Playing With Bread (And Photoshop)

I started here.  Well that's not exactly true.  I started with the sourdough starter to make the bread.

But photographically, I started with this picture.  I took it to photoshop.

I went into filters.  I wasn't sure what I could do with this picture, but I thought I'd see where it would take me.


I went into filters and tried several and they weren't exciting me.  But Paint Daubs had possibilities.

But only if I got closer and played some more.  So first I got closer.

That's more interesting, but not really as compelling as I want.

So let's try curves.  That's a feature in Photoshop where you play with a curve to change colors and light.  It doesn't have precise settings like Filters.  You just have to play until you get what you want.


That eventually got me here.  Much better.




 It's got some Hundertwasser echoes.

The rest was pretty easy.  I just copied this image and went into edit/transform/distort until I got what looked like a flap.  Then I copied it and flipped it vertically so I had the two flaps. I put a gray edge on the flaps because the colors blended too much to see the edges.   And put in a background color and cropped it.  

The final product:  

I guess I could call it bread and nobody but you and me would know why.  The real benefit of this is to experiment and see what I can do.  And I confess, these are all techniques I've used before.  I should just look up Photoshop tricks online to figure out tools I don't know how to use yet.  And my brain needed something other than politics or even just words today.  

"The legislature now has a balanced budget before them THEY now can decide priorities of the budget. My administration is agnostic on this."

A short one today, I hope.  Some reactions to the governor's letter to the university community.

"The previous administration burned through nearly every dollar in the state's savings account."

Actually, he wanted to increase revenues with appropriate taxes but the Republican controlled Senate banned the word taxes.  And he did cut the budget each year.  But rather than destroying the state, the way your budget will, he got some money from the PFD account (lowering the checks) and from savings accounts.  You, governor, also refuse to consider increasing revenues.  That's a serious problem.

 "While some wish to ignore Alaskans and propose billion-dollar taxes and PFD grabs, I've made clear that this is out of line with the core beliefs of most Alaskans."

Whether it's out of line with people's core beliefs, I can't say. If that's true, you're saying the core beliefs of most Alaskans are:  we want our services and our free oil money, but we refuse to pay for any of it.   Taxes are certainly NOT against the core beliefs of most educated Alaskans who understand the numbers and the impacts these proposed cuts will have and who understand that there are some things - like roads, police, schools, public health - that are a much better bargain for a society if the public pools their money (as in taxes) to buy collectively.  Yeah, some with lots of money can buy private security guards and send their kids to private schools, but society as a whole needs everyone to get a decent education.  Only con artists benefit from an uneducated public.

And those who believed Dunleavy's campaign promises that he'd balance the budget and pay out the old PFD cuts and keep the state running - they desperately need  good education and mental health systems.

"The legislature now has a balanced budget before them  THEY now can decide priorities of the budget.  My administration is agnostic on this."  

As strategy, I guess this is a good move on the governor's part.  He's basically saying, I've balanced the budget and the legislature can decide on where to cut.  They'll get the blame, he hopes.  But really, to tell the university they can work out with the legislature where to cut is like telling your kids, "Hey, here's 50 cents, go buy yourself dinner.  I'm agnostic about what you eat, but just keep it within our budget."  You can't buy dinner for 50 cents and you can't run a university on 40% of last year's budget.  It's a disaster for years to come.   (Dermot Cole has already addressed the governor's claim that it's only 17%.)

I don't know who's helping the governor do all this.  Well aside from Donna Arduin.  Or if he really thinks - "the sky won't fall" because government is bloated.  This is like not believing in gravity.

I once asked my students - as we discussed ontology - if the University was real?  They all agreed it was.  I argued it was just something that people made up. And they could make it up into something entirely different.   That the state could decide to sell all the buildings to some company and they could call it whatever they wanted and the university simply wouldn't exist any more.

But that was a philosophical argument to make a point about the nature of reality.  It seems our governor is trying to prove my point.   Some people will die.  Others will suffer needlessly because of the cuts this budget requires.  Even if the legislature restores half the cuts.

In a letter to the editor the other day, someone wrote this was simply the governor's opening gambit of a chess game.  There is no opening gambit in chess that compares to this.  Well, there's one - knocking over the board and all the pieces.

