The New Neo

Nunes and the leaks

Posted on April 1, 2017 by neoApril 2, 2017

Every scandal that comes down the pike is given the “gate” suffix these days. But this one really deserves it, because it involves evidence of the Obama administration spying on political rivals and then leaking information obtained in that effort:

Mr. Nunes earlier this week got his own source to show him a treasure trove of documents at a secure facility. Here are the relevant details:

First, there were dozens of documents with information about Trump officials. Second, the information these documents contained was not related to Russia. Third, while many reports did “mask” identities (referring, for instance, to “U.S. Person 1 or 2”) they were written in ways that made clear which Trump officials were being discussed. Fourth, in at least one instance, a Trump official other than Mr. Flynn was outright unmasked. Finally, these documents were circulated at the highest levels of government.

To sum up, Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration.

And yet the MSM seems oddly uninterested in this aspect of the story. What is the press interested in? The way in which Nunes received the information:

Meantime, few things match the ludicrous furor over Mr. Nunes’s source-meeting place, or his visit to brief Mr. Trump. Congress members must view most classified material on executive-branch grounds, since that’s the only way to access it physically. Having discovered the former administration’s surveillance of Trump officials, Mr. Nunes had a duty to let the White House know. (Imagine if he’d sat on it.) He could hardly let Democrats know first, since their only interest these days is in leaking and twisting stories. And the reason he held press briefings before and after his meeting with Mr. Trump was to be transparent about his purpose.

Hint to the press corps: If Mr. Nunes wanted to tip off the White House about his Russia probe, it’d be a lot easier to speed-dial Steve Bannon secretly from his office.

The left professes to care about government abuses of power. That’s only when the government is on the right.

Hawaii judge enjoins Trump from issuing executive orders

Posted on April 1, 2017 by neoApril 2, 2017

District Judge Derrick Watson of Hawaii has been in the news quite a bit lately. You may recall that he was one of several judges who issued orders in separate but similar cases to block Trump’s revised EO regarding travel from six Muslim nations. Even more recently, Judge Watson extended the order:

At a hearing in Honolulu on Wednesday [March 29], federal lawyers asked Watson to either dismiss that order or narrow the restrictions to apply to fewer parts of the travel ban.

Instead, Watson said he would turn the order into a preliminary injunction, which has the effect of extending his order blocking the travel ban for a longer period.

Watson said he would keep intact the restrictions on the travel ban — a block of its 90-day moratorium on travel to the U.S. from nationals of six majority-Muslim countries and its 120-day pause on new refugee resettlement.

But that’s not all. Today, in an unprecedented Saturday session, a ruling was issued in another case that had been ridiculed when it first was announced, that of students Justin Hattersea and Monica Slater of the University of Hawaii, who had sued to enjoin President Trump from issuing executive orders of any kind. Many legal experts had declared this suit absurd, stating that there is absolutely no precedent for declaring that plaintiffs Hattersea and Slater have standing to sue. But, as happened in the previous cases, the idea of standing was expanded:

Rules on “standing” mean that not just anybody can waltz into federal court and challenge government actions. To maintain an action, you must demonstrate that you have suffered a violation of a recognized right. To use the lingo of the courts, you must show that your injuries are “concrete and particularized.”…

[The court] used the hurt feelings (yes, really) of American residents and the hypothetical economic harm to American states and local institutions [to grant plaintiffs standing]…

The court granted an individual citizen standing to sue in part because he was “deeply saddened by the message [the executive orders] convey.”

Those quotes from the judge in the previous, narrower case were reiterated and expanded on today in the ruling on the broader case, from which this excerpt is taken:

Plaintiffs Battersea and Slater, students at the University of Hawaii, were not only “deeply saddened” by every single one of Trump’s executive orders and the messages they convey, but they are extremely stressed by his presidency as a whole. This stress has had major economic consequences for them both. Battersea has been so shaken ever since Trump’s election in November that he is doing poorly in school and has gone on academic probation, and his graduation from college (and therefore his future job prospects) is threatened. Slater has suffered so much distress that she has been forced to get an official companion animal, the upkeep of which is fairly expensive. She has also developed Post-Trump Stress Disorder and gone into therapy, another huge expense.

