Yearly Archives: 2018

On our recent trip to visit Deb’s Mom, I took some tranquil pictures of the countryside. Here’s some nice clouds on the horizon.

And a couple of tiger lilies.

Earlier today CNN was reporting that President Trump was seriously considering an offer by President Putin of Russia to permit interviews with the Russian military offers indicted by Special Counsel Mueller for interference in the 2016 Presidential Election IF the Russians could interview a set of Americans they purport have been up to shenanigans – including the former American Ambassador to Russia.

This caused quite the uproar among the diplomatic crowd; according to the Daily Beast, the general reaction was negative.

Current and former American diplomats are expressing disgust and horror over the White House’s willingness to entertain permitting Russian officials to question a prominent former U.S. ambassador.

One serving diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was “at a fucking loss” over comments that can be expected to chill American diplomacy in hostile or authoritarian countries – a comment echoed by former State Department officials as well.

“It’s beyond disgraceful. It’s fundamentally ignorant with regard to how we conduct diplomacy or what that means. It really puts in jeopardy the professional independence of diplomats anywhere in the world, if the consequence of their actions is going to be potentially being turned over to a foreign government,” the U.S. diplomat told The Daily Beast.

Now CNN is reporting an abrupt about-face:

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders just issued a statement that says President Trump disagrees with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to question Americans, including the former US ambassador to Russia.

“It is a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin, but President Trump disagrees with it,” she said. “Hopefully President Putin will have the 12 identified Russians come to the United States to prove their innocence or guilt.”

This is the sort of flailing you get from incompetent amateurs. If we were serious about our leaders, Trump would not be one after the last couple of weeks. Trump, and the United States, has so much egg on our face you might as well call us the Frittata States of America.

And the eggs have gone bad.

We’ve seen how the new Republicans have been loudly proclaiming their allegiance to President Trump as they advance their candidacies for various elected positions, and thereby proudly brandishing a populist conservative / right wing extremist position new to the Republican Party. But how about in … Iran? Rohollah Faghihi reports in AL Monitor on the new generation of Iranian hard-liners:

Hard-liners in Iran face the key challenge of a new generation questioning the approach being taken by the old guard. Members of the younger generation, unlike their older peers, are challenging anyone who acts against their expectations, even including when that person happens to be Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, the most popular figure in the conservative camp.

Traditional Iranian hard-liners are broadly characterized by their anti-Americanism and opposition to engagement with the West, desire for “revolutionary” foreign relations and opposition to any form of liberalism promoted by Reformists. In short, they have a general intolerance toward cultural and political change.

The new generation, however, espouses the hard-line discourse, yet do not adhere to the Principlist camp of conservatives. They call themselves “innovative revolutionaries,” on a mission to lead a renaissance in their camp. They accuse the old guard of being overly cautious and of betraying the spirit of Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic. This generation tends to be more uncompromising than their predecessors, viewing their rivals as sworn enemies with whom forming alliances is unthinkable. …

The innovative revolutionaries vehemently oppose any cooperation with the Reformists, whom they consider promoters of liberalism and secularism, considered anathemas to the Islamic Revolution’s principles. In this regard, during Rouhani’s tenure, the new generation has criticized him for various reasons. They loathe older, pragmatic conservatives, including former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and parliament Speaker Ali Larijani, for backing Rouhani in the past two presidential elections. When it comes to the Reformists and Rouhani, the new generation accepts no compromise and has no qualms about challenging those moving closer to their declared enemies.

Their movement is failing to win elections and the affections of the people, it must be a lack of purity, so let’s kick out the old perverts. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? A good old RINO expungement in action. The GOP didn’t control every single elected seat nationally or in the states, so let’s kick out some of our more moderate members for being impure, and bring in those who more explicitly embrace the Holy Writ ideology, and that’ll bring us to victory. That’s been the activity since at least the time of Reagan, although I see Newt Gingrich as a big signpost on that Trail to Oblivion. (As I’ve noted before, though, Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) saw this coming, and with a sense of foreboding, no less.)

Iran is best described as a managed democracy, meaning that there are those holding unelected seats of high power who control the list of who may vie for elective seats of power, and then, via the Supreme Leader, controls those who’ve won the elections. This new generation of hardliners will need to find ways to capture those unelected seats before they can have realistic hopes of capturing those elective seats, and the power that goes with them.

I think they realize that. It’s certainly suggested in the following:

In a May interview, Payam Fazlinejad, a young hard-line analyst, said of the new generation, “We are faced with ‘innovative revolutionaries’ who have distinctly critical thoughts, which are based on the originalist remarks of the Imam [Khomeini] and the [supreme] leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]. [They] think about reforms and renaissance to help the [Islamic] Revolution overcome challenges.”

Returning to the words of the founders, as if they are without flaw and will always apply. Thus do fanatics avoid the need for intelligent thought. We’re starting to see that in the American candidates who embrace Trumpism. However, we may be more fortunate than the Iranians, as the analogy is imperfect and Trump continues to commit error after error, alienating more and more of the moderate Republicans. If their team politics discipline can be broken for the terrible curse that it truly has become, we still have a chance of avoiding the apparently inevitable fate of the Iranians – controlled by those who dare not think, dare not learn, dare not adapt.

Because adaptation is compromise, and compromise is unthinkable.

I generally avoid intellectual theft, but the material of this post simply aches for the title, which I have stolen from Chuck Shepherd of the venerable, and no longer active, newspaper column News Of The Weird. Onward!