What the governor does have going for him is that his letter is in good English, it's polite, and if you don't know anything about the situation, it might sound reasonable.

Can Cures For Brazilian Domestic Violence Perpetrators Work With Trump Supporters Too?

An LA Times article reports that a group therapy program for men who beat their wives has been extremely successful.  Here's a short excerpt:

"For Fabio Alberto Alves, discussing feelings was something only women did.But the judge had sentenced the 53-year-old machinist to group therapy for men convicted of domestic violence, so he didn’t have much choice. It was either that or prison.During the first two of 20 weekly sessions, he didn’t say a word. He shouldn’t even be here, he thought. His wife of 25 years had blown the situation out of proportion. He was drunk when he grabbed her and caused a scene at her church. The cops should have never been involved. Then, on his third night as part of the group, he opened up.“Being here for me now is like being with family,” he said. “I realized that what I did was wrong, but that no one is here to judge me. When I’m here, I feel like I can talk, express myself.”The shift in attitude — from indignant and detached to temperate and open — is what groups like the one Alves participates in are after. As Brazil continues to register startling rates of domestic violence and femicide, therapists, prosecutors, judges and women’s right activists all agree on one thing: If saving women from becoming victims is the goal, working on men is the answer."

The article reports that recidivism rates drop to zero!  But even if it was as high as 20%, that would be huge.  It also notes that most resources go to victims, but as that last sentence in the quote points out, if anything is going to change, the men have to be involved.  (Just as whites have to be become more aware of the  their own involvement and the magnitude of the problem, if racism is going to end.)

Any kind of serious change like this has to go on in the heads of perpetrators.  Their self-serving narratives have to be challenged and they have to be offered alternative ways to think about the world and their position in it.   That's what good education is about.  Getting people to articulate their models of how the world works and then having them compare their own models to experts' models.  (And I'm not blindly siding with experts here.  Sometimes the students' models are better.)

The Brazilian article got me to wondering whether group therapy might be helpful for Trump supporters.   After all, these are people who believe crazy conspiracy theories and are clearly deciding emotionally, not rationally.  (Yes, I realize that's pretty strong, but not enough Germans confronted people who supported Hitler's lies and racism.  Though in Germany such confrontation could quickly lead to death.  In the US we don't have that threat - yet.  And if you are offended by Hitler analogies, there's Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Idi Amin, etc.)

And then I found this study - Men with Fragile Masculinity Vote for Trump - today that suggests my idea isn't that far-fetched.

I'd note that it appears this study has not been published in a peer reviewed journal - just the Washington Post.  And the authors themselves caution:

"Our data suggests that fragile masculinity is a critical feature of our current politics. Nonetheless, points of caution are in order.
First, the research reported here is correlational. We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way. However, given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.
Second, it remains to be seen whether any link between fragile masculinity and voting will persist after Trump exits the national stage. We suspect, however, that Trump’s re-engineering of the GOP as a party inextricably tied to many Americans’ identity concerns — whether based on race, religion or gender — will ensure that fragile masculinity remains a force in politics."

(Can you imagine a Trump supporter cautioning that his data is only correlational and hasn't been proven to be causal?)

Assuming the study has merit, then I'd argue that if the therapy works with macho Brazilians, why not with the men of the MAGA crowd?  But then, Brazilians who beat their wives have an incentive to attend such therapy.  It keeps them out of prison.  We can't offer Trump supporters therapy as an alternative to prison, unless, of course, they are convicted of a crime.

And if the study is wrong, well, I still believe that changing how one sees the world is the most likely way to permanently change their behavior.  This is another reason why good public schools that teach critical thinking skills are important.

So, it's time for people to start organizing discussion groups and finding skilled facilitators to bring our country back together again.  It won't work for everyone, but if 10% of Trump supporters are cured of their delusions, that would make a huge difference.  (And I'd note there are people whose dedication to Clinton was just as emotionally based, and who would have voted for her against a truly enlightened, experienced, and science oriented Republican.  (Yeah, I'm trying to figure out who that might have been.  Abe Lincoln?)

