Monthly Archives: June 2017

I’ve discussed the war I think we’re fighting with the Russians before, specifically here, although we could simply term it a fierce rivalry, at least for those who like to keep their terminology clean. It started, more or less, with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia; our riposte was the drop in oil prices; and the return Russian thrust is their interference in our elections.

We do need to realize that we’re in a coldly serious competition with Russia. This is not a military conflict, and need not be, but here’s the problem: we’re trying to run our side of the conflict with one foot in concrete. Both sides have their advantages and disadvantages, ranging from various natural resources to societal cultures to political systems, and we could spend days writing about them. But Russia is deadly serious about their ambitions, and we need to not make unforced errors.

And our side is doing that.

I’m not talking about the election of Donald Trump – that was a forced error. We were manipulated into that mistake, and it’s indisputable that we were manipulated into it.

But now we have an Administration which is actively trying to cripple the American Government, one of the most potent weapons in this war. Notwithstanding President Trump’s attempts to blame the Democrats, he is far, far behind in nominating the leaders of the government, as TIME reports:

“Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors,” the President tweeted. “They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals.”

Setting aside the fact that his fellow Republicans control the Senate, there remains a very large problem here: the White House has not nominated anyone for the job in London. Trump announced during a gala luncheon on Jan. 19 that New York Jets owners Woody Johnson would be his pick, but the White House has not referred the nomination to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It’s tough for anyone—Republicans or Democrats—to confirm a nominee who hasn’t been nominated. An ambassador-in-theory at the Court of Saint James does the United States no good.

Among these personnel are some of the most important in service, those of the State Department. They handle the diplomatic duties, and this is where wars start – or are successfully aborted. Many news outlets have reported on Secretary of Defense (read: War) Mattis’ comments on the situation, so at random, here’s Business Insider:

“If you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately,” Mattis said, before members of Congress at a National Security Advisory Council meeting, the US Global Leadership Coalition notes.

“So I think it’s a cost-benefit ratio. The more that we put into the State Department’s diplomacy, hopefully the less we have to put into a military budget as we deal with the outcome of an apparent American withdrawal from the international scene,” Mattis continued.

It’s become increasingly apparent that the GOP has become the party of the amateurs. Honestly, there is no serving GOP member of Congress who stands out as a leading expert on any aspect of foreign relations. In the past, the GOP had a reputation for integrity in this area, with leading names such as Senator Lugar of Indiana rightly well known and respected.

Nowadays? Maybe the best known is Senator McCain, who, based on his rambling contribution to the James Comey hearing yesterday, has entered his dotage and might be best served by retiring. After that?

But I’ll skip busting the chops of various GOP members – no matter how they need to be highlighted – in order to move on to the GOP itself. I and many others have noted before how it disdains experts and expertise in preference to pretending that all is how it prefers it to be – yet you can be sure that when their trucks breakdown, they don’t take them to the kid who’s ten years old but assures you he knows how to fix your pickup.

No, they take them to the trained mechanics. Why they think that doesn’t apply to national policy in a dozen different areas, I don’t know. But this attitude, borne, in many cases, from lust for power allied with a profound ignorance outside of any fields of expertise they may have, does not serve the nation well. We need that to stop.

And I’m using that mysterious pronoun again, We. I’d like to address it and then them. By We I mean the electorate, and to youse guys, it’s time to stop fooling around and electing half-baked amateurs. I don’t care if they tell you all is well (it’s not), that they’ll take you back to the halcyon days of the 50s (they won’t and they weren’t) (OK, some of the cars had great styling), or even if they know how to pray really well. I don’t care if they’re Democrats or GOP, but they must be competent – because I’m confident a competent Republican will understand there’s a difference between government and business, that both are necessary – and an active government is not necessarily a bad thing.

It all doesn’t help when you have an ambitious rival who’s getting ready to eat your lunch because you elected amateurs. In some cases, acknowledged amateurs. Via The Hill:

“Of course, there needs to be a degree of independence between [the Department of Justice], FBI and the White House, and a line of communication’s established,” Ryan told reporters.

“The president’s new at this. He’s new to government. So he probably wasn’t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, the FBI and White Houses. He’s just new to this.”

Another reporter later pressed Ryan on why inexperience is an “acceptable excuse” for Trump’s behavior.

“I’m not saying it’s an acceptable excuse. It’s just my observation,” Ryan replied. “He’s new at government and so, therefore, I think that he’s learning as he goes.”

Problem is, we don’t have time for this. He selected a slug in Secretary of State Tillerson, and someone uninterested in increasing the performance of the education system in DeVos – two important pillars of a free society.

This is about far more than Trump. It’s about the sickness of the GOP; the ignorance of the electorate – and how that endangers the safety of the United States. We need long term solutions, not just chants about electing progressives or Democrats. We need improvement in the standards of voters, in understanding the important role of government, and how electing the incompetent only inflicts more damage on ourselves.