There is no question that plaintiffs have suffered from the Trump presidency and in particular from his executive orders as a group, and he is thus enjoined from issuing them.

Legal experts on the right have howled at the reasoning here, as has the Trump administration. But Trump’s team of lawyers must wait for the appeal process to go forward, and in the meantime Trump’s hands are tied. Any appeal will be to the 9th District, the court that previously upheld the order halting Trump’s travel ban, so it is highly likely that this present ruling will be upheld as well, and the case might end up going to the Supreme Court.

Dark energy may not exist

Posted on March 31, 2017 by neoMarch 31, 2017

I try to follow the general outlines of the current theories of theoretical physics, but it goes without saying that I don’t understand the math, and that I miss a lot of the details. So although I’d never even heard of “dark energy” before (antimatter yes; dark matter yes—and I think I had lumped dark matter and dark energy together), I’m interested in a report that calls into question the existence of dark energy:

According to the new study from Eé¶tvé¶s Loré¡nd University in Hungary and the University of Hawaii, the discrepancy that dark energy was “invented” to fill might have arisen from the parts of the theory that were glossed over for the sake of simplicity. The researchers set up a computer simulation of how the universe formed, based on its large-scale structure. That structure apparently takes the form of “foam,” where galaxies are found on the thin walls of each bubble, but large pockets in the middle are mostly devoid of both normal and dark matter.

The team simulated how gravity would affect matter in this structure and found that, rather than the universe expanding in a smooth, uniform manner, different parts of it would expand at different rates. Importantly, though, the overall average rate of expansion is still consistent with observations, and points to accelerated expansion. The end result is what the team calls the Avera model.

“The theory of general relativity is fundamental in understanding the way the universe evolves,” says Dobos. “We do not question its validity; we question the validity of the approximate solutions. Our findings rely on a mathematical conjecture which permits the differential expansion of space, consistent with general relativity, and they show how the formation of complex structures of matter affects the expansion. These issues were previously swept under the rug but taking them into account can explain the acceleration without the need for dark energy.”

There’s so much we don’t know, and although it’s fascinating to speculate I doubt we will ever know enough to truly understand the universe’s formation in the scientific sense. As a very young child I was taken with such questions and even dared to dream that I might enter the field of cosmology myself. I was good at math and science, but not that surpassingly good, as I realized some time late in my high school or early in my college career. I am in awe of those who can do this at a high level, though, and follow their work as best I can.

As for dark matter and dark energy, I’ll leave it for now with a nod to the poets

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,
And in the twilight wait for what will come.
The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,
Like flying words, will strike you as they fall;
But go, and if you listen she will call.
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal””
Luke Havergal.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that’s in your eyes;
But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies””
In eastern skies…

Or:

The End Of The World

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing ”” nothing at all.

And the music makers:

Why did Trump threaten the Freedom Caucus?

Posted on March 31, 2017 by neoMarch 31, 2017

We all know the superficial answer to the question of why Trump threatened the Republican members of Congress known as the Freedom Caucus: because they thwarted him in the passage of the Obamacare reform bill (Ryancare, Trumpcare, GOPcare, whatever you want to call it). But his action—that of a new president publicly threatening to oppose and topple an important wing of his own party during the next election—is unusual enough (at least, in this country) to draw attention and questions.

Was it a temper tantrum from a juvenile president angry at not getting his way?

Was it a well-thought-out strategy designed to intimidate and control some members of Congress who were getting too big (and too contrary) for their britches?

Was it payback to the conservatives who failed to back him sufficiently during his campaign?

And will it have any effect at all (other than bringing joy to the hearts of liberals everywhere)? Will it actually intimidate the members of the Freedom Caucus?

I’ll take that last question first: no. For example:

“It didn’t take long for the swamp to drain @realDonaldTrump,” tweeted Rep. Justin Amash, R-Mich. “No shame, Mr. President. Almost everyone succumbs to the D.C. Establishment.”…

As for a possible challenge in 2018, [Rep. Trent] Franks said: “If somebody can get to the right of me in the primaries God bless them.”

