Monthly Archives: September 2017

So is this the start of, well, bacterial cell division on a national level? White House spokesman Sanders:

Q    There are many Republicans who believe that getting something on the Republican side is not going to be easy; that the divisions that we see between the center and the right in the Republican Party will become only deeper.  What gives you confidence that this will actually happen?

MS. SANDERS:  With all due respect, I don’t think the American people elected Congress to do things that were easy.  They elected them to make a government that works, to work properly, and to work for American people.  And that’s their job.  And if they can’t do it, then they need to get out of the way and let somebody else who can take on a heavy lift and get things accomplished.

She didn’t target the Democrats, she simply said Congress. And it was a theme of that press conference. I see two possibilities here.

First, she may be setting up the current GOP members of Congress who are not conforming to President Trump’s desires for removal at the next election. This would be an internal revolution, but it could be difficult. This is, obviously, a warning shot across the bow of the non-conformists.

So the second possibility is that we’re seeing the beginning of the shearing off of Trump and Trump’s allies in the GOP into another party. How this will go for a President who continues to be deeply and embarrassingly unpopular is hard to see as successful. However, given Trump’s inability to use his position to engineer his way to what he wants, which is the mark of an incompetent politician, he may see this as an alternative approach.

But it would certainly make his job easier if his closest allies happened to also occupy key positions in Congress. Not to mention it would appeal to his immense ego, and shore up his insecurities.

The Party Of Trump.

Screed:

1. a long discourse or essay, especially a diatribe.
2. an informal letter, account, or other piece of writing. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Mueller Has Early Draft of Trump Letter Giving Reasons for Firing Comey,” MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and MAGGIE HABERMAN, The New York Times:

Mr. Miller and Mr. Kushner both told the president that weekend that they were in favor of firing Mr. Comey.

Mr. Trump ordered Mr. Miller to draft a letter, and dictated his unfettered thoughts. Several people who saw Mr. Miller’s multi-page draft described it as a “screed.”

Mr. Trump was back in Washington on Monday, May 8, when copies of the letter were handed out in the Oval Office to senior officials, including Mr. McGahn and Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Trump announced that he had decided to fire Mr. Comey, and read aloud from Mr. Miller’s memo.

Some present at the meeting, including Mr. McGahn, were alarmed that the president had decided to fire the F.B.I. director after consulting only Ms. Trump, Mr. Kushner and Mr. Miller. Mr. McGahn began an effort to stop the letter or at least pare it back.

Is it sad how politics has even spilled into Word Of The Day? Or is it just more opportunity to learn precise meanings?

Along with Hurricane Irma is Sunspot AR2673, which unleashed a hell of a solar flare, as Spaceweather.com reports:

On Sept. 6th at 1202 UT, sunspot AR2673 unleashed a major X9.3-class solar flare–the strongest solar flare in more than a decade. X-rays and UV radiation from the blast ionized the top of Earth’s atmosphere, causing a strong shortwave radio blackout over Europe, Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. …

Many readers are asking about the historic context of this event. How epic is it? Answer: This is a decade-class flare. A list of the most powerful solar flaresrecorded since 1976 ranks today’s flare at #14, tied with a similar explosion in 1990. However, compared to the iconic Carrington Event of 1859, or even the more recent Halloween storms of 2003, this event is relatively mild. Modern power grids, telecommunications, and other sun sensitive technologies should weather the storm with little difficulty.

[The link to the above may be bad.]

Keep an eye on the sky, especially if you’re the high northern latitudes.

… then it’s time to devolve to name calling. Yes, folks, it’s time to dive into the email bag again, this time on the subject of the Confederate statue removal. This time around I’ll quote the damn thing with a critique interlaced. And in haste, as guests press me for time.

Words of wisdom from someone concerned .

OK, the first rule of handing out words of wisdom is to remember those claiming to be wise usually are NOT. And, yeah, just to be fair, I was a little appalled when Justice Sotomayor, during her nomination hearings, remarked about the importance of a “wise Latina.”

I have BREAKING NEWS for all those that want to erase American history during the day or in the dead of night:

If you take down every statue on the continent, slavery and the American Civil War will still have happened. If you have minimum wage skills now, taking down statues won’t change that. If you’re up to your ass in college loan debt, taking down statues won’t change that. The nation will still be $20,000,000,000,000 in debt. We will still be in a global economy. North Korea will still be run by a lunatic who wants you dead. Radical Islamists will still want you dead. People who hate you now, will still hate you, perhaps even more. Soros, Obama and the Clinton’s will still be sleazy and corrupt and you’ll still be just a puppet for them.

Dude, who said anything about removal of the statuary settling all the problems of the world? This is just a little sleight of hand, distract the reader while the cookie is stolen, now isn’t it?

