Monthly Archives: August 2017

A friend sent along this example of the proper use of Twitter (via MSN/Money), but it jolted me in a totally different manner (annoying Twitter formatting removed):

On Friday evening, Tesla customer Paul Franks tweeted the following:

@elonmusk can you guys program the car once in park to move back the seat and raise the steering wheel? Steering wheel is wearing.

Just 24 minutes later, the famous CEO replied with the following message:

Good point. We will add that to all cars in one of the upcoming software releases.

Reminds me of how I dealt with user suggestions when I worked in open source software. Suggestion comes in the morning, strive to have it implemented in the evening for user testing overnight. I like to think the fast turnaround contributed to the ambiance of the project.

It’s also nice to see Twitter has a redeeming characteristic. I don’t bother with it, myself.

Goiter:

Goiter is an enlargement of the thyroid gland. The resulting bulge on the neck may become extremely large, but most simple goiters are brought under control before this happens. Occasionally a simple goiter may cause some difficulty in breathing and swallowing. [PubMed]

Mentioned by my Arts Editor last night, and I realized I had no clear idea of the meaning of the term. It appears to be descriptive and does not address causes. Here’s a helpful image:

Source: National Institutes of Health

These ladies suffer from iodine deficiency.

Here come the black-eyed susans, in three modes. Light …

… and dark, consorting with the cleome …

… and skulking off into the night, no doubt to harass innocent pedestrians. A bit hulking, don’t you think?

Kevin Drum remarks upon the difficulties of uniting the Democratic Party, which I suppose I’m happy enough to take his word for, not being the sort to pay much attention to the technical difficulties of a “big tent” party. But I think he suffers a hiccup in his reasoning in the addendum:

There’s a good example of this in Warren’s speech, where she says this:

A few weeks ago, I saw an op-ed in the New York Times from a so-called Democratic strategist titled, “Back to the Center, Democrats.”…We’ve been warned off before. Give up, keep your heads down, be realistic, act like a grown-up, keep doing the same old same old.

But here’s what’s interesting: instead of lots of ferocious back-and- forth and piling on, this time, no one cared. Big yawn. Why? Because the Democratic Party isn’t going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill.¹ It is NOT going to happen.

Bill Clinton campaigned on both those things and he won the presidency. But when he actually followed through, a lot of lefty Democrats rebelled. Nevertheless, Clinton won reelection by a huge margin. Warren is correct that the Democratic Party has moved left on these issues since Clinton’s presidency, but she’s not correct that this means moderates no longer exist. They do, and Democrats still need them to win.

There’s one big omission in Kevin’s reasoning: President Clinton’s opposition. Bob Dole ran a poor campaign and didn’t have the personal charisma that I’m told President Clinton had (I never understood that myself, but I’ll stipulate it). Clinton beat Dole by nearly 9% points in the popular vote. Some of that might be attributable to welfare and crime, but I doubt much of it. I remember that campaign, and Dole really never had a chance, despite Clinton’s political failings.

Remember Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX)? I’ve written about him before. He’s the guy who had the nerve to write this:

“Better to get your news directly from the president,” Smith said. “In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.” [Vox]

I couldn’t help thinking about him while reading Steve Benen’s discussion on Maddowblog of Trump’s ego-rally (my thanks to my friend Jim for supplying that descriptive label) in Phoenix. What caught my eye?

But there was one line that jumped out at me because it dovetails with a rhetorical line I’ve been keeping an eye on in recent months. Trump was eager to argue that he’s produced amazing economic gains – the president touted the million-job figure again, though I don’t think he appreciates why that tally is so underwhelming – which led him to this gem:

“[E]conomic growth has surged to 2.6 percent. Remember, everybody said, ‘You won’t bring it up to 1 percent. You won’t bring it up to 1.2 percent.’”

Everybody didn’t say that. In fact, literally no one said that because this rhetoric doesn’t make any sense. The president seemed lost trying to talk about this a month ago, and his economic illiteracy doesn’t seem to be getting any better. …

All of which leads to a straightforward dynamic: (1) maybe no one in the White House has explained GDP reports to our first amateur president; (2) maybe Trump’s aides have explained it, but he didn’t understand the lessons; or (3) perhaps White House staffers did explain it, Trump understood the lessons just fine, and the president is working from the assumption that the public is easily fooled.

And we know that many the Trump supporters get their news only from Trump and some of his allied media. So, for them, when Trump shouts that no one thought he could bring economic growth up to 2.6%, they believe it – because they don’t know better and they’ve been told that everyone else lies to them.

And this is so in line with the expected results of Rep. Smith’s idiotic advice. He may have given it as a way to retain the allegiance of voters, but he may find out someday that he’s not the one dispensing the truth – it’s all about Trump. And that locks him into a straitjacket of loyalty that may, someday, squeeze him out of his job.

Helicity:

Imagine the tiny tornado that forms in your tea as you stir it. The swirl can have three parts: a link, in which one loop passes through the centre of another, like chain links; a writhe, in which a loop gets a kink in it like an unruly garden hose; and a twist, when several streams of water flow around one another, like the strings in a twisted rope.