Retraction Watch pointed me at the following sequence involving a research paper. First, the abstract, of which I’ll bold the gob-smacking part.

Controlling the release kinetics from a drug carrier is crucial to maintain a drug’s therapeutic window. We report the use of biodegradable porous silicon microparticles (pSi MPs) loaded with the anticancer drug camphothecin, followed by a plasma polymer overcoating using a loudspeaker plasma reactor. Homogenous “Teflon-like” coatings were achieved by tumbling the particles by playing AC/DC’s song “Thunderstruck”. The overcoating resulted in a markedly slower release of the cytotoxic drug, and this effect correlated positively with the plasma polymer coating times, ranging from 2-fold up to more than 100-fold. Ultimately, upon characterizing and verifying pSi MP production, loading, and coating with analytical methods such as time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, scanning electron microscopy, thermal gravimetry, water contact angle measurements, and fluorescence microscopy, human neuroblastoma cells were challenged with pSi MPs in an in vitro assay, revealing a significant time delay in cell death onset.

Say what? Is this some sort of karma thing involving head-banging rock? And then this question and response came along:

Does this only work with with the one song from AC/DC or can other music be substituted?

Maybe Fleetwood Mac? Or the folks who did Afternoon Delight, whoever they were?

In this publication we also investigated a range of monotonous frequencies. Each of these frequencies alone did not not produce as good a coating on the particles as the song. We suspect that the changing frequencies of songs provide chaotic mixing of the particles. We did not investigate other songs besides “Thunderstruck” but it might be possible to optimise the particle tumbling with other songs or frequencies. However, it is difficult to imagine having a song that rocks as much as “Thunderstruck”. Dr Thomas Michl conducted this work and would be happy to answer further questions.

Thanks for your question.

Augh!

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) has, for all intents and purposes, appeared to have already checked out of his job as Representative to Congress from Wisconsin, as well as the Speaker of the House. He refuses to try to restrain President Trump in any legal & possible way with regards to the trade wars tariffs because he thinks it’ll be futile; his approach to writing and passing major legislation is the most rank amateurism we’ve seen in decades (see the Tax Change bill and the bill to revoke the ACA, each written with the express intent that the Senate would completely rewrite them and then the House would pass them through reconciliation); and even his reputation as a policy wonk hangs in tatters after the debacle with insurance.

The man has proven himself a total incompetent at the tough job of governance, and, since he’s stated he’s retiring from the job at the end of this term, he’s basically checked out.

Just a few moments ago I thought of a way to light a fire under this abjectly failed politico. Let’s postulate a series of events.

1. The Democrats, in a shocking mid-term wave election, bury the Republicans in the mid-terms. It’s so bad that the Democrats hold a super-majority in the House, and take the Senate as well.
2. In a critical move for the purposes of this post, Representative Nancy Pelosi is once again elected as Speaker of the House.
3. The next day, impeachment proceedings are begun against President Trump on charges of mismanagement and betrayal of state secrets, for which there exists abundant evidence in President Trump’s failure to nominate candidates for many critical positions in the government, in the former case, and his refusal to accept the judgments of his intelligence agencies in the latter. As an aperitif to the latter, his invitation that top Russians join him for a celebratory meeting in the Oval Office becomes a lovely dessert for a House full of enraged Democrats.
4. By the end of the day, the House has passed the impeachment resolution through acclamation, as most of Republican Representatives have come to realize the depth of President Trump’s incompetence, if not his perfidy. Those few who are still loyal to their leader whine incredulously.
5. The next day, the Senate votes to accept the presentation of the House, and before President Trump can do more than proclaim about it all being fake news, and in perhaps the most shocking and unlikely part of this hypothetical, enough Republican Senators, shamed by the Lion of the Senate, the terribly ill Senator McCain, as well former Senators Corker and Flake, join the Democrats and vote for conviction. Former President Trump is relieved of his duties, his perks, and possibly his freedom.
6. But even as suddenly President Pence is sworn in, the House has been busy. Pence, after all, is not a cheery faced innocence innocent. As many pundits have pointed out, he’s lied to the public numerous times. And, as part of the Trump Administration, there is a certain amount of guilt by association, just or not. Possibly unbeknownst to the rather busy Pence, the House has already brought and approved impeachment proceedings against President Pence during his swearing-in and inaugural celebrations.
7. The next day, in a terrifying shocker, enough Senate Republicans, frantically fighting for their political lives by avoiding the taints of corruption and treason associated with the Trump Administration, convict Pence and bounce him out on his ear.

Shocking? Sure. Unlikely? Oh, yes. Impossible?

Fuck, no. This. Could. Happen.

Have you been paying attention? Did you notice the critical omission?

President Pence, having been in office for only a few precious hours, hours filled with security briefings and all the minutiae his predecessor fluffed, DIDN’T GET AROUND TO APPOINTING A VICE-PRESIDENT. In fact, the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution requires that a nomination to the Vice-President’s office, made due to a sudden vacancy, be confirmed by a simple majority of both the Senate and the House.

In this scenario, both the Senate and the House are controlled by Democrats.

So, who remembers the succession order? The VP is gone, so who’s next?

The Speaker of the House.

Can you say President Pelosi?

If I were to be totally honest, I’d ask myself if Speaker Ryan has an hidden agenda. Perhaps he’s looking to blow up the Republican Party through his comically awful efforts at being a legislator and Speaker – a camouflaged Democrat, or a conservative who hates the GOP.