That response from Franks prompts the question of what sort of candidates would Trump try to replace the Freedom Caucus members with—moderates? Trump lackeys?:

Recruiting primary opponents to run against sitting House Republicans is easier said than done, said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor of The Cook Political Report.

For one thing, it will be hard to find challengers more conservative than many Freedom Caucus members, Duffy said. There also may not be many establishment Republicans willing to be considered “Trump’s candidate” in a tough primary race.

“I think he might believe he can recruit candidates,” she said, “because he’s never actually had to do it.”

There are a lot of things Trump has never done before that he thinks he will be able to do. It’s part of the confidence that reassured and heartened a lot of people who voted for him—that, and his business record. I was not one of those reassured and heartened people, and I’m still not. I’m happy with some of Trump’s moves, particularly the nomination of Gorsuch. And I’m happy, very happy, that Hillary Clinton isn’t president. But there are a lot of “buts.”

Nor am I surprised at these anti-Freedom Caucus tweets of Trump’s (which I feel are empty threats so far). Trump has a long record of attacking and threatening anyone who crosses him, and it goes back way before he entered politics. I agree with this analysis:

Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political consultant based in Texas, said there is “a natural contrast” between Trump and many GOP conservatives, one that may be deeper any side realizes.

“Donald Trump is all about deals and the Freedom Caucus is all about principles,” Mackowiak said. “I’m not sure it can be fixed on health care, and the more frustrated Trump gets, the more likely he will be to try to cut deals with Democrats.”

It’s hard to say how a split would affect the 2018 elections, Mackowiak said, though he added: “A narrower (Republican) majority in the next Congress would make Trump and Ryan’s job even harder than it is now.”

It is my impression that Trump wanted a bill passed, and he wanted to pass it quickly and then to move on to other things. On what points did Trump and the Freedom Caucus disagree? I couldn’t find too many articles on that, but here’s one. It appears to me to be a valid disagreement between the two sides on how reconciliation would work and what the bill would be allowed to cover, but it also seems to me that this was a disagreement that could have been ironed out as the answers to those questions were clarified with more time.

But Trump was determined to rush it:

Mick Mulvaney told Republicans behind the doors behind me, he said that the president wants a vote tomorrow, and is moving on after this vote regardless of what happens.”

A source from within the room told Bash that if the bill doesn’t pass, Trump said “he is moving on, and they will be stuck with Obamacare.”

Another threat that didn’t work. Of perhaps it did work, depending on Trump’s goal. A lot of people (me included) have pointed out that Trump is somewhat to the left on health care reform, and that he probably only added that campaign rhetoric about repealing Obamacare because he figured it would help him win, rather than out of any sense of outrage at Obamacare itself. Therefore his idea of a good system to replace it is not going to resemble the ideas of a conservative, because on this issue he isn’t conservative at all. So perhaps his goal all the time was to get a green light to work with Democrats to tweak Obamacare a bit but essentially leave it in place, and ignore and condemn the conservative wing of the GOP in the process.

However, I have little doubt that, if that’s the case, most of Trump’s more avid supporters will shrug and excuse it—and blame Congress instead.

How I got started as a blogger

Posted on March 31, 2017 by neoMarch 31, 2017

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of a previous post.]

When blogger Andrew Sullivan bit the blogging dust and quit, I took special note of his departure for personal reasons, because you might actually say that it’s actually because of Sullivan that I became a blogger myself.

When I first began reading blogs around 2002 and was shy even about commenting on them, back when Sullivan actually seemed to have some reasonable things to say, his was one of the blogs I read daily. He used to feature a single email a day from a reader, one he thought particularly noteworthy and wanted to highlight. He didn’t have comments (I don’t think his blog ever featured comments, which I think was a failing), but he had huge traffic back then. So if your email to Sullivan was one of the lucky few published there, it was assured a very wide audience indeed.

I took to emailing him quite regularly with my own point of view, and Sullivan (or some aide or interne of his) seemed to like what I had to say, because my email was often the one featured. But after a year or two of this, one day when my son was visiting me he said, “Why are you working so hard for Andrew Sullivan?”