These three motions combine in a vortex to make up what’s called its helicity … [“Teacup tornadoes brew up a storm,” NewScientist (12 August 2017)]

And it ain’t us. Greg Fallis elaborates on the problem of Afghanistan:

Same shit, different invader. In almost every invasion, the Afghan tribes have been outgunned, out-technologied, out-resourced, and often out-fought. But they’ve never been out-waited. Never.

Why? Because they’re operating on a radically different understanding of time and place than the invaders. They live there. They know the invaders, regardless of who they are or where they’re from, will eventually want to leave. The simple fact is the Afghans don’t need to win; they only need to persist. If it takes a generation or two of low intensity guerrilla warfare until their enemies get fed up and find a reason to go home, they’re okay with that. They’ve done it before.

“Afghans will secure and build their own nation, and define their own future.”

That’s from Trump’s speech, and it’s a classic case of stupidity fed by willful blindness. The Afghans have been securing and building their own nation for a couple thousand years. They are defining their future. Right now that definition includes killing U.S. and NATO troops and booting us out of their country. There’s yet another reality we need to accept.

That’s the long view. But how does Greg tally up the Taliban? Were they purely an Afghan phenomenon? Or were they an incursion from Pakistan? I ask because, in my understanding, the Taliban more or less ran Afghanistan 1996-2001. And, yes, they no longer hold power – but only because of outside interference from the United States. And it fights on, hungering for power. Which is not to say the warlords who preceded them were any better.

NewScientist (12 August 2017) reports on an unexpected chemical reaction may revive hydrogen fueled cars:

Earlier this year, Scott Grendahl and his team at the US Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland made a surprising discovery. They were testing a high-strength aluminium alloy by pouring water on it, and it started to bubble, giving off hydrogen. That doesn’t normally happen to aluminium. It usually oxidises in water, forming a barrier that stops any reaction. But this alloy just kept reacting.

Hydrogen has long been touted as a clean, green fuel, but it is difficult to store and move around because of the low temperature and high pressure at which it must be kept. If aluminium could be made to effectively react with water, it would mean hydrogen on demand. Unlike hydrogen, aluminium and water are easy to carry, and both are stable. But previous attempts to get aluminium and water to react required high temperatures or catalysts, and were slow. Obtaining the hydrogen took hours and was around 50 per cent efficient.

“Ours does it in less than 3 minutes,” says Grendahl. Moreover, the new material offers at least an order of magnitude more energy than lithium batteries of the same weight. And unlike batteries, it can remain stable and ready for use indefinitely.

So is the aluminium alloy consumed by the reaction? Or is it a catalyst itself?

Maybe I should hang on to my Mazda RX7 – I recall reading quite a long time ago that Mazda engineers had adapted the car’s rotary engine to use hydrogen rather than gasoline. Just pour in the distilled water…

In case you were wondering about the hiring bonuses awarded to former SCOTUS law clerks, newly hired into private practice, here’s a report from National Law Journal:

The trial boutique Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz has hired two clerks from the most recent U.S. Supreme Court term, and in the process it appears to have set a new high for incoming associate bonuses.

The hires, Elizabeth “Betsy” Henthorne and John James “JJ” Snidow, join the firm’s Washington, D.C., office from the chambers of Justices Elena Kagan and Anthony Kennedy, respectively. Wilkinson Walsh will award them hiring bonuses of $350,000 each, name partner Sean Eskovitz said, compared with bonuses that have topped out at $300,000 and $330,000 for former high court clerks in recent years.

Which is deeply suggestive of the value of the prizes to be won in court.

I decided to try cleome snapping at night, as lightly edited by my Arts Editor.

This is my favorite.

My Arts Editor really likes this one.

Sarah Grant and Jack Goldsmith on Lawfare survey the array of options available to the Department of Defense if Trump decides to order a disastrous military order. The upshot?

To say that the Secretary of Defense and his subordinates have a legal duty to comply with presidential orders is not to say that they should do so. It just means that the law of the chain of command requires them to, and they have to be prepared to accept the consequences of defiance. For the Secretary of Defense, that means—if he thinks appropriate—resigning in protest, resisting until fired, informing congressional leaders (in or out of public), or quietly coordinating with the Vice President and others for presidential removal under the 25th Amendment. And whatever the Secretary’s choice, it provides no legal protection to the combatant commanders should they also resist. This might seem like a frustratingly limited set of options. But having an elected President as Commander-in-Chief, and strict adherence to the chain of command, are core elements of civilian control of the military that serve other very important values in the normal course of events. The current conundrum highlights again how very deeply our system of government depends on the People electing a President who is generally reasonable, prudent, and responsible.

That last sentence puts a shiver down my spine. Trump supporters may argue that this is a completely uncalled for exercise in paranoia, but based on the general level of knowledge exhibited by those supporters, and their information sources, I would not expect them to understand the situation in context. Given the long experience of many contributors to Lawfare in the area of national security law, and their consensus dismay at the actions of President Trump, I think this is a prudent article by Grant and Goldsmith.

But, in truth, the ultimate responsibility does not devolve upon Secretary Mattis and his direct subordinates, even if they are the ones fired and dishonored if they take the proper action in the face of an insane order. It rests with those who have the responsibility of oversight over the President, and that is the Legislative branch. In that respect, the general GOP preference to vote with the President is not a good omen; this comment from Speaker Ryan with respect to a simple resolution of censure of President Trump over his comments in the Charlottesville tragedy are quite discouraging:

QUESTION: Hi, Speaker Ryan. Given our shared upbringing, I’m sure that you are as shocked as I am at the brazen expressions, public expressions of white supremacy and anti-Semitism that our country has seen since the November election.

