Monthly Archives: January 2017

Julian Pecquet on AL Monitor reports the echoes of the objections from the US Foreign Service to the travel ban:

“As a result of this ban, many of those fleeing war and persecution have been adversely and unjustly affected,” the Mecca-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation said in a statement Jan. 30. “Such selective and discriminatory acts will only serve to embolden the radical narratives of extremists and will provide further fuel to the advocates of violence and terrorism.”

And the Saudi-backed government in Yemen, which is battling Houthi rebels and welcomes Trump’s stance against the Houthis’ Iranian patron, also denounced what they call Trump’s “ban.”

“We resent the US ban,” the Yemeni Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Such decisions support the stance of extremists and sow divisions.”

Even the Iraqi Kurds, many of whom trust Trump to be more supportive than former President Obama of their dreams of independence, are keeping a nervous eye on the developments of the past few days. Like other Iraqis, they are covered by new regulations denying them entry into the United States for 90 days.

Populist stands, popular as they may be, are naturally developed by those who have little experience in the relevant domains. As the amateurs muck about, the innocent victims cry out, but those responsible will never apologize and only relent with the greatest reluctance, for they will hide behind the bush of conveying the desires of the people, the deliverer of wishes; but such is not the role of our representatives in government, but to instead find and implement effectual policies; and, much like Trump’s self-proclaimed military wit, discard the merely popular; for the popular is the dreams of the inexperienced, unnuanced, unsubtle.

And the world is a very subtle, non-linear place.

The Independent has an article illustrating the dangers of reaching for goals out of legend – for scientists. They were in search of metallic hydrogen:

To do the research, the scientists crushed tiny bits of hydrogen beneath diamond anvils, exerting more pressure on it than is found at the centre of the Earth. Small steps forward have been made through the work, but no researchers have yet been able to show off the shiny metal that would be expected to be seen.

That is what the two Harvard scientists claimed to have done. But they cannot yet show off the piece of metal because it is still stuck between the jaws of the anvil – and they say that removing it might cause it to disappear entirely.

The researchers believe however that the reflective and shiny material they can see crushed in the anvil is metallic hydrogen. One of the scientists, Isaac Silvera, said that when looking through a microscope at the sample it looked to be shiny and so “you can only believe [it] is a metal”.

But …

The Harvard researchers first posted their work to arXiv, a website that collects scientific studies before they are published through peer-reviewed journals, in October. At that point it attracted huge amounts of criticism from other scientists who argued that it was based on a mistake.

But the paper was published this week in the journal Science all the same, heralding a succession of headlines that claimed that humanity had made a huge breakthrough that could shed light on some of the central questions of the universe.

The pressure to publish on research professors – especially those at high end institutes such as these two at Harvard – may have caused them to not be complete in their work. After all, the phenomenon of duplicate discoveries is fairly well known, and even if they didn’t know of any competing teams, that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there.

The two wanted to “… publicise their “breakthrough event”, and that further experiments would shed more light.” It’s not a gamble to not check your results thoroughly, it’s really just bad science. I can understand them wanting to get the stick in the ground, marking the territory as their’s – but I fear they may end up on the Retraction Watch web site.

Academy Award winning Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) stars Gregory Peck confronting anti-Semitism in its American form – the nearly invisible miasma of a people who might have formally accepted the American stricture that religion should not matter in one’s social and business dealings, but haven’t actually invested in it. A writer with an assignment, he begins telling all manner of people that he’s Jewish, and observes their reactions – until his own young son is subjected to the more honest anti-Semitism of small children, and while he was morally outraged at what he had encountered from both Christian and Jew alike, this emotional pain is the real lesson he needs to help him write his story.

As one would expect from an award winner, there are many superb aspects to this movie, from the the excellent illustrations of the moral arc of the movie, to the acting and photography (we saw it on TV in the original B&W). Peck is his usual sympathetic, complex self, showing a professional skill at squirming uncomfortably in social situations; the blanket covering hypocrisy is always a little rumpled. Within the greater arc of American history, this is some of the most subtle bigotry, unlike the more raw versions practiced on the Africans, Irish, Germans, Chinese, and no doubt others.

All this aside, while the story is fairly timeless, this telling is inevitably tied to the artifacts of the era, which is just after World War II. It could have hurt, but such things as the man who functions as the directory of a building has an organic, authentic feeling to it, which makes the movie interesting from the academic viewpoint of collecting archaic customs of the time.

