to vote for Biden, and lower income and higher income earners are more likely to lean Democrat, and middle income earners more likely to lean Relublican.

Trump tweets from golf course

Channelling his inner seven-year old, Donald Trump tweets, "I WON THIS ELECTION BY A LOT!" - from a golf course!

Inspired!

Pro-Trump armed protesters still holding voting centres hostage

I can't believe I'm still writing about the US election on November 7th, but I'm still writing about the US election on November 7th ...

It's just a bit unfathomable and surreal to us outsiders that there are openly armed citizens wandering around outside American polling stations where votes are still being counted. 

Mind you, it's pretty unfathomable to most people that they are still counting votes at this point. It's notnlike we didn't know that this would happen. Could they not just have passed a nationwide law specifying that postal ballots need to be received a week before election day, and that election centres need to have them counted before election day? That would have avoided all of this chaos and stress, the results would have been known on election day, and there would not be openly armed citizens wandering around outside American polling stations where votes are still being counted.

Pro-Trump protesters carrying rifles and hand-guns have been rallying around vote tabulation centres in Phoenix, Detroit, Philadelphia and other cities where Donald Trump's initial vote surge appears to be dissipating as postal votes are counted, shouting "Stop the steal!" and "Arrest the poll workers!" and "Make Elections Fair Again!" (I kid you not), responding to Trump's repeated and unfounded claims that illegal things are happening and his election is being stolen from under his feet. A Hummer with two armed personnel with illegal guns was detained after a tip-off. Many election officials legitomately fear for their lives.

Meanwhile, African countries are pointing am accusing finger at the USA, which has repeatedly advised them on how democratic elections should be run.