Welcome, GOP, To The Circular Firing Squad Phenomenom

For years, the nominating process of the Democratic Party was dominated by the ghosts of Daley's Chicago.  I guess it can all go back to Will Roger's famous quip, "I don't belong to an organized political party; I'm a Democrat."  But the '70s and '80s were times of raucous conventions, floor fights and special interest pandering.

Clinton changed that in '92.  His convention was incredibly well stage managed, so much so that Ross Perot temporarily dropped out of the race in response.  Meanwhile, the Republicans gave Pat Buchanan a prime time speaking slot to unleash the GOP id upon America's living rooms.  Nevertheless, the GOP did manage to continue to preserve their reputation that was best articulated by James Carville: "Democrats have to fall in love with their candidates, Republican just fall in line."  The GOP nominating process was inevitably determined by party elders in smoke filled rooms.

In 1996, it was Bob Dole's turn.  In 2000, seeking a younger face, the party selected Dubya and crushed the McCain uprising.  In 2008, though, you could sense the ability of the party elite to shape the field slipping away.  Partly because they knew they were likely to lose, they just didn't seem to settle on an "heir" and push that guy over the finish line.  They flirted with Giuliani, but his various apostasies and foibles were simply too much.  Huckabee and Romney just didn't fit the mold, so they settled on McCain rather late.  It was not the coronation that so many GOP nominating processes resemble.

Now, with economic indicators suggesting they should be able to challenge Obama, they want a candidate who can win.  And it's pretty clear who their "best" candidate is.  It's Willard.  He's a perfect generic candidate with a square jaw and nice hair, but unlike Governor Goodhair, he actually has higher brain functions.  The party elite can read a poll and Romney matches up better against Obama than do any of the other inhabitants of the traveling freak show that is Decision 2012.

So what we are seeing now is a concerted effort by GOP opinion makers to shove Newt under the bus.  The attacks go something like, "I knew Newt Gingrich, Newt Gingrich was a colleague of mine, Newt Gingrich should not be allowed anywhere near power ever again."  Former compatriots from the House are lining up to shake their heads sadly and sagely and lament how they'd LIKE to support Newt, but honestly, the dude is just a dick.

This, I think, is at the root of the punditry's basic disbelief that Newt can win the nomination.  Everyone THEY know is telling them Newt can't win.  He has, as Charlie Pierce puts it, Dickhead Tourettes.  He is compulsively unable to not utter bizarre formulations of the World According To Newt.

The problem that the DC GOP establishment and associated punditry have is that they have created a monster.  They were fluffing the Tea Party as true patriots, arming themselves against the assault of Islamo-Social-Fascism.  They were "real Americans" who refused to let government mess with their Medicare.

Problem is, those yahoos in their tri-corner hats have now completely taken over the GOP.  They don't want Romney, because they have spent the last two year working themselves into a frothy lather over ObamaCare, which was basically a GOP idea promulgated by Romney.  Plus, magic underwear.

So what will happen?

First, Mitt has launched a full bore attack on Newt.  (Let's take a moment.  Mitt and Newt?  Suddenly Barack seems like a normal name.)  If Newt wins the nomination, those attacks can't be taken back.  The party establishment will never really warm to Newt.  Notice how the money-machers have largely sat out the primaries?  Where are the bundlers?  Where are the "Pioneers"?

If Mitt is able to steamroll Newt out of the nomination, do you think all the Romney hating GOP rank and file members will suddenly become enthusiastic for the Multiple Choice Mormon?  Not to mention that Romney - in an effort to hold of Gingrich - has had to not only embrace Ryan's toxic plan to end Medicare as we know it, but kiss it, nuzzle it and buy it a fancy dinner before a night out dancing.  In order to outflank Gingrich, Romney has to embrace some of the most toxic ideas in the GOP firmament.

Finally, Mitt's entire plan was to be the "Anointed" one, the GOP Heir Apparent.  He never really rose to the bait of the lesser Not Romneys.  True, he did smack down Governor Goodhair, but there are 8th graders who can do that.  But now he has to actually go on Fox News and get pissy with Bret Baier.  He has hidden himself from the media, now he's going to have to engage it.