Who All Does Congress Want to Question? Abramson's List With Pics And Brief Bio

Let's just get this straight.  From Wikipedia:

"Ten investigations were conducted into the 2012 Benghazi attack, six of these by Republican-controlled House committees. Problems were identified with security measures at the Benghazi facilities, due to poor decisions made by employees of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and specifically its director Eric Boswell, who resigned under pressure in December 2012.[1] Despite numerous allegations against Obama administration officials of scandal, cover-up and lying regarding the Benghazi attack and its aftermath, none of the ten investigations found any evidence to support those allegations.[2][3][4][5]"

At worst, investigators believed that the Obama administration, particularly the State Department, headed by then likely 2016  presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, had used bad judgment and were negligent and then covering up what happened.  That is, that they made mistakes and then hid them..  You can read the various conclusions of the many investigations in the Wikipedia link. (They couldn't substantiate the charges.) The basic reason for all these investigations was not to uncover illegal actions, but to sully the reputation of Hillary Clinton.  (I acknowledge that there may have been those who believed their conspiracy theories, but it's my sense that people like Nunes were just attacking a political opponent because they could.

So when you hear Republicans - starting with Trump - complain about the investigations led by Mueller and now committees in the House of Representatives, recognize that Obama would have been impeached by this point in his administration if he and his campaign had done one tenth of what evidence suggests Trump has done.  We normally don't base whether to prosecute on the status of the alleged perpetrator.  (Actually, this may not be accurate.  The famous and wealthy do have the power to sway prosecutors into not prosecuting, into settlements, or other evasive actions.  See the Jeffrey Epstein story as just one example.  Or consider that Trump and his so-called university scammed tens of millions of dollars from students, yet, unlike a petty thief who steals, say, a fancy bike, were able to settle and avoid criminal charges that would put them in prison.

Seth Abramson has been collecting everything public he could find about allegations against Trump for years now and published a book last November - Proof of Collusion - which puts all his findings into a very detailed book about all of the allegations and people involved.  He knows this as well as anyone not privy to what the Mueller team is finding.  And, of course, everyone knows that despite swindling tens of millions from prospective students, Trump and his so called university were able to settle instead of facing criminal charges and prison.

Today Abramson put up a Tweeter thread with the list of people House investigations want to talk to - 61 total - along with pictures and brief bios of those less well known.  Here it is below.  (I'm not sure I'm embedding the whole thread or just the initial tweet.  So here's a link to the thread if it's not all below.) (A Tweet is a single message and a Thread is a group of Tweets 'threaded' together.)

(THREAD) This thread is a guided tour of the 81 PERSONS from whom the House Judiciary Committee is now seeking documents in contemplation of possible impeachment proceedings down the line. These names tell us much about where Congress is headed. I hope you'll read on and retweet. pic.twitter.com/wsErydjzKQ

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 4, 2019

"No section of the above property shall be sold, conveyed, leased to, or occupied by a person or persons other than of the Caucasian race, except that a domestic servant of persons then residing upon said property shall be allowed hereon in connection with his employment."

I'd first met Karen at the swimming pool a couple of years ago when my granddaughter was having a swimming lesson and Karen was swimming.  We hit it off right away - but I suspect she has this way of charming people.

We met again last year at the Bainbridge Island High School protest.

And now she was speaking at the Bainbridge Library.

She started off talking about finding a water damaged photo album at a gathering of family members after a funeral.  An aunt had been on the couch watching news about a fire on tv.  What she didn't realize until the fire fighters got into her room, that it was her house that was on fire.  And that's how the album got damaged.  Karen took it to someone she knew and they were able to get many of the pictures digitized and printed again.

And that set Karen on a quest to learn more about her family - most of whom were in the Virginia and North Carolina area.

Karen had gotten to the Seattle area with the military and her husband.

When her dad died, she spent time in Connecticut going through his things and doing research to discover how her family got to Connecticut.




And when she finally got back to the Seattle area, she took a class on (I'm not sure exactly whether it was genealogy in general or geared specifically to African-American history).

In any case, she got started researching the African-American history of Kitsap County and Bainbridge Island.

I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that there was much African-American history on Bainbridge Island.  One of my problems with Bainbridge is the relative lack of diversity.  But the military brought African-Americans to Kitsap County after WW II.   Joe Louis even fought on Bainbridge Island as part of the opening of the Town and Country Market in 1957.

The event was co-sponsored by the library and the Bainbridge Historical Museum where Karen is doing lots of her research.  So I went by the museum the next day and found her with materials spread all over.