While this movie is unhurried, it doesn’t drag through unnecessary scenes; each is important and will tell you something, although occasionally it’s nothing more than Love is a Blindfold. Indeed, beyond the title (I can’t think of a good replacement, but this title is awful), and the ending (I think he got the wrong girl in the end, but then the other one reminds me of my Arts Editor), it’s hard to find much to complain about. This is a long movie and you will find this movie is, as my Arts Editor says, good for you. If you don’t mind such movies, then it’s Highly Recommended.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. From Roger Pielke, Jr.’s 2010 book The Climate Fix, Chapter 7 (Disasters, Death, and Destruction), p 174:

Consider that presidents declare 50 percent more flood disasters in years in which they are running for reelection than in other years. There is obviously a signal there. It’s just not a climate signal.

Indicative of the difficulties in analyzing proxies of climate data – sometimes politics intrudes. I wonder if Obama did the same thing…

Avuncular:

suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality <avuncular indulgence> [Merriam-Webster]

Encountered in “Inside the Trial of Dylann Roof,” Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker:

Judge Richard Gergel was presiding. He is an avuncular silver-haired man with a reputation for efficiency and a liberal bent; in 2014, he issued a ruling that same-sex couples have the right to marry in South Carolina, and he was responsible for installing a portrait of Jonathan Jasper Wright, the state’s first black Supreme Court justice, in the Court building.

Paul Rosenzweig on Lawfare discusses the abrupt arrest of a manager at Kaspersky Labs, and his own discretion when it comes to security software. Did you know KL was located in Russia?

The news today is shocking.  Russian authorities have arrested a top Kaspersky cybersecurity manager for espionage.  Kaspersky is a Russian-based cybersecurity company, widely regarded as having close ties to the Russian government.  Kaspersky himself has close connections to the KGB [as an aside, that is one reason why I personally do not use Kaspersky’s products.]  According to English language reports: “Kaspersky Lab on Wednesday confirmed reports in Russia’s respected Kommersant newspaper that Ruslan Stoyanov, head of its computer incidents investigations unit, was arrested in December. Kommersant said that Stoyanov was arrested along with a senior Russian FSB intelligence officer and that they both face charges of treason.”  That’s two people who, no doubt, will soon be convicted and, one suspects, thereafter executed.

As I understand Paul, he thinks American activity in connection with the recent election may have provided enough of a signal to Russian intelligence to pinpoint an American mole in KL. Paul thinks we might have done better:

Today we see the costs of the public discussion of intelligence.  I admit to speculating here (though with good reason, I think) but two of our sources (including one in Kaspersky) are now blown and the reason may well be that we felt the need to publicly disclose the information we gleaned from their efforts in order to publicly defend the IC against President Trump’s unjustified and unjustifiable attacks.  To be fair, part of the reason for the need for the publication was also the Obama administration’s remarkable reluctance to act earlier this year and the relatively laughable nature of the sanctions we imposed.  They had the tools but failed to use them.  And as a result, two men will, I think …. die.

Some more blood sacrificed to American politics? There have been several incidents of wars being extended for election reasons, which seems despicable. I don’t know if we’ll ever find out what happened here.

Lawfare is reporting that American civilians are not alone in their astonishment at the Muslim travel ban – Foreign Service personnel are also protesting using an official communications channel:

Numerous Foreign Service officers and other diplomats have drafted a dissent memo expressing opposition to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning refugees and immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States. ABC reported this morning on the draft, which is likely to be submitted today.

Here’s a copy of the actual draft. We are hearing that literally hundreds of foreign service officers are planning to be party to the dissent memo; it’s still unclear exactly how many. We have redacted all names and personally identifiable information from this document.

The State Department’s Dissent Channel is a mechanism for employees to confidentially express policy disagreement, created in 1971 as a response to concerns within the Department over the government’s handling of the Vietnam War. Authors of a memo submitted through the Channel, which is open to all regular employees of the State Department and USAID, may not be subject to any penalty or disciplinary action in response. Once a memo is submitted, the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff must acknowledge its receipt within two working days and will usually distribute it to the Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of State, the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the Chairperson of the Open Forum, and, if the memo’s author is employed by USAID, by the head of that agency as well. Taking into account the wishes of the author, the memo may also be distributed more broadly within the State Department and may be done so anonymously.

A response is irrelevant; that such a memo exists at all, and is attracting many signatures from Foreign Service professionals, indicates just how poorly the Trump Administration is performing.

I’m still digesting the actual memo, available at the provided link on Lawfare.

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) comes out of the noir genre. A girl, Martha, trying to run away with a boy from the other side of the tracks, accidentally kills her domineering aunt in front of her tutor’s son, and then lies. 17 years later, the boy returns with a checkered past, and the girl now runs the aunt’s business empire – and the tutor’s son is married to her and is the District Attorney. Assuming he’s back to indulge in some blackmail, the married couple makes the boy’s life tough, not only physically, but emotionally.

