Yearly Archives: 2018

Reuters is reporting on standard political shit by the Republicans:

With congressional elections looming, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday proposed more deficit-expanding tax cuts, an effort seen by some tax experts as unlikely to become law and geared chiefly toward winning votes.

Even if the initiative fails to pass, it could put Democrats in the position of opposing the new tax-cut plan on the House floor, which Republicans could seek to use to their advantage in the Nov. 6 elections where control of Congress will be at stake.

Under the measure, federal individual income tax cuts approved on a temporary basis by the Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald Trump in December would become permanent.

It would also eliminate the maximum age for some retirement account contributions and let new businesses write off more start-up costs.

Nothing particularly objectionable about the maneuvering, but as Steve Benen points out:

Even if we put aside the many substantive concerns – including the fact that GOP officials aren’t even trying to come up with a way to pay for another round of tax cuts – the politics aren’t as clear as Republican leaders would like.

If they continue to not find ways to pay for this – by, say, cutting the Defense budget, which I happen to think is bloated – then Democratic incumbents can respond to attacks by Republican challengers on the issue by saying, You bet your ass, the Democrats were the adults in the room, recognized the national debt is going to ruin us, and we refused to do that. Mr. Challenger, in view of the mess that happened in Kansas when they did what you proposed to do, how can you possibly justify your support for this disaster?

In the case of obverse, the Republican candidate so foolish as to vote for this tax reduction will also face a withering volley.

Appealing to the true fiscal conservative, who is aware that our national financial ruin would result in inflation that would destroy any minor pickups in income for the average individual, and that the Laffer Curve is a theoretical fallacy at worst, and at best only works in certain situations, is the best bet. Being freaking made that the GOP is putting our nation’s future financial health at risk just to get  a few votes is both sincere and appropriate, in my view.

And now we have a third data point to add to the trend of Republican corruption. The AP reports on Representative Rod Blum (R-IA):

A congressman from Iowa violated House ethics rules by failing to disclose his ownership role in a new company, a mysterious outfit that featured his top federal staffer in a false testimonial promoting its services, an Associated Press review shows.

Rep. Rod Blum was one of two directors of the Tin Moon Corp. when the internet marketing company was incorporated in May 2016, as the Republican was serving his first term, a business filing shows. Among other services, Tin Moon promises to help companies cited for federal food and drug safety violations bury their Food and Drug Administration warning letters below positive internet search results.

Blum claims it to be a clerical error. How corrupt is this? Not really all that … oh wait. It gets a bit worse.

Tin Moon’s website on Tuesday removed an official photo of Blum wearing his congressional pin and changed his title from CEO to “majority shareholder” after AP raised questions about ethics rules. Tin Moon is based in the same Dubuque office as a construction software company Blum owns, Digital Canal.

And then:

Late Wednesday, the company also removed an online video testimonial showing “John Ferland representing Digital Canal” and claiming to be a satisfied customer. Ferland — who is actually chief of staff in Blum’s congressional office and has never worked for Digital Canal — claimed that Tin Moon is “saving us thousands of dollars every month, keeping our traffic and leads higher,” and implored: “From one business owner to another, I suggest you take a look at Tin Moon.”

Assuming the AP has its ducks in a row, this is rather like cockroaches scurrying for their dark little holes when someone turns on the lights, isn’t it?

The omission of mentioning his ownership in the company seems quite odd. How can one forget about a company one has a financial interest in? And then Blum depicted as CEO with his Congressional title clearly shown – quite Roman, one might say, that hint of power and influence. I wonder if he was aware of it. The video, in comparison, is simply crass and deceptive. Blum later suggests he has no idea how that happened, which is doubly disgusting. You’re the majority shareholder, try being an adult about it.

The frenzied removal of evidence, as if that will help matters. It’s just so … I’ll chance the overused banal, although I sense that word is going by the wayside.

The timing is interesting, too, as while Representatives Hunter & Collins are in relatively safe Republican districts, although I can’t help wonder if they’re less safe now, Blum is in a relatively competitive district according to Ballotpedia, having won his last election 53.7% to 46.1%, and while it went for Trump in 2016, in 2012 it went for Obama.

So this ethical contretemps may result in a loss of another GOP seat, and, more importantly, contributes to the damage being accumulated by the Republican Party.

It appears the transition of power in Saudi Arabia is not going well, as I mentioned here earlier. Bruce Riedel adds to the analysis in AL Monitor:

Saudi Vision 2030, the brainchild of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to reduce the kingdom’s dependence on oil income, is coming undone. The king has stripped away the central pillar of the project. The country is becoming more autocratic and repressive. The slide toward greater repression is prompting capital flight.

The centerpiece of the ambitious plan was to open up Aramco, the national oil company, to outside investors. Five percent of the company would be opened initially, creating an initial public offering, or IPO. The crown prince estimated that the company would be valued at $2 trillion, creating the world’s largest IPO of $100 billion.

Incidentally, capital flight leads to economic upset. If it’s traced to an autocratic takeover, it makes for an easy target for overthrow – and worse. But if a democracy engages in acts that result in capital flight, then those in control either must control the press or the democracy is in danger of going under – especially if Democracy is considered the problem, rather than foolish activities of a few.