His point was that I was spending hours on these emails to Sullivan, which were really tantamount to blog posts, and why? “Why not start your own blog?” he added.

This was an idea that literally had never occurred to me before. I’m not at all sure that, without my son asking me that question, it ever would have occurred to me. As soon as he asked it I rejected the idea. “Never!” I said. “I’ll never do that!”

But my son went to Blogger and showed me how easy it was to set one up. “No!” I said. Not interested.

But in a spirit of fun, he asked me to choose a name for the blog, a color, a template, and he designed one for me. It took about five minutes, and there it was.

“I’ll never use it,” I assured him. “You’re wasting your time.”

“Well, it’ll be there anyway, just in case you change your mind.”

I didn’t change my mind, at least not right away. The first few posts I put up there a while later were just copies of emails I’d sent to Sullivan which had been published on his blog, and I published them on my own blog out of boredom and just to see how the whole process worked. I didn’t have a sitemeter, because there didn’t seem to be any traffic on the blog and I didn’t expect that there ever would be.

The election of 2004 came and went, and I hardly ever posted anything. But in February of 2005, for reasons I no longer recall (although I wish I did), I decided to post more often, although not yet every day, to see what would happen if I tried to do this blogging thing in a more serious way.

What had changed my mind? I don’t know; my recollection is that it was just an idea that came one day, an experiment: if I post nearly every day, and try to network with other bloggers and send them links, what would happen? I figured I’d try it for a month or two—and install a sitemeter, to monitor my progress—and if nothing changed I’d give it up. Things took off much more quickly than I’d thought they would, thanks in no small measure to helpful and simpatico bloggers such as the late Norm Geras, Dr. Sanity, and Gerard Vanderleun of American Digest. The rest, as they say, is history.

Terror plot in Italy thwarted

Posted on March 30, 2017 by neoMarch 30, 2017

This is a curious article. It describes the arrest of three men in Venice who were allegedly planning an attack on the Rialto Bridge, out of admiration for and in imitation of the recent attack on Westminster Bridge in London.

I can’t quite make out from the information in the article how far the planning had gone (it doesn’t sound like very far), but I noticed two things of interest.

The first is that the arrests were made as a result of telephone surveillance, triggered by a visit to Syria:

In wire-tapped telephone conversations, the suspects were recorded appearing to celebrate last week’s attack in London, in which Muslim convert Khalid Masood, 52, drove a car into crowds walking across Westminster Bridge, killing three people, before fatally stabbing a policeman, Keith Palmer, outside Parliament.

A phone intercept caught one of the men telling another: “You’ll go straight to paradise because of all the infidels in Venice. Put a bomb on the Rialto.”

In another conversation, one of the men said: “I can’t wait to take an oath to Allah. If they let me take the oath, I’m ready to die.”…

Police had kept the alleged cell under surveillance for months. The undercover operation began last year after one of the men came back from a trip to Syria. All had residency permits and were living in Italy legally. “There was a lot of talk about unconditional support to Isil. It wasn’t just theory and dogma,” said Mr D’Ippolito. The suspects were close to moving towards “planning and projects”, he said.

And the second is that the three men were Kosovars. I had not realized that Kosovars were especially simpatico with ISIS, but apparently there is a sizeable group that is:

Around 300 Kosovars have gone to fight with Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq, including Isil and al-Nusra Front.

Kosovo once had the dubious distinction of producing the highest number, per capita, of “foreign fighters” of any country in Europe. The number of Kosovars joining extremist groups has waned in the last year, partly as a result of the government cracking down on recruitment by radical imams and partly because of an education campaign.

Kosovars are overwhelmingly Muslim. But until now they have been seen as overwhelmingly moderate in their brand of Islam, and as friends of the west and as Europeans. That is probably still true of the vast majority. But, as this incident demonstrates, there are also worrisome pockets of radicalized Kosovars who are vulnerable to ISIS’ siren call.

Let’s hear it for the editors of the LA Times

Posted on March 30, 2017 by neoMarch 30, 2017

That title wasn’t sarcasm; I mean it.