But statues are all about celebration, aren’t they? Now, why are we celebrating the lives and deaths of traitors? Because that’s what they were. They started the Civil War because slavery was being hemmed in by States and Territories that banned it. And they couldn’t stand the idea that someday their slaves would be taken away.

So why celebrate them? And, on the flip side of this single, why stick the needle into the descendants of those slaves? Why remind them of the guys in the white sheets who illegally lynched and terrorized them?

Let’s just get down and dirty here. There’s never a single solution to any big thing. But there’s lots of small solutions to nail lots of small problems. One of them is our continual problem of race relations, of white supremacists running around with imagined grievances, and of the unprincipled folks who take advantage of that to build wealth and power.

The removal of those statues satisfies the moral imperative that we do not celebrate treachery against the United States. By removing them, we begin to fade out that continual sense of false grievance, of racial tensions.

Source: CNN.
Blech

The rest of that? A mixture of obvious truths and slimy mud slinging, wherein he hopes the former will hide the basic dishonor of the latter. Like I said, when he can’t bring up a belch of bad reasoning, he just slings the mud, hoping these ideas, these little pathogen-laden TICKS, will jump into the readers’ brains and infest them with calumny and libel.

The Department of Education will still not have educated anyone. There will still be only two genders. Hillary will still not have won the 2016 election and Bernie will still be a communist charlatan. There will still be opposing views outside your safe spaces. You’ll still be accountable for your own choices, and the world will still owe you nothing.

Here we get into traditional anti-government provincialism. After all, Education is what destroys this guy’s message, so he’s against it – take any protests with the proverbial salt lick. As we all know, Hillary won the election, but lost in the Electoral College – he might think that’s a very fine point, but the fact of the matter is that the Trump Administration is a minority government – and not getting any better. And Bernie? We’ll probably never know, but since he’s for gun rights, there may be a problem in that argument.

Taking down all the statues will still not change the fact that Communism has been responsible for more slavery and death than the Confederacy ever was and that it was Democrats who fought to keep slavery while Republicans fought to stop it. The removal of statues won’t change the fact that the first slave owner was a black man.

It’s a little hard to even know where to start with this bit of tattered shouting. Shall I just shrug and ask what relevance Communists may have to do with this? It’s a fading, has-been ideology, a dead-end side branch in the evolution of societal systems. So what? No one arguing for the removal of the statues gives a rip about Communism. Hell, most of them are simply for social justice, and a sizable minority are capitalists who recognize the danger slavery presents to capitalism.

And while I’m certain this is a desperate red cape flung into the air to distract me from the essentially empty failure of this presenter’s argument, I still can’t help but notice how he desperately also ignores the importance of context. The easy mistake to recognize is that of disparate population sizes. After all, Russia went Communist in 1918, decades after the Confederacy went down to defeat. Just on that basis alone it’s hard to justify a comparison without a fair amount of math.

But let’s take this one step further, friends, and ask how weaponry compared between the two governmental systems, because, make no mistake about it, slavery is enforced with violence, whether you’re a Communist or a Confederate, with good old-fashioned guns, and that means it’s just possible that the heroic Confederate general that this fellow’s worshiping may have used a whip on some helpless black child.

But he didn’t use machine guns. Or Kalashnikov’s. Not because of his inherent virtue, but because they weren’t available. But if he could have, would our generic Confederate done so?

You bet. You bet. And that’s what this guy wants to defend. Think about it, folks, for a moment. Your blood should run cold, eh?

And I nearly forgot the Democrats / Republicans mumbo-jumbo. Now, I can take this two ways. First, we can just cite context and note that the Democrats of today are not the Democrats of 150 years ago. Past performance is no guarantee of future gains, as the financial advisors will tell you. Second, and what I like better, is this: The Democrats grew up. The Republicans, on the other hand, lost any claim on moral superiority. That’s what happens when you’re sleeping with white nationalists.

Son, you sure you want to make that argument?

And now on to the final deception.

So, if you have a problem with a statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia, but no issues with a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Seattle, we’ll erect a monument to your cowardice and depict a huddled mass of frightened and drooling idiots who can’t find their asses with both hands and a map.

I had not heard of a statue of Lenin in Seattle, so I did some research. He’s right! There is!

But it’s not proudly on display in celebration of the late founder of a dead empire, as this guy would have you believe. Remember, folks, if it seems ridiculous, it’s worth a bit of research. So here’s Wikipedia:

The Statue of Lenin in Seattle is a 16 ft (5 m) bronze sculpture of Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, by Bulgarian sculptor Emil Venkov. It completed and put on display in Czechoslovakia in 1988. The statue was taken down following the Velvet Revolution of 1989. It was bought by an American in 1993, who moved it to Washington in the US. Since 1995 it has been up for sale and on display in an outdoor retail property in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle.