Much like The Grapes of Wrath (1940), this is a movie about circumstance, choices, and how they affect the balance of a lifetime. But in this case, some might argue that Martha had little choice; her aunt was stern and strict, and may have had delusions of grandeur, as she reiterates her intention to make her orphaned niece into an “Ivers”. It’s a question mark, though, for all that the aunt’s portrayal appears to be evil, and is shown beating a kitten to death, it’s still arguable: perhaps the proper upbringing was all she had on her mind. Some people do fear, and sometimes hate, cats.

But the aunt dies, and now the decision of telling the truth or lying comes to the fore. But she’s a child, and she makes the child’s choice: lie.

But, as we learn, that one decision queers her life’s arc enormously: her marriage is a sham, her husband, for all of his apparent success, is a drunk, she fears her life is the prison she lied to avoid, and when the boy who was going to help her escape returns, she quietly snaps. We don’t even hear it, yet it resounds throughout the movie.

None of the characters are saints. The boy who returned? A gambler who slips trouble like a dancer. His mysterious girl? Another victim of a dysfunctional family, with a police record. Perhaps he’s with her out of pity, or out of his own desperation – he doesn’t know himself. But when illicit financial opportunity is dangled in front of him, he’s willing to grasp it – even if a nettle comes with it.

But what a nettle.

If not languid, this is certainly a leisurely tale, letting you soak in the glow of the stars, and some excellent cinematography. The twists and turns of the story kept us on our toes (good thing my head cold is finally fading), and the acting was quite good. If you enjoy noir, this is certainly not to be missed.

Underfunded pension funds? Must be Chicago, right?

Nope, it’s Iran. Navid Kalhor reports in AL Monitor:

The most important issues are the imposition of financial obligations by consecutive administrations over the past four decades as well as the approval of populist legislation by various parliaments, and particularly under the previous conservative government. Combined with the pension funds’ own financial problems, the situation is truly dire.

By politically influencing the pension reserves, consecutive governments have mismanaged the assets owned by these funds. At present, most of them are accumulating large, unsustainable and unfunded pension liabilities. In this vein, problems concerning equity, efficiency and management are pervasive. In an interview with business weekly Tejarat-e-Farda on Oct. 8, 2016, Mohsen Riazi, the deputy of the social and economic planning office at the Social Security Organization (SSO), said, ”Policies such as early retirement in difficult and hazardous occupations and renovation of industries that have played a great role in the financial misbalance of the largest pension fund in the country [belonging to the SSO] date back to the Reformist government [1997-2005].”

Growing old has its risks no matter where you live.

Sure, it’s The Onion. Doesn’t mean it’s not right.

Putting the nation on alert against what it has described as a “highly credible terrorist threat,” the FBI announced today that it has uncovered a plot by members of al-Qaeda to sit back and enjoy themselves while the United States collapses of its own accord.

Multiple intelligence agencies confirmed that the militant Islamist organization and its numerous affiliates intend to carry out a massive, coordinated plan to stand aside and watch America’s increasingly rapid decline, with terrorist operatives across the globe reportedly mobilizing to take it easy, relax, and savor the spectacle as it unfolds.

“We have intercepted electronic communication indicating that al-Qaeda members are actively plotting to stay out of the way while America as we know it gradually crumbles under the weight of its own self-inflicted debt and disrepair,” FBI Deputy Director Mark F. Giuliano told the assembled press corps. “If this plan succeeds, it will leave behind a nation with a completely dysfunctional economy, collapsing infrastructure, and a catastrophic health crisis afflicting millions across the nation. We want to emphasize that this danger is very real.”

More precisely, the 9/11 attacks were never about tangibly defeating us as we were. They were about changing us. That is, the United States as it was could not be defeated by a bunch of terrorists – or even if the Middle East nations all banded together and took a shot.

But, for those who hated us, there was a realization that the ideals we represented were very attractive to large segments of their population, large enough that the factions the haters represented would never be able to take power if nothing changed.

And thus, the attacks. As enormously frightening as they were, they inflicted only a small amount of damage; worse yet, for the terrorists, they exposed a hole in our systems which had to be repaired.

And was repaired.

But. But but but. It also changed us. A highly conservative administration (and somewhere around here is a posting on an academic study of the conservative mind, but I can’t find it at the moment), conservatives who claimed to be so much better than their political opponents at defending America, were embarrassed and shown to be, in the eyes of many, making hollow claims and promises. This enraged them.

Thus came the Afghan invasion, the Iraq invasion, the opening of Gitmo, and the various torture scandals which have since left a horrid blot on the honor and reputation of the United States. The Bush / Cheney Administration served the needs of the terrorists perhaps better than they ever expected.