But I doubt it. Speaker Ryan currently has a TrumpScore of 95%; furthermore, FiveThirtyEight’s analyses of Ryan has shown that his policy positions are far-right extremist, consonant with the current members of the Republican Party. It’s a far stretch to label him a NeverTrumper or, heaven forbid, a Commie.

If I had Speaker Ryan in my office, and I was inclined to be honest with the man, despite my knowledge of his lack of a grasp on reality and my dislike of raw incompetence, I’d tell him this:

Impeach Trump right now. This moment. Because Trump’s most recent behavior is intolerable in an American President, and if you can’t do it, then the Republicans are doomed to the destruction of their party, the destruction of their hold on Congress, and the destruction of their hold on the Executive Branch. Even the Judicial Branch will not be invulnerable, as Judges can be impeached. Your views will be considered tainted and suspect because you, by default, supported a President who was impeached and convicted.

You must act decisively, for country and then for party.

The next few weeks will certainly form the basis of history’s judgment of Ryan and his party. I honestly strongly doubt we’ll be seeing a President Pelosi in February of next year.

But it’s not impossible.

Harry Enten, formerly with poll maven site FiveThirtyEight and now with CNN, talks not about polls – but about the behavior of pollsters and what that may augur:

Polls of the week: Four internal House polls released this week by groups aligned with Democratic or liberal causes. Conservative and Republican groups released no internal House polls this week. This is part of a pattern seen this year with left-wing groups putting out 93% of the partisan polls collected by FiveThirtyEight compared to only 7% by right-wing groups.

What’s the big idea: The House of Representatives is difficult to predict because non-partisan polling for individual districts is limited and often not that accurate. Much of the polling released is done by partisan groups.

The obvious problem with partisan-sponsored polls is that it tends to only see the light of day when it looks good for the side who is conducting the poll.

But, of course, a group first needs to get a poll with good results for their side to actually release it. This got me thinking that if one side fields a lot of polls that end up favorable to their side, then maybe they’re more likely to release more internal polls than other side.

It turns out that this has been true in past years.

Ah, so we have what may be a “tell,” to use poker-gab. You only talk when the news is good.

In every year but one, left-wing groups have put out more internal polls relative to right-wing groups. Still, there is a clear relationship between how many internal polls each side is releasing and the election results. The more internal polls put out by left-wing groups relative to right-wing groups, the better Democrats tend to do in House elections. …

But count the share of internal polls left-wing groups have put out relative to Republicans as another good sign for Democrats in 2018. Democrats have done very well in special elections,continue to lead on the generic congressional ballot and Republicans have a lot more seats at risk, according to ratings from CNN and others. All of these factors, at this juncture, point to Democrats doing very well in November’s House elections.

This is the sort of observation which can be invaluable, and it’s one of those details that comes from experts, not us dumb clods in the streets. It’ll be interesting to see if Harry’s observation turns out to be right.

During our recent vacation trip to Michigan, my scant watching of TV did yield two commercials of a political nature.

The first talked about “The Calley Plan,” a plan from candidate-for-governor and current Lt. Governor Brian Calley to fix the roads and otherwise improve the State, all without raising taxes. It sounded a bit like a fantasy, but perhaps he has an unstated funding source: raising corporate taxes, perhaps? Or cutting expenditures of some other sort.

The second commercial featured an attack on Calley’s behalf on Bill Schuette, current Michigan AG, one of his primary rivals. It boiled down to “He doesn’t love Trump enough.”

A depressing showing on Calley’s part. It lacked imagination, leadership, and showed a lack of confidence that he can win the nomination, much less the general election, on his own merits; instead, he implicitly swears fealty to a President who has been credibly accused of treason.

I wonder if an entire generation of Republican leaders will be lost to the Trump black hole of incompetence.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation beats back an assault on a bastion of freedom… knowledge of the law:

A federal appeals court today ruled that industry groups cannot control publication of binding laws and standards. This decision protects the work of Public.Resource.org (PRO), a nonprofit organization that works to improve access to government documents. …

Six large industry groups that work on building and product safety, energy efficiency, and educational testing filed suit against PRO in 2013. These groups publish thousands of standards that are developed by industry and government employees. Some of those standards are incorporated into federal and state regulations, becoming binding law. As part of helping the public access the law, PRO posts those binding standards on its website. The industry groups, known as standards development organizations, accused PRO of copyright and trademark infringement for posting those standards online. In effect, they claimed the right to decide who can copy, share, and speak the law. The federal district court for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the standards organizations in 2017, and ordered PRO not to post the standards.

EFF notes this rejection of a lower court decision came under the fair use doctrine, and is not final because the lower court was instructed to reconsider keeping fair use in mind.

So far as I’m concerned, since the law cannot be obeyed if it’s not known, it is automatically in the public domain. It’s silly madness to suggest that any organization cannot publish a faithful reproduction of current law for the use of the public, just because of substantial contributions from an organization.

Ideally, laws are made to benefit the public, individually and as a whole. If the industry in question is developing these standards, which subsequently become law, they are benefiting from these standards through the age-old mechanisms of developing public trust in their products, reassuring the public that minimum standards of safety and efficacy have been met. Trying to control the publishing rights is little more than bare-teeth greed.