And frankly, Mitt's electability is largely ephemeral, I think.  He has not had to compete with someone as bright as he is.  Newt and Obama are not Perry or Bachmann.  He gets whiny when challenged.  And the basic attack on Mitt from the Democrats will be Bain Capital, 24-7.  Mitt will be the Wall Street guy who bought up businesses and laid people off.  He's the rich stiff who doesn't like to be challenged.

There's no way to tell how this will play out, because the GOP hasn't really had to deal with this in decades.  But it strikes me that the GOP may be headed for the wilderness that the Democrats experienced in the '70s and '80s, as they twist themselves into pretzels trying to accommodate the anti-abortion nutcases and the anti-gay and anti-hispanic bigots and the supply side dead-enders and the 1% and the aging white population of which Gingrich is, in fact, the perfect representation.

Hey, a guy can hope.

UPDATE:  Here's a chart from Nate Silver at the Times.  It shows how common this terrain was for Democrats and how unprecedented to the GOP:

Oh, Just Shoot Me...

Were you perhaps wondering if - just maybe - Penn State was innocent in the Sandusky horror show?

Well, they're guilty.  How do I know?

They hired Lanny Davis.

Just Cut And Paste

They Started the Fire

by John Cole

The thing to remember about the chaos ensuing in the GOP primaries, where each week a different candidate is the new new savior before publicly shitting the bed, is that this is all the fault of the Republican party itself. They allowed the party to create this alternate reality about, well, everything that happened the last decade. They are the ones who encouraged their party to believe that a center-left Democrat is actually an America hating socialists. They are the ones who made this mess, so when they are all horrified when each week a different candidate looks the fool by pandering to the base, remember, they are the ones who encouraged the base to think all this crazy shit.

UPDATE: Longer version of the same idea here:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/iowa-debate-december-10-6613783

Wasted Valuable Grading Time To Read This

http://www.happyplace.com/4173/the-best-responses-to-celebrities-on-twitter/page/10

Hilarious.  At least as the vestiges of civilization are drowned in a sea of 140 character soundbites, we can all have a good chuckle.

In Your Exam, Stealing Your Brain Cells

YAY!

Currently giving exams to terrified AP students who know this will go on their PERMANENT RECORD!!!1!

There has been a lot of talk in our school about the efficacy of exams - as opposed to a paper written outside of class.  As an AP teacher, I don't really have a choice, as my students have to be prepared for the AP exam in May, but even without the college board breathing down my neck, I still favor the exam format.

The argument against the exam is that it prioritizes memorization over thought.  Or to the degree that students DO have to think during an exam - say when they are writing essays on the exam - it still relies too much on speed and remembering why Martin Van Buren was not a successful president.

And in the Age of the Great Gizoogle, memorizing information is not the skill it once was.  I use Wikipedia in class all the time to find out things like the 2009 Mexican midterm election results or the exact wording of the Intolerable Acts.

But a good exam should not be about trivia.  It should be about comprehension.  Recall is part of that, of course, but recall is not unimportant.  And while cramming for an exam is not all that productive long term, the more often they learn a thing, the more likely it is to stick.

The downside is that the next three days are going to suck for me, but that's a small price to pay for how much my students are suffering now...

News Of The World

Even as I prepare to administer my Comparative Government exam tomorrow, I look ahead to teaching Russia upon our return from vacation.  And things are getting interesting in Russia.

First of all, there's a certain challenge in teaching a course based on institutions when those institutions undergo change.  Two examples: Britain's First Past The Post electoral system disadvantages the third party Liberal Dems, and therefore Britain never has coalition governments unlike other Parliamentary...what?  They did?  Nevermind.  And then you have Iran.  Iran has a weird hybrid of republic and theocracy.  But the wide spread fraud in the last election has ended any pretense that Iran might have had towards free elections.  Previously, there were limits in who could run, but the elections were not presumed to be fraudulent.  You can't say that anymore, and now Iran is rumored to be considering a move to a Parliamentary system.

I say all this because Russia is in the grips of an important moment in their national history.

We presume in America that officials "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed".  That legitimacy necessarily flows from the ballot box.  But that's not alwats the case.  Mexico, for decades, had a regime kind of similar to Iran, in that the elections were on the up and up, but the PRI controlled the list of candidates, the way the Supreme Leader does in Iran.  And similar to Russia, there were other parties on the ballot, but no one presumed they would be anything more than minor nuisances to the ruling party.