And our synagogue in Kenosha has had to have extra security hired and we’ve asked the Kenosha Police Department to help us out so that people can feel comfortable coming to our synagogue to gather.

And so following up on what’s been asked already, Speaker Ryan, as the leader of the congressional Republicans, I’d like to ask you what concrete steps that you will take to hold the president accountable when his words and executive actions either implicitly or explicitly condone, if not champion, racism and xenophobia. For example, will you support the resolution for censure?

(APPLAUSE)

RYAN: First of all, Dena’s mom and dad, Sylvia and Leon, were close friends of my mom and dad’s. Our families have known each other for a long, long time. And we are family friends.

But I just disagree with you. I will not support that. I think that would be — that would be so counterproductive. If we descend this issue into some partisan hack-fest, into some bickering against each other, and demean it down to some political food fight, what good does that do to unify this country?

(APPLAUSE)

We want to unify this country against this kind of hatred and this kind of bigotry.

So I think that would be the absolutely worst thing we should do. You just heard me say what I thought about what he said on Tuesday and what I thought he said on Monday and just a half-hour ago. The point is, all of us have got to strive to do better, and more importantly, I mean, that right there was sort of conflict of one party against another party. I think what we need to do is each of us drop our guard, start listening to each other, and having a good civil dialogue with each other about how we can improve the dialogue in this country and make sure that we can unify against this kind of vile, repugnant bigotry. [CNN transcript]

Speaker Ryan is one of the leaders in not listening to the other side, a leader in doing Trump’s bidding, not to mention a leader in general incompetency. I fear that any action that might negatively impact the GOP leader is off the table for him.

Given that he may perceive the GOP base is fully behind President Trump, and he values his position more than the safety of the country, this is not particularly surprising. But there’s also the fact that Ryan himself is part of the fringe. He spends a lot of time, I think, trying to normalize his ideology (that is, make his ideology seem mainstream and harmless), so he can’t really afford to condemn another member of the fringe, even if they don’t occupy precisely the same swampy spot. He’s already under attack from both Democrats and even more extremist members of the GOP (and just how that latter can be happening is a matter of conjecture), so he’s walking a tightrope.

He won’t do a thing if he can find a way not to.

Continuing this thread concerning recent violence in places of education, Peter Reinart of The Atlantic captures the heart of the antifa movement on the far left – and how they fuel the grievances of the right. It’s a fascinating look into how the extremist elements of both ends of the political spectrum tend to look a great deal alike. I think Peter nails it here:

What’s eroding in Portland is the quality Max Weber considered essential to a functioning state: a monopoly on legitimate violence. As members of a largely anarchist movement, antifascists don’t want the government to stop white supremacists from gathering. They want to do so themselves, rendering the government impotent. With help from other left-wing activists, they’re already having some success at disrupting government. Demonstrators have interrupted so many city-council meetings that in February, the council met behind locked doors. In February and March, activists protesting police violence and the city’s investments in the Dakota Access Pipeline hounded Mayor Ted Wheeler so persistently at his home that he took refuge in a hotel. The fateful email to parade organizers warned, “The police cannot stop us from shutting down roads.”

The return email is “You can’t stop us from arresting your punk asses for harassment of government officials and dumping you in prison for a few years.” I’ve never had much patience for the anarchist movement, as it seems to be predicated on the philosophy that humans aren’t humans. They find themselves applying violence to gain their goal, and then applying more violence to retain their goal. Might as well just call it a gang war and be done with it. Peter continues:

Antifa believes it is pursuing the opposite of authoritarianism. Many of its activists oppose the very notion of a centralized state. But in the name of protecting the vulnerable, antifascists have granted themselves the authority to decide which Americans may publicly assemble and which may not. That authority rests on no democratic foundation. Unlike the politicians they revile, the men and women of antifa cannot be voted out of office. Generally, they don’t even disclose their names.Antifa’s perceived legitimacy is inversely correlated with the government’s. Which is why, in the Trump era, the movement is growing like never before. As the president derides and subverts liberal-democratic norms, progressives face a choice. They can recommit to the rules of fair play, and try to limit the president’s corrosive effect, though they will often fail. Or they can, in revulsion or fear or righteous rage, try to deny racists and Trump supporters their political rights. From Middlebury to Berkeley to Portland, the latter approach is on the rise, especially among young people.Revulsion, fear, and rage are understandable. But one thing is clear. The people preventing Republicans from safely assembling on the streets of Portland may consider themselves fierce opponents of the authoritarianism growing on the American right. In truth, however, they are its unlikeliest allies.

Right. Peter notes the standard liberal response to these sorts of things is “…  appeals to reason”. In today’s world, to ‘reason’ I’d add ‘shame.’ The shame of having voted for an incompetent man-child, the shame of having voted for someone who appears to have great sympathy for one of the most evil of groups – the racists, to keep it to a single word. Frankly, I’m surprised the evangelicals who voted for Trump, such as Falwell of Liberty University, haven’t died of shame. I do understand a few graduates of Liberty are preparing to mail their diplomas back to Liberty out of disgust.