The tariffs are having immediate impacts on projects both north and south of the American / Canadian border. Lloyd Alter on Treehugger discusses the cancellation of the Framework Tower in Portland:

There are lots of crazy changing market conditions happening right now; lumber has spiked from US$315 at the start of 2017 to US$540 earlier this year, thanks to increased demand because of the hot American economy and big tariffs imposed by the Trump government on Canadian lumber. Cross-laminated timber (CLT) uses a lot of wood, so a big increase like that is going to make a difference. The alternatives, steel and concrete, have also spiked because of tariffs, generally making all kinds of housing less affordable.

CLT is still new and expensive, and between tax cuts that lit a fire under the economy and tariffs that lit a fire under material prices, it is a tough time to try and build non-profit housing for a fixed price. The Developer tries to put a brave face on it, saying, “Although beset with market challenges beyond our control, we are very proud of Framework’s achievements and the new standards we’ve established for the use of CLT in the U.S.”

And so some economic activity – and jobs – are extinguished by President Trump’s foolhardiness.

A reader reacts to my post concerning the motivations of President Trump:

Trump didn’t have a five star meeting or press conference after meeting with Putin. I don’t think it is alright to put all the blame of president Trump. I give some of the problem to Putin, the thug, who I think came to town to humiliate the President. Second, the President was maybe being to Polite, maybe he should have Chris Wallace do the press conference for him.

Another reader reacts to the first:

 “Polite” isn’t in 45’s vocabulary or standard behavior patterns.

If he can’t hold his own against Putin, then he is not qualified to be Commander in Chief.

He is 1) compromised or 2)in way over his head and destroying our democracy.

And the first replies:

 So the guy had a bad day, and that makes him a bad President. It’s time for the liberals to lighten up. There constant badgering is giving them less credibility if possible. I understand constructive criticism, but this non stop nonsense over a few remarks made in a press conference is taking it over the top. Putin has one thing in mind agreeing to meet with President Trump and he thinks he succeeded. Next week all this will be water over the damn, I hope.

My problem is that it’s hard to find President Trump having good days, and the fact of the matter is that engaging in a summit, whether it be with Putin or Kim, requires you to be having one of your best days, backed with exhaustive preparation – because we all know that respectable world leaders will be prepared. But it’s been well-reported that Trump doesn’t engage in preparation, he thinks he’s good enough to do things off the cuff, a reflection of what appears to be how he does everything. Thus, he continually fails.

Additionally, as the most powerful country in the world, we shouldn’t look like we’re engaging in “abasement” in front of another country’s leader, not even China – and most certainly not Russia.

But, as an independent, I will ask myself whether this is just a problem of the liberals being too partisan, as the first reader implies. The answer, to my mind, comes ironically from the conservatives.

I remain a proud conservative and Republican, but I resigned today as Belmont Co Ohio GOP Chairman. I did so as a matter of conscience, and my sense of duty.

— Chris Gagin (@cgagin)

The President is entitled to GOP party leaders, at all levels, fully committed to his views and agenda. Following today’s press conference with Pres. Putin, as well as certain policy differences, most especially on trade, I could no longer fulfill that duty. Thus, I resigned.

— Chris Gagin (@cgagin) July 16, 2018
[Twitter / WaPo / The Daily 202 ]

Another:

Former congressman Joe Walsh, a Republican from Illinois who has previously supported the president, called the surreal 46-minute news conference in Helsinki “the final straw for me.”

Look, I’m no big deal, but today is the final straw for me. I will never support Trump again. If that makes me a NeverTrumper, so be it.

I am a tea party conservative, that will never change. But Trump was a traitor to this country today. That must not be accepted.

Speak out.

— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) July 16, 2018

[Twitter / WaPo / The Daily 202 ]

More conservatives jumping ship, recognizing a truth and – far longer after they should have – exiting the sinking intellectual vessel. How many just exited without the publicity?

James Hohmann, author of The Daily 202 post from which I extracted the above quotes, expresses a belief that the President’s actions, easily interpreted by dispassionate observers as treasonous and self-serving, will have no effect on the Trump supporters, but I think we’re going to continue to see a steady bleeding from the body of supporters as many factors come together to illustrate the fruits of incompetency. His “easily won” trade war, if he doesn’t avert it himself in the face of overwhelming retaliation from China and other countries, will bring economic distress to rural Trumpists; the tax change bill, despite the claims of conservative that it serves the middle class, does not and everyone knows how to read a paycheck; fiscal hawks, whether or not you approve of them, will see the deficit sky-rocket (already has begun) despite the claims of Laffer Curve true believers who fail to trouble themselves with the details of how taxation interacts with the economy, as we’ve already seen in Kansas; and those Trumpists dependent on the ACA for affordable health care premiums are beginning to realize that TrumpCare, which is the ACA minus some important mechanisms, is not affordable unless, to use a memorable phrase from a colleague in my first couple of years of employment, you buy the “shavetail” insurance plan.

Here’s the unfortunate part of the ugly and ongoing debacle: No doubt President Trump has tapped into some legitimate concerns. But his dubious relation with the truth, his thirst to win at any cost, his apparent racism, his abuse of the Office, all of these traits are obscuring these important points. Are illegal immigrants really a problem? Maybe so, but his absurd claims about rapists and gangs and his decision – HIS DECISION – to kidnap children from their illegal immigrant parents (to quote a member of my extended family) will bury the entire issue when he’s out of office. Should we reform legal immigration to use a meritocratic approach rather than the current approach, as he advocates? That issue will be tainted with Trump’s name in the future, and it will take a tremendous amount of work by honest advocates of the meritocratic approach to remove that taint before they can even hope to wage a successful campaign to change it.