The crown prince’s so-called anti-corruption campaign last November — in which hundreds of prominent Saudis, including members of the family, were detained and forced to hand over assets to the government — added further difficulties. The shakedown underscored the absence of due process and the rule of law in the kingdom and discouraged foreign investment. It also sparked major capital flight as the wealthy sought to protect their assets abroad. One authoritative estimate is that almost $150 billion in capital has left the kingdom in the last two years. …

The arbitrary detentions last fall and now of women are part of a broader trend of greater authoritarianism and repression in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia has always been an absolute monarchy that stifles dissent. There is no freedom of assembly or speech. Public executions are a mainstay of Saudi life.

But the repression is getting worse. The shakedown last year was unprecedented in Saudi history. Some of those detained are still under arrest. Public executions are more frequent. Prominent clerical critics have been rounded up.

And etc. If the Saudi Arabian monarchy falls over, there’ll be some rearrangements in terms of power and alliances in the Middle East. Don’t assume Iran will benefit from disarray at its primary rival in the region, either, because they have a big bucket of economic & environmental troubles of their own.

Looks like this region could get more interesting in the next few years. Another reason to lessen our dependence on oil.

The view from my mother-in-law’s place last weekend.

NewScientist (1 September 2018) reports on pollution and the collective you:

An analysis that compared local air quality with cognitive test scores from nearly 32,000 students in China has found that a 17 per cent increase in measures of air pollution is linked to a 6 per cent decrease in verbal skills and a 2 per cent decrease in mathematics performance (PNAS, doi.org/ctc3).

Air pollution may damage the brain through several pathways at once, says Xiaobo Zhang at Peking University in Beijing, who was involved in the analysis. Other research has shown that pollutants in the air can carry toxins into the brain, decreased oxygen supply caused by pollution may impair cognitive functions, and prolonged exposure to unclean air can lead to neurological inflammation and disease.

While 2% may fall into the error bars, 6% may not. And this makes sense, since our brains evolved in a very different atmosphere. In fact, it’d be interesting to know if the higher percentage of CO₂, relative to when we evolved our brains, is also having a deleterious effect on them as well.

He’s cute.

However, a little hairy with cat fur. My Arts Editor decided to introduce him to the great outdoors. It might have had something to do with thoughts of him running over her bare toes.

Nummy nummy in my tummy!

The surprisingly good The Lost World (1925) is the classic Arthur Conan Doyle story of the same name, but we found this particular silent film version on Amazon Prime.  The movie we saw is a collage of 4 different prints, all damaged. This may account for some of the odd gaps in the story.  Still, they claim it’s longer by half than any of the single reels they used to put this version together.

We start out with the venerable Professor Challenger, having returned from his first trip to the mysterious South American plateau supposedly hosting dinosaurs, with wild claims but no evidence. Jeered by rowdy students at a presentation, he calls for volunteers to return to the plateau, and he gets Sir Roxton, the hunter, Professor Summerlee, a critic, and Malone, the journalist looking for a risky adventure qualifying him for the love of beautiful Gladys. Accompanying them will be Paula White, daughter of Maple White, who was left behind on the previous expedition, fate unknown.

Upon arrival at the plateau, they soon see a pterodactyl in the distance, and while marveling at that, an ape tries to bombard them from the plateau above. Making the ascent, soon Summerlee is convinced of Challenger’s claims, but their way back down is lost when a dinosaur knocks over an opportunistic bridge. Scrambling now for survival among the brontos, stegs, triceratops (there is no cute abbreviation for such a word), and those “pests of the prehistoric world,” allosaurs, a volcano begins to go off. A rope ladder is sent up by their base support group, and they scramble down it to safety, even as our mystery ape tries to disrupt their escape, having the sorrowful news of the death of Maple White.

During this time, a bronto survives a fall into a lake at the base of the plateau (I believe my Arts Editor suggested it should have gone splat!), and Challenger arranges for its return to London. At unloading time, it breaks loose, and makes for the Thames, leaving Challenger with nothing but stories and an outraged populace. Meanwhile, Gladys has married (“he’s a clerk!”), leaving Malone free to marry Paula.

This was actually fun. The special effects are old-fashioned, but they’re surprisingly effective. I’d never think a bronto would go for the throat of a predator like an allosaur. The black and white in this version is leavened with various color washes. The dialog, on the traditional interleaved placards, is kept on the screen a pleasantly short amount of time, and if there’s no insightful theme, we still had a good time watching it.

While reading Andrew Sullivan’s latest column concerning the insanity in Washington, I was reminded about an article on ethical voting I saw a while back. First, let me cite Andrew’s article, which at this point is discussing the anonymous op-ed:

If Anonymous quits, he will only empower the president’s worst anti-democratic instincts, and make way for someone else who will likely enable authoritarianism. If he stays, he is undermining the very democracy he is trying to protect, by conducting what is effectively a soft coup on behalf of the “steady state” and that part of the GOP that decisively lost to Trump in the primaries.