She's also getting into Native American history.  Seems these folks kept moving west and thought they could just build wherever they wanted, regardless of whether people were already using the land.

This chronicle attempts to be fair to the Indians, but it's written by the victors and really doesn't present the Indians' side of the story.

Here are much more detailed accounts.  The first one from someone who was there.  It seems clear that there was plenty of warning before the Indians attacked in what is called the White River Massacre by the whites.  And a number of the settlers left.

http://themossback.tripod.com/indianwar/wrmassacre.htm   These are very extensive and detailed first hand accounts by whites of what they called the White River massacre.

Here's a more general account, but gives more context and attempts to view things from a native perspective.  https://omittedhistory.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/the-puget-sound-war-1855-1856/  Here's a part:

"As a precursor, the Native American tribes of the area consisted of the Nisqually, Muckleshoot, Puyallup, and the Klickitat peoples. The war itself was triggered by The Treaty of Medicine Creek, penned by Washington Territory Governor Isaac Stevens in 1854. The American-favored treaty granted about 2.24 million acres of land to the United States in exchange for the creation of three reservations, cash payments over twenty years, and “recognition” of traditional native fishing and hunting rights. Unfortunately, Nisqually farming land was taken as part of negotiations (Washington State Historical Society)."

Getting into the 20th Century, Karen showed me this lease agreement to buy land in Port Blakely Bay on Bainbridge Island.  She highlighted two parts in yellow.  Restriction 7, I'll just write out here for people who have trouble reading the image:

"No section of the above property shall be sold, conveyed, leased to, or occupied by a person or persons other than of the Caucasian race, except that a domestic servant of persons then residing upon said property shall be allowed hereon in connection with his employment."

This is dated November 1943.

From a 2006 NY Times article about a Virginia case three years earlier where the seller used this sort of language in the deed of his house to deny a sale to an African-American family.  

"The Supreme Court ruled against racially restrictive covenants in 1948, and they were outlawed by the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968. But because so many of them remain in deeds and neighborhood bylaws, some states, including California, have moved to eliminate them. Advocates for their removal reason that the restrictions, even if illegal, provide justification for subtle racism -- or, as in Mr. Matthews's case, outright discrimination. (Mr. Matthews declined to comment.)"

 This kind of discriminatory language still remains in many deeds - even in Anchorage - to this day.  In part because the procedure for changing the deeds is often difficult or impossible.  A key was to make them part of the subdivision, not the individual house.

This is the kind of thing that is meant by white privilege.  In this case whites had the 'privilege' of buying land and people of color did not, even if they had the money.  Here's a post I wrote in 2012 about  Some of My Best Friends Are Black by Tanner Colby who does a really good job of presenting a very readable history of how these covenants got started and helped lead to red-lining.

And while these clauses are no longer enforceable, people have many ways of making life harder for people of color than for whites.  I believe that people who are upset about losing those kinds of privileges make up a good part of Trump's supporters.

And talking about privilege, this week's TED Radio Hour on NPR was about luck.  The first speaker  I heard, Tina Seelig [Starts around 12:30 min in], talked about luck being about your own mental image.  But damn, she taught at Stanford, she must have had some pretty good luck to start with.  But the next ones talked about luck happening before your were born. Amy Hunter who starts around 20 minutes in.  This one is critical.   She relates luck to which zip code you're born into.  The next one was a Canadian, Mark Sutcliffe, who said being born there as a white guy was great luck. Eshauna Smith follows this up by exploring how she got out of her zip code (she didn't say it that way) while most of the other really smart kids there did not.

Well worth listening to while you're cooking, folding laundry, or waiting in line somewhere.   I'd particularly recommend listening to Hunter,   followed by Mark Sutcliffe.  And then Eshauna Smith.

Here's the whole thing.

So Nice To Be Home

A couple views as we got near Anchorage.

There was actually sun in other directions and when we were on the ground.  It doesn't really feel any colder than Seattle did - no wind helps.  And thanks to our house sitter for taken such good care.  I got to go chat with all the plants that seem to be enjoying the increasing light each day.  

No airplanes for a while.  Going to enjoy being home.  But we will miss the grandkids, and even their parents.  