Pick your favorite topic that Trump has addressed with his lies, boasts, and braggodocio, and realize that if he, accidentally, advocated a good position that happened to please his supporters, now that position is tainted with his bad name.

Think about it.

This is part of our future. Even as a past President, he’ll affect our lives in ways we’ll regret, even if we immediately reverse every single one of his decisions.

The organization Americans United for Separation of Church and State does not like the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh to SCOTUS. Among their points:

Third, in friend-of-the-court briefs in both Santa Fe and Good News Club v. Milford Central School, as well as in a 2017 speech, Kavanaugh argued against long-standing precedent prohibiting the use of public funds for religious activities. If the Supreme Court were to adopt Kavanaugh’s views on public funding of religion, that would upend the bedrock constitutional principle that we each get to decide for ourselves whether and how our money goes to support religion.

Which is more than a little disturbing, if true. Naturally, a summary like this elides nuance. I don’t have time to read the speech at the link, so I can only say I find it disturbing information, since it would lead not only to lawsuits, but eventually to violence (lynchings and the like, for those who like their descriptions vivid) and, if held to in an extreme way, civil war.

Just to highlight how much this made me laugh with horror:

So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. – President Trump

To which the chorus should be, Yeah, so what? It should come as no surprise that Senator McCain, for all this faults, nailed it:

Sen. John McCain called President Donald Trump‘s joint appearance with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Tuesday “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory,” and said Trump had “abased himself … abjectly before a tyrant.” [CNBC]

Any GOP Congressperson could have issued such a statement and greatly repaired their reputation within the greater United States populace. How many will do so? This will be the measure of the continued patriotic allegiance of the Republican Party to the American polity.

In the meantime, I’ve noted from time to time that certain candidates for political office have tightly clutched President Trump to their political breasts, even proclaiming themselves to be more Trump than Trump. Will they dare to disown him now? Or, as it appears they have little political consciousness of their own, will they discover that Trump is a concrete block rather than the life vest they envisioned as they swam through the political ocean in search of the power they so desperately seek?

Victoria Clark and others at Lawfare, in light of yesterday’s announcement of the indictment of the Russian Mariia Butina directly following the press conference of Trump and Putin, examine not only the new indictment, but more importantly the entire strategy the law enforcement agencies of the United States is pursuing in the face of Trump’s frantic denials of Russian culpability:

First, this was not an action by Mueller but by the Justice Department’s National Security Division (NSD) and the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. Precisely why that is so is not entirely clear from the documents. The activity described in the criminal complaint and the accompanying affidavit certainly covers the period of the 2016 election campaign. It certainly includes allegations of Russian “meddling” or “interference” in the U.S. political system. Mueller would almost certainly have been within his rights had he considered this matter within his jurisdiction under a grant of authority that includes “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” Whether Mueller passed the matter off to the NSD, or whether it originated there, the fact that this investigation is being handled outside of the special counsel’s office shows the discipline Mueller is exercising in not taking on matters that aren’t strictly related to Russian interference in the 2016 election. He passed the Michael Cohen investigation off to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. And this one—though more obviously linked to the matter of Russian electoral interference—ended up, by one means or another, not in his shop but in the NSD and with the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

These decisions reflect discipline and modesty on Mueller’s part; he is not building an investigative empire the way Kenneth Starr did, to Starr’s own great cost. And they have a very happy collateral effect: They significantly reduce the potential consequences of a Mueller firing. If Trump were to fire Rod Rosenstein or Mueller or both in a fit of pique tomorrow, the Michael Cohen investigation would continue. This prosecution would continue. The Russian hacking indictment has been passed to the NSD.

A decentralized approach to this prosecution brings numerous positives to this debacle:

1. As Clark notes, the demise of any single person, whether legally or physically, will only harm the investigation under their purview.
2. It more easily includes the various judgments, talents, and skills that multiple individuals bring to the dinner table.
3. As Clark, et al, mention Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Clinton, it’s worth noting that the multiple investigations are reflective of the ongoing and widespread corruption of the Trump Administration. Make no mistake, his failure to recognize Russia as an adversary, his moves in support of Russian objectives, and his subversion of an entire major U. S. political party will be a major and disgraceful chapter in many an indictment – whether they occur in the next 6 months or the next 10 years.

Trump’s voters may have wanted to drain the swamp in order to get rid of the alligators, but they’ve only replaced them with King Croc.

The press conference following the confidential Trump/Putin summit has caused an uproar as Trump was characterized as defending Russia over authoritative American voices concerning Russia’s behavior, etc. This, in turn, has led to increasing observations, including from myself, that Trump is acting not as a free agent, but as someone who has been compromised by a foreign power, presumably (but not necessarily) that being Russia.

In the spirit of contrarianism, which is at the heart of honest intellectual investigation, I present an alternative hypothesis, discarded by many in favor of the aforementioned hypothesis, to explain Trump’s behavior.

The hypothesis is that Trump, admiring, as do most people, the strong, decisive leader, is simply mimicking those he admires. Notice that he’s expressed admiration not only for Putin, but as well for Duterte of The Philippines and Xi Jinping of China. Even Kim of North Korea, in between insults, has also been buttered up.