In the 1980s, Mexico saw its petro-economy collapse.  This greatly undercut the popularity of the PRI, which based its legitimacy on the stability and prosperity that it brought the Mexican people.  So, the PRI began to commit widespread electoral fraud.  Now, the Mexican people have a stronger identification with "democracy" than do the Russian or Iranian people, so they took this very hard.  Their choices may have been limited under the PRI, but it was still their choice.  Fraud removes that choice.

This is what we saw in Iran with the Green Movement.  The choices in Iran have always been limited - Khatami and Mousavi and others were not going to overthrow the Islamic Republic - but the people at least had some choice.  The fraud that swept Ahmadinejad back into power took that away from the people and stripped away any pretense at representative government.  And at the moment, Iran teeters on the brink between military dictatorship and a reformulated, parliamentary Islamic republic.

Russia does not have the deep roots of electoral politics that Mexico (or even Iran) has.  Elections have always been problematic there.

But they have had elections.  Putin won those elections, because he is very popular - or was - and did not need to resort to fraud.  He might make it impossible for his opponents to win - see how he hounded Gary Kasparov out of the race the last time through - but he didn't screw with the voting.

It is now abundantly clear that he did this time around.

Now maybe (probably?) the Russian people simply don't care enough about the idea of democracy to be affronted by this naked act of fraud.  The Mexican people did, and they eventually forced the PRI to abandon its fraudulent ways, which directly led to the election of the PAN's Vicente Fox in 2000.  We don't know what the long term effect will be in Iran.

But Russia stands at a very important moment.  As we undergo what might be called a fourth wave of democratization in the Middle East, Russia looks to be sliding back deeper and deeper into authoritarianism.

What will the Russian people do about it?

No, Your Excellent Idea Is Pretty Much Crap

Tom Friedman has an idea!

Third parties... What are you doing to do?

Now, certainly third parties have a place in American history.  In the 19th century, they usually arose because one of the two main parties were not addressing an important issue.  The perfidy of Masons.  The spread of slavery.  The peril of the Irish.  The desire to inflate the currency.  The struggles of farmers.

I guess you can even look at George Wallace as addressing the needs of white supremacists.

Ross Perot was somewhat different.  To his credit, he did focus attention and energy on the deficit.  But his was also a top down, personality driven enterprise driven by ego.  And then there's Ralph Nader, but I repeat myself.

Now, there is a lot of talk about third parties this year.  In some ways, the Tea Party could function as a third party if Willard Romney wins the nomination.  If they were to bolt (which is doubtful), they could function as a third party.  More likely evangelicals will bolt, but that's an example of grassroots third parties.  Similarly, if OWS coalesced around a candidate, they could be a third party.  At least in part, that's what Obama's speech yesterday is trying to head off.

But that is different from Americans Elect.  This is a top down, third "party" effort flogged by people like Tom Friedman.  They want a sensible technocrat.  Someone who works with both sides of the aisle.  Someone who doesn't pander to the extremes.

No one seems to have told them that guy is already President.

The other problem with this line of thinking (and this is true of all the recent third parties since the Progressive Party), is that it presumes that a president without a party can govern.

Our government is simply not wired to work that way.  Congress certainly isn't wired to work that way.

We had a president without a party once.  His name was John Tyler.  I am reasonably certain he was not carved onto the side of Mount Rushmore.  Tyler's presidency was a mass of dysfunction, as he was expelled from the Whig party for apostasy.  Tyler was a Whig because he opposed Andrew Jackson, not because he supported the Whig policies of Henry Clay.  So when he succeeded Ol' Tippecanoe (and Tyler, too!), he quickly exposed himself as a man torn between parties.

To a certain degree, Jimmy Carter became a man without a party, as Washington Democrats simply couldn't put up with him.  That turned out well.

Governments function because of institutions.  Parties are powerful institutions.  The idea that you can summon forth a knight in shining soundbites to win with presidency and slay the dragon of deficits and win the crusade against partisanship is narcissistic folly.  (Did I mention this is Friedman's idea?)