In Obama they had a more canny enemy Commander-In-Chief, one who thought and analyzed and saw the big picture. I suspect there was celebration in the terrorist holes when Trump came to power. Because now we’re seeing shallow-minded “travel bans” which is triggering protests and discord in the United States. It’s on display for everyone overseas to see: the United States, which likes to make itself a beacon of hope, is becoming less attractive to those in desperate straits. (And if you, dear reader, just shrug, then I shall remind you that Albert Einstein was another refugee in desperate straits, as were many others who made great contributions to the States over the centuries.)

Make no mistake.

There’s a difference between a respectful clamor of differing opinions, and outright discord and protests. This is not a bunch of leftists or rabble rousers reacting to a conservative President. These are common citizens who understand the United States stands for liberty and accepting refugees, and not ripping families apart just to satisfy the xenophobia of a few fringers. Once again, it’s amateur hour at the White House.

And a satirical web site may have failed in its mission: it may have gotten the news spot-on.

The Planetary Society’s Report has reminded me that there’s more going on than politics – there’s the greater Universe. I’ll be scattering some cool pictures from 2016 about, just to keep up my feeling of awe. First up is from NASA/JPL/University of Arizona and the MRO HiRISE project, looking at the Martian south polar region:

Source: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The white portions of this observation are part of that residual [South Polar] ice cap, and the sunlight is coming from roughly the bottom of this non-map projected image. It is made of solid, frozen carbon dioxide and is very bright relative to the background. This is despite the background terrain having a very high water-ice content, which is darkened by very fine rocky particles, or dust.

Very interesting and picturesque in this scene are the different scales of polygons present in each terrain. The relatively medium-toned lines in the dark terrain divide it into polygons that are up to approximately 10 to 15 meters (30 to 45 feet) wide. Typically, temperature changes of the ground over the seasons cause it to expand and contract, forming cracks and troughs between sections of ground that may partially fill with frost, forming the polygonal pattern viewed from above.

The polygons in the bright carbon dioxide terrain are different. First, they are much larger, up to 20 to 40 meters (60 to125 feet) wide.

Very unexpected.

California is enjoying a respite from the recent drought – as KQED reports, quite a respite:

Virtually all of California is enjoying its wettest winter in five years. In fact, current statistical reports on rainfall and the water content of the Sierra Nevada snowpack show that so far, we’re in the midst of one of the wettest California rainy seasons on record.

All the precipitation has transformed a state that suffered through five years of severe drought. One of the most visible effects: high levels of the state’s major reservoirs.

And a nifty before & after pic. From the American River & Hydrologic Observatory we can get their real-time charting service:

Hopefully this will provide some relief. I hope this doesn’t slow down conservation and management efforts mentioned in earlier posts.

Daniel Bob on 38 North rebuts a Charles Krauthammer suggestion that Japan and South Korea be permitted to develop nuclear arms as a way to pressure North Korea to terminate its nuclear arms program:

Japan’s public and its leaders understand that choosing to go nuclear would actually reduce the country’s security. It would undermine the country’s vital alliance with the United States and likely provoke South Korea, America’s other key alliance partner in East Asia (which has also rejected nuclear weapons despite having the technical capability), to follow suit. However, 59 percent of Koreans gave a positive answer when asked, “Should South Korea possess nuclear weapons?” according to the same Genron NPO survey cited above. Given their ongoing distrust of Japan, Koreans would almost certainly view their neighbor—if armed with nuclear weapons and unmoored from its alliance with Washington—as a threat, generating even more support for developing a nuclear arsenal. If Japan and South Korea joined the nuclear club, China could be expected to respond by increasing its own store of nuclear bombs, while other states in the region would feel less constrained by their NPT obligations.

The likely result would be the end of both the US-led alliance system in Asia, which has been so successful in advancing US and regional interests, and the NPT, which stands as the world’s most important and successful arms limitation treaty. Within East Asia, historical animosities still afflict Japan’s interactions with South Korea and China; territorial disputes undermine Japan’s relations with China, Korea and Russia as well as China’s relations with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Vietnam; internal conflicts linger in Thailand, Myanmar, the Philippines and Indonesia; and a number of autocratic regimes and democracies alike face instability. The proliferation of nuclear weapons would not only increase the chance of catastrophic war in the context of regional tensions, but also of loose nukes falling into the wrong hands. …

I ask you to stop and think for a moment what it would mean to have nuclear weapons in so many hands, in the hands of countries large and small, stable and unstable, responsible and irresponsible, scattered throughout the world. There would be no rest for anyone then, no stability, no real security, and no chance of effective disarmament. There would only be the increased chance of accidental war, and an increased necessity for the great powers to involve themselves in what otherwise would be local conflicts.

Yeah, the idea seems nutty; in fact, it sounds like capitulation. We can’t solve the problem, let’s let their close neighbors solve it, instead. Daniel’s case seems sound.