And that lead me to consider the problem of that part of the GOP that lost “decisively” in the primaries to Trump-backed candidates. If you’re a never-Trumper conservative, who should you be voting for, or even voting at all? The article on ethical voting is, I believe, this one in Quartz, and has the following passage:

“As a citizen, I have a duty to others because it’s not just me and my principles, but everybody,” says [philosophy professor Michael] LaBossiere, who favors the utilitarian approach. “I have to consider how what I do will impact other people. For example, if I was a die-hard Bernie supporter, I might say my principles tell me to vote for Bernie. But I’m not going to let my principles condemn other people to suffering.”

And the current contretemps of the United States, if we individually recognize it, is certainly illustrative of the truth of that paragraph, isn’t it? Upon those who voted for Bernie, those who might have voted Democratic but didn’t vote at all because of some concern over Hillary, as well as those who voted for Trump, falls the blame for the damage being done to the foundations of our liberal democracy, from the fallacious attacks on the free press to our international relations and alienation of key allies, while enabling the malign ambitions of the Russians.

If you’re shaking your head in denial, I’m sorry, but it’s true.

The narcissistic nature of today’s American society is, I suspect, partially to blame. I say this from the viewpoint that, because it’s a single vote, how much impact can it have in a State of some millions? I know that I’ve personally argued on an occasion or two (prior to the opening of UMB) that the worth of the individual’s vote is not in its use, but that it exists as a passport to participation in society’s institutions. But it should be now clear that it must be exercised to be fully qualifying for that access to institutions.

Moreover, it’s a selfish viewpoint, because it presupposes that we must have an individual, substantial impact with that vote, or it’s not worth exercising. But the fact is that we have just as much electoral impact as the millionaire in his mansion, and that should be a source of great joy, because in our previous incarnation as an English colony, that millionaire, that member of a more elevated class, really did have more impact than the common guy in the street. The consequence of that was a society preoccupied with the higher classes, and resulted finally in the Revolution.

With the privilege of voting and participating comes the responsibility of voting for the best possible outcome. This doesn’t mean simply evaluating each candidate for fidelity to your values, or who makes the most expansive promises, but finding that candidate who has demonstrated competency in governing, who has ideals and goals at least somewhat compatible with yours, and has a chance of winning.

Being too disgusted to vote sounds sexy, even realistic, but in the end it’s an abdication of responsibility, particularly when it means you don’t vote at all, rather than skipping a particular race. Take the time to research and evaluate, because that’s part of being an American citizen – you are seriously offered an opportunity to help select our leaders, why blow it off? Because you’re lazy? Unacceptable. Because none of the candidates meet your standards? Maybe you should be out there researching what it would take to run yourself – and maybe you’ll learn a thing or two about those very issues you thought weren’t addressed properly.

As hard as it is to accept that your 3rd party candidate isn’t going to win, it’s usually the reality, and if you want to make a true contribution to the task of governance, voting for that 3rd party candidate may enable the candidate you really didn’t like to win the race.

That’s how our electoral system currently works.

Perhaps we should be discussing ranked voting as a replacement system for all races, as they’ve started using in Minneapolis, but that’s another post. We have to work with what we have, and if you refuse to recognize that reality, then you’re part of the problem.

Not part of the solution.

Metacognition:

Knowledge about the accuracy of our knowledge is a facility called metacognition. Requiring self-awareness and introspective judgements, it is used in many everyday decisions. For instance, we might decide to invest money in a new venture because it seems promising, but choose not to risk much capital because we realise we might be mistaken. [“We can train ourselves to be better at knowing when we are wrong“, Clare Wilson, NewScientist (1 September 2018, paywall)]

Remember deepfakes, the anticipated production of video fakes that are difficult or impossible to detect? NewScientist (1 September 2018, paywall) reports they’re here:

A FAKE is only as good as it looks. And while forging a counterfeit handbag or watch takes time and effort, churning out fake videos has become surprisingly easy.

A new system can turn a few simple animated line drawings into realistic fake clips in high definition. The software is open source, meaning it is available to anyone – and it has reignited concerns that such tools could be used to warp our perception of the world. …

The resulting footage can be produced at 2K resolution and looks startlingly lifelike. Examples the team has produced include street scenes, and people talking or performing dance moves (arxiv.org/abs/1808.06601).

“It is sort of stunning, the progress that has been made,” says digital forensics expert Hany Farid at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.

This type of video has become known as a deepfake, and fake videos of world leaders, such as Donald Trump and Theresa May, have been created using similar techniques. A community dedicated to creating faked pornography videos containing famous actors has sprung up too.

In case you don’t think this is a big deal, even prior to the development of this system, people have died because of the distribution of fake videos:

Fake videos have been implicated in the deaths of more than 20 people in India. This started after a video clip showing two men on a motorcycle snatching children on the streets went viral on WhatsApp.

The video was originally a public service announcement in Pakistan to raise awareness of human trafficking. However, it was edited to remove the message at the end. The clip was thought real, and widely spread WhatsApp messages pointed the finger at organ thieves disguised as beggars, which sparked public outrage leading to mob killings.

Essentially, assassinations, metaphorical and real, can now be arranged by the malign simply through distribution of a video of something that never happened, because they can depend on the mob mentality to complete the job.

That will be true until society decides in a collective manner, no doubt only enough people are dead or ruined, to no longer trust a video. Electronic recordings of the visual aspect of reality are now transitioning from somewhat trustworthy to not trustworthy at all.