But the antifa, which are, from my understanding, largely drawn from universities, should be equally ashamed, as they’re betraying the very institutions to which they are attending. Institutions of education are, by their very nature, non-violent places for the exchange of information and learning how to think; war is in honest debate, where losers acknowledge their losses and correct their thinking.

The antifa has little connection to such a philosophy. So I fear we may see the two sides joyfully engaging in combat until they’re worn out, their ranks thinned by casualties and – gasp! – members finally maturing and leaving those organizations in search of something better.

Which they may find in democratic institutions. In an imperfect world, for all the imperfections Democracy offers, at least it has resilience, checks and balances, and a slant against the private use of violence to settle disputes. I have seen nothing better.

Continuing my lamentations on this thread, the Motley Fool has composed and sent another promotional mail of dubious quality. First, some background. The Motley Fool originally began by advocating a deliberate, long term investing style, centering around the theses of the Gardner brothers. They claimed they weren’t pumpers, and didn’t appear to be from the evidence of the time. They disdained the so-called “technical” style of investing, a style in which the behavior of stocks are thought to be predictable independent, more or less, of the company they represent; nor did they have any use for “market timing.” There’s was the fundamental approach, in which the companies are appraised in many facets, from financials to products to leadership. It was all done in a very open manner. And communications were very … they had a style of communication that was very much on the level.

So on to the missive.

It starts with this:

In exactly 24 hours, CEO Tom Gardner is going to reveal an incredible discovery he and his team of researchers have made in recent months and how it led them to a small group of stocks he’s calling “the single greatest buying opportunity” he’s seen in more than a decade.

While I won’t object to the content, I will say that I find the style of communication dismaying. Full of high-magnitude exclamations, it lacks only a few dozen exclamation points to really jam their point home. In fact, it feels like the slickest of promotional mails, meant to suck the wealth right out of elderly retired couples who have lost their mental acuity. Rather than appeal to folks’ rationality, it’s really a poke at the fight or flight mechanism by implying that, absent instant action on your part, you’ll lose out on a marvelous opportunity.

Mercifully, this is not one of their missives that resembles an Atlas rocket, but is fairly short. But in the wrapup, I was surprised to see this:

IMPORTANT NOTE: After Tuesday night, a replay of the event will not be made available. You must attend on Tuesday if you want to hear from Tom and his team of investors.

We sincerely apologize if you are unable to fit this time into your schedule, but because the specific strategies and recommendations we’ll be discussing are extremely time- and market-sensitive, we are simply unable to offer access to this information beyond Tuesday night. No exceptions will be made. We hope you understand.

No, I don’t understand. Really? Tom Gardner has abandoned his long held belief that buying well run companies in growing markets is the best way to build wealth, and that this can be done without market timing? Unless they’ve picked out some ultra small stock to buy, which is always highly risky, I can’t really understand this.

And no replay? What, really? And you don’t think someone else will record it and make it available? This is rather like shooting oneself in the foot.

But let’s think about this some more, because reading this straight on seems incoherent.

A sizable number of investors WILL have something planned for Tuesday, because Americans (who I assume make up the bulk of the membership of The Motley Fool) are simply a busy bunch of people these days. So the way I see it, if you can entice them into breaking plans and commitments in order to see this “opportunity”, then they have already made an investment in this “opportunity”. For the Sales/Marketing team, this may seem like a winning strategy – the suckers are already on the hook. Add to this the obvious fact that those who are watching are investors interested in scoring BIG … well, get out the live fish well. And, of course, the mystery about something being so time and market sensitive – it’s all quite alluring, isn’t it?

But I’ll tell you what – I won’t be finding out. My Tuesday is already booked. And when some slick promotional material happens across my desk, I nearly always help it accelerate to the nearest waste bin. And then when it’s someone changing his spots, as Mr. Gardner sadly appears to be doing, well, only morbid curiosity would induce me to check this out. Of which I have a modicum, but not enough to break my own plans.

Frieze:

A broad horizontal band of sculpted or painted decoration, especially on a wall near the ceiling.
‘the horsemen of the Parthenon frieze’
‘the coastline is a frieze of cliffs’ [Oxford Dictionaries]

Noted in “A Princely Update,” Jason Urbanus, Archaeology ( Sept/Oct 2017):

Radiography showed that the prince’s belt was embroidered with fine silver threads that formed a continuous frieze of Celtic motifs, the only one of its kind ever discovered.

These gladiolas were innocently mooching about the garden one bedewed morning, and I decided to see if I could get a pic of the dew drops. Seems to have worked out.

Missouri State Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal (D) wrote an entirely inappropriate post on Facebook, as reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal apologized on Sunday for a Facebook post that hoped for the assassination of President Donald Trump, saying, “I made a mistake.”

But the Democrat, who has faced a deafening chorus of critics insisting she should resign, did not indicate any willingness to do so.

At a news conference at Wellspring Church in Ferguson on Sunday, she said she had made a mistake and let others down. She had said much the same last week, but on Sunday she went further, apologizing to the president.

“President Trump, I apologize to you and your family,” she said.

She cited frustration with the tragedy in Charlottesville.

So why the lemonade? The reaction of Democratic leaders:

Missouri’s highest-ranking elected officials, Republicans and Democrats alike, have demanded that Chappelle-Nadal step down from her position. State Senate leaders have given her an ultimatum: Resign, or be expelled.