Let's March

Seattle, where we've spent most of the month, had one of the coldest Februaries on record and including one of the snowiest.
San Francisco, where we spent part of the month, was rainy and February temps were well below normal.
And the LA Times says today that LA had its first February since they've been keeping records ( "at

least 132 years") when temperature never reached 70˚F.  The average was down from 68˚F to 61˚F.

Meanwhile Anchorage started February a little warmer than normal and ended a little colder than normal.

So, does this mean Trump is right and Climate Change is a hoax?  Weather is NOT Climate.  Weather is what happens short term.  Climate is the larger overall trends.  And Climate Change is about change.  That doesn't mean just getting warmer (though that's the overall trend).  It also means more extremes, more volatility, and changes that will affect how much water areas have, whether traditional crops will survive, whether heat and floods will change the landscapes.

Climate change is real and businesses know it and are concerned.   Only ideologues who reject science for vanity and ideology don't believe it.

But meanwhile, Let's March.  Let's enjoy this month.  Our last full day in the Seattle area is beautiful.  And I'm looking forward to getting some sunny wintertime in Anchorage tomorrow.

Working Conditions of Some Folks Who Feed Your Electronic Media Habits

Some pieces on the less visible side of our rapid adoption of electronic media.

Computer Games - From Real Life

"During a quarterly earnings call on February 11, Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision Blizzard — one of the biggest companies in video games, publicly traded with a market cap of about $35 billion — announced excellent news for investors: His company had just completed a “record year” of revenue. But then he had even better news for them: Activision Blizzard was set to lay off 8 percent of their workforce, to further increase shareholder margins, meaning 800 employees would be losing their jobs.
The cycles of extreme crunch and job churn have meant that game employees often burn out after a few years in games: In 2017, the industry had the highest turnover rate of any in the country. Games companies are not troubled by this, because they bank on the aura that their products and their fan communities give them. The idealism and passion of the young people who come to games hoping to work in a field that inspires them and brings them joy end up making them ripe for exploitation, a pattern many young writers, actors, and musicians might recognize. At so-called triple-A studios like Rockstar or Ubisoft, they get chewed up and spit out in the name of creating an expensive few hours of pleasure for middle-class consumers."

Casey Newton's The Trauma Floor:  The Secret Lives of Facebook Moderators in America, tells the story of contract workers who screen FB posts to eliminate inappropriate posts.  It starts of at a training session:

"For this portion of her education, Chloe will have to moderate a Facebook post in front of her fellow trainees. When it’s her turn, she walks to the front of the room, where a monitor displays a video that has been posted to the world’s largest social network. None of the trainees have seen it before, Chloe included. She presses play.
The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed. She knows that section 13 of the Facebook community standards prohibits videos that depict the murder of one or more people. When Chloe explains this to the class, she hears her voice shaking." 

The piece goes on to talk about how these employees are NOT really FB employees and their pay and working conditions are much different from those in Menlo Park. Interviews with a number of former and current employees reveals high mental health problems, with sex and drugs a common way to cope.  While there are counselors, they aren't there all the time.   A long section in the middle discusses the difficulty of interpreting the rules for what is allowable and what isn't.  As you can imagine there is a fine balancing act between not offending people and not being overly protective.

"In some cases, the company has been criticized for not doing enough — as when United Nations investigators found that it had been complicit in spreading hate speech during the genocide of the Rohingya community in Myanmar. In others, it has been criticized for overreach — as when a moderator removed a post that excerpted the Declaration of Independence. (Thomas Jefferson was ultimately granted a posthumous exemption to Facebook’s speech guidelines, which prohibit the use of the phrase 'Indian savages.')"

The scores employees get keeps track of their accuracy.

Eventually gets to tour the Phoenix workplace under controlled conditions where employees say things aren't as bad as he's been led to believe.


And finally (for this post anyway) (and a slightly different focus)  "AR Will Spark the Next Big Tech Platform—Call It Mirrorworld" in Wired, by Kevin Kelly.  This begins with a description of AR as experienced by Mythbusters' Adam Savage:

“I turned it on and I could hear a whale,” he says, “but I couldn’t see it. I’m looking around my office for it. And then it swims by my windows—on the outside of my building! So the glasses scanned my room and it knew that my windows were portals and it rendered the whale as if it were swimming down my street. I actually got choked up.” 