Kevin Drum finds a new study concerning his favorite hobbyhorse that happens to be covered in lead paint. The key to this study are the two very similar study groups, one of which had an intervention to lower lead levels in the blood, the other not:

Source: Mother Jones

Violent crime arrests go up along with blood lead levels, which should be no surprise at this point. But the final two bars in the chart are the most dramatic. The control and intervention groups, which were very similar to begin with, diverged substantially. The intervention group, even though it probably started out with slightly higher lead levels, was far, far less likely to be arrested for a violent crime in their teenage years compared to the control group. The statistical significance of the drop is extremely strong.

Because the two groups of kids were so similar, there was barely any need for controls. The authors did them anyway (gender, mother’s education, birth weight, etc.), and they had little effect on the final results.

This continues to intrigue. Perhaps George “Machine Gun” Kelly’s nickname should have been Lead Belly.

But, frankly, close up they’re a little creepy. First, the sleepy view.

And now for a closer view of their genitalia:

Sorry about that last one getting a little blurry.

And a final glory shot.

As Turkey slides into the grasp of the autocrat, we’ll see how good his grasp is when it comes to the fine points of managing his country. For example, the economy nearly crashed near the end of 2016, and now that the referendum passed, giving President Erdogan far more power, he has that sitting in his lap. Mustafa Sonmez reports in AL Monitor:

Yet there is also the other side of the growth-glowing coin, where new fragilities are emerging on top of existing ones. The unemployment rate, for instance, reached 12.6% in February. Inflation hit 11.7% in consumer prices and 15.3% in producer prices in May, emerging as one of the most serious problems in the short run. Tourism revenues, meanwhile, signal a decline even in comparison with 2016, which was already a crisis year.

The government’s lavish spending and various incentives to avert the crisis, including corporate tax discounts, premium supports and reduced VAT rates, will all mean budgetary strains in the long run that would upset public finances. Ultimately, the lower classes will end up paying the price.

There is also the question of what will happen at the Credit Guarantee Fund, which has sponsored the issuance of Treasury-guaranteed loans totaling some 180 billion liras, with maturity terms extending to 10 years and often including grace periods of up to three years. The volume of the fund itself was raised to 250 billion liras in March, which led public banks in particular to lend lavishly in the run-up to the referendum. This may result in clamors when reimbursement time arrives.

The banking sector’s loan volume has expanded by 160 billion liras this year, but lira deposits have increased only by 33 billion liras — even though banks have raised yields to up to 15% per year. This means a significant shortage of resources in the sector, and the Central Bank is being used to overcome the problem. The inevitable outcome, many fear, will be more inflation, more bad debts and more burden on the public budget.

And if all that comes to pass, what will the Turks do? Trust in their leader? Will he redirect their anger at some minority group? Blame the Greeks?

Blame Trump? (Maybe not.)

Turkey’s not small beans, so if they get in trouble, that could have impact in both Europe and the Mideast.

Skeuomorph:

A skeuomorph (/ˈskjuːəˌmɔːrf, ˈskjuːoʊ–/^[1][2]) is a derivative object that retains ornamental design cues from structures that are inherent to the original. [Wikipedia]

Seen in “The retro-styled Munro Motor 2.0 blurs the line between e-bike & motorcycle,” Derek Markham, Treehugger.com:

The North Carolina legislature occasionally shows some sense, mostly in reaction to corporate interests. Sami Grover on Treehugger.com is shocked to discover a bill is in process to boost the solar power industry:

In terms of overall impact, the bill does appear to be pretty wide ranging. It covers everything from permitting solar leases (as long as the lease is not directly tied to how much energy is generated) to allowing, for the first time, participation in “community solar” schemes. And while it reduces the amount that Duke Energy is expected to pay for power to solar farms, it also requires Duke to accept bids from solar farms and offer longer contracts—a move which many solar developers apparently see as a worthy tradeoff.

It’s really quite an encouraging sign, and perhaps not as surprising as it may first seem. North Carolina has actually seen huge growth in the utility-scale solar sector of late, spurred in part by the presence of giant tech companies like Apple (the photo above is of their solar farm in Charlotte [omitted]). Residential solar, however, has lagged somewhat behind, so an overhaul of the state’s legislation may well unlock some pent up demand.

Or it may reflect a dawning realization that the electorate is not so happy with conservative-corporate politics; an upgrade to their reputation as the continuing gerrymandering case goes against them. I suspect competing on a level playing field will turn North Carolina blue, inside and out.

Kansas has finally tossed out the Brownback plan for doom, over his torrid objections. Turns out the GOP – at least in Kansas – has its limits when disaster looms. The Wichita Eagle reports:

Lawmakers rolled back Gov. Sam Brownback’s signature tax policy over his objections Tuesday night, forcing into law tax increases to fix a budget shortfall and provide more money for schools.