Ah, if I were at liberty to laugh, I’d be wiping tears from my eyes: the symbol of the antithesis of capitalism is for sale! The only celebration is when someone steps up and buys it – and probably melts the thing down for its basic metals value.

Oh, and Donald J. Trump is STILL PRESIDENT!

In the interests of being complete, I include the above pathetic line – since STILL is such an acknowledgment of ongoing failure. I know some of my friends reading this will take it as an insult to liberals, while others will consider it an insult that such a clumsy deceiver would proclaim his allegiance to Trump, for which Trump would surely sue if he could only find this dubious clod. I consider it an insult to America, though, that this person, so incompetent in both argument and deceit, still believes that, somehow, he achieved victory in Trump’s electoral college victory, as if the hamstringing and damage being done to America every day by this Administration is good for the writer of this concentrated effort in deceit. It’s a celebration of divisiveness, which, come to think of it, was a minor note in the song of the Confederacy.

He should be ashamed.

But he won’t be.

But I trust that my friends who’ve persevered to this point will agree that crap like this, circulating through our communities, is unworthy of respect. All it stirs is hate and division.

Umbrage:

to feel upset or annoyed, usually because you feel that someone has been rude or shown no respect to you:

Will she take umbrage if she isn’t invited to the wedding? [Cambridge Dictionary]

Vladimir Putin, rule of Russia, believes that sanctions would be worthless for correcting North Korea’s behavior, according to CNN:

But Putin, speaking in China on Tuesday, cautioned against “military hysteria” and said that the only way to resolve the crisis was through diplomacy.

He warned that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has calculated that the survival of his regime depends on its development of nuclear weapons. Kim had seen how western intervention in Iraq had ended in the overthrow of Saddam Hussein after which the country was ravaged by war, Putin warned, and Kim was determined not to suffer the same fate.

“Saddam Hussein rejected the production of weapons of mass destruction, but even under that pretense, he was destroyed and members of his family were killed,” Putin said.

“The country was demolished and Saddam Hussein was hanged. Everyone knows that and everyone in North Korea knows that.” …

But speaking at the closure of the BRICs summit in Beijing — which hosted the leaders of Brazil, India, China and South Africa — Putin said that while Russia condemned North Korea’s latest actions, imposing any kind of sanctions would be “useless and ineffective.” Kim would rather starve his people than see his regime overthrown, he said.

Yes, it’s Putin, but the last bit rings true, especially concerning Hussein. Thus, while Joseph DeThomas’ post on 38 North is much more respectable, he seems to have forgotten that one aspect. He recommends a combination of stronger enforcement of sanctions as well as a stronger game of diplomacy, and after some specific recommendations he writes:

Orchestrating this diplomacy will be one of the most complex challenges of the past 50 years. It is unclear whether the US State Department—suffering from several levels of missing leadership, low morale and persistent and unhelpful interference from the White House—is up to the task. But a way will have to be found to perform it if there is to be success on this issue.

Probably nicknamed Bush & Cheney.

Joseph doesn’t really go far enough in recognizing the utter inadequacy of the Trump Administration, because, in retrospect, the problems didn’t start there. They started with the Bush II Administration’s decision to trump up (forgive me) a reason to destroy Saddam Hussein, who at this point had been reduced to a two-bit blowhard who had given up his weapons of mass destruction in exchange for guarantees of survival.

But those guarantees were backed by the US government, and were abrogated, to use John Bolton’s term, through lies and deceit.

And – no doubt I repeat myself – the birds of mendacity have come home to roost. Kim Jong-un understands that the US government is not trustworthy, and that, in his mind, it’s prudent to be a porcupine that can inflict a lot of damage on a predator. Promises aren’t enough, but a long, pointy spear may be.

There’s a real moral lesson in all this, but no doubt a historian will do a better – or more objective – job figuring it out than I will. To me, though, this smacks of provincialism, religious egocentrism, and the delusion that God favors you, and thus you can do no wrong.

No. We’re getting an object lesson in how badly these attitudes can go wrong, and the sad thing is that those who voted for Bush probably don’t realize just how much this is their philosophy’s fault. Some of it is the difficulty of drawing lessons from international incidents, since they can be hard to comprehend if you’re not in the Foreign Service. It’s even harder when you practice the hubris of being the center of the Universe. And it’s bloody well impossible when you are not made to see honest analysis, but instead pandering by the right wing media pursuing power and wealth with little regard to the national interest.

And here’s a relevant link. Don’t depend on your Federal government to remind you – they want to bust the ACA. If you’re wondering why, try firing off a letter to your favorite GOP CongressCritter.

My mother-in-law will be in town for the next few days, and so the blogging will be curtailed, although I’ll be trying to catch the news.