Kelly gives an overview.  (Wired assumes everyone knows what AR means and doesn't define it.  But I suspect not all my readers do.  It stands for Augmented Reality.)

"The first big technology platform was the web, which digitized information, subjecting knowledge to the power of algorithms; it came to be dominated by Google. The second great platform was social media, running primarily on mobile phones. It digitized people and subjected human behavior and relationships to the power of algorithms, and it is ruled by Facebook and WeChat.
We are now at the dawn of the third platform, which will digitize the rest of the world. On this platform, all things and places will be machine-­readable, subject to the power of algorithms. Whoever dominates this grand third platform will become among the wealthiest and most powerful people and companies in history, just as those who now dominate the first two platforms have. Also, like its predecessors, this new platform will unleash the prosperity of thousands more companies in its ecosystem, and a million new ideas—and problems—that weren’t possible before machines could read the world."

So what?

Every new technology inherently brings change to the society that adopts it.  I remember reading about an indigenous group of people's first contact with foreigners, who gave metal hatchets to people in the group.  The possession of tools like these had been restricted by tradition to village leaders.  Now everyone had such a tool and the whole social order of the community fell apart.

We've been on an incredible technology ride as we adopt one new technology after another with very little concern for how these technologies have and will impact us.  Digital imagery manipulation has destroyed the idea of photos and videos as reliable evidence of truth.  And the internet is currently being used to further destroy any notion of a provable truth.  Democracy requires a level of agreement on what is true.

But aside from the content of the internet and how it influences our world views, there is also the impact of how the technology is produced - the materials, the work settings, wealth redistribution.  And capitalism itself makes it hard to control the impacts of new technology.  Cloning and genetic modification of humans will happen (have happened?) despite strong ethical concerns.  Capitalists supply what they think they can profit from.  We know, for example, the free market plays a key role in the extinction of species - either because some part of them is valued like rhinoceros horns, or because their habitat is destroyed as a side-effect (externality) of resource development and the unregulated dumping of waste.

Before you give up because you think the problems are too great to solve, remember your own consumption and waste management strategies.  Talk about the side effects of computer games with your friends and relatives who made Activision Blizzard a $35 billion! company.

Cohen Testimony, Republican Response

Let's be clear.  Michael Cohen is NOT a nice guy.  He grew up with friends - like Felix Sater - whose parents were part of the Jewish-Russian mafia.  Here's Wikipedia's says about his personal life:

Cohen married Ukraine-born Laura Shusterman in 1994.[17][18][19] Laura Shusterman's father, Fima Shusterman, left Soviet Ukraine for New York in 1975.[19] Cohen has a daughter, Samantha, and a son, Jake.[20] Cohen's wife, according to the Wall Street Journal, is implicated in potential criminal activity, and Cohen's father-in-law is the one who introduced him to Trump according to a Trump biographer.[21][22] Cohen's uncle is a doctor who treated members of the Lucchese crime family.[19] The uncle owned "El Caribe Country Club," known to be frequented by individuals associated with the Russian mafia: Evsei Agron, Marat Balagula, and Boris Nayfeld.[23]
Before joining the Trump Organization, Cohen had purchased several homes in Trump's buildings.[13] A 2017 New York Times article reported that Cohen is known for having "a penchant for luxury"; he was married at The Pierre, drove a Porsche while attending college, and once owned a Bentley.[17]

He was surrounded by people who abused the law for their own benefit, including his boss for ten years, Donald J. Trump.

So, it's understandable that the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee today, have repeatedly hammered him over his reliability as a witness. He was called the first witness before Congress who'd ever been convicted of lying to Congress.  (That should probably be fact checked.) He was even called a pathological liar by one.

House Oversight Committee Rep. Stuebe of Florida complained about how Cohen lied to Congress (he didn't say "in defense of Trump.")  Did Stuebe or any of the Republicans complaining about that dishonest testimony today, raise serious questions about Cohen's truthfulness at the time?