The editors of the Los Angeles Times thinks it was overreach for California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra to charge the makers of the Planned Parenthood videos with crimes:

There’s no question that anti-abortion activist David Daleiden surreptitiously recorded healthcare and biomedical services employees across the state of California with the intent of discrediting the healthcare provider, Planned Parenthood ”” something his heavily edited videos failed to do. There’s also no question that it’s against state law to record confidential conversations without the consent of all the parties involved.

But that doesn’t mean that California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra should have charged Daleiden and his co-conspirator, Susan Merritt, with 15 felony counts ”” one for each of the 14 people recorded, and a 15th for conspiracy. It’s disturbingly aggressive for Becerra to apply this criminal statute to people who were trying to influence a contested issue of public policy, regardless of how sound or popular that policy may be. Planned Parenthood and biomedical company StemExpress, which was also featured in the videos, have another remedy for the harm that was done to them: They can sue Daleiden and Merritt for damages. The state doesn’t need to threaten the pair with prison time.

The LA Times claim consistency in this, whether the alleged offenders being charged are on the left or the right:

In similar cases, we have denounced moves to criminalize such behavior, especially in the case of animal welfare investigators who have gone undercover at slaughterhouses and other agricultural businesses to secretly record horrific and illegal abuses of animals. That work, too, is aimed at revealing wrongdoing and changing public policy.

That’s why the state law forbidding recording of conversations should be applied narrowly, and to clear and egregious violations of privacy where the motive is personal gain.

A great deal of the editorial is devoted to assuring readers that the Times’ editors are on the side of Planned Parenthood in general. Not surprising. But that only underlines the fact that the stance the editors are taking on Beccara is a correct one—and even in some ways a brave one. As discussed in the post below this, departing at all from the Democrats’ party line can be risky.

Why are Democrats so much more united than Republicans?

Posted on March 30, 2017 by neoMarch 30, 2017

A good question, one asked by commenter “Cornhead” in the Republican unity thread:

But why are the Dems so united? They rarely ”“ if ever ”“ break ranks. Nebraska’s Ben Nelson was a perfect example. Conservative state but he voted for Obamacare and every single Dem bill.

The thread is loaded with answers from other commenters to that question, and well worth reading.

But here’s mine:

(1) Democrats are far more wedded to ends justify means, and less wedded to the specifics of justifying their personal ideology and beliefs.

(2) Many Democrats see progressivism as a movement, almost like a religion. As such, they follow their leaders for what they see as the greater good.

(3) The Democratic Party has been engaged for quite some time in (successfully) purging its more moderate members. So it really IS more united than the GOP, because the outliers have either left politics or come over to the GOP.

(4) The Democratic leadership plays hardball (more so than the Republican leadership), and those who would defect realize that they probably wouldn’t have a very lengthy political future.

Think about it. The right focuses more on individualism (rugged or otherwise), the left on collectivism. Doesn’t it follow that members of the left would be more inclined to submerge their individual beliefs for what they see as the good of the collective (the party, in this case) than members of the right would? This represents a personality difference as well as a difference of philosophy, and as such both are internal motivations to do what the party leaders say. But there are also external reasons (for example, numbers 3 and 4 above) that play into the phenomenon and foster party unity for Democrats as well.

Those tendencies and coercions toward party unity have been more successful within the US left in recent years. But the drive for unity has had to push against the tendency of radical groups to splinter. Here’s a humorous depiction of the latter:

Brexit: breaking up…

Posted on March 30, 2017 by neoMarch 30, 2017

…is hard to do.

As Britain is now learning.

When a country voluntarily signs away some of its autonomy—in this case, to join the EU—it would seem at the outset that such a decision would be reversible if that country so desires. After all, the vow wasn’t “till death do us part.”

But if France and Germany have anything to say about it, they’ll make Britain pay for Brexit:

Before I go into detail about the phone calls, remember that no one really knows what will happen next because this has never happened before. Article 50 in the Lisbon Treaty allows member countries to leave the EU after two years of negotiations. If the country and the EU cannot reach an agreement then the country leaves without anything.