This is not a particularly new hypothesis, but it’s worth exploring a couple of facets. First, because Trump not only admires Putin, but may have actually elevated him to a cult-like status, Trump may have easily become what his own followers have become: an enthusiastic tribalist, a follower of strong-man Trump. It becomes relatively easy to find examples among Trump’s tribalists in their behavior towards him that Trump himself is indulging in: defending or trivializing behaviors which, in reality, are quite appalling and unacceptable, proclaiming negative news to be fake news, and that sort of thing.

Secondly, it’s reflective of Trump’s disregard, or lack of respect, for proper procedure. The heart of the liberal democracy which has brought so much to Americans and others of Western Civilization is the recognition of the importance of proper procedures, by which I mean those which bring justice, and safeguard against injustice. Government, as I’ve said many times before, is a different animal from the private sector, and so Trump, who has famously refused to pay his suppliers (an accepted procedure of the private sector), has tried to bring his autocratic style to an institution and sector which has emphatically rejected it as inimical to its very heart.

Putin and Duterte are well known for their essential disdain for good procedure, the former because it would threaten his position, the latter because that appeal to the “strong-man” image of ripping up “troublesome” procedures obstructing progress on important issues was his key to winning a victory. Kim, of course, feels free to ignore good procedure whenever he feels threatened, although the folks at 38 North will point out that poor procedure can have negative results even in an imperious autocracy; Xi may be the most likely to follow procedures, even as he has become the autarch of China.

Trump, as has been extensively noted, has always felt rules applied to others, but not to himself, particularly when it comes to profit. For him, result is all, and procedures meant to safeguard the general institution, be it government or the entire private sector, are mere nettlesome and unneeded regulations. In this regard, he’s similar to his idols, Putin, Duterte, Kim, and Xi, and because he sees them as successful, he sees his own disregard for procedure to be emblematic of his success, no matter how dubious his self-proclaimed successes may be.

That, in a nutshell, is the alternative explanation for his behaviors. I don’t claim it’s better than having been compromised, I simply suggest it as another way to view the debacle currently under way.

If this Daily Beast report is true, uber-nerd Elon Musk is disappointing:

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been revealed as a top donor to a Republican PAC aimed at keeping control of Congress. Filings published by ProPublica this weekend show Musk contributed $38,900 to the Protect the House PAC, joining the likes of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and Houston Texans owner Robert McNair in the PAC’s top 50 donors. The PAC raised more than $8 million in the second quarter for Republican lawmakers hoping to fend off Democratic challengers. Musk, who called claims that he is a top donor to the GOP “categorically false,” has a history of donating to both parties.

He could make the argument that he’s trying to preserve the business environment for his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, but given the dysfunctionality of the Republican Party, including in the crucial area of climate change, the sane observer would expect someone whose expertise has a fundamental basis of the embrace of truth to disdain an organization who has increasingly moved away from just such a concept.

Or, to be concrete, the destruction the environment benefits neither company.

If Musk really values the importance of truth, he should not be contributing a single dollar to a Republican organization, as the current Republican base is far too much love with its ideology over and above honest fact.

And a disappointment to nerds everywhere.

Littérateur:

1. a literary person, especially a writer of literary works. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in the Introduction to Trouble Is My Business:

Between the one-syllable humors of the comic strip and the anemic subtleties of the littérateur there is a wide stretch of country, in which the mystery story may or may not be an important landmark.

A reader remarks on fruit juices:

Yep. I don’t think being skinny as a rail as a kid means fruit juice is not bad for a person. It just takes most people many years of gaining a half to a pound of mostly visceral fat per year a while to notice. It might also be that one’s liver is more efficient — spilling less fat to be stored while metabolizing all that fructose — when one is young. I ate the popular low-fat, calorie restricted diet until about 1996, when thanks to my wife, we gradually learned how wrong that was. I didn’t gain significant weight or body fat until my mid-thirties, at the height of the low-fat (replaced by sugar in processed foods) craze. Turns out sugar, especially sugars metabolized as fructose and simple starches which are quickly converted to sugar, are the real problem. And as you posted recently, perhaps the abundance of soy bean oils used for cooking and processing foods. And the recent research showing nanoparticles of titanium dioxide lodging in the pancreas might also cause metabolic syndrome; titanium dioxide being the most common “white” color in the world, and used in everything from aspirin and vitamin pills, to foods, to paint and plastics and beyond. I just can’t imagine how TO2 is getting in our pancreases. /sarcasm.

I’ve been constricting my potato choices recently. I had not heard there were concerns about TO₂ in the body, which is appallingly interesting..

NewScientist (30 June 2018, paywall) wants to tell me how to think about black holes, the icons of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Among the observations is this:

Black holes are cast-iron predictions of general relativity, Einstein’s peerless theory of gravity, and yet they stretch it to breaking point. Its equations fail catastrophically at a black hole’s centre, known as its singularity, where the warping of space-time simply goes off the scale. “Everything you calculate goes to infinity,” says Ferreira. “It has no meaning.”

Even Einstein thought that black holes were too absurd to be real. They emit no light, so we cannot see them. Yet we infer their presence from their influence on nearby matter as they suck in gas and dust and stars, the contortions of which produce awesome light shows. In 2015, when we detected gravitational waves for the first time, the observed ripples in space-time matched the predicted signal from two black holes spiralling into one another and merging.

Which makes me think of systems which are too interesting. That is, Kurt Gödel, a mathematician of Einstein’s vintage, proved that systems of sufficient power were inevitably incomplete, meaning there were certain statements about such systems which were not provably true nor false.