Uri Savir in AL Monitor has an interesting report out of Israel on their plan for dealing with the Trump Administration:

According to a senior Ministry of Foreign Affairs official who is part of the policy team preparing Netanyahu’s visit, Israel is currently drafting a proposal for Trump and his team, pre-empting any future agreement with the Palestinians. The draft will propose that the new US administration recognize Israel’s future sovereignty in the settlement blocs without defining their scope. Israel also seeks US assurances that it will prevent any diplomatic move internationalizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution, such as the continuation of the Jan. 15 Paris conferences or any other UN Security Council resolution stipulating the illegality of Israeli West Bank settlements. On the other hand, the relocation of the US Embassy to Jerusalem is not high on the Israeli agenda, out of concern for unrest in the West Bank. Such an agreement by the new administration will enable the Netanyahu government to freely continue its settlement expansion policies, especially within the settlement blocs and the Jerusalem area. Netanyahu will also ask for new sanctions on Iran.

Other countries are also covered. I can’t help but wonder, though, if Netanyahu has taken into account Trump’s predilection for TV, as noted by Steve Benen:

During the Republican presidential primaries, NBC News’ Chuck Todd asked Trump whom he turns to for guidance on matters of national security. “Well,” the Republican replied, “I watch the shows.”

By the fall, Kellyanne Conway said if she wanted to deliver a message to Trump, she wouldn’t just tell him what’s on her mind. “A way you can communicate with him is you go on TV to communicate,” she explained.

I foresee a new television series in the future, starring the Israeli Prime Minister.

Spraint:

Spraint is the dung of the otter.^[1]

Spraints are typically identified by smell and are known for their distinct aromas, the smell of which has been described as ranging from freshly mown hay to putrefied fish.^[2] The European otter‘s spraints are black and slimy, 3–10 cm (1–4 in) long and deposited in groups of up to four in prominent locations near water. They contain scales, shells and bones of water creatures.^[3] Because of the decline of otters in Britain, several surveys have been made to record the distribution of the animal, usually by recording the presence of spraint. ^[4] Further, there is some evidence that spraint density is correlated with otter density. [Wikipedia]

Noted in NewScientist’s Feedback column.

ON THE subject of spraint, our colleagues previously announced the news that dogs habitually orientate north-south when relieving themselves (17/24/31 December 2016, p 44). Steve Martin sees a useful application: “If you are exploring, take your dog with you and you will never get lost.” Just remember to give it a big feed first.

Vivien Harrison, meanwhile, cautions that the correct breed is necessary. “My brother informs me that his dog doesn’t orientate itself north-south when it defecates,” she says, “as it is not a shih tzu pointer.”

In proper Minnesota fashion, I now moan Uff-da.

Back in 2015 I responded to a post by David Chung advocating straight ticket voting, the backbone of power politics. The victory of Trump and many GOP Congressional members has been attributed to stray Republicans returning to the party ticket, and while it’s not the only factor in their recovery, it’s an important factor, and resulted in many upsets. It”s a little depressing to see my points from that prior post starting to be fulfilled, starting right at the top.

Competency: As we’re seeing in the various nominations so far, demonstrated competency is not a component of most of the Administration’s picks; rather, it’s demonstrated loyalty. This lack of interest in competency, in turn, reflects on the Administration itself, in particular its methods. But, as Seashsells on The Daily Kos points out, the incompetence may have already been demonstrated on a more concrete level: the damaging weather in Georgia:

THIS is what American Carnage means. Just as FEMA failed to get help to NOLA after Katrina, so Trump and his team have dropped the ball after tornado storms ripped through the SouthEast this past Saturday and Sunday. There are 20 people dead and communities devastated with some areas looking like what many call a war zone. Officials are begging Trump to send help TWO-THREE DAYS after the tornado storms. Make sure you spread this story. Trump supporters need to see what voting for incompetent, anti-government Republicans gets them.

Positions are prizes: Magnifying the Bush Administration, it seems like nearly all the nominees are being handed awards for their donations and/or work. DeVos, Tillerson, Price. Even Haley, although in this case it’s not a reward to Haley, who didn’t support Trump, but for her Lt. Governor, Henry McMaster, an early Trump supporter. But now they have their cracker jack prizes for the money they donated – but what do we get out of them?

Reduction in public debate: While the volume of public clamor has increased, it’s not at all clear to me that public, productive debates on national policy are taking place. Perhaps I’m missing them. Or perhaps, as word comes down the chain of command that Trump has decided thus and so, the ideological faithful leap into line – no matter what they privately think. And this lack of debate means that the voices of those afflicted by the decisions are not effectively heard by those on top – by those who demand and expect absolute loyalty. For example, at the bottom are Iowa farmers and the TPP, as reported by The Des Moines Register:

President Donald Trump’s decision to jettison the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal and renegotiate U.S. trade with Canada and Mexico could lead to a trade war that could put Iowa in the cross-hairs, worried state leaders told the Register on Monday.