The legislation ends the “march to zero” income tax cuts that Brownback heralded for much of his time as governor. …

The override represents a blow to the legacy of one of the most unpopular governors in America, amid speculation that he may not serve out his remaining time in office but instead take a federal position.

Brownback did not respond immediately to the override votes. The night before, he had said he would veto and issued a statement: “Senate Bill 30 is a $1.2 billion tax hike, making it the largest in state history. This is bad for Kansas and bad for the many Kansans who would have more of their hard-earned money taken from them.”

Lawmakers who supported the bill and the override said the 2012 policy was a mistake that had drained the state of revenue, leading to rounds of budget cuts and harming investments in roads and other priorities.

“It’s hard to celebrate because Kansas is in such shambles. The magnitude of the problems that we have to correct is so great,” Rep. Melissa Rooker, R-Fairway, said.

Given the recent fall in general conserviative leaning folks in the country, I’m guessing the Kansas GOP, liking neither the rock nor the hard place, chose higher taxes and moved to accord with reality, rather than hanging on to an ideology that had proven false.

It’ll be important to keep an eye on Kansas to assess whether they begin to prosper again – and why – or if this is insufficient.

Or if the state is permanently wrecked.

As you can see, the lupine and columbine are not adverse to late night parties. I think the baptisia in the background may be the overly protective parent, though.

Run, columbine, run – he’s got a paddle!

Sorry, not embeddable.

www.facebook.com/Cats.Are.Amazing/videos/759282670801415/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

Elections have consequences, but sometimes they apply to those who really wish the election hadn’t happened. Remember how many prominent and mid-level Republicans protested the nomination of Donald Trump for the Presidency? It was really unprecedented, from Republicans who were willing to vote for anyone else, to now-former Republicans abandoning the Party.

But Trump, by a quirk of quantum mechanics, managed to win anyways, and riding his shirt tails was a rag-tag band of Republicans who managed to retain control of Congress, albeit by slimmer margins than the prior Congress.

Since then, as long time readers know, in my view it’s been chaos in both of those branches of Congress. And now another consequence must be alarming the Republican leadership. From Gallup:

These results are based on Gallup Daily tracking throughout May. Overall, 45% of U.S. adults self-identify as Democrats or say they are independents who lean Democratic, while 38% identify as Republicans or lean Republican.

It’s interesting, and perhaps depressing, for Democratic leaders that there is no increase in their percentage. I would have thought the increased political consciousness inspired by the clownish atmosphere in the current national leadership would have pushed a lot of independent voters into the liberal camp. Perhaps the Fox News effect is stronger than I’d like to think, or maybe liberals just come across poorly in the media. Certainly, their failure to vigorously defend the ACA is a blot on their reputation.

But as much as Trump is a national eyesore, the GOP leadership in Congress has had its share of unforced (and unadmitted to) errors, from the House passing of the AHCA to the Betsy DeVos and Jeff Sessions confirmations. Equal parts extremism and incompetence, this downtrend may signal that we’ve seen the top of this latest cycle of populism, and people may begin to appreciate that experts are valuable – and work in hard areas and sometimes make mistakes. I can hope.

So what happens on June 20th, when the last two open seats in the House of Representatives are filled through special elections? Beats me – deep red seats that are unexpectedly competitive. More importantly, what happens on the next election cycle? In the unlikely event that Trump remains President then, this drop off in conservative sympathies may indicate he’ll be facing a deeply hostile Congress.

But that only assumes these results hold up – or even worsen for the Republicans. Stay tuned and know hope.

Ages ago I critiqued a proposal (it’s a bit down in that post) for reforming the Pennsylvania judicial selection system. It called for a bipartisan commission to select judges; I suggested that this would simply transfer the partisan facet of the election to the effort to get on the bipartisan commission – and then nothing would get done, as the most unreasonable partisans of both sides would not agree.

Now I see four former governors of Pennsylvania have endorsed the idea, using the prevalent euphemism merit selection for a bipartisan selection body. Philly.com has their proposal:

Merit selection is not a panacea. We are hardly naïve about today’s political realities. Nonetheless, having in place a system by which any qualified candidate can apply for an open seat on the appellate bench and be considered by a bipartisan, diverse group of citizens from across the commonwealth — a group tasked with evaluating the strength of that candidate’s professional and personal qualifications to serve — is a far better system than one in which random ballot position, fund-raising, and campaigning are determining factors.

It seems like there will be improvement in terms of the uproar of the elections being reduced – the vicious fighting for positions on the commission will occur during its formation, and, depending on that selection process, may or may not involve vast sums of money, petty bickering, and all the paraphernalia used by partisans of both sides.

But the judges won’t have elections any longer, will they?