With a hurricane like Harvey, it’s not just humans that need help – but some of the wildlife as well. Melissa Breyer of Treehugger.com reports why helping bats is helping the human inhabitants of Houston:

So why the sudden focus on bats? Sure, there are bat lovers for whom this might be of particular interest – compassion is compassion. But there are people and pets in dire need of attention. Yet here’s the thing: The Waugh Bridge colony eats around two and a half tons of insects every night. Without them, Houston’s mosquito population would look very different. Popular Science writes, “A dead bat is a bat that can no longer consume huge meals made of Houston’s mosquitoes – mosquitoes that may lead to a proliferation of diseases after the flood.”

Petrologist:

Petrology (from the Greek πέτρος, pétros, “rock” and λόγος, lógos, “subject matter”, see -logy) is the branch of geology that studies rocks and the conditions under which they form. Petrology has three subdivisions, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrology. Igneous and metamorphic petrology are commonly taught together because they both contain heavy use of chemistry, chemical methods, and phase diagrams. Sedimentary petrology is, on the other hand, commonly taught together with stratigraphy because it deals with the processes that form sedimentary rock. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “Why Thousands of Volcanologists are Meeting in Portland,” Erik Klemetti, Rocky Planet:

So, this whole week I’ll be taking part in the IAVCEI meeting in Portland, Oregon. Of course, most people have never heard of IAVCEI, which is an abbreviation of the International Association of Volcanology and the Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior (now you can see why we use the abbreviation.) This meeting is bringing together over 1,200 volcanologists and petrologists (who study magma, not petroleum) from all over world to talk about volcanoes.

Please, sleep with my daughter who can read your filthy test pilot mind!

Beyond the Time Barrier (1960) is an example of the horror-SF genre, but unfortunately a fairly aimless example. Major Bill Allison, USAF, is a test pilot, using a rocket-equipped jet fighter to attempt to make it into orbit. On his last mission, he loses contact with his control team, and when he lands back at base, he finds it abandoned, dilapidated, and weedy. He explores and soon leaves the airbase, looking for anyone, when he loses consciousness.

On coming to, he finds himself a captive. The head of his captors, an elderly man called the Supreme, is wary, while his middle-aged Captain is aggressive and accuses Allison of being a spy. After some verbal fencing, Allison is taken away to a cage where other prisoners are kept – all bald and crawling on the ground. He fights with and questions one, and then is taken out of the cage and returned to the Supreme. He’s questioned some more and accused of being a ‘Scape’. The Supreme’s deaf and mute daughter, who has some telepathic capbility, is proctoring the conversation, and continually indicates Allison is telling the truth.

Eventually, we learn it is 60 years in the future, and now there are only Mutants, who have been damaged by a plague caused by A-Bomb testing, Scapes, who are so named for having escaped the plague, and everyone else, who is considered normal – but, with the exceptions of the Supreme, the Captain, and the Supreme’s daughter, Trirene, they are all sterile as well as mute and deaf^[1].

This, presumably, so the actors could be paid less for no speaking lines, my Arts Editor pointed out.

The Scapes, three in number, consisting of two scientists and a female Russian military officer^[1], have all arrived at this place in much the same way as did Allison, but their craft were destroyed, while Allison’s is intact, so they hatch a plan for Allison to return to his native time to try to stop the plague; meantime, he’s also informed that the daughter has picked him for her mate, since everyone else is sterile. Allison resolves to take her with him, since his plane is a two seater, although he flew alone.

Eventually, the time comes to break out of captivity and make a run for the plane, but the Russian military officer frees the captive Mutants, and in the resultant chaos tries to force Allison to take her instead of Trirene back in time. However, she’s killed by one of the two captive scientists, who has his own designs on the plane, but he, in turn, loses the turf battle to the other scientist, and in the final fight, Allison kills the last scientist, who accidentally shoots Trirene to death during the struggle. Ooops.

Allison then returns and is placed in the hospital, having magically become an elderly man, and is debriefed.

It’s all rather silly. Is there any sort of real theme here? Not that I can discern. And good horror movies do have some sort of interesting theme. Alien (1979), one of the greatest of the genre, gradually reveals that the machinations of a giant corporation in search of profit has infinitely worsened the predicament in which the crew of the Nostromo finds itself, and because this constitutes a betrayal of the crew, it greatly strengthens a horror element in that the iron-clad law that we all stick together in the face of unknown dangers has been broken in the simple search for profit. The horror element embodied in the act of rendering aid resulting in skin-crawling disaster for the rescuers is multiplied.

But there doesn’t seem to be anything like that here. A very straightforward action story, I suppose, but it seems, of all things, timid. The writers didn’t want to pursue hard choices, just tell the story in an expeditious manner.