Agriculture and manufacturing, two industries that help form the foundation of Iowa’s economy, would be among the first casualties because of Iowa’s heavy dependence on exports.

For the party faithful, here’s a chilling comment:

“I would hope that President Trump wouldn’t take action that could start a trade war, given that it would damage the very people who helped put him in office,” said Dermot Hayes, an Iowa State University agricultural economist. “But that’s just a hope.”

I worry that the failure to hold Trump to a high standard by Iowa farmers is going to substantially hurt not only our Iowa farmers, but everyone else.

Selecting Party planks: Given the amorphous cipher that is President Trump, his actual position on many issues remains quite questionable, rendering this assertion of mine a little dubious. You don’t think he’s a cipher? Consider this report on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, from TPM:

During a joint press conference on Friday at the White House, British Prime Minister Theresa May seemed to go out of her way to box in President Donald Trump on his backing for NATO, declaring that he had told her in their private meeting that he will support the decades-old alliance “100 percent.” …

May’s portrayal of Trump’s comments on NATO diverge from his public statements on the alliance.

The strength of a democracy can be perceived as a weakness – the failure to speak in a single voice. For those who are in economic distress, for those who don’t tolerate dissent and multiple opinions and think they need certainty, it can seem as if the nation is adrift in a fog of voices. But it’s that respectful clamor, the opinions of many people, which bring us the political and moral strength that has made us a world leader. As we learn to use this tool called the Web, learn to discern false news from true news, lie from fact, we should improve our utilization of those opinions. At one time, the gatekeepers of the broadcast networks helped keep debate quality high; today we’re learning how attain that quality, as we gradually marginalize dubious sources such as foreign teenagers and its American equivalent, Breitbart News.

In order to understand the fallacy of team politics and its implementation, straight ticket voting, one must come to a certain realization: team politics is an instrumentality independent of the quality of the policies it enables and enforces. Once this concept of straight ticket voting gains acceptance and is used, it can be used for anything.

Repeat it with me, folks: Anything.

Such as a highly damaging trade war, because the leadership doesn’t understand the processes and limitations of international trade.

The concept of team politics, without context, is a profound abdication of responsibility. I shan’t deny limited applicability, such as against today’s GOP, which appears to be a highly competent marketing machine, and not much else. But once committed to voting for a straight ticket, there is no more judgment to make, and if one or more of the members of the ticket are bloody fools, or sociopaths – well, straight ticket voting is not a defense, not a rationale. You are still responsible if that ticket you voted for leads you into bedlam.

One final point. I worry that other parties will see what appears to be success for the GOP, and try to follow suit, holding out the siren song of straight ticket voting. As they do so, we should see the power mongers, the sociopaths, the leaders with no qualifications start to climb the ladder towards the top of the hierarchy. That’s a sign of pathology. Watch for it. Otherwise, we’ll have another generation of Hasterts, Livingstones, and Gingrichs, deLays and Lotts – and Trumps. People to whom the rules didn’t apply as they reached for power.

And got it.

The opposite of straight ticket voting is an embodiment of one of the most important, yet under discussed, American qualities: that of doubt. The realization that our answers to governance are contingent, tentative, and never definitive and final. We put forward solutions, but if they fail then we write them off and try again, much as FDR reportedly did – and Governor Brownback fails to do, fixed as he is on ideological purity and not effectuality.

Broken ticket voting recognizes that no one party has all the answers.

This version of War of the Worlds  (2005) is not the classic version, but the remake starring Tom Cruise. It is, in some ways, similar to the earlier version, but it also differs in a key way.

They are similar in the special effects department, in that both, for their era, is excellent. The solution to the problem of something destroying humanity is the same, the attack of our pathogens on hosts with no defenses, and thus they appear to share the same religious orientation, although this version’s touch of religion is far lighter, perhaps even superfluous.

But there’s a key difference. In the original, science is brought to bear upon the problem, and is one of the foci of that version; its bitter and complete failure, and the scientists’ desperation, vs the smallest of the small’s success in defending our planet becomes the epilogue of the movie.

In this new version, science never enters into it. This is a classic It Came, We Saw, We Ran Like Hell plot, and we follow the flying heels of Cruise’s character, a longshoreman with virtually no concept of science, as he gathers up his children and gets out of town with the monsters hot on his trail. Once in the countryside, he must play dodge-ems with the monster’s monstrous machines, all the while trying to ride herd on a daughter with a scream like a train whistle, and a son with a ridiculous urge to prove himself.