They’ll be faced with the temptation of pandering to the commission, instead. No offense to the judiciary, as I’m sure many will simply go about their jobs and then hope their job performance is sufficient to retain their jobs every few years.

But that’s hardly a secure job position. It doesn’t necessarily induce top performance.

And then for those judges – or candidates – who are deficient, the temptations will be strong. Bribes may be rare, but favoritism in rulings? That I could see.

Look, selecting judges is not an easy process. In an inherently political system, judges need to be neutral politically, with a bias to interpreting the law for each case. And then know what to do when the law doesn’t appear to directly address a situation. The point of the selection process should be to remove negative pressures (political as well as corruptive) from their jobs.

However, the former governors appear to be distracted by a need to involve the citizenry in the process. Here’s their reply to critiques:

And yes, there are those who say that substituting merit selection of these judges and justices for elections is denying voters’ right to elect all of the judiciary. To them we say, Pennsylvania voters will still get three bites at the electoral apple. First, they would continue to elect their local magisterial district judges and judges on the courts of common pleas. These candidates are generally better known to the voters than candidates for statewide judicial positions.

Second, Pennsylvanians would decide for themselves whether they prefer elections or merit selection. The adoption of merit selection for statewide positions would require amending the state constitution, beginning with passage of a bill in two consecutive sessions of the Legislature — itself no small feat — and then go to the voters for final approval.

 Finally, judges and justices who are nominated and approved for the appellate courts would have to face the voters in nonpartisan, retention elections after serving on the bench for four years. At that time, voters would have a body of information about how these individuals perform on the bench to use when deciding whether or not to retain them.

And how many non-aligned voters pay any attention at all to the body of work of appellate judges?

I wish the governors had met the populist outcry against appointed judges head-on, instead. This is an opportunity to put forth the reasoning of the Founding Fathers on the judiciary, that it should be independent to the greatest extent possible from the winds of professional politicians, using appointments with such lengths as to outlast the appointer, and to insulate them from popular, but often wrong, opinion. Certainly, they should be removable, but not easily, as judges are human and can be corrupted or even just be wrong, wrong, wrong.

But I fear this bipartisan commission approach mistakes partisanship for wisdom.

And then I wondered if irises changed their underwear at midnight …

Actually, I caught them sneaking up on me.

In “The Universe According to Emmy Noether” (Steve Nadis, Discover Magazine, June 2017, paywall) I learn something new – and suffer a visual of dubious import:

Noether’s theorem, however, is crucial to more than just the search for new particles; it extends to all branches of physics. Harvard physicist Andrew Strominger, for example, has identified an infinite number of symmetries related to soft particles, which are particles that have no energy. These particles come in two varieties: soft photons (particles that transmit the electromagnetic force) and soft gravitons (particles that transmit the gravitational force). Recent papers by Strominger and his colleagues, Stephen Hawking and Malcolm Perry of Cambridge University, suggest that material falling into a black hole adds soft particles to the black hole’s boundary, or event horizon. These particles would in effect serve as recording devices that store information, providing clues about the original material that went into the black hole.

Conceptual view of an event horizon
Feryal Ozel/University of Arizona

Terribly sorry, I’m sure this is totally inappropriate – but when the black hole evaporates, as Hawking’s work supposedly shows (I am not expressing doubt, but merely my wholly inadequate mathematical preparation), does this “skin” of information get sloughed off? Do myriad skins of already evaporated black holes wander the Universe, metaphorically awaiting a creature capable of understanding and enjoying the information encoded in the slough, much like a snake leaves its skin behind?

Last January Backchannel published an article relevant to this thread, concerning the establishment of an AI (Artificial Intelligence) ethics board by Google. One of the leadoff paragraphs contains links to a number of associated organizations:

Earlier this month, the MIT Media Lab joined with the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society to anchor a $27 million Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence initiative. The fund joins a growing array of AI ethics initiatives crisscrossing the corporate world and academia. In July 2016, leading AI researchers discussed the technologies’ social and economic implications at the AI Now symposium in New York City. And in September, a group of academic and industry researchers organized under the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence — an ongoing project hosted by Stanford University — released its first report describing how AI technologies could impact life in a North American city by the year 2030.

And I’ll get back to this. The Backchannel article covers the Google organization:

Perhaps the most significant new project, however, is a Silicon Valley coalition that also launched in September. Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft jointly announced they were forming the Partnership on AI: a nonprofit organization dedicated to matters such as the trustworthiness and reliability of AI technologies. Today, the Partnership announced that Apple is joining the coalition, and that its first official board meeting will be held on February 3, in San Francisco.

Think of this group as a United Nations-like forum for companies developing AI — a place for self-interested parties to seek common ground on issues that could do great good or great harm to all of humanity. …

The real issue — though it doesn’t have the same ring as “killer robots” — is the question of corporate transparency. When the bottom line beckons, who will lobby on behalf of the human good?