I was initially dismayed when reading a summary of the incident, but to hear that the Democrats, her own party, demanded her instant resignation – whether she complies or not – indicates to me that at least one side of the political spectrum still remembers how to conduct itself as a political party.

And, as a reminder, this is more than can be said for the GOP. For example, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) said this during the Presidential campaign:

“Nothing made me feel any better than [when] I walked into a gun shop, I think, yesterday … and there was a copy of Rifleman on the counter,” he said in audio posted by CNN of an event with Republican volunteers. “It’s got a picture of Hillary Clinton on the front of it. I was a little bit shocked at that ― it didn’t have a bullseye on it.” [HuffPo]

There are other examples as well, including this one from the current President, then candidate:

Repeating his contention that Mrs. Clinton wanted to abolish the right to bear arms, Mr. Trump warned at a rally here that it would be “a horrible day” if Mrs. Clinton were elected and got to appoint a tiebreaking Supreme Court justice.

“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.” [The New York Times]

So the Republican leaders in Missouri were outraged at State Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal’s faux-pas, and rightly so. Were they similarly outraged at Senator Burr, or candidate Trump, when they advocated violence against another political personage? Because this isn’t about the impropriety of advocating the assassination of a President. This is about the disaster that would befall this nation if we fell to using violence to settle political differences, much like, say, Yemen.

I call on the good Republicans of Missouri to condemn Senator Burr and President Trump for their inappropriate remarks during the last Presidential campaign, or to repeat their condemnations if they issued them when those fell utterances occurred. It would demonstrate that they have the future of the nation in their hearts – not just the party.

Yes, we saw your ad for helpless victims, and we think we fit the bill.

I’ve always heard that The Amityville Horror (1979) was a classic of the genre, but really not much else, so going into this television cut of the movie, we were really free from preconception, excepting that it was going to be good.

And I suppose I must say, not being the superstitious sort, I found the elements of horror in this movie, as they were supernatural and religiously based, rather unimpressive on a personal level. I can see how someone with a religious frame of mind might be horrified at the thought of a house in which demons from Hell have some influence, but for my Arts Editor and I, we were unaffected.

Not that I’m immune to horror movies. Both Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986) kept me on the edge of my seat, and I suppose another reviewer would scoff at the science-fiction substrate on which these films are based. But I think there’s a difference, in that for all the improbability of the aliens in those two movies of existing, the premise which they exemplify is not impossible. Yes, there could be aliens hungry for human flesh out there, just waiting for us to stumble on them.

In The Amityville Horror, we’re confronted with mere hints of creatures from myth, with all apologies to readers with religious convictions. Worse yet, the victims do not aggressively defend themselves – they are persistent in their residence, perhaps, but they are not clever enough to strike a blow in their defense. The idea of their existence is absurd.

And, yet, I can be intrigued by other movies with absurd elements, such as Greek gods. In those cases, the genre is not generally horror, but some other general thematic category in which the absurd elements play a metaphorical or allegorical role. Their is no profession of their existence; they are used to tell a story and give a lesson.

With this horror movie, though, the fright-inducing elements are used literally, and are purposed to raise the hackles on the back of your neck, to inflict the fight or flight reflex and drag you into fright. And there’s nothing implicitly wrong with that – unless these literal elements are absolutely rejected by the audience. And that’s what we did.

Add in plot holes, such as what happened to Father Delaney, perhaps introduced by the television cuts, and the movie becomes an also-ran, a disappointing heart to the mythic classic.

Robert Williams on Lawfare has a suggestion for the North Korean situation – the United States should conditionally accept the Chinese proposal of North Korea freezing all tests and exports of nuclear & ballistic missile technology in exchange for scaling back US and South Korea joint military exercises. The condition? Professor Williams thinks that China should bring something to the table as well, such as a more robust enforcement of U.N. sanctions. But something rang a little false to my completely inexperienced ear:

The point here is not to suggest that a three-part deal with China and North Korea will necessarily work. Nearly any proposal designed to produce constructive negotiations with Kim’s regime must be viewed with an abundance of caution given the historical record and the fact that Kim sees nukes as essential to his survival. On almost any conceivable scenario, deterrence and containment will be cornerstones of U.S. strategy going forward.

There’s a key assumption that I have not seen questioned and/or bolstered anywhere is that Kim sees nukes as a key to his survival. Does he? The recent contretemps between Trump and Kim actually suggest something different – that Kim sees his advanced weapons capability as a lever for making further gains in the International game. Yes, survival is part of it – but the primary objective may be advancing such things as the North Korean economy, Kim’s prestige, and no doubt other things that don’t come immediately to mind. These may not be integral to his political survival, but by advancing them, he may make his position more secure, he may make his people more comfortable, he may even advance some lost ideological cause, although exactly what cause would not be lost under the North Korean flag escapes me.

Why is this important? Motivations dictate actions, even veiled actions. If we assume Kim is running scared and is surrounding himself with weapons that up the stakes world-wide just as a matter of survival, we may predict from that position that he’ll take an action which, in reality, he doesn’t care to take. We need to be sure of just exactly is motivating his development of nuclear weapons.