But while the science and military of the first version barely lay a finger on the monsters (they manage to chop up a mechanical eye, as I recall, and bring it back for study), when Cruise finally gets scooped up by one of the machines, he goes up with a grenade belt, and, through a brave ploy, he halts its macabre rampage.

1 for the regular guys, 0 for the experts. While the first version addressed the classic rivalry between religion and science, this new version addresses a less conventional rivalry – that between the experts and the guy who fixes his own cars. It’s not stressed – we never even see a scientist labor and fail – but the theme lingers in the background, encouraging the audience to believe it can do anything it wants, if it runs fast enough and happens to be clever.

In the end, the monsters meet their doom due to the aforementioned pathogens, so the theme of the superiority of the regular guys is diluted, even attenuated; and, in fact, that’s a general problem with this movie: it can’t really decide what it wants to say, beyond the classic Put a putz in a pressure situation and he may grow up. It attempts to follow the original’s lesson in faith, but does it poorly, since it adheres to the single viewpoint of the longshoreman, who shows no sense of religion from beginning to end.

All that said, if you’re a visual person, this is a fun movie to watch. Director Spielberg springs a number of dramatic tableaus, from a hunt of Cruise’s family in an abandoned farm house, to a burning train, still flying along despite the monsters’ attack, to a car ferry attempting to save refugees, but instead becoming a death trap. These are carried off in grand style, but rather than being the cherries on the top of a great plot, they are the distractions from the rather muddled mess it becomes. The transition from the destruction of monster to the march on Boston is particularly problematic, because by now there’s no mechanized transport, except for the military – so how did they get to Boston so quick? And why murder that one guy, driven mad by the loss of his family? It seems … excessive.

All in all, it’s an OK movie, certainly if you have a head cold like I do, but it’s not going to stick to you. Better seen in the cinema than on the TV, it’ll be 20 years old in about 8 years – it may be worth waiting for it to show up as a “classic” at a local nostalgia cinema.

Since the Trump Administration is apparently deciding to abandon its moral commitment to public health by no longer reminding people midway through the ACA signup process to finish it (which apparently is crucial), I will link to Steve Benen’s report on it, and reiterate his advice:

Vox’s Sarah Kliff added, “For Obamacare to work, it needs a lot of young people to sign up. Young adults typically have lower health care costs, so they can help balance out the hefty medical bills of older enrollees…. With less outreach at the very end of the open enrollment period, former Obamacare officials expect they’ll have fewer sign-ups from young adults.”

For Trump World, this is, of course, the point. The White House doesn’t want the system to work, so the president’s team is taking deliberate steps to undermine the system – in order to then complain that it doesn’t work.

For the record, Americans can still sign up through Jan. 31. You might want to let people in your life know about the looming deadline – it’s a detail their Republican-run government is trying to keep under wraps.

Remind everyone you know. And don’t fall for this underhanded stratagem.

Later note: The GOP’s allies certainly hope to drown the ACA. Consider this report from Politico:

A House GOP-aligned outside group is rolling out a $2.6 million media blitz urging lawmakers to repeal and replace Obamacare — a move aimed at proving Republicans support as they craft a health care alternative.

American Action Network on Wednesday will unveil the new spending on TV, digital and print ads as well as mailers in 41 districts. That brings the group’s total Obamacare ad spending to just over $4 million in January alone, a huge investment they hope will preempt Democratic attacks for their efforts.

“The current healthcare system does not work and has hurt millions of Americans; it’s time for a healthcare system that works,” said Corry Bliss, AAN executive director, in a statement. “Americans should know that Congress has a plan for patient-centered health care and their member of Congress is a key voice in this fight.”

Sounds like a load of nonsense from here. They need to bring along some facts and figures.

Forbes.com has an interesting tidbit on the Senator Warren’s baby, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau:

Judge Brett Kavanaugh of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote a decision last year declaring the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency unconstitutional because no one including the President had the power to fire its director (a structure CFPB supporters including Sen. Elizabeth Warren say protects it from political meddling).

“Because of their massive power and the absence of Presidential supervision and direction, independent agencies pose a significant threat to individual liberty and to the constitutional system of separation of powers and checks and balances,” wrote Kavanaugh, a George W. Bush appointee who also served as counsel in the Bush administration.

So do judges, oddly enough, but I suppose the difference is that the agency doesn’t function as a check on another governmental agency. In the referenced article, the actual modification:

In a decision reversing $109 million in fines the board ordered against mortgage lender PHH Corp., the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that CFPB Director Richard Cordray must be subject to firing by President Obama.

If the CFPB doesn’t appeal, or loses the appeal, then Trump can fire the director whenever a complainant gets Trump’s ear and whines a bit. I don’t expect much in the way of adult supervision.