Partisanship exists because there are different opinions on how to run the country.  Arguing between the parties is not a symptom of dysfunction, it's a necessary part of making decisions.  However, once the arguing is finished, compromise becomes necessary.  As the GOP showed - yet again - yesterday, they will filibuster ANYTHING Obama puts forward, even moderate judges.

The problem is not that Washington is a partisan place, but that one party has decided not to compromise at all on anything.  THAT is the root of the dysfunction.  Electing Bloomberg won't solve that.

Now, conceivably a third party in the legislature would be interesting, but you'd have to change our electoral laws (to one of instant runoffs between the top two finishers) and change the rules of Congress.

But aside from THAT... cake.

Obama Would've Made A Good Blogger

http://news.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/obamas-teddy-roosevelt-speech---full-transcript.php?ref=fpblg

Worth reading.

Is Popcorn Good For A Cold?

I am sick, because of course I am.  I have a ton of work to do, a wrestling meet to lose tomorrow, exams to prepare, review sessions to plan, comments to write, exams to grade, children to monitor.  Of course I feel like warmed over poo.

I had a nice bowl of soup at lunch.  Chicken, of course.  So good for the back of my throat which has been worked over with a cheese grater.

But I have to say watching the GOP crack up is the Christmas gift that keeps on giving.

Everyone who works or knows Newt Gingrich is agog at his recent ascendency.  Lindsey Graham, who was the Brutus to Newt's Caesar, is now trying to patch things up, because Newt's probably more popular in SC than Huckleberry is at the moment.

Meanwhile, the GOP congressional leadership has been so gobsmacked by his rise, that they haven't noticed that - oh, yeah - we have to pass a budget.  What could be a better monument to the resurrection of Newt Gingrich than a full-on governmental shutdown?  The Crazy Caucus wants to attach all sorts of riders to defund ACORN and abolish the Department of Education, but then they won't vote for it anyway, because it doesn't have exemption from criminal prosecution for people who shoot abortion doctors in their churches.

So, Boehner knows he needs Democratic votes for a bill that his crazier members are loading up with crap.

Meanwhile, the GOP seems unwilling to extend the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits because... well, I guess because it's offset with a surtax on the 1%, but really it's because they are now literally incapable of doing ANYTHING that resembles governing.

So, within a month, we could see A) Newt Gingrich win Iowa with Mitt Romney finishing third.  B) The GOP shutting down the government for Christmas, C) The GOP cutting off UI and raising taxes on the middle class.

Golly gee willikers!

Wherein, Daily Kos Becomes Almost Irrelevant

Where's Markos Waldo?

One of the things that drew me to the blogosphere was the fact that nowhere in the traditional media did I hear much that I agreed with, especially in the run-up to the Iraq War.  I guess it started with the 2000 Election (fuzzy math/Gore's sighs), accelerated with the recount and then exploded with the manufactured war.  It's not that I'm a Super Genius, but I am not stupid and I am relatively well informed.  As I became a more experienced history teacher, I also learned more context for things that were happening around me (which is the point, after all, of studying history).

I think Eschaton was the first blog I visited and quickly moved from the Baby Blue Cherub to the Great Orange Satan.  It was at Kos that I first learned of the maxim "More and Better Democrats".  

The "More" part is pretty self-explanatory.  There is a fundamental calculation that Markos was making that you have to tolerate "ConservaDems" in conservative districts and states in order to get majorities in Congress.  This strategy bore fruit finally in the 2006 midterms.

The "Better" part was trying to force more progressive candidates on to bluer states and districts.  The best example of this has been the long and finally fruitful effort to kick Joe Lieberman into retirement.  Lieberman simply does not represent the Democratic party of Connecticut.  You need a better Democrat from Connecticut in order to balance out the more conservative/centrist members.

The "More Democrats" is why Daily Kos threw its support behind guys like Jon Tester in Montana and Mark Warner in Virginia.  And when Tester flirted with apostasy on the Obama jobs bill, the community at Daily Kos pretty much revolted.  Warner lost them years ago.  Same with Jim Webb.

Most of it is a combination memory loss/political ADHD, where they forget what life was like in Bush's America.  Some of it is the sanctimonious that often accompanies the Left.  There's a fair amount of not having a common enemy to focus on, too.