Trump blows a lot of smoke and looks foolish, and Kim probably got exactly what he wanted. That’s how I read Robert Carlin’s post on 38 North concerning the dangers of a war breaking out a few weeks ago between North Korea and the United States:

The real question, the important question, the one that could be answered was: what were the North Koreans doing from August 9-14 while the US was huffing and puffing over Pyongyang’s threat about Guam?

The answer, it turns out, was easy: almost nothing. There were rallies in Pyongyang and the provinces. (The two laggards held their rallies yesterday.) There were reports of youths and students rushing to declare their willingness to enlist in the army. But for the rest of the country, the message was that the way to defeat the Americans was: Stay at work! Produce more!

In other words, there was no mobilization of the population in preparation for a military confrontation. Even more telling, although Western media were fixated on Guam during this period, North Korean media barely mentioned it after the initial statements appeared announcing the planning. None of the reports on the rallies mentioned Guam. The focus, instead, was on the August 7 DPRK Government statement issued in response to the new UN Security Council sanctions resolution passed just a few days before.

And does the mainstream media have access to that sort of data? I don’t know. But certainly actions say more than incoherent bluster. Trump might have done better if he’d just said, Oh, did Kim say that? Maybe he needs a little pat on the fanny. Although that might have given us all a lot more heartburn.

Apposite:

suitable; well-adapted; pertinent; relevant; apt:
an apposite answer. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in Andrew Sullivan’s latest column for NYMag, “Trump’s Charlottesville Response Should Change Everything — and Will Change Nothing“:

These broad, smug generalizations are not only on the left, of course. Here, for example, is an interview with a traditional Southern Baptist theologian, Andrew T. Walker, who has a new book providing moral guidance on the transgender issue. Walker cites Paul’s condemnation of swindlers, thieves, drunks, homosexuals, and adulterers as apposite to the transgender experience: “There are practices and lifestyles that, if left unrepented of, can prevent someone from inheriting — that is, having a place in — the kingdom of God. To live as a Christian is to accept God’s authority over our own. Transgender identities fall into that category — they are not compatible with following Christ.”

A few weeks ago Neuroskeptic reported on his recent “sting”, using text from Wikipedia concerning Star Wars, of suspected predatory science journals, and how one had fun with him:

Two journals requested me to revise and resubmit the manuscript. At JSM Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (JSciMedCentral) both of the two peer reviewers spotted and seemingly enjoyed the Star Wars spoof, with one commenting that “The authors have neglected to add the following references: Lucas et al., 1977, Palpatine et al., 1980, and Calrissian et al., 1983”. Despite this, the journal asked me to revise and resubmit.

At the Journal of Molecular Biology and Techniques (Elyns Group), the two peer reviewers didn’t seem to get the joke, but recommended some changes such as reverting “midichlorians” back to “mitochondria.”

There were several which requested publication fees, and then printed it anyways. Clumsy assholes, them. At least the above guys recognized the sting. Maybe they’re legit.

By Zach Rudisin – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

This thread has been dormant, but a recent circulating mail caught my attention, and it rather fits this this old topic. A short email, which means I’ll quote it directly, although reformatted.

Funny, this must have been missed by the media………………..

And that’s only the beginning of the comparisons.

On Friday, the Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel.  It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. The report also said that Trump decided not to take a dime of his salary, instead he donated it to an amazing cause! (see below) .

The report also showed that President Trump is far better at saving money than Obama was.  The total annual White House salaries under trump are $35.8 million vs. $40.9 under Obama, a savings of $5.1 million. Here are some other key findings:

There are 110 fewer employees on White House staff under Trump than under Obama at this point in their respective presidencies.

Nineteen fewer staffers are dedicated to The First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS).  Currently, there are five staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 24 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).

However, it’s what the report said Trump did with this salary that has everyone talking! Instead of taking his salary, Trump donated all $400,000 to the Department of the Interior where it will be used for construction and repair needs at military cemeteries!  AMAZING!  It’s so great to have a President who loves our brave military men and women so much

Oh, and where’s the media coverage of this?

Oh that’s right, they don’t cover anything good that the President does.

Let’s first look at the irrelevancies, the distractions, if you will, before we take in the main course. I speak of the disdain of the media. … where’s the media coverage of this?

PolitiFact:

For the second quarter in a row, President Donald Trump declined to take a salary and opted instead to gift the quarterly installment to a government entity, this time to the Department of Education.

At a White House press briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders presented a check for $100,000 to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

WaPo:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced at the White House on Wednesday that President Trump was donating $100,000, his salary for the second quarter of the year, to the Education Department to help fund a science camp.

The headline of the news release issued by the Education Department said: “Secretary DeVos Accepts President Trump’s Q2 Salary as a Donation for STEM-Focused Camp.” STEM refers to science, technology, engineering and math.

CNN:

The $78,333.32 that President Donald Trump donated from his first paycheck as President will help fund restoration projects at Antietam National Battlefield.

Interior Department Secretary Ryan Zinke announced Wednesday that the portion of the salary, which Trump in April announced he was donating to the National Park Service, will support restorations at the National Park Service protected area in Sharpsburg, Maryland, which commemorates the Battle of Antietam.