That should be the responsibility of the governments in question. After all, corporations are ill-equipped for such concerns; even the good corporations have a preoccupation with corporate survival, not societal survival, which is the explicit concern of government. Of course, given the clownish attributes of the current government, I’m not certain I want them holding those reins.

There’s not a great deal more relevant facts about the Google effort, as it seems to be a secret undertaking (or was in January).

One of the links referenced above is to an effort by venerable MIT to explore the topic.

The Media Lab and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society will leverage a network of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates who will collaborate on unbiased, sustained, evidenced-based, solution-oriented work that cuts across disciplines and sectors. This research will include questions that address society’s ethical expectations of AI, using machine learning to learn ethical and legal norms from data, and using data-driven techniques to quantify the potential impact of AI, for example, on the labor market. …

“Artificial Intelligence provides the potential for deeply personalized learning experiences for people of all ages and stages,” says [Cynthia] Breazeal, who emphasizes the need for AI to reach people in developing nations and underserved populations. But she adds that it is also “a kind of double-edged sword. What should it be learning and adapting to benefit you? And what should it do to protect your privacy and your security?”

It’s an introductory document, not really meant for analysis. However, why let that stop me? There appears to be an assumption that the Artificial Intelligences of the future will be of what I’ll call the non-autonomous variety, by which I mean they will not be making decisions about their own tasks, futures, desires, and fates, but rather be exceptionally advanced hammers in our hands. And it’s a worthy limitation; but it sort of avoids the ultimate suite of questions, doesn’t it? That being, if we’re in the position to give birth to an entirely different sentient species, then do we have responsibilities associated with that event and what comes afterward, or are they more like a brand new batch of … slaves?

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger.com reports on the latest development in tall wood buildings:

When it is completed, Terrace House will be the tallest wood building in the world, inching out (metering out?) Brock Commons, also in Vancouver, by 18 meters to its pointy top. But according to Matt Robinson in the Vancouver Sun, The developer Tobi Reyes said building a taller wood structure than anyone else had before “wasn’t by design.” And if you believe that….

TerraceHouse via PortLiving

Engineer Hermann Blumer is on the job; he worked with Shigeru Ban on Centre Pompidou-Metz, also a remarkable wood structure. …

The building apparently has development approval and is in for permit, and being wood construction, will probably be up before you know it. Wood construction is faster, quieter and cleaner than concrete, is great in earthquake conditions and wood sequesters CO2 for the life of the building.

So long as they remain safe, they’ll remain attractive as the primary alternative to concrete buildings. It’ll be interesting to see how quickly it does go up, and its occupancy percentage.

Superhero stories can be a tough tale to tell effectively because of the lack of a common thread of humanity. After all, the superhero possesses powers not attainable by the common person; and defeating your everyday thug can only take you so far before the audience becomes bored and wanders off, meaning the story-teller must come up with more extravagant antagonists, and the slender rope the story-crafter is trying to dance upon is becomes thinner and thinner.

There are a couple of approaches to this problem. For example, the superhero may also be burdened with some physical disability, which emboldens the common crook. Marvel’s Daredevil is blind, but in a clever twist, he attributes his superpowers to that blindness, his remaining senses sharpening to cover for his nearly useless eyes. Still, the basic disability remains.

Another approach is that taken by the subject of today’s review, Wonder Woman (2017). This is an interesting melding of the Goddess Diana, from old Greek Mythology, with the years of World War I, aka the War to End All Wars. Marvel Studios has chosen to start her off by putting her up against another God, Ares, the God of War (and where will they go from here?). The key is they’ve chosen to humanize a Goddess by recognizing that the traditional divine beings hardly ever change and grow, as this is often taken by devotees as denials of their God’s divine and all-knowing status, and this static condition is death for a story.

So we get to see Diana grow from a child to a woman. And then we get to see her not only be fallible, but to see her change and mature emotionally and mentally in response to the consequences of her actions. This transforms her from an unknowable divine being to someone very much akin to us.

And this, in turn, permits us to share in her story, to understand her mistakes, and, with her, to learn from those mistakes. As my Arts Editor points out, this is the traditional voyage of discovery, complete with mistakes made, consequences sustained, and lessons made apparent.

This artistic decision is one of the strongest components of this movie, but the story itself is well drawn, balancing horror with humor, laughter with anticipation, a plot twist here, a plot twist there. While the title character herself is a good looking lady, she is not a statue depending on her looks, but a good actor in her own right; more gratifyingly, she’s not completely surrounded by more good lookers, but some folks who just look normal – even Chris Pine, who has played Captain Kirk in several block-busters from the Star Trek franchise, is not a pretty face in this movie. In fact, he improved his standing in my estimation, showing more acting chops here than in any of his Trek movies (I skipped the last one, but not because of Pine).