It’s not hard to see black holes as analogous to the unprovable statements of Gödel’s work. In fact, they might even prove to be a more direct representative of the concept, in two different concepts of the underlying nature of our Universe.

The first is Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, which asserts that the Universe is the physical manifestation of a mathematical equation, or system. If this proves true in the latter sense, then the black holes may be the representation of the various unprovable statements of the system of which the Universe is representative, instabilities, one might say, of the system. Even insanities, if we go so far as to admit an author is necessary for the mathematical system to exist in the first place.

The second is the scenario in which the Universe, and all of us inside it, is a computer simulation. What, then, do the black holes represent? Since matter and even information seems to simply disappear into them, perhaps they might be considered the input/output ports of the computer system. Perhaps black holes are simple samplers of the state of the system for whoever authored our postulated computer simulation. True, black holes do come in different sizes, as we know from observation, but rather than reflect the matter gathered directly, it may reflect the processing which takes place on the sample so gathered.

This may all sound quite silly, but I do know that sampling the interior states of computer programs can be quite challenging, even in the relatively simple projects on which I work. How much harder is it for sophisticated simulators, especially something that scales from sub-atomic all the way to stars and galaxies? I’m not sure.

And it’s a lovely, lazy thought for a Sunday afternoon.

The continuing saga of Brexit, the British exit from the European Union, may be taking a left turn following the resignation of Boris Johnson from Prime Minister Theresa May’s government, who is a Brexit “hard exit” advocates, as well as chief negotiator David Davis – but possibly not disaster. Former Brit Andrew Sullivan explains in New York:

So what happens when all this keeps coming closer and closer? Who knows? But with parliament deadlocked and the E.U. implacable, a simple solution could present itself as the only way out for a Tory Party desperate to keep Labour out of power: The transition period could be extended, and a second referendum called. On the ballot this time would be the two actual, non-fantasy options: a brutal exit, or remaining in the E.U.

This wouldn’t be a referendum to undo the first one; it would be to clarify it, after the actual, tangible, non-fantasy options are available. People voted for Brexit with no one actually knowing what kind of Brexit, or any clear idea of what it would entail, and many voters were confused about the intricacies. Two years later, and the confusion is even deeper, and the divide greater.

I don’t know what the result of such a second referendum would be, but I know that it is the only way not to permanently divide and embitter the country, and to end the debate for good. I suspect that a doomsday Brexit would concentrate the mind; and that sticking with the status quo, after the last two chaotic years, might seem a little more enticing that it once did. In that scenario, Brexit may — just may — be reversed by the people. That’s my hope anyway. Some small part of me wonders whether it isn’t Theresa May’s hope as well.

And Andrew believes this may have been a setup by Prime Minister May. Add in President Trump’s criticism of Prime Minister May (swiftly denied to be criticism, or to exist, or maybe he claims the tapes are fake, who knows what we should make of President Irrelevancy), which will inflame British opinion, no matter how hard Rupert Murdoch works to calm the waters, and we may see the abortion of Brexit, and, if my and other speculations on the matter are correct, the dilution and spoilage of the Russian strategy to alienate the various national actors allied in opposition to Putin’s empire-minded ways.

Or at least one prong of the plan. President Trump remains resolute in denying the activities of the Russians in the 2016 Presidential elections, unless, of course, he plans to accuse the Russians of interfering to aid President Clinton. Excuse me, candidate Clinton. To be honest, my implications are mere speculation; the evidence that he has been compromised is circumstancial and not dispositive.

But for us pattern-seeking monkey-types, the arrows definitely point in that direction, and it’s worth using it as a scientific hypothesis. What is the real point of a hypothesis? To predict. If we stipulate for the moment the President being compromised, then we can predict their will continue to be attempts by the President to dismantle important alliances which have blocked and frustrated Russia since before it’s rebirth following the peaceful defeat and dismantlement of its predecessor, the USSR.

And Prime Minister May may be cementing a place in history for herself if she finds a way to avoid the entire Brexit debacle.

In case you want to see an analysis by experienced lawyers, rather than a software engineer (that would be me), of the indictment of Russian military intelligence personnel, Lawfare presents just such an analysis here. Their summary?

The Internet Research Agency indictment, in February, offered a potential legal solution to that puzzle.

This indictment, by contrast, offers a potential factual breakthrough. It tells us that the prior factual premise was wrong: the alleged conduct violating the CFAA continued to occur throughout the summer of 2016. That affects the earlier analysis in two ways. First, it makes clear that the Russians did intend to release the information at the time the hacking occured. Second, and perhaps more important, the indictment alleges that the criminal hacking conspiracy was ongoing at the time individuals in the Trump campaign were in contact with charged and uncharged Russian conspirators, raising the possibility of more straightforward aiding and abetting liability.

In other words, stay tuned. This indictment represents a tightening of the ring in the story of criminal prosecution for the 2016 election hacking. The government has now alleged that the social media manipulations by Russian actors constituted a criminal conspiracy. It has alleged as well that the hacking of Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails were crimes conducted by officers of the Russian state. The question remains: Who, if anyone, helped?

And will the judiciary – or a jury – accept the contention that social media manipulation by foreign actors is a crime? I happen to believe so, but how about the folks with power.

Yesterday, Representative McCollum (D-MN) responded to my letter regarding the illegal immigrant family debacle. She affirms her position opposing such policies, and cites her support for Reunite Children With Their Parents Act (H.R. 6172). She also discusses her opposition to “hyper-partisan” bills from the Republicans.