Impacts? I count the following:

• Courts will try to accept only those recordings for which the provenance is known and trusted, which they do to some extent already, but I suspect this will grudgingly be lost as more and more courts are fooled by technologies such as this.
• The continued growth of an art form in which real people are placed in fictional situations. This is already happening, but as more and more artists become involved, it will evolve into who-knows-what.
• A drop in the sales of real cameras as current and potential customers become disgusted by the entire phenomenon of recording reality.
• The use of this technology to question the very authenticity of someone’s identity through the production of suicide videos depicting the death of people who have not died. Regarded as nuisance crime, at its most basic it’s an assassination of someone’s life, similar to today’s identity theft. The addition of difficult-to-identify bodies which may correspond in some way to the victim of this crime will make the situation especially difficult – and spawn an industry in which people are actually murdered in order to supply bodies for the virtually murdered.

Will we turn completely away from recordings of the visual aspect of reality as a society? Or will we find that technological solution in order to save this world-wide custom? I look forward to finding out.

WaPo’s Thomas Kent has a few thoughts on the subject, wrapping up with this:

Unless the dangers of fake video receive broad public attention now, the public will be caught unaware when truly convincing fakes appear, perhaps with disastrous results.

Finally, in publicizing the dangers, media need to avoid a tone of hopelessness — “Soon we may never know what is real and what isn’t.” Quality media outlets need to emphasize how carefully they vet video. They should make sure their ethics codes and verification procedures adequately address the dangers. Otherwise, audiences will doubt any video — including legitimate and important footage that media outlets gather in their own breaking-news coverage and investigative work.

Kent still has hope to salvage the video recording, but he does acknowledge the possibility of it being completely lost.

And just for your delectation:

It’s gonna get worse, folks.

NBC News is reporting that President Trump wants Attorney General help track down the author of the notorious op-ed:

President Donald Trump said Friday he wanted Attorney General Jeff Sessions to launch an investigation into who authored the explosive anonymous opinion article published in The New York Times earlier this week.

“Jeff should be investigating who the author of that piece was, because I really believe it’s national security,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The op-ed writer, identified only as a senior administration official, said some members of the administration are trying to thwart Trump as part of a “resistance.”

Steve Benen remarks:

The trouble, of course, is that Trump’s call doesn’t make much sense. In order for the New York Times opinion piece to warrant scrutiny from the attorney general, there would need to be some kind of evidence of a federal crime. There isn’t. We’ve all read the op-ed and it does not describe illegal misconduct.

It also doesn’t point to any national security threats, unless one is inclined to accept the op-ed author’s concerns at face value and conclude that having an unfit president is itself a national security threat.

I think the first paragraph of Steve’s analysis is a mis-fire, or a mis-print. The question is whether the letter itself is illegal.

But remember the flavor of the moment a few weeks ago, Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) signed by White House staffers? It’s possible that Trump wants Sessions to investigate for abrogation of those agreements. Once again, Trump tramps close to a precedent he’d hate if he tries to punish a transgression of a questionable legal agreement, because a court might easily find those agreements to be non-binding.

But, given the insulting picture it paints of the President, how can he not lose his cool on this letter? It’s probable, as I’m sure many other observers have noted, that the author of that op-ed is intentionally provoking the President in hopes of alienating his base, or committing a political crime gross enough to bring Congress back to its senses.

I think this chances of either happening are miniscule.

And, on a less serious note, I’m having mad visuals of the only way the author will be found by Trump is if the guy can’t repress his giggling at his desk.

It must have been a conspiracy that caused this tsunami, as noted by Higman, et al, in an abstract in Nature’s Scientific Reports:

Glacial retreat in recent decades has exposed unstable slopes and allowed deep water to extend beneath some of those slopes. Slope failure at the terminus of Tyndall Glacier on 17 October 2015 sent 180 million tons of rock into Taan Fiord, Alaska. The resulting tsunami reached elevations as high as 193 m, one of the highest tsunami runups ever documented worldwide. …

Our results call attention to an indirect effect of climate change that is increasing the frequency and magnitude of natural hazards near glaciated mountains.

Any ground-based eye-witnesses would be dead, of course. In fact, a drone hovering above would probably have been wrecked by air currents induced by the tsunami.

The impending drowning of various sea ports and other coastline cities is the true big story, of course, followed by changes to agricultural patterns, but incidents such as this one are terrifying reminders of the power of physics and how it ignores all the delusions of humanity.

While having a rare listen to The Rachel Maddow Show tonight, in which she was discussing Judge Kavanaugh’s views on contraception and abortion (in her view, he appears to be deeply confused concerning the biological facts of the matter), it suddenly occurred to me why the Republicans are opposed to Universal Health Care (UHC), or a one-payer system. It has little enough to do with infringement on free markets, but is simply this:

If we have UHC, then the US Government will be paying for every abortion in America, full stop. Since the government is funded through individual taxes, it’s not a big step to see anti-abortion opponents seeing themselves as taking on a personal responsibility for each abortion.

I’m not going to step into the abortion controversy except to note that a fetus is not a human being. But I do think it’s worth taking note that this could be one excuse for the ideological rigidity of Republicans on this issue.