I doubt any did.   I tried to find transcripts of the testimony but I can't.  [Anyone with a link or a copy, please send it to me.]  The closest I got was this:

NBC News report on the October 2017 testimony of Michael Cohen where he lied to defend the president:

"But Rep. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, who is leading the committee’s Russia probe, said Cohen answered his questions to his satisfaction and saw no need to invite him back."
"A Democratic congressman asked Cohen if he had ever used an alias in the past, raising one in particular: Michael Hacking. Cohen explained it was related to a taxi company he had owned — hack in this case being a reference to New York’s yellow cabs.
“They really thought they had him, that this was an alias he used to hack into people’s phones. It was almost too good to be true,” said Republican Rep. Peter King, who as a New Yorker was one of the few present who immediately saw the humor in the exchange. 'It was a moment of levity. I don’t know if the Democrats found it as funny as I did.'”

So these are two cases of Republicans at the time who were 'satisfied' with Cohen's testimony or found levity in the fact that a Democrat was tripped up by a hacking reference.  No outrage though then, about Cohen's testimony, which today they declare to be a disqualifier for him as a witness.  They called this hearing a waste of time when they should be doing far more important stuff.

Considering that the Republicans are standing firm to defend the most prominent serial liar in the world, it's clear to me that their attacks on Cohen are not about his lying, but about his defecting from the Trump team.

Do they mean that everything he's said today is a lie?  What about when he said that Trump would never hit his wife?  What about when he refused to rule out selling his story in books and movies?  What about when he said he had no direct knowledge of collusion between Trump and Russia over the election?  Were those lies too?

All white collar crimes depend on insiders, people who have questionable if not terrible pasts.  It's because they are the people who know what happened.

The real irony in all this, is that the Republicans are furious at Cohen for once lying to protect Trump.  The same sort of loyalty to Trump they were demonstrating at the hearing themselves.  It's only when he stopped defending Trump that they got mad at him.

The afternoon session begins soon.  You can watch it live here:

Text of Michael Cohen's Testimony Before House Committee On Oversight And Reform [UPDATED]

At some point we will get to the tipping point and Trump's presidency will be understood by most to be doomed.  He's already done dozens of things that would have destroyed any previous president.  Part of his protective wall, has been the Republican controlled  US Senate.  Cohen's testimony makes it harder for them to plead lack of proof.  This is a very clear, "The emperor has no clothes" moment.

I don't know that Cohen's testimony will be that tipping point.  Part of me thinks the tipping point  will be something that is far less legally problematic, but will somehow strike a nerve in the US people like other outrages haven't.

But this - courtesy of Politico - is the kind of thing many have been expecting a long time.  Coming from Trump's own personal lawyer, who worked for him for ten years and saw him behind the scenes, it's very damning.

He says a lot here, but he also says he has no first hand evidence of collusion with Russia.

Basically, he calls Trump a racist, a conman, a cheat.  But read it yourself.  Tipping point?  I don't know.  It will be harder for Republicans to credibly maintain their denials.  Certainly this is landmark testimony.

John Dean was Nixon's white house lawyer.  He's the one whose Congressional Testimony changed the Watergate momentum.  It's interesting that Michael Cohen's middle name is Dean.

Micahel Cohen Statement by on Scribd

[UPDATE March 6, 2019: I just got this notice from SCRIBD: "This is a notification that Scribd’s BookID copyright protection system has disabled access to Micahel Cohen Statement (id: 400620375). This does not necessarily mean that an infringement has occurred, or that you have done anything wrong. BookID is part of Scribd's diverse efforts to reinforce the copyrights of authors and publishers. Like all automated systems, it will occasionally identify legitimate content as a possible infringement. Unfortunately, the volume of content in Scribd's library prohibits us from reaching out for verification before BookID disables content. Scribd frequently updates BookID in order to reduce false positives. Authors that publish to Scribd's subscription reading service through one of our publishing partners may also find that BookID may remove uploads of duplicate or similar content from personal Scribd accounts. If you believe that this removal is an error, please forward a copy of this notification to copyright@scribd.com along with a clear explanation of your issue. Our team will review your request and will restore content as deemed appropriate." I sent them a letter saying that this was a public document and I didn't need copyright permissions. But then I linked to find that I had found that someone else had already put the document up and so I saw no reason to duplicate it on SCRIBD. But apparently the entity that put it up is charging people to read it. So I'll try to find another copy and put it on my account. Sorry.]

[No sooner than I got my note up, it's working again.  Oh well, now people can read it again. Good.]

[Got an email - they fixed it.  And it turns out I had put it up.  Not sure why the link above sent me to someone else's post.  Now it goes to mine again.  They responded really quickly.]