But it now seems like Daily Kos is abandoning the More Democrats for the Better Democrats.  That's fine, that's their right, and the site has been trending that way since the public option fight.  

But for the Democrats to retake the House, they need More Democrats.  Many of the Better Democrats are safe in their seats.  Some, like Alan Grayson, went too far, too fast with their constituencies, but most are ensconced in true blue districts.  Without widening the field to include the "More", having a rump of the "Better" is not helpful, especially in the House with its majoritarian rules and procedures.

I'm not sure where the "More" camp will migrate to.  But there needs to be a big institutional site for them/us.  

Here I Am! Rock Me Like A Herman Cain!

Wow, no one could have predicted...

Since I'm a day late on the Herman Cain withdrawal, I will just throw a bunch of links at you.

First, there is Booman's "What I learned from Herman Cain".

Second, because of course, we have The Onion.

Herman Cain was always more of an act of political performance art.  He was on the grift and out to sell some books.  Run for President, charm some people, maybe you get a comfy gig at Fox.  There are lots of blonde ladies at Fox for Herman to hit on, so I can see the appeal.

Most of Cain's "ideas" were pure hokum.  The 9-9-9 plan was apparently based on the Sims video game.  His willful ignorance about anything related to foreign affairs was kind of frightening after a point.  I mean, Rick Perry is too stupid to know anything about Uzbekistan, but Cain just refused to learn about it.

But unlike Gingrich or Romney, he was likable.  He passed the "Who do you want to have a beer with?" test.  Mainly because Romney and Huntsman are forbidden from drinking, Gingrich would probably be all pompous about the merits of microbrews and the history of fermentation, while Bachmann after a few sips would get all clingy and talk about how Marcus spends so much time with troubled boys that he never touches her anymore.  Awkward.

Gingrich probably stands to win from this.  He's a lot of people's second choice, which is fitting for a man working on his own third choice.  If the bulk of Cain's support goes to Newt, he wins Iowa.  If he wins Iowa and runs a strong second in New Hampshire, he probably sweeps South Carolina and Florida.

The only thing now standing between Gingrich and the GOP nomination is Newt Gingrich.

Hell Weeks Begin

One damned thing after another.

So, I have a wrestling tournament today, followed by school duty until midnight.

I also collect 24 research papers that have to be graded by Thursday morning.  Friday morning I give my final exams and have to turn those around by Monday.  Then it's comment writing time.

It could be worse, I suppose.  I could - like My Most Wondrous and Delectable Wife - be a class dean and have to write an additional 40 letters.

So, I leave you with this from Charlie Pierce:

The president had a plan to put people to work repairing this country's disgraceful infrastructure. This was knocked down in the Congress, not because it wouldn't work, but because it might. I would like any of the glibertarian nitwits who scorn these kinds of programs to explain to a father of three that he's better off working six weeks stocking Chinese-made crap at some electronics-store chain than he would be working for a year fixing a bridge, or building a water-treatment plant, or retrofitting a building with energy-saving technology. I grow tired of the prevailing assumption that we are simply a nation of temp workers in waiting. You can take your grandchildren to see a bridge you built. (I knew old WPA hands who did exactly that, and there was a railroad bridge out in the woods in the state forest in which I once worked that old folks would walk down the trails just to visit.) Work has to be more than a paycheck graciously granted to you by some board of directors that might as well be on Mars. People want more than jobs. They want to produce something. They want to contribute to something bigger than themselves that isn't necessarily The Company.

Instead, we get vague promises of a golden age of global capitalism. We get invective about the unemployed, and those people who are outside yelling at the buildings wherein the lifeblood of the American economy continues to be siphoned off into business that produce nothing. And eight percent of us could be building bridges, and are not.

Politically, this should be unsurvivable. For anyone. Politically, this should be a more serious bit of business than who got jiggy with whom back way back in the day. Politically, this should be the moment at which the country adopts this blog's fundamental economic theory:

Fk The Deficit. People Got No Jobs. People Got No Money.

Instead, things are looking up!

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/job-numbers-for-november-2011-6607826#ixzz1fTrECjmd

Oh, Herman...

Herman Cain strikes back.

Oh, my.