This sounds like the beginning of a plot for a bad movie. From NewScientist (14 January 2017):

Source: wiseGEEK

Alysson Muotri at the University of California, San Diego, and his team created the mini-brains by exposing stem cells taken from the pulp of children’s milk teeth to cocktails of growth factors that help them mature.Eventually, they can develop as many as six layers of cerebral cortex – the outer surface of the brain. This region is much more sophisticated in humans than in other animals, and houses important circuitry governing our most complex thoughts and behaviours, including socialising with others.

It’s cool stuff, really – who would have thought that the pulp of milk teeth could be used to create parts of a cerebral cortex? And why?

To understand how brain development affects sociability, the team used donated cells from children with autism and Rett syndrome, both of which are associated with impaired communication skills. They also used cells from children with Williams syndrome, a condition characterised by a hyper-sociable nature. People with Williams syndrome can be unable to restrain themselves from talking to complete strangers.

The team found that mini-brains grown using stem cells from children with autism form fewer neural connections, while those from Williams syndrome children have an abnormally high number. When cells from the teeth of children with none of these conditions were used, the resulting mini-brains were somewhere in between these two extremes.

Which leads to questions of whether or not therapies developed to correct the number of neural connections to an “ideal” number is an ethical treatment. After all, what would determine an ideal number? That leads to questions about neuro-typical vs neuro-atypical desirability.

It connects, in my mind, to the azi of C. J. Cherryh’s Cyteen series, who were basically bred slaves – who didn’t mind being slaves. I found them a bit chilling, but then that was one of the points of the series – heavy specialization may be necessary to survive in space.

On Lawfare Jack Goldsmith does not believe the military services nor the CIA will return to torture:

People forget that under the Bush administration, the DOD in 2003 successfully revolted against aggressive interrogation techniques that the DOJ has at the time ruled lawful, and that the CIA interrogation and black site program had basically ground to a halt after 2006 in light of the changes in the law forged by the Detainee Treatment Act and Hamdan.  They forget that the CIA refused, after the DTA but before Hamdan, to accept a DOJ interpretation of the DTA that would permit a return to waterboarding.  (See pages 119-120 of Power and Constraint.)  Hamdan made a return even more perilous.  Whatever ambiguity was left concerning the legality of waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques was eliminated by the McCain-Feinstein Amendment to the FY2016 National Defense Authorization Act, which, as Steve Vladeck notes, requires ICRC access to detainees and “limits the techniques that can be used against any detainee either in U.S. custody, under the effective control of the United States, or held in a facility owned, operated, or controlled by the United States, to those ‘authorized by and listed in the Army Field Manual 2–22.3.’”

These are some of the reasons why the Attorney General and Defense Secretary pledged not to return to waterboarding, and why the CIA Director did as well despite some weasel-words.

That was ten to fifteen years ago, so I might not be so sanguine. Still, it’s an interesting post for his emphasis on the nuances which I doubt Trump even knows exists. Here’s an example (which he takes from an earlier publication of his):

Presidential actions do not take place in a vacuum, but rather in a context where they are interpreted based on perceptions about the President’s intentions and trustworthiness.   The early Bush administration loudly and proudly proclaimed that it wanted to expand presidential power, and appeared to act on this proclamation in many legal opinions and contexts that scared all of the checking institutions above and led them to push back very hard against Bush in an unprecedented fashion.  … [Presidential actions] are not judged in a vacuum.  They are judged against a background of beliefs about (among other things) the president’s trustworthiness and commitment to the rule of law.  In its first term the Bush administration was (as I argued in The Terror Presidency) unprecedentedly indifferent to these factors, and the checking institutions bit back unprecedentedly hard.  Trump is already in a much worse position than was Bush on the trustworthiness score.

Trump’s pack of amateurs and second-raters may play well to his base – but for the professionals both inside and outside the national security apparatus it’s going to be something entirely different. If we start seeing wholesale firings, we’ll know the Trump Administration is unhappy with the responses they’re receiving. However, the judiciary is relatively immune to the Administration, so they may end up being a bulwark against the foolish activities.

Claire Brewster does interesting things to obsolete maps:

I’ll skip trying to connect material to subject matter. Here’s another.

More here.

Message From Space (1978) has enthusiasm, chutzpah-filled teenagers, deus ex machina, and galactic bad guys. It doesn’t have any real plot, logic, motivations, special effects, or any real reason to get excited.

Except for that spaceship that crashes right at the end.

Whether or not it’s a rip off of Star Wars, don’t waste your time. Even as a head-cold movie it’s a horrid bit of trash.

By Steve Benen on MaddowBlog:

After Donald Trump condemned people who are registered to vote in two different states, multiple reports surfaced about the president’s chief strangest and his Treasury nominee being registered to vote in two different states.

Perhaps he is strange, but it’s no doubt strategist. Gotta like it.