I trust the point is made – this goober’s on the prowl for the unwary. But as I said, this was the distraction. And a secondary distraction is the claim that the salary will be used for military cemetery restoration and maintenance, and how this proves, somehow, that the President loves the military. Well, the claim about usage is palpably wrong, and while I shan’t argue that the President does seem to have some sort of fixation on military men (see how many former generals he’s appointed to prominent positions in his Administration), this distraction is primarily to point out that the President’s “love” is quite selective – don’t be looking for that kiss on the cheek, or even a polite salute, if you’re transgender, or if you’re Muslim. Those two disgraceful acts are, of course, to be forgotten if you are taken in this email. The rest of us, though, will not forget his contempt for those who don’t quite fit his image of a soldier – nor will we forget how he equated his attendance of a military prep school for actual service.

What’s my real point? Long time readers of this blog are aware of my observation of how the partitions of society into sectors – private sector, public sector, health, education –  is not merely a matter of convenience, but is actually an implicit recognition that they not only exist, but that each has explicit goals which not only differ from each other, but affect the character of the operations devised within each sector, such that an operation that is optimal for one sector may be suboptimal, or even completely inappropriate, in another.

Bypassing all the interesting discussion of this topic (all those posts are listed here), let’s relate this to the email under the microscope. First, for newer readers who are perhaps doubtful about my above statement, I will ask my rhetorical trick question:

What is the acceptable profit margin of the government?

Of course, for the newer reader the answer is no doubt, Well, uh, I don’t know – that’s not the point of government! Exactly. Exactly. Now let’s read that email again, keeping in mind that we’re talking about government, not the private sector, even if the honest reader, who is not a bean-counter, would find the statements problematic in the private sector context.

So, you’ve finished reading. We see the application of an appalling and simplistic calculus to the operations of the White House. Since when do we use the operating budget of the White House, or the count of staff, as a proxy for evaluating the successful operation of the White House?

In my mind, never. True, there is a requirement of efficiency, but this missive wisely makes no effort to evaluate the performance of the Trump White House, because Trump’s accomplishments, despite his self-congratulatory blather, have been few and far between, while his failures have come in blinding snowstorms of incompetency. Even an honest Republican will acknowledge it. Only the Trump supporter, voluntarily blinded to the regular media in favor of Trump’s Twitter account in an intellectually dishonest maneuver of breathtaking audacity, will disagree.

In fact, by disregarding this requirement, the author is attempting to discard competency from the evaluation of the President. On this metric, an empty White House, with only Trump walking the halls hither and yon, is the best White House. Would the author accept this? To the extent he sputters and tries, we know the author to be unserious and disruptive of the society which makes the United States – because most of us understand this most important point:

The White House must excel in diplomacy. As the primary and nearly exclusive arbiter of foreign policy, in a world full of immediate dangers, the White House’s expenditures are a distant tertiary aspect of its evaluation. The real questions: How much does the world respect us? Do we have foreign relations objectives which will lead to a more prosperous and safe world? Do we have real-world operations in place to achieve those objectives? For all these things, White House staff must respond with support, from the National Security Advisor right down to the chef who makes our foreign visitors happy.

So this missive, by substituting inappropriate metrics that are naive even in their native habitat for the appropriate metrics of competency, does a massive disservice to the reader, whether it’s someone who merely scans the email quickly, or the reader who has been mistrained by Fox News to hate President Obama.

It’s always wise to think about metrics, a subject I’ve long considered blogging about, but haven’t gotten around to yet.

And I suggest forgetting this email completely, as it’s designed to instill pride in a President who is, by any realistic measure, falling down on the job.

Into the ol’ mail slot, if email could enter slots, came a new piece. I reproduce it below as a screen shot, as I can’t find it on the web and merely copying it is unsatisfactory. To summarize, the piece is from United West (“Uniting Western Civilization for Freedom and Liberty” – note all the keywords selected for emotional content), noting the selection of a mosque in Boca Raton, FL, as a polling station, and presenting a video the claims the mosque is a center for Islamic extremism. A local (to Boca Raton) meeting to discuss the matter is announced for August 17, 2017, where evidence may be presented. Finally, an assertion of United West being a charity is made, and a request for a donation.

I couldn’t find much on this one that isn’t from biased media – which means I skipped reading Breitbart, YouTube, BareNakedIslam, etc. ThinkProgress, obviously slanted to the left, noted the cancellation of using the mosque, along with all the other religious joints being used, etc. This is interesting:

Indeed, while some take issue with using religious spaces as polling locations, churches, synagogues, and other worship halls have served as voting centers throughout American history. A rabbi serving a Reform Jewish congregation in nearby Boynton Beach noted this history while voicing support for using the mosque as a polling center last week, saying, “to suggest that every mosque is pure evil and every other religious institution is pure good is just not accurate and it’s prejudice and it’s wrong.”

Don’t click on the picture for a more readable version – it actually gets smaller.

The Sun-Sentinel also covered it. Neither Sun-Sentinel nor ThinkProgress mentioned alleged extremist activity. Importantly, both of these articles date back to July 2016, more than a year ago – while the meeting sponsored by United West is dated to August 17, 2017. Why such a delay in this meeting? Did it take place?

Snopes doesn’t mention this entire incident. In fact, Google only returned 14 entries on it, so unless you read the fringe-right extremist sites, there’s no mention of it. Which makes it quite suspicious.