And maybe everyone else knew that.

NewScientist (1 September 2018, paywall) reports on a possible natural phenomenon that would wipe us out without a chance of redemption:

Most gravitational waves – ripples in the fabric of the universe caused by the motion of massive objects – are spherical. They propagate outwards like a 3D version of ripples on the surface of a pond after a stone is thrown in. But when a high energy object or particle moves at the speed of light, theory says it creates a different type of gravitational wave: flat, or plane-fronted waves, like a tidal wave.

Frans Pretorius at Princeton University in New Jersey and William East at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada simulated what happens if two of these unusual waves collide.

Smaller varieties simply pass through one another and go on to dissipate. But when they get large enough, a pair of colliding waves can collapse into a black hole, Pretorius and East found. “These particles have a lot of energy and produce curvature in space-time, and when the waves collide, that curvature wraps in on itself,” says Pretorius.

The black hole left behind would devour about 85 per cent of the energy in the waves, the pair found. Most of the remaining energy would stream outwards in a shell of slightly weaker gravitational waves, while a small proportion of the waves would be essentially caught in orbit, circling the black hole forever (arxiv.org/abs/1807.11562v1).

I’m just fascinated at both the idea of gravitational waves colliding causing a black hole – and that a gravitational wave is itself affected by gravitation. I suppose it’s inevitable, given how a black hole warps the area around it, but I’m still boggling a bit. A measure of my lack of knowledge about exotic physics.

I’ve discussed the sectors of society in the past, and how the importation of operationality of one sector may be non-optimal for achieving the goals of another society. It appears that, consciousness of this or not, the health sector is trying to move away from private sector operationality:

A group of major American hospitals, battered by price spikes on old drugs and long-lasting shortages of critical medicines, has launched a mission-driven, not-for-profit generic drug company, Civica Rx, to take some control over the drug supply.

Backed by seven large health systems and three philanthropic groups, the new venture will be led by an industry insider who refuses to draw a salary. The company will focus initially on establishing price transparency and stable supplies for 14 generic drugs used in hospitals, without pressure from shareholders to issue dividends or push a stock price higher.

“We’re trying to do the right thing — create a first-of-its-kind societal asset with one mission: to make sure essential generic medicines are affordable and available to everyone,” said Dan Liljenquist, chair of Civica Rx and chief strategy officer at Intermountain Healthcare in Utah. [WaPo]

This could be quite a big bit of news, and it’ll be worth keeping an eye on.

Come back, foolish airplane, I want to play!

The first half of Varan The Unbelievable (1958) is an oddity among old kaiju movies – there are actual characters with real chemistry that get to speak believable dialog, and I’ll tell you what – that was a real, if relative, pleasure. Added to that, the moviemakers had the smarts to make the first encounter with the eponymous monster quite sublime in the Burkean sense of the word, as I’ve mentioned in other reviews: one had the sense there was more to monster, that its horror went on and on, since all we could really see was its foot, and even that was enveloped in dust.

So what’s going on? US Navy Command Bradley is at a Japanese lake to test a desalination process based on adding chemicals to the water, along with his Japanese wife and some elements of the Japanese Self-Defense Force (SDF), which are illustrated with some nifty real-world footage. Unfortunately for Bradley, his experiments awaken Varan, a big ol’ lizard sleeping on the lake’s bottom, that eventually begins to trample the country-side, despite the efforts of the SDF. Not satisfied with tromping about the lake’s beaches, Varan heads back into the water for Oneida, a local city.

At this point, it’s become a standard city romp (technically only the airport is stomped, but the experienced reader will understand the point), complete with plastic model tanks and plot holes. For instance, why should the chemicals used by Bradley to inadvertently awaken Varan be used to try to kill him? It makes little sense, and the relentless good acting isn’t enough to overcome the disappointment of what this movie becomes.

Never mind me, just looking for that Chicken McFinger I dropped on the floor.

And it’s too bad, because Varan itself wasn’t too bad in the monster department (although my Arts Editor is not in complete agreement on that point). Some other average to good special effects, good dialog, and a halfway decent start to the movie makes the second half sting a bit more.

And, in that, this review may be unfair. After all, this is a 60 year old movie. Perhaps the destruction of the city’s airport by a monster was quite the novelty for the contemporary audience.

But this movie also lacks a good theme. We could theorize the theme is not to mess with Mother Nature, but awakening a big lizard isn’t really something I’d worry about when boldly experimenting. I’d worry more about my hair falling out.

In the end, it’s actually a bit fun, a bit disappointing, and you wonder what it could have been.

In The Plum Line Gary Sargent reckons the already-notorious anonymous op-ed piece in the Times is little more than a cover for officials in the White House as well as the GOP’s reputation:

In reference to anonymous Times op-ed from a senior White House official detailing how officials are colluding to keep President Trump from making truly terrible decisions, NBC News has been collecting statements from the many candidates, and I find I can’t help supplying the silent additions and corrections to them. This turns out to be a more serious exercise than one might expect. I shan’t capture the entire NBC News article, I’ll just supply my thoughts for each candidate:

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: He’s been caught in a number of his own lies, so maybe he’s the one. But it’s clear, from his days as Governor of Indiana, if he’s bright enough to coordinate such an effort – or realize that it’s necessary.