And it was really boring.

¹I voted that the normals should have a name, too, but my Arts Editor discarded my vote.

²They indulge in some extremely bad and painfully told science to explain Allison’s predicament.

Nothing more than that.. took this pic a while back.

This one, too. Not sure how I forgot to post it, since it’s a bit of a dazzler.

Almost two weeks ago another missive in the ongoing saga of the Motley Fool came across my desk, and I was so appalled at what I read I put it away. Another look didn’t make it any better, though. Purporting to be from co-founder Tom Gardner, it says, among other things, this:

For the past six months, I have been working on a special research project with an ambitious goal:

Isolate the single investing factor that was found in nearly every one of The Motley Fool’s most successful stock recommendations…

As I began to analyze all the recommendations The Motley Fool has ever made, I quickly noticed a clear pattern emerging:

THE SMALLER OUR RECOMMENDATIONS, THE MORE MONEY INVESTORS HAVE MADE.

In other words, the smaller the total capitalization (“cap”) of a company they had recommended, the bigger the profit.

Tom, given how you stated it, the first criticism is that this is just standard math. Forget all the crap about share price, number of shares, etc – when you buy a piece of a company, the percentage at which the company’s total capitalization appreciates over the period that you hold that share of stock is also the percentage at which your holding also appreciates^[1]. Let’s make up a totally artificial example. Suppose someone has guaranteed you that in five years time four companies will each have a $10 billion cap. Suppose further that right at this moment the four companies have caps of $5 billion, $1 billion, $500 million, and $100 million.

Which company should you buy? Ignoring all other variables, and that’s one helluva big “ignore”, you buy the one worth $100 million because the appreciation percentage is the greatest^[2].

But this leads to my second criticism, which are misstatements. There are misstatements in the mail and misstatements in what I just wrote, so I’ll go first – I implied that the risk of each investment is the same. They never are, and that’s the main challenge of any investor, understanding the risks of each investment.

But Tom just glosses over the same point. If Tom had said,

Despite the higher risks implicit in microcap stocks, The Motley Fool’s picks in this area of investing have far outperformed all of our picks outside of microcaps!

then I could have respected what he’d written. That would speak to both the novices and the experienced investors, as the novice may not realize how important risk evaluation is during the investment process, while the experienced investor would realize it was an honest statement that explicitly notes this area of investing is not for beginners.

And then we come to the “herding the buffalo off the cliff” phase of the promotion.

To make sure only committed, long-term investors have the chance to benefit from these recommendations…

Not only will we be accepting just 1,500 additional new members into The Rising Stars Portfolio, but the only way to officially receive YOUR invitation before we reveal the entire portfolio is by filling out our brief “New Member Application.”

With over 500,000 active investors in the Motley Fool community, you can see why we expect those 1,500 seats to sell out fast. Installing this “New Member Application ” ensures our interests align when it comes to investing alongside The Rising Stars Portfolio.

Ah, they’ll sell out fast. Quick action is required. Turn off the brain and get yourself positioned, eh? It’s not a really respectable way to run a sober investing service. Indeed, if you carefully examine the statements, you’ll realize that they really don’t relate to each other very well. Consider the first paragraph vs the second. Or what does it mean to “install” an application?

But I fear rationality is not part of this promotion, despite rationality and refusal to run with the herd being historical parts of the Motley Fool business.

Instead, reading this, the heart starts pounding and you hit that button that says you’re interested before everyone else does, and now they have a shot. It’s not a guarantee for them, of course. Some folks will realize microcaps represent far too much risk for them – Tom’s new service may even give them that warning. But I won’t know that, because I won’t push the button.

As I was thinking about this promotion, it occurred to me to wonder if Tom and David Gardner have actually sold the Motley Fool to some nameless conglomerate, and as part of the sales agreement they agreed that the personas of Tom and David may be used by the new owners to promote the company. The zombie Gardners, if you will.

Now I’m a little frightened of doing the actual research to falsify the hypothesis. What if I’m right?

¹Minus fees and taxes, of course, once you sell. Also, if the company sells new shares of stock in order to raise capital for various purposes, current shareholders are diluted and will then not profit as much. This is common with microcaps, which are usually still developing their initial product. Speak to a licensed financial professional for more detail – don’t depend on me!

²And if this is not immediately obvious, please find a remedial mathematics course which will help you develop your mathematical intuition.