And I’ve never heard of a United West charity, which automatically marks THEM as suspicious in my mind – after all, scam-artists are rampant. First I went to Charity Navigator, my first visit ever, since United West notes prominently their “501-c3” status – this is usually specified 501(c)(3). I didn’t find them, but typing United West into the Charity Navigator search engine brings up 124 entries, from United West Valley Firefighters Charities to Hamlin Unit No 11 American Legion AUxiliary Dept of West Virginia. Maybe I missed them. Maybe Charity Navigator doesn’t know about them. It’s not a conclusive search.

Charities must have EINs to claim 501-(c)(3) status. Google was unhelpful. ProPublica makes available a database of EINs, but searching on United West yields 23476 hits. Adding in Civilization was unhelpful. So .. the next step is to interrogate United West directly.

United West has a slick web site, but their search engine yielded nothing useful in response to a request for their EIN, so I cannot prove or disprove their claim to be a charity – and thus cannot check with Charity Navigator to evaluate their performance as a charity.

So I started poking around the United West web site, and discover this, with the headline “Obama funded Hezb’Allah weapons factory being built by IRAN in Lebanon.”

It’s no surprise United West is right-leaning, given the content of the mail, but in my mind, misleading or outright lying headlines pushes them right over the line into the same pocket of hell occupied by the Soviet propaganda masters. Let’s take this apart a little, shall we?

Right from the get-go, Obama funded … this phrase implicitly suggests a voluntary contribution from former President Obama directly to a factory. Well, no. Sorry, kids United West, try again. The money to which the headline refers was an internationally mandated return of funds, by an international court put together by the United States and Iran to decide matters such as these; in fact, this makes it a matter of national honor, involving the return of funds paid for weapons systems never delivered by the United States. Here’s Fortune.com’s^[1] coverage of the event, from which I extracted this information. I think Fortune.com is eminently more respectable, since it presents facts and doesn’t distort the issue, so far as I can see.

But there’s more to come. In the body of this press release, the money is referred to as jizya, which is old Islamic term for taxes levied on non-Muslim subjects. While it’s good to see United West pushing back against the old falsehood that Obama is Muslim, this is really a childish twist on cleverness, reinforcing the central falsehood of the article. It acts as a club membership keyword – if you know what it means, then you’re part of the club.

And this is always important when gaining trust from the marks.

There’s little point in going on.

* * *

But what about the rest of the content of the mail? I’d like to make two points in relation to the Sleight of Hand entitling this post.

First, there’s this reference about Sharia law enfolding the United States. Given the brutality reported under Sharia law in Iran and Saudi Arabia (adversaries, by the way), as well as the Islamic State, this is meant to evoke fear, and, in fact, the famous fight or flight mechanism. Why is this important? Because it turns off the rational part of the human mind. Humanity celebrates itself for its capacity for rationality; it’s an intellectual error, however, to believe that this means we’re automatically rational. We’re not. We have a lot of short-cuts we use to achieve positive results, but those short-cuts mean we discard rationality when we use them. We look at a situation and react without rational thought.

This is great when the bushes rustle and we take off running because there might be a lion in the bushes. Make no mistake, the rational part of our brains (sometimes referred to as System 2) can be too slow to assess some situations.

But implanting an automatic reflex doesn’t make it right, and that’s what’s going on here. This group wants to say Sharia in the United States, and then use your automatic reflex of fear to shake out your wallet.

So let’s think about it, together. What does the United States Constitution say? Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  This is known as the Establishment Clause, and it sounds like a safeguard to me. But is there concrete evidence that it’s really a safeguard?

Yes. Eugene Volokh covered this last year, which I noted here – a Minnesota appellate court rebuffed just such an attempt. American courts apply American law, as Eugene states the unequivocal obvious. So long as American law includes the Establishment Clause, we need not worry about a theocracy of any sort taking over the American government – and ruining the country.

My second point is very simple. The mail leads off, “Jeeze, what next? Are we still in the US or what?” (In the process of making the mail part of this post, we seem to have actually lost this line. Any reader who wishes to see the mail I received need only send me mail, using the link on the right, asking for the mail and I will forward it on to you.) Now, maybe this was added by a later relayer, but to my eye this seems to be another attempt to gain the sympathy of the reader, to signal mutual regard, and therefore trust, in the sender of the email.

And the rest becomes a wearisome exercise in failed trickery: the request for a donation to support the defense of the homeland, a defense unneeded (you pay enough in taxes for the Department of Defense, doncha think?), as we’ve come to understand here.

The lesson here? Damp down the automatic panic reaction brought on by certain keywords and do some research.

¹The section in question from Fortune.com:

The major issue between the two governments was a $400 million payment for military equipment made by the government of the Shah of Iran, prior to the 1979 uprising that topped him. The U.S. banned delivery of the jets and other weapons amid the hostage crisis, but froze the $400 million advance payment. “The Pentagon handled arms purchases from foreign countries,” says Gary Sick, a former National Security Council official who served as the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. “Defense took care of the details. So the $400 million scheduled purchase was a government-to-government transaction. The U.S. government was holding the money. That’s why it was so difficult to resolve.”

But we finally did the thing we did last year – adorn the garage with strings for training the tomato plants to climb. Whether we get any sort of substantial harvest this year is up in the air, though. They seem to be behind.