SECRETARY OF STATE MIKE POMPEO: Despite his politicization of the CIA, his experience there and as Secretary of State may have broadened his horizons enough to “be the guy”.

DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DAN COATS: “Oh, I wish I had, I wish I had.” Coats was publicly castigated by Trump personally, and of course the intelligence community has been dissed by Trump on numerous occasions. But I suspect he’s too circumspect.

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY KIRSTJEN NIELSEN: You can bet your poker hand she did it. Her reputation is absolutely in shreds, and this is the only way to restore it.

DEFENSE SECRETARY JAMES MATTIS: Too busy.

DIRECTOR OF THE OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET MICK MULVANEY: He’s a lunatic in Trump’s vein. He might do it if he saw personal opportunity to advance up the career ladder, though, because that’s what Trump would do.

DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY BEN CARSON: He may have been too sleepy.

TREASURY SECRETARY STEVE MNUCHIN: This guy’s a cipher, but his lack of prior government service suggests it’s not him. Don’t put too much money on that bet.

DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS SECRETARY ROBERT WILKIE: Too busy cleaning up prior Republican war detritus to write something like this.

LABOR SECRETARY ALEX ACOSTA: Who?

CIA DIRECTOR GINA HASPEL: “Yes!”

COUNSELOR TO THE PRESIDENT KELLYANNE CONWAY: You bet she did. It’s part of makeup sex with her husband, trenchant trump critic George Conway.

EPA ACTING ADMINISTRATOR ANDREW WHEELER: He’s been a non-entity, so I dunno. If it was still Pruitt, the answer would be a slobbery NO, because his mouth would be XXXXXXXXXX^[1].

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY SONNY PERDUE: Who? Probably too busy trying to buy off Trump-voting farmers who are now weeping over the tariff-wars.

SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION ADMINISTRATOR LINDA MCMAHON: This former pro-wrestling executive wouldn’t possibly be this subtle. She’d deliver – in person.

ENERGY SECRETARY RICK PERRY: It’s possible. I can’t imagine he enjoyed the Trump-praising session all that much.

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE WILBUR ROSS: This guy is scum, and I saw a report that Trump balled him out once. I could see him tossing a hand grenade into Trump’s shorts while trying to make like an angel.

WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL DON MCGAHN: Perhaps. I don’t have much of a read on the guy.

TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY ELAINE CHAO: “But she wishes she was.”

U.S. AMBASSADOR TO RUSSIA JON HUNTSMAN: But why?

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY ALEX AZAR: Mr. Azar is keeping his head down until the shrapnel has cleared. Then, and only then, will he claim credit.

U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE ROBERT LIGHTHIZER: He said, “I did not write it. It does not reflect my views at all, and it does not reflect the views of anyone I know in the Administration.” He then returned to his hermit’s life in the Ural Mountains.

SECRETARY OF EDUCATION BETSY DEVOS: She was too slow composing the essay to claim to be the author.

U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS NIKKI HALEY: By temperament, yes, by access, probably not.

Just going through them and contrasting them with the top people in either of the previous two Administrations makes clear just how much of a debacle this amateur has brought about, because it’s very easy seeing at least half, if not more, of these senior officials having it in for President Trump. The Obama and Bush Administrations? Even if their ideology didn’t suit you, it was a lot more difficult to find rank incompetence, although I will admit the FEMA guy in the Bush Administration turned out to be a total loss. Bush called him Brownie.

But in comparison … wow. Just wow.

¹I like to pretend this is a mildy family-friendly blog, so I shan’t quite say that. Just remember that Mr. Pruitt’s picture is next to the word sycophant in the latest Merriam-Webster dictionary.

A conservative friend, no doubt a little upset about the pressure under which President Trump finds himself to which I made reference, asked me a question on Facebook today:

Have you looked at your 401k lately?

Well, no, not as such, although I keep an eye on the entire portfolio.

But this gives me an excuse to talk about choices of metrics. This is an important topic, I think, which is sometimes under-addressed by media and citizens alike, because using the wrong metric can and almost always will lead to bad conclusions.

My friend’s implication is that the economic system should be the metric by which we measure “how well we’re doing.” But I have my doubts that this is an appropriate measure.

First, it’s quite self-centered. If my self-worth inflates by a magnitude or two, but all those around me sink by 90%, is this a good thing or a bad thing? Frankly, I suspect there’s a problem. It may be one of those problems where the villagers show up at my door with pitchforks and torches.

In addition, this metric reminds me of something that has irritated me about some progressive arguments I’ve seen on The Daily Kos, where a few members were puzzling over the failure of conservative voters to vote their self-interest. I’m sure some conservatives make the same argument, only they see self-interest differently. And, for those of us who understand the concept of self-sacrifice and why it’s actually a selfish action, my observation may seem amiss. But taking the whole vote your self-interest thing face value, it turns elections into contests over which group is larger in terms of benefiting from lower taxes or higher taxes, stronger development or weaker development, etc. In particular, that first clause, concerning taxes, is deeply misleading given the Kansas debacle.