The special effects met the current bar for success, although sometimes it seemed there might be too many. Still, it’s a movie that wants to cover a lot of ground, so that may have been justified. Characters are well drawn, even the Amazons who ran the risk of being too similar. And, being a product of Disney’s Marvel, it has a certain technical sophistication that you just come to expect.

So, go. Have fun. Recommended, if you enjoy superhero movies. It’s a half-step above most of the superhero films in my experience.

Professor Adrian Vermeule speculates on Lawfare on the results of Trump appointing large numbers of judges, who are approved by a Senate that may no longer take notice of blue slips. His first point:

At the level of large constitutional abstractions, courts will point to the Preamble to the Constitution, observing that it is enacted by and in the name of “the People of the United States,” not anywhere else, and that it aims to promote the “general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” This will be taken to provide background principles that inform the reading of all other constitutional and statutory texts, and that shape and constrain legislative and executive authority in an indefinite range of areas.

In other words, legal provincialism. While it’s easy to build a visceral case for such readings of the law, these ignore a basic fact of today’s existence – even if maps show us as nearly alone on a very large island, it doesn’t matter anymore – we interact on a moment-to-moment basis with other nations, and we inevitably interface our legal systems with others, sometimes on a friendly basis, sometimes on a hostile basis. Even more importantly, our actions are so magnified by our technology that it is wholly appropriate to ask if our actions in, say, Gary, Indiana, are injuring the inhabitants of Bangladesh – and, if so, require compensation as appropriate. It is not, of course, just to injure a foreign national and then not compensate; down that path lies bitter conflict, even wars, if not necessarily declared.

It’s better to admit the reality on the ground and modify the legal system and realities simply as good policy. To that extent, those new judges of Trump’s selection who disagree with this philosophy may be condemning the United States to armed conflicts of various sorts, assuming they achieve a legal ascendancy – and refuse to learn, change, and grow in their new jobs. That capacity to learn, etc, may be our best hope.

BTW, Adrian, I think, is torn between withering sarcasm and startling fear.

I was just wondering if peonies metamorphose into something else at midnight …

Guess not.

Some other views on the NATO Article 5 omission by Trump (my view here.). Charles Krauthammer, a neocon, has a mystified conclusion in The National Review:

Angela Merkel said Sunday (without mentioning his name) that after Trump’s visit it is clear that Europe can no longer rely on others. It’s not that yesterday Europe could fully rely — and today it cannot rely at all. It’s simply that the American deterrent has been weakened. And deterrence weakened is an invitation to instability, miscalculation, provocation and worse.

And for what?

You’re a fellow conservative. Just follow the money. Kevin Drum on Mother Jones:

Holy shit. It’s one thing to lose a battle about what goes into a presidential speech—that happens all the time—but it’s quite another to agree to include something and then remove it without telling your top national security advisors. And then send them out to face the press.

This isn’t a case of Trump listening to the last guy in the room. It sounds more like Trump being unwilling to tell his national security team to their faces that he disagrees with them—and then screwing them behind their backs. How long can you keep working for a guy like that?

Indeed. Andrew Sullivan:

And in a few months, Trump has all but trashed it. NATO’s Article 5 — the rock-solid assurance that an attack on any alliance member will be treated as an attack on all — was always the linchpin, and its credibility, especially with the Russians, was essential. Every single American president has therefore immediately, reflexively, emphatically reaffirmed it. And yet Trump pointedly and pettily refused to last week — even though an explicit assurance was apparently in the original text of his speech, and even though Mattis, McMaster, et al. know perfectly well why it is indispensable. Without this unquestioned trust, a defensive alliance falls apart. Yes, there is a real question of the European commitment to defense spending — and Trump had every right to bring that up. But by threatening to withhold military support without such an increase in spending, Trump turned an alliance into a protection racket. Such rackets depend on fear, not trust. He effectively — in a fit of apparent pique — threw away the work and lives of generations like a child tosses a toy from a bassinet.

Which illustrates the limitations of Trump’s cognitive ability – he can’t get beyond seeing money. There are great, if directly intangible, advantages to being the leader among leaders, and the top of that list may be the ability to set the agenda for the world. Trump’s problem is that he’s always been secure and advantaged – and he doesn’t understand that the sandbox he’s in now could become a flaming nuclear hell if he’s not careful. So he doesn’t understand how useful and important it can be to hold the agenda ledger – until another world power snatches it away.

Current Secretary of Defense and former General Mattis (!) in The New York Times:

“To quote a British observer of us from some years ago, bear with us,” Mr. Mattis said. “Once we have exhausted all possible alternatives, the Americans will do the right thing,” he continued, invoking a famous quote often attributed to Winston Churchill.

“So we will still be there, and we will be there with you,” he added.