Turns out Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare was once a journalist, skilled in reading between the lines when it comes to anonymous sources. He shares his rules for evaluating such reporting:

Rule No. 3: It Is Ethical and Legal for Defense Lawyers to Dish on Matters About Which Prosecutors Cannot Appropriately Talk

There is no point more important to understanding where any given story comes from than this basic legal fact: investigative secrecy rules bind prosecutors and law enforcement and court officials but generally not defense lawyers or witnesses. Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure bars prosecutors and grand jurors from disclosing matters taking place before a grand jury. Lots of other rules within investigative bodies generally make it improper for prosecutors and FBI officials to talk to the press about what they’ve learned. So when prosecutors and investigators leak, and it does happen, it’s often a serious impropriety—and sometimes a criminal act. (There are limited exceptions to this statement.)

The thing to keep in mind is that none of these rules covers the many defense lawyers who have subjects, targets or witnesses before those same investigators. In fact, defense lawyers are ethically bound to zealously represent their clients’ interests, and many lawyers see conditioning the public discussion of an investigation in a favorable direction for the client as part of their jobs. There are situations—court orders sealing material, confidentiality agreements and the like—where defense lawyers have ethical or legal constraints on their ability to speak as well. But the norm is that they have great freedom to discuss matters prosecutors cannot discuss; the main constraint on them is the duty to act in their clients’ interests.

Dirty little secret: It’s a common tactic for defense lawyers to put material out there in a fashion favorable to their clients and to make sure the sourcing is suggestive of an improper prosecutorial leak—and then complain publicly about prosecutorial leaks. This happens a lot.

My point is not that prosecutors and investigators never leak. They sometimes do. It is, rather, that when it’s lawful and ethical and appropriate for defense lawyers to disclose material and illegal and unethical and potentially actionable for prosecutors to do so, the default assumption should be that the material came from the defense bar when something is sourced in a fashion consistent with coming from either.

Benjamin goes on to analyze a couple of recent stories using his guidelines. Interesting stuff.

Progressive David Nir is upset with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA):

This is very interesting indeed. Longtime Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein is an institution in California, but she’s often made liberals’ teeth ache. The most recent trip to the dentist became necessary just the other day, when Feinstein rather startlingly declared she believes Trump “can be a good president,” something it’s hard to believe any mainstream Democratic politician would ever think, let alone say aloud. Feinstein’s full remarks were even worse:

“I think we have to have some patience. I do. It’s eight months into the tenure of the presidency … We’ll have to see if he can forget himself and his feeling about himself enough to be able to really have the kind of empathy and the kind of direction that this country needs. The question is whether he can learn and change. If so, I believe he can be a good president.”

Feinstein thinks it’s possible Trump can learn and change? Forget himself? Show empathy? Seriously? Which Donald Trump has Feinstein been watching these last few terrifying years? Any hypothesis that involves Trump doing something you’d want him to do is automatically null and void. These are not open questions, because we already have the answers.

But I read the Senator’s remarks as a direct insult to Trump. After all, in Trump’s mind Trump is a great guy – why should he have to change? To change is to acknowledge the first eight months of his Administration have been abject failure.

I wonder if the progressives are a little trigger-happy.

Michael Elleman on 38 North reports on the latest North Korean stride forward in missile technology, from the launch of August 28:

She has him in a headlock! Oh, but those eyes!

It’s all about … ummm … apparently, inter-species sex in the fairly incoherent Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II (1993). An egg and the remains of another are discovered on an island used as a nuclear waste dumping ground, and as the research team is examining them, Rodan (but pronounced “Radon“, as in the radioactive gas common in many basements, and a known health hazard, which may be some sort of subtle pun) appears and messes with them; then Godzilla appears, and in the tussle that follows, the team escapes in their helicopter, lugging along the intact egg.

Meantime, a team is working on Mechagodzilla, assembled from various bits of other monsters, along with a generous helping of technology, oh, goodness, this is really dreary to write about.. Deep breath.. is being perfected. Aaaaaaaand … over at the lab, a cohort of telepathic girls begin singing to the egg, and it hatches into a vegetarian baby Godzilla.

Yep. Vegetarian. Although those ain’t molars. But the eyes, so cute.

In any case, Godzilla appears nearby and Mechagodzilla sallies forth to do battle. After bouncing around for a while, Mechagodzilla burns out and Godzilla, neglecting to stomp his opponent summarily into the ground, wanders off while Baby Godzilla’s eyes glow red.

Baby Godzilla is then packaged up and used as bait for Godzilla, luring him to some uninhabited islands for a finishing fight with Mechagodzilla, but Rodan appears, torches the helicopter, and snatches the Baby Godzilla. Mechagodzilla intercepts and messes up Rodan but good, just as Godzilla approaches. A battle royale ends in Godzilla being left a quadriplegic, and thus he’s given ten minutes to recover per the rules of … what, this isn’t a sanctioned bout?