But like many promises made during the courtship stage, easier said than done. A price might be extracted:

Wolfgang Sché¤uble said Britain would be bound by tax rules after it leaves the European Union (EU) which would restrict giving incentives to retain investors.

The German finance minister also said the UK would be forced to pay EU budget bills for more than ten years, echoing proposals for the UK to pay an exit bill of up to £43billion.

Theresa May had been looking to close ally Germany, as a net exporter to Britain, to quell French demands the UK “pay a price” for wanting to leave the bloc.

Read the whole thing.

Germany and France aren’t historically accustomed to uniting on much, but apparently they’re united on this.

Republican unity: an oxymoron

Posted on March 29, 2017 by neoMarch 29, 2017

In his column today in the NY Post, Michael Goodwin discusses some contradictory communications from Trump about the failed health care bill. Goodwin also mentions that calls for bipartisanship are doomed (agreed), and suggests that what Trump really needs to do now is unite the GOP:

The only way forward is for Trump to unite the Republican Party.

If he can do that, Dems will be forced to engage in substantive negotiations because the alternative is exclusive Republican rule on every piece of legislation. In effect, GOP unity could force Dems to the table for at least a semblance of bipartisanship that would be good for the country.

But if Trump can’t unite his party, if its circular firing squad is permanent, major parts of his agenda could be DOA. And Dems will be giddy at the funeral.

But “Republican unity” is an oxymoron. It’s not just recently that it’s gone down the tubes; as far as I can recall, it hasn’t existed in my lifetime. Rockefeller Republicans vs. Goldwater Republicans were an earlier manifestation, and a bitter one. Reagan challenged incumbent president Gerald Ford in 1976. And it’s been going on ever since.

Now, perhaps it’s reached a fever pitch at the moment, but I actually don’t see it as worse now than then. Perhaps it’s more important, but not worse. One of the reasons it may be more important right now is that Republicans need to roll back many aspects of the Obama administration, and they have the numbers to do it if they could only unite on their goals and a way to achieve them. For the first time in a long time Republicans have relatively solid control of the executive branch and legislative branches and are poised to nominate one (and perhaps more, in time) SCOTUS justice of a conservative stripe.

So it may be that their lack of unity is highlighted right now. But, as much as I fault Trump for many things (including what I see as not really even trying to get to some sort of actual consensus on the bill, but rather rushing it and strong-arming it), I don’t think that unity was ever in the cards. The rift in the GOP is very real, bitter, and old.

Unfortunately.

Presidents and the press

Posted on March 29, 2017 by neoMarch 29, 2017

You think the press is bad now? And you think relations between the press and presidents have never been worse on both sides? Don’t be too sure.

The following quote is taken from an article by Ryan Holiday about a book by Harold Holzer called Lincoln and the Power of the Press:

In addition to waging war on the battlefield, in the courts, in Congress, Lincoln was also required to fight and win on the hotly contested front pages of the nation’s newspapers.

If you were to ask the average person what they know about Lincoln and the media, they’d probably say something about him throwing journalists in jail or suspending certain Constitutional rights. That is true and it is interesting.

Actually, I disagree about what the “average person” would say. I don’t know what circles the author of that article moves in, but I’d estimate that maybe—maybe—about 10% of the population knows about those things. And I actually think that’s being generous.

Another attempt to prosecute the makers of the Planned Parenthood videos

Posted on March 29, 2017 by neoMarch 29, 2017

It happened before, in Texas. Now it’s happening in California:

The duo who bravely exposed Planned Parenthood’s baby body parts operation through undercover videos has been charged by California prosecutors with 15 new felony counts.

In 2016, both David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt with the Center for Medical Progress were indicted by a Texas grand jury on felony tampering charges. Daleiden also received a second indictment. All charges were eventually dropped, and Planned Parenthood was left seething at the Harris County district attorney’s office.

Now, California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra has charged the pair with 15 felonies…

In response to the new charges, the Center for Medical Progress issued the following statement:

“The bogus charges from Planned Parenthood’s political cronies are fake news. They tried the same collusion with corrupt officials in Houston, TX and failed: both the charges and the DA were thrown out…”

Of course, California is not Texas, and vice versa.