I think I’m going to send my Senators and Representative mail regarding Puerto Rico becoming a State someday soon. It seems unjust to deny those American citizens full representation in Congress.

Basic logic tends to be overlooked even as it underlies the most basic technologies of today’s civilization. But has the last word been uttered on the matter, between modus ponens and syllogisms? Not according to Douglas Heaven in NewScientist (30 June 2018, paywall):

One major work-in-progress is an assumption Aristotle called “the most certain of principles”: that things are either true or not true. Inconveniently, this makes conventional logic blow up on occasion. Take the sentence “this sentence is false”: is that true or false?

Neither true nor false

Many-valued logics get round this by allowing statements to be true, false, possible – and more. Paraconsistent logics provide ways to deal with statements that are both true and false, contradictions that would yield nonsense in more traditional logic.

As logic evolves, it is becoming closer and closer to what’s really in our heads – and, paradoxically, harder to understand. Logic has also suffered as the internet and other media have sped up the spread of emotional arguments, says Gabbay. “Illogical arguments are more effective now than logical ones.”

His own pet project is to bring logic out of our heads and closer to our hearts, by developing a formal system of logic, plus rules for reasoning with it, that can capture emotional aspects of argumentation, including personal attacks, appeals to “common sense”, straw-man arguments and so on. “All of the things that were considered to be logical fallacies up to now urgently need to be modelled,” he says – the next stage in the evolution of logic as our guide to truth.

I wish he’d hurry. Having a formal approach to writing arguments which are not only formally correct but are also convincing to people who don’t care about being formally correct would certainly be nice.

Ever hear of vegetable orthotics? Here they are again this year, as they worked fairly well last year.

Incidentally, our neighbor took down their fence and replaced it with arbor vitae. Should be nice.

It’s good of Special Counsel Mueller and to take pity on me for griping about the lack of news out of the investigation. As you’ve no doubt heard, 12 new indictments were filed in court today. Here’s the indictment. What caught my eye^[1]?

Object of the Conspiracy

20. The object of the conspiracy ws to hack into the computers of U.S. persona and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, steal documents from those computers, and stage releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Seems to be quite clear. Other sections detail attacks on Democratic and affiliated entities.

58. Although the Conspirators caused transactions to be conducted in a variety of currencies, including U.S. dollars, they principally used bitcoin when purchasing servers, registering domains, and otherwise making payments in furtherance of hacking activity. Many of these payments were processed by companies in the United States that provided processing services to hosting companies, domain registrars, and other vendors both international and domestic. The use of bitcoin allowed the Conspirators to avoid direct relationships with traditional financial institutions, allowing them to evade greater scrutiny of their identities and sources of funds.

If you’re inclined to see silver linings in dark clouds – and I’m not particularly – then this is an exemplar of one of the problems bitcoin brings to the world – the privacy and occultation of the activities of the users is great if the user is engaged in legal activities and is worried about illicit monitoring by the government, but it’s not desirable when the user is engaged in anti-social activities.

It’ll be interesting to see if this indictment becomes part of the cannon fodder for banning cryptocurrencies. My bet is that it will become that. But will it be the discussion be reasonable or ideological? Of late, and as stoked by our international adversaries, important discussions such as these become shouting matches in which the winners do what they want, and the losers, rather than consider the possibility that they were wrong, nurse their complaints, suckle at their own wounds, and vow vengeance upon their enemies.

Everyone thinks they know everything. Toss in a bit of religious mania and it becomes toxic septicemia for the arteries of society.

72. In or around July 2016, KOVALEV [one of the defendants] and his co-conspirators hacked the website of a state board of elections (“SBOE 1”) and stole information related to approximately 500,000 voters, including names, addresses, partial social security numbers, dates of birth, and driver’s license numbers.

Which suggests there was more going on than just social media influence. While there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of direct interference with vote counting, the known weaknesses of voting machines makes them a vulnerability in our system which should be immediately patched – or dispensed with.

[43]a. On or about August 15, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.

Fascinating. Some candidate – and perhaps current member of Congress – has a serious ethics deficit. If his or her name comes out and they are a member of Congress, they may not have a chance to resign – they may be ridden out on a rail.

[43]b. On or about August 22, 2016, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, transferred approximately 2.5 gigabytes of data stolen from the DCCC to a then-registered state lobbyist and online source of political news. The stolen data included donor records and personal identifying information for more than 2,000 Democratic donors.

Notice it doesn’t say the lobbyist asked for the information – an anonymous contribution of stolen information? But the fact that it was stolen should have been manifest. One wonders if the recipient rejected it or not.

There’s a lot of interesting stuff, and it should give Trump something to talk about with Putin at their upcoming summit. Of course, after the last indictment of Russian intelligence material was handed down, I had a suggestion as to how Trump should handle it:

1. The President sends a diplomatic note to the Russians requesting immediate extradition.
2. The Russians reply with a suitably snarky No.
3. The sunny reply to that is, We’re pleased you have agreed to our request, and the entire United States 5th Fleet will be coming to the port of Vladivostok in order to place them under arrest. Your cooperation will be appreciated. We’ll send in an LST for the actual pickup.

With very little modification, I quite sincerely and strongly urge the President to use this simple script to win back respect of and admiration for America both within and without the United States. He and his team have made many mistakes during his time in office; this approach would clear up a lot of the mistrust and despair for which he’s responsible.

¹All quotes hand typed. The PDF is made up of jpg files, I think. Apologies for typos.