Just go read this.

http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2011/12/02/women-who-love-herman-who-loves-women/

How can you shame a man to quit his campaign when he has no obvious sense of shame?

Oh, Mittens...

Mitt vs the bear.

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/12/01/this-is-the-electable-one/

Wow.  Mistermix over at Balloon Juice finds this attack ad on Romney.  Go watch it.  The punchline is at the end, when you see whose ad it is.

He compares Romney with Bachmann and finds Bachmann the much more polished campaigner, in the sense that Bachmann can easily repeat talking points no matter the context.

Romney has been hermetically sealed away from real people for so long, he doesn't know what to do when Fox News... FOX NEWS! asks him straightforward questions.  Imagine Bill Clinton or Barack Obama being asked questions about their biggest perceived weakness as a candidate.  Don't you think that they would have a ready, canned answer to that question?

Once Romney loses that aura of inevitability, what exactly does he have going for him?  His hair?  His jawline?  If that were enough, Perry would be in the lead.

That clearly must be the thinking behind the campaign that ran this ad.  Romney may LOOK inevitable, but he's simply not a very good candidate in a lot of ways.

Charlie Pierce returns from wherever he was hiding yesterday to give us this piece of brilliance.

Libertarians Are Ultimately Just Children

Let's start with the kids at the Von Mises Institute.

There is some merit to Austrian economics.  Not a ton, but there is some.  It tends to elevate the theoretical over the real world, but they make some good points from time to time.

But true Libertarians are just kind of nutty.  Ed at Gin and Tacos bring us this unbelievable - OK, actually not unbelievable per se, but gob smackingly awful - piece from the writers at the Von Mises Institute about trying to rehabilitate Scrooge.

Click thru and read the damned thing.

First, you have the mindless, reflexive obeisance to free market ideology.  "Bob Cratchett is being paid exactly what the market feels he should be worth."  Then, you have the heartless misanthropy.  "And Cratchett should not be rewarded for foolishly having all those kids."  And then the weird hero worship. "Scrooge is actually a very good and productive man."

This really struck me because I actually had the time and opportunity to read a New Yorker piece yesterday. Something I used to do quite often.  It is on David Thiel, the Silicon Valley investment guy who founded PayPal and funded the early days of Facebook.

In it, we learn of this very bright, precocious young man who went to Stanford and found it somewhat stultifying.  In his mind, education simply seeks to create conformists.  He - apparently by nature - is a contrarian.  And I think that's the first hallmark of a Libertarian.  That whatever is understood and received is probably wrong and should be opposed.

Obviously, this makes it the opposite of Burkean conservatism, which puts a premium on slow, evolutionary change that abides by traditions and standards.

At the end of the article, George Packer is at a dinner party with a bunch of these Silicon Valley Libertarian types.  They disparage college as being a waste of time, when people should be out following their entrepreneurial bliss.  When Packer mentions that maybe reading Great Books and arguing with people who don't come from your same background has value, the response was telling.

Around the table, the response was swift and negative.  (Artificial Intelligence researcher) Yudkowsky reported he was having a "visceral reaction" to what I'd said about great books.  (Biotech specialist) Nosek was visibly upset: in high school, in Illinois, he had failed an English class because his teacher said he couldn't write.

That last part is telling to me.  Libertarians tend not to handle failure well, and most tend not to have to face it. Nosek could not possibly be a bad writer.  School itself must have been the problem. Packer concludes:

The libertarian worship of individual freedom, and contempt for social convention, comes easiest to people who have never really had to grow up.  An appetite for disruption and risk - two of Thiel's favorite words - reflects, in part, a sense of immunity to the normal heartbreak and defeats that a deadening job, money trouble, and unhappy children deal out to the "unthinking herd."  Thiel and his circle in Silicon Valley may be able to imagine a future that would never occur to other people precisely because they've refused to leave that stage of youthful wonder which life forces most human beings to outgrow....Thiel is no different.  He wants to live forever, have the option to escape to outer space or an oceanic city-state, and play chess against a robot that can discuss Tolkien, because these were the fantasies that filled his childhood imagination.

That is probably as sympathetic and cutting a definition of the libertarian impulse as you're likely to read.

Oh, and the Tolkien reference? Yeah, that probably wasn't an accident.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Ringsand Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.