Disregarding a side road labeled Self-interest is not necessarily economic, my second point is to ask, what use is wealth when we risk inflation? The tax change bill passed by the Republicans and signed into law by a boastful President Trump has done little to boost the economy, but more importantly it’s pushed us toward the cliff of inflation and/or national bankruptcy, as noted by the folks at the Bipartisan Policy Center recently:

The federal deficit so far for Fiscal Year 2018 reached $532 billion in May, which is 23 percent higher than the same period last year, according to monthly data released today by the Treasury Department. The total deficit remains on track to reach roughly $800 billion for the year.

In the month of May alone, the federal government ran a monthly budget deficit of $147 billion, which was 67 percent higher than the deficit in May 2017, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Key drivers of the year-over-year deficit increase through May included:

• Gross interest spending rose 12 percent to $318 billion, a $33 billion increase relative to 2017
• Corporate tax revenues fell 25 percent to $124 billion, a $42 billion decrease from 2017
• Federal spending, excluding interest payments, increased 5 percent to $2.4 trillion, a $122 billion increase relative to 2017, driven in large part by increased spending on health care and defense programs

“Nine years into our economic recovery from the Great Recession, it is indefensible that we allow the deficit to grow unabated,” Shai Akabas, BPC director of economic policy, said. “These growing deficits are not a surprise, we have been warning about them for years.”

The Laffer Curve, while it may function in certain circumstances, is not a universal phenomenon, and so we’re now facing enormous new debts incurred by those with faith, rather than belief, that lowering taxes will increase economic activity. Turns out it’s not that simple. And to finance the debt? You-know-who may turn to printing money.

Therefore, an increase in my 401K is not impressive if inflation is eating it alive, and, worse, for those of us on a fixed income, it’s fucking disaster. Now some people would just shrug and state that it’s their problem for being, say, elderly, but I remember the United States as a polity, a political entity the purpose of which was the common defense and the common welfare. Throwing people off the cliff for not being as business-savvy as the rest of us is not how we started out – but it may be how we end, as those who would be discarded instead storm the mansions of the wealth and rid us of them.

Relating to the previous point’s conclusion concerning the common welfare, a third point is that measuring my self-worth doesn’t tell me anything about the trend lines of those structures around me which I require. A hypothetical might be the terminal degradation of all the farming land in Minnesota. A less hypothetical, and just as concerning, is our health system’s own health. There are many press reports on President Trump’s assault on the ACA, to the extent that I no longer use the term ObamaCare, but TrumpCare, because he’s taken it over. I know that members of my extended family are now worried about having health care at all in the future due to the continued assaults by Trump and other conservatives on the ACA. If the health of my neighbors and family is at risk, what do I care for my 401K?

Fourth, liberty. Yeah, I just said liberty, and by that, I refer to the authoritarian tendencies of President Trump. Of what use is money if our political system is damaged beyond repair? We need to remember that our economic system is secondary to our political system, or, better yet, our economic system is contingent on our political system. Capitalism may work in non-liberal democracies, but honestly it doesn’t work very well and often degrades into mercantilism, or perhaps doesn’t ever climb out of the black hole of mercantilism.

This suggests that our first metric must be the health of our political system, as was foreseen by the Founding Fathers. Given its current distress as President Trump continues to display so much incompetency that I honestly believe he’s afflicted with dementia, it seems entirely foolish to look at a 401K as the measuring stick of the current Administration, as well as the GOP so incompetently in charge of Congress.

Or, the 401K metric simply sucks. It tells us nothing of importance.

In case you wonder who’s going to be quoted in the paper soon – many people suffer this malady, I’m sure – I suspect it’s going to be mental health professionals specializing in dementia and how such a person can appear to be perfectly normal in one aspect of his life, and completely bonkers in another.

Just sayin’ it seems quite probable. After all, a big chunk of the American people are going to need an excuse for their misjudgments fairly soon now.

On Lawfare Professor Keith Whittington ponders how conviction on impeachments charge should proceed in the Senate (and if this conversation doesn’t leave you gob-smacked, you’re not paying attention to the conduct of our Executive branch):

President Trump presents a different problem, and indeed a problem that would be unique in the history of federal impeachments. The concerns revolving around President Trump do not center on a single incident like President Johnson’s effort to remove Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, or even a closely related set of incidents like Judge Humphreys’ support of the secessionist cause. President Trump has found himself entangled in a myriad of legal, political and constitutional difficulties, and he seems to stumble into more with every news cycle. If the House were to pursue impeachment charges against the president—perhaps after the midterm election and the seating of a new Democratic majority – the biggest challenge might be how to edit the list of potential impeachment charges down to a manageable size. Members of the House Democratic caucus have already introduced possible articles of impeachment focused on the president’s rhetoric after the Charlottesville riot and his unerring ability to bring the presidency into “contempt, ridicule, disgrace and disrepute.” It is easy to imagine more, ranging from his actions during the 2016 election campaign to his obstruction of the Russia investigation to his ongoing financial conflicts of interest to his handling of national security secrets to his abuse of his discretionary constitutional and statutory authority. Rather than doing everything possible to walk back out of impeachment territory and demonstrate that impeachment is not a necessary remedy to what ails the White House, the president and his supporters have preferred to dig in and try to weather the storm.