OK, so the Japanese (one named Johnson, just for laughs) are getting all set to turn Godzilla into a million cheeseburgers, when Rodan rises from the dead, flings itself (I hesitate to even guess gender) on top of Godzilla, turns bright red and blends with Godzilla, healing his second brain (sure, I didn’t mention it, you know all dinosaurs had second brains, right?), and Godzilla bounces to his feet for a knockout swing at Mechagodzilla. Victory achieved, he and Baby Godzilla wade off into the ocean while the General in charge tells us that Baby Godzilla is the offspring of Godzilla and Rodan.

The visuals of that mating leave me dazed and confused.

Much like this awful movie.

If you have to see this, I hope you’re a Godzilla completist, because there’s no other reason to subject yourself to this rot. Unless you like making jokes about monsters named ‘Radon’.

Distaff:

the female branch or side of a family [Merriam-Webster]

Heard from my Arts Editor recently, realized I didn’t know the meaning at all.

This is a harvest year for apples, but it’s become apparent that between an anemic year for tomatoes and a buggy year for apples, we’re not getting much to put by.

She starts baking.

Even the smartphone camera got a little freaked out about it.

Is this my voodoo doll? Wrong genre this time, kids!

Vincent Price may not burn the castle down in this one, but chances are you won’t care at the end of Tower Of London (1962), an imaginative take on the accession of Richard III to the throne of England in 1483. Compressing the events, both real and fictional, from 2+ years to perhaps a month or so, Price, in the lead role, introduces the audience to Richard’s raging ambition. His brother, King Edward, lies in his death bed, and commands the youngest of the three brothers, the Duke of Clarence, to be Protector of Edward’s sons, the elder the heir. Thus, Richard’s first hurdle is created, and he leaps it with flair, and soon the bodies are piling up as the matter of a kingship is a costly undertaking.

But Richard’s mind, already twisted like his crooked back through resentment of those he thinks laughs at him, now suffers a touch of Macbeth’s disease – the affliction of guilt, of shame for what he’s done and will do. But this does not stop him, and when the unstoppable force of guilt meets the immovable object that is Richard’s ambition, the result is a man whose descent into madness goes deeper and deeper as he ascends to the throne, trampling upon the bodies of those in his way, both determined and innocent. His delusions lead him into further murder, danger, and misjudgment, and soon he takes on the mantle of invincibility; the audience may suspect that, to him, it’s not whether he has been touched by God, but whether he has touched God.

And, as often happens to the hubristic, he meets an ignominious doom suitable for the foolish at Bosworth.

Price displays a wider range than is usual for him, dragging his way from courtly manners to outright murder to gibbering terror, and he pulls all off with equal competency, treading a fine line between convincing performance and chewing the scenery. His supporting cast, too, is at least equal to their tasks; his minion, Ratcliffe (Michael Pate), brings a delicious little extra to his role. The cinematography is excellent, as is the audio, and the special effects generally did not repel me for want of competency. The sets were adequate to the needs of the story.

And the story, constrained as it has to be by the historical events, is not bad. The madness of ambition is well conveyed, and if its fidelity to real events is somewhat low, what of it? This is a story that teaches a lesson concerning over-reaching and the dangers that accompany it; these purposes benefit from the modifications to the base reality. And if Richard is not met with effective opposition at his forcible and traitorous usurpation of the throne, the opposition he does meet is that within himself. His betrayal of his own family results, in the end, in his own betrayal.

Roger Corman was the director, a famed (or infamous) B-film director. We’ve seen a number of his efforts, and this may be his best so far.

For all the positives, I won’t quite recommend it. The pacing needed some work, I think, and some of the actual murders could have been clarified to emphasize the real horror generated by Richard’s ambition. For example, the horror associated with the murders is heightened as it violates some special norms, so we’re expected to recoil at the idea of murdering one’s brother; if there had been stronger apparent affection between Richard and Clarence, we might have been more horrified.

Perhaps more importantly, one of the most important facets of this sort of story is the generation of pity for the man who commits these crimes, and it was difficult to feel real pity for the wreck of a man who would be King, in the end. Achieving such a quality would have elevated his movie up the ladder of accomplishment.

But if you do get the opportunity, you may find this entertaining on a lazy afternoon.

And if you prefer your entertainment to be purely escapist, you should probably stop reading at this juncture.

Midway through I began to see some parallels with the Trump Administration. The denial of facts, the desperate ambition, turning to dubious means as well as dubious actors (not in the theatrical sense), all are shared between Price’s Richard III and various members of the Administration – not just its head. A general dissatisfaction with reality, the delusions of grandeur, and how it leads to a disaster for both the Crown and the People were unexpected reminders of the current sad drama unfolding in our nation’s capitol. One suspects, however, that there is little guilt, little introspection, little self-awareness in this Administration, simply greedy grasping and knee-jerk fear in equal measures.