At another point, Mr. Mattis implored his audience to understand that just because the United States had backed away from the multilateral Pacific trade agreement “does not mean we are turning our back” on the prospect of negotiating bilateral trade agreements.

Which is to say, we’ll get this kid under control and all growed up any day now. I dunno, sir, he’s already 70 years old and set in his ways.

Zeeshan Aleem on Vox:

European leaders probably found the timing of Trump’s refusal to pledge to uphold Article 5 to be particularly galling. Trump is unveiling a memorial to the victims of 9/11 while in Brussels — the only event that has caused NATO to invoke Article 5. The NATO alliance collectively fought the war in Afghanistan which was launched in the wake of those attacks on the US.

In the meantime, NATO is stepping up its commitment to US-led initiatives. On Thursday, NATO decided to officially join the US-led coalition against ISIS, although it did not pledge the use of combat troops as part of that commitment.

The strength of NATO is particularly relevant these days in light of terrorist violence and a resurgent Russia. The continent is currently enduring a fairly steady wave of terrorist attacks — most recently, a suicide bombing this week at a concert in Manchester, England, that killed 22. And Russia’s belligerence in recent years, with its meddling and territorial expansion into Ukraine and its involvement in the Syrian civil war, has its neighbors on edge about the possibility of more expansionism. Trump’s deliberate decision to keep mum on his stance on Article 5 broadcasts a clear message to the West’s military adversaries: NATO is not stable, the US cannot be relied upon to pull its weight on behalf of its allies.

Galling, hypocritical, there are so many adjectives that apply.

Susan Wright on RedState:

Nobody knows if they should take Trump seriously, or should they listen to his cabinet? Right now, the message isn’t always the same, and Trump has repeatedly undercut his own team, often a day or two after sending them out to deliver a message to the world.

Now people with solid names and reputations are seeing those reputations tarnished, as they’re reduced to muck work, shovel in hand, following behind Trump to scoop up the messes he leaves on the world stage.

I’ve not been paying attention to the folks on RedState, so I don’t know if they generally approve of Trump or not. Susan’s conclusion seems fairly generic and mundane.

Politico’s Susan Glasser has a report on the recent contretemps that arose when President Trump failed to affirm Article 5 of the NATO treaty:

When President Donald Trump addressed NATO leaders during his debut overseas trip little more than a week ago, he surprised and disappointed European allies who hoped—and expected—he would use his speech to explicitly reaffirm America’s commitment to mutual defense of the alliance’s members, a one-for-all, all-for-one provision that looks increasingly urgent as Eastern European members worry about the threat from a resurgent Russia on their borders.

That part of the Trump visit is known.

What’s not is that the president also disappointed—and surprised—his own top national security officials by failing to include the language reaffirming the so-called Article 5 provision in his speech. National security adviser H.R. McMaster, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson all supported Trump doing so and had worked in the weeks leading up to the trip to make sure it was included in the speech, according to five sources familiar with the episode. They thought it was, and a White House aide even told The New York Times the day before the line was definitely included.

Deceiving his own National Security team – this has given rise to a lot of clucking among the punditry, and deservedly so. I have  two thoughts:

1. Long term consequences: This demonstrates that a democratically elected leader of the most powerful country on Earth can make decisions which are highly damaging to both the United States and the balance of the Western Democracies. This, consequently, damages the credibility of democracy as an effective form of government.Think about that. An overwhelming majority of the United States is raised with the idea, an ingrained idea, that they have the right to be part of the government process, at the very least by voting; by the same token, by putting themselves forth for governmental positions and perhaps attaining high positions in the government. That, in essence, is the great promise of democracy, as encapsulated in the revolutionary rallying cry No taxation without representation! Sure, France and Germany have demonstrated the ability to elect respectable leaders. That’s good. But is that good enough? Is this going to be ammunition for autocrat Vladimir Putin to use for persuading other countries to abandon democracies? How about Saudi Arabia?And it’s a valid question for the United States as well. Do we return to the bloody^[1] past of monarchies? How about a stroll down the path of Dominionism?Or is it time to try to draw up another form of government? Who’s up to sing the praises for their Robot Overlords^[2]? If we are set on moving forward, though, I might favor the form put forth in Heinlein’s Starship Troopers – you must earn your privilege to vote by volunteering for government service, wherein the government service inculcates the virtue of putting greater society ahead of your individual desires. Whichever path we choose to tread, it is irrefutable that Trump has done some damage to the entire concept of Democracy as a credible governmental approach – which, incidentally, is the system under which he has made and lost and made and lost his millions^[3]. He’s basically committing a sort of philosophical suicide.And we may find that evolving to some other form of government is an unhappy, fraught process.
2. The source of this action. Glasser’s informed speculation is in accord with my initial thoughts:
   

   The president appears to have deleted it himself, according to one version making the rounds inside the government, reflecting his personal skepticism about NATO and insistence on lecturing NATO allies about spending more on defense rather than offering reassurances of any sort; another version relayed to others by several White House aides is that Trump’s nationalist chief strategist Steve Bannon and policy aide Stephen Miller played a role in the deletion.