Trump’s critics have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to presidential scandals. Their difficulty comes with establishing that any single scandal is sufficient to justify the president’s impeachment and removal. Of course the president’s most committed foes are already convinced that Trump should be removed from office. Indeed, many thought extraordinary steps should have been taken to prevent him from even being inaugurated. The president’s fellow partisans, however, have thus far been unimpressed. Although many Republicans might readily admit President Trump’s many missteps, relatively few are prepared to say that those missteps amount to impeachable offenses that would justify overturning the will of the voters. Like Bill Clinton before him, Donald Trump benefits from the fact that those who cast their ballots in his favor had already decided that his personal flaws did not override his political utility. Trump’s many foibles were priced in to his presidency.

And in conclusion?

If, however, offenses pile upon offenses and an officer cannot be adequately checked and trusted to conduct himself in a more responsible manner befitting his high office, then the constitutional calculus changes. Impeachable offenses cannot be adequately evaluated is isolation. Although senators might be called upon to vote on one charge at a time, they have a responsibility to consider the totality of circumstances when casting that vote.

If the history of the President is such to suggest that he’ll continue to engage in behavior that is not to the benefit of the United States, if it’s a pattern of bad behavior, I do not see how one can excuse it.

However, I suspect the extremist right wing that is now the GOP sees the President as a useful tool for implementing their agenda. They can tolerate his crass attacks on our liberal democracy, because, to their minds, a liberal democracy is not important. They may see a Dominionist future, a fascist future, or a corporatist future, but not one where a liberal democracy is critical – or even tolerated.

I fear the Trump supporters are being played, at least in part. I’d rather not see the conclusion of such a play, I suspect it’ll not be what anyone, except our adversaries, would like to see.

A reader remarks on our surprise garden occupants:

If you’re talking about the plant with the trumpet-like bloom, that is Datura. They open in the evening and are pollinated by the hummingbird moth. They will get a prickly seed pod that spits out seeds after it dries. You can probably thank a bird or the wind for bringing it to your yard.

Ah! Thank you! I see the folks at iNaturalist also identified it as Datura, aka Devil’s Trumpet.

Some poor fool uploaded a recording to YouTube of Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) upbraiding Democrats for actually trying to conduct a thorough hearing on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination to SCOTUS:

A righteous scolding, no? Steve Benen points out some inconvenient facts:

But the GOP senator may not remember recent history as well as he should. “If you want to pick judges from your way of thinking, then you better win an election”? Well, Barack Obama won an election – in fact, he won two – and when he tried to fill a Supreme Court vacancy with a compromise nominee recommended by Republicans, Graham and his GOP colleagues refused to even give Merrick Garland a hearing, choosing instead to impose a months-long blockade with no precedent in the American tradition.

If “winning an election” is the prerequisite to picking judges, why did Graham participate in a partisan scheme to steal a Supreme Court seat from a democratically elected president?

What’s more, Graham is conveniently overlooking the fact that several Senate Republicans argued in 2016 that if Hillary Clinton won the presidential race, they’d block any Supreme Court nominee she chose, regardless of merit, for her entire term. There was, at the time, a pending vacancy on the high court, and at least three GOP senators said that they’d keep that vacancy open until 2021, at the earliest, if the Democratic won.

And there’s more.

But I’m not here to bury Senator Graham. I’m here to glorify his name.

In fact, I’d like to suggest that every time, in the future, that a politician, be they Republican, Democrat, or other, tries to ignore the facts of history while scolding his or her colleagues like children, that politician be known as “pulling a Graham.”

Thank you.

On Lawfare, while reading Professor Dakota S. Rudesill’s analysis of policy changes from the Obama Administration to the Trump Administration with regard to cyber warfare, I couldn’t help but reflect on alternative explanations for this:

It is by now clear that the Trump administration is pursuing a broad project of driving responsibility for national security decisions down the chain of command, and reducing review by the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) interagency process. The result is to empower agency-level actors, particularly cabinet secretaries, the directors of the NSA and CIA, and military commanders.  But decision devolution also drives up risks of uncoordinated government activity. Ultimately, the president is coming to bear less practical responsibility, and potentially less political responsibility, even as he retains ultimate constitutional and moral responsibility for what happens on his watch.

My question: who made this decision? President Trump? Or someone who doesn’t really want Trump involved in decisions for which he’s clearly not prepared? Steve Benen had similar remarks as well:

I realize many of us have grown inured to the bizarre circumstances we find ourselves in, but I’m inclined to stick that excerpted paragraph in a time capsule. The amateur president of a global superpower just says things, and no one — including White House officials — has any idea what to make of his orders or whether anyone intends to act on them.

As we discussed a few weeks ago, this comes up with alarming regularity. For example, Trump announced in June that he had “instructed” U.S. officials “not to endorse” an official G-7 communique negotiated by diplomats from member nations. Officials didn’t much care about the tweet and they proceeded to ignore Trump’s online instructions.

& etc. I’ve remarked on the long-term consequences of this de facto policy of treating the President like a child to be ignored, and while long-term the consequences are negative, we must first survive the short-term, which may require this regrettable policy.