Earlier this week Benjamin Wittes and Jane Chong  of Lawfare called for the beginning of impeachment proceedings. Jane now continues with a look at her list of the top four impeachment myths. I found the last, concerning the Emoluments Clause, the hardest to comprehend, and perhaps the most disturbing:

Equilux:

An equinox is the moment in which the plane of Earth‘s equator passes through the center of the Sun‘s disk,^[2] which occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September.

On an equinox, day and night are of approximately equal duration all over the planet. They are not exactly equal, however, due to the angular size of the sun and atmospheric refraction. To avoid this ambiguity, the word equilux is sometimes (but rarely) used to mean a day in which the durations of light and darkness are equal. [Wikipedia]

Just happened to stumble across it.

You can’t really draw any analogies to water dripping in this case, because the chart from Gallup as of today betrays neither stalagmites nor stalactites:

The two relevant numbers are, for approval of Trump as President, 34%, and disapproval, 61%. As you can see, they continue to diverge, indicating the President’s support is decaying. When the numbers manage to reach a 2-to-1 ratio, what will happen? It’s not totally unprecedented, as President Nixon’s numbers were worse at the time of his resignation – below 30% approval.

Will Trump leave office of his own accord, his ego having taken enough of a beating? Or will he wish to press on, to prove himself right? I’m betting the latter, being such an egotist, so the numbers must be analyzed for what they indicate about his support, not his future actions. The divergence suggests one of two things – and they are not mutually exclusive.

This is what I’d like to be at some Trumpist meetings where they discuss his accomplishments.

First, the Trumpist hard core is gradually losing its sheath of GOP members who voted Trump and approved of him for a while on a partisan basis, but are gradually discovering that his many extremist views and incompetent approach to the Presidency is really too much to stomach. As part of such a movement, I can postulate that at least some will begin considering competency as more important than in the past, moving ideological purity down the priority list and, for the truly suspicious ones, discounting the manipulations of the right wing media circus. They might even discard the entire ‘team politics’ approach, which has hamstrung the moderates to the point where they can only leave the party to protest those who’ve clambered to the top of the pile of candidates in search of power. And this may begin to move the GOP back to the left, which will appall those who have benefited from the right wing gallop in which the party has engaged for the last 25, if not 40, years, and now think they can fling the weakest of rhetoric into the wind in order to profit (see this post from earlier today for the level to which arguments from the right have sunk). This movement can only be a good thing for the Party as a whole, as well as the country.

The second possibility is that the Trumpist core of support itself is beginning to crack. There have been reports of late that Trump’s “ego-rallies,” as a friend calls them, have been less well attended than President Trump might like. If this is true – and I don’t know that this has been verified – it doesn’t mean that those who are disaffected will begin to judge future candidates using better criteria, because it’s quite possible that Trump’s failure to deliver on various promises has merely disappointed them without educating them. A sad possibility, but some citizens will only use that criteria for their judgment of candidates. I vividly recall Trump being the hands-down winner at making ridiculous promises and predictions during the campaign, especially the primaries, leaving his GOP rivals red-faced and in the dust as even they couldn’t really force themselves to promise 10% economic growth. If the Trumpists tied their support to his promises, many of them impossible and most outlandish, then we may see Trump sunk by his own rhetoric. You can start your own private company and remain king of the castle for so long as you can keep the creditors at bay; the political game is far, far different, and Trump doesn’t really seem to appreciate that. There are several factors – be appealing to the independents, keeping your supporters happy, while remaining within the bounds of the law and understanding the purpose of the various conventions which we follow – up until now. In the area of supporters, if you choose to keep them happy through concrete promises, such as increasing the military budget by $500 billion, then you have a problem when you fail miserably. Principles and policies are better promises than simply saying you’ll spend $X more on the military, outlaw abortion, or put guns in the hands of the mentally ill..

Will his numbers continue its divergence? I am aware that most folks don’t pay a lot of attention to the issues I’ve started thinking about since I started blogging; I’ve long said that political groupies think the world should revolve around politics, and bewail the simple fact that it doesn’t. I don’t, generally, as it’s an ugly business, but these days it’s more important than it used to be to pay attention the political world around us. So I’m often disappointed in how slowly Trump’s support has eroded, even if it’s been at historically low levels. I viscerally loathe his mendacious lies, I find his incompetency wretched, and his fascination with fringe-right web sites appalling.

But I hope there’ll be a silver lining left behind when his cloud sinks into the sea – that of more political involvement from solid citizens, those who had ignored the political world and have found that, for all that politics can be a sausage making business, at least it got things done – until the GOP of 2000 and then 2016 took over and have demonstrated their awful incompetency. Perhaps the participation of citizens who have one hand covering their nose as they push the levers of power will bring sanity back to our political world, in terms of compromise and decisions made with less regard to political issues and more to national issues of justice, prosperity, and security.