   This is congruent with my own speculation on Mr. Bannon’s views as an alleged white supremacist – his hatred for the form of government that deprived him of hereditary (one supposes) position as a slaveowner. This simple omission from a speech is reverberating throughout the democracies of the West, shaking an historic alliance to its roots. It’s hard to overstate the importance of NATO in historical context, even if Article 5 has only been invoked once in its history. Perhaps the best way to think about it is using the “fleet in being” concept, where the very existence of a force, even if not deployed, modifies the behavior of the adversary. For example, the Soviet Union, so long as it believed the NATO treaty nations would support all of its articles, could never really dare to indulge in aggression against any of those members because then it would face the military opposition of all the nations. I suppose the Warsaw Pact could be viewed in a similar way.

   And what would have happened if Ukraine had been part of NATO when Russia invaded Crimea a few years ago, a part of Ukraine? This leads to the other possibility, that Putin told Trump to omit this part of the speech, as he conducts a low level war against the United States, the great enemy of Russia. However, there is little inside information to prove this supposition, merely the observation that Russia will benefit most from the demise of NATO.

¹And I’m being quite literal here – neither monarchies nor theocracies have done well in the humane government department. Basically, gouts of government-sanctioned blood cover their books to an upsetting degree.

²Not me. Although I suppose I should have said “Artificial Intelligences” rather than Robot, but Robot Overload has a better ring to it. And the AI overlords are probably two or three hundred years in the future anyways.

³I’m not actually sure of Trump’s current location in that cycle.

The North Carolina Democrats suffered a small setback in their court case regarding gerrymandering, as WRAL.com reports:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld without comment a lower court’s ruling that North Carolina lawmakers illegally relied too much on the race of voters when they drew 28 state House and state Senate districts in 2011.

But the justices vacated the court’s order to immediately redraw the districts and hold a special election this year, saying other remedies should be considered.

It’s really thin lemonade for the GOP, though, and their statement, to my mind, reflects that:

“We are encouraged the Supreme Court unanimously rejected the lower court’s politically-motivated attempt to force a special legislative election in 2017 and its efforts to ‘suspend provisions of the North Carolina Constitution,’ ignore voters’ constitutional right to elect representatives to two-year terms and effectively nullify their votes from 2016,” Rep. David Lewis , R-Harnett, and Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, said in a joint statement.

SCOTUS agreed that gerrymandering occurred, but thinks the remedy is too severe. An honest GOP may have acknowledged the loss or even the moral failure behind the loss. This reaction sounds more like a victory celebration.

Within the North Carolina GOP the toxic brew is, at best, retaining its efficacy. As it seems likely that a redraw for the 2018 elections will be required, they may find themselves nipped in the bud by an electorate impatient with GOP incompetency.

From Attorney Neal Katyal, who is one of the attorneys who brought the suit against President Trump’s travel ban, commenting on Trump’s Tweets’ effects:

Its kinda odd to have the defendant in Hawaii v. Trump acting as our co-counsel.

This refers to the legal fact that his own Tweets are used against him.

… our dianthus survived the ugly (for perennials) winter and is in bloom!

This makes me wonder if all of America is going to be wandering about, drooling, in a few decades. NewScientist (27 May 2017) has a report on the effects of sleep deprivation on mice, and it’s not pretty:

BURNING the midnight oil may well burn out your brain. The brain cells that destroy and digest worn-out cells and debris go into overdrive in mice that are chronically sleep-deprived.

In the short term, this might be beneficial – clearing potentially harmful debris and rebuilding worn circuitry might protect healthy brain connections. But it may cause harm in the long term, and could explain why a chronic lack of sleep puts people at risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders, says Michele Bellesi of the Marche Polytechnic University in Italy. …

The team specifically looked at glial cells, which form the brain’s housekeeping system. Earlier research had found that a gene that regulates the activity of these cells is more active after a period of sleep deprivation.

One type of glial cell, called an astrocyte, prunes unnecessary synapses in the brain to remodel its wiring. Another type, called a microglial cell, prowls the brain for damaged cells and debris.

Bellisi’s team found that after an undisturbed sleep, astrocytes appeared to be active in around 6 per cent of the synapses in the brains of the well-rested mice. But astrocytes seemed to be more active in sleep-deprived mice – those that had lost eight hours of sleep showed astrocyte activity in around 8 per cent of their synapses, while the cells were active in 13.5 per cent of the synapses of the chronically sleep-deprived animals.

Another reason not to be a brown-nosing slave to your employer. Me? I’m going out to a drive-in movie tonight and sleeping in tomorrow. I put in a couple of hours at work yesterday to cover.