Yearly Archives: 2018

If you’re not a computer security professional, you may not be aware of the magnitude of the attacks on the computer systems on which we rely. Andrew Burt and Dan Geer on Lawfare can give you a taste:

Attack surfaces have expanded beyond any organization’s ability to understand, much less defend against, potential adverse events. Common interdependencies, once assumed secure, are not, rendering entire protocols, infrastructures, and even hardware devices susceptible to exploitation.

So large is the deluge of potential security threats that a new phrase has entered the lexicon for information security professionals: “alert fatigue.” One 2015 study, focused on malware triaging efforts at over 600 US organizations, found an average of 17,000 alerts generated per week, with only 4 percent of such alerts ever investigated. And that’s just malware alerts. The information we have at our disposal about our vulnerabilities does little in the way of mitigating them.

This serves as an intro to a paper they’ve written for the Hoover Institute. I’ve not read it, lacking free time. But this alert fatigue is a warning that our systems are too vulnerable. Long ago, I briefly worked for Siemens Energy Automation Systems (long enough ago that I’m not sure I have the name right and I don’t even know if that entity is still around), a division of Siemens that supplied computer systems for controlling electrical grids, and I know that, at the time, many of those installations were available via the Internet. I know because I found myself debugging systems on the fly in other states and countries, without ever leaving Minnesota.

In retrospect, that’s an amazing lapse. It’s like putting a webcam in your bathroom so people can watch you do your thing. (Yeah, yeah, I’m sure some people do that, too, but I’m making a point here.) Now, I do recall some of my colleagues traveling to do the same sort of work, indicating that at least some of our customers had the proper level of paranoia, but I suspect that was a minority.

But I really do wonder how many systems that are on the web really shouldn’t be.

Out at Rosedale (Roseville, MN) they’ve opened the most upscale food court I’ve ever seen. It’s called The Revolution and looked, at least in spots, delicious. Too bad I won’t be partaking. Why?

Only credit, debit, or gift cards? Really? This pronouncement, once you think about it, is mostly just garbage. Let’s do a quick dissection:

1. Smoother service. Really, folks, we’ve all learned how to wait in line. Really. And, you know what? Your long, slow lines are going to be one hell of a lot longer and slower if you lose connections to the central credit servers. I’ve seen it happen and, if you’re lacking a cash option, your customers are not going to have a happy experience. They’ll have all those wonderful smells, cash in their pockets, and yet not be able to buy any of those products that smell so good. Ah, of course, you could equip your vendors with those big old credit card manual processors. Remember them? <klunk, klunk, scribble> They will be significantly slower than straight cash.
2. Cashless terminals. Sure, of course it’s logical that the presence of cashless terminals require your entire facility be cashless. Of course they do! (Why are you shouting?) Of course … Of … course. Oh, wait. Maybe not. Logic. So much for that point.
3. Cleaner. This might possibly be true. But, given the lack of cries of calamity, I doubt it’s a major problem. How about just issuing latex gloves to the cashiers?
4. Easier. No, just no. But I’ll defer this explanation.
5. Safer [for customers]. No, not really. A stolen credit card means a big drain on your account, and while the issuer will cover [most] of it, that just means higher interest rates for everyone using credit. Cash is not open-ended like a credit card, and, depending on how it’s carried, can be more difficult than a card to subtly steal. And not nearly as attractive to thieves who know how to use a stolen credit card.
6. Safer [for vendors]. Yes! You’re right! Cash must be moved physically, and many merchants prefer to take a discount on their profits to handling cash. It makes sense. BUT IT DOESN’T MATTER TO ME. Your problems are your problems. Don’t impose them on me.
7. No-Cash. This policy is legal [although the informal reasoning presented in the link provided eludes me] but unfriendly to those of us who don’t care for plastic, whether their reasons are monetary or ecological. A little confused on that last point? Plastic is, after all, plastic. Consider this: Best Buy has stopped issuing plastic gift cards, because they’re, well, plastic. They’ve gone with paper, which is presumably recyclable. So you’ve lost those folks who think it’s more ecological to go with cash than credit cards. (I don’t actually know if that’s true or not.)

Now, back to the Easier point. In the short-term, many customers find it easier to use credit cards. Some use it for acquiring more and more stuff, others for budgeting.

But I’m a software engineer, and I’ll tell you what – credit cards are now all about computers, and what we’re generating here is a data trail for consumption by the Big Data analysis centers. These are used for a variety of operational purposes, but functionally, they’re mostly the same – how to extract more money from your wallet. As a consumer, I might like that (no, I’m not kidding – think of how hard it is to find stuff you want if you have specialized needs), but then again I might not. Discipline can be a problem for some folks.

Other purposes are more sinister, and mostly center around acquiring other information about you, such as your habits, your acquisitions, your physical locations, all the sort of things that most people would prefer to be kept out of sight. Which is not to say that they aren’t anyways. We spray off data every time we go online, every time we cross the visual field of a surveillance camera, etc etc. But it takes a lot of effort to bring all those things together, because the databases are disparate.

Which is why I dislike this scheme. By forcing you to disgorge your data into their computers, they learn a whole lot about you in a way that doesn’t require cross-referencing schemes across multiple databases. This is basically a corporate grab of data that they can analyze and make more money off of.

Not to mention they’re forcing you OUT of the generally accepted monetary system of the United States, and into the corporate controlled monetary system of credit & debit.

So, call me a crank if you will, and I’ll regret not sampling the pizza, but “Revolution” this is not. This is all about corporate profit and how to maximize it at your expense. And shitty, fallacious signage.

Found in Rosedale, located in Roseville, MN, is this quite impressive moose.

If moose were to evolve to this standard, the wolves wouldn’t stand a chance. Time to contact some rogue genetic engineers….

Looking for a new residence, she’s just not sure this one’ll do for her thousands of offspring. Maybe something a little taller?

Falling into the same category as Terrordactyl (2016) is Big Ass Spider! (2013), which concerns the Army losing track of a corpse of someone killed by a mutant spider. When the corpse shows up in the morgue of a local hospital, and the spider escapes into the ventilation system, pest exterminator Alex offers to go after “it,” whatever it is, in exchange for voiding his hospital bill.

By the time he and his informal partner track it down to the physical plant of the hospital, the Army has arrived and boggles up his attempts to take down the spider, which is only a foot or two across.

Things go rapidly downhill after that, as the spider escapes the building and rapidly begins harvesting “food” (that would be humans) in preparation for reproducing (although it’s not clear with what it might have mated with in order to fertilize the eggs), with Alex in dogged pursuit, and one might say competition with the Army, in particular the second-in-command, a lovely Lieutenant Karly. Their firearms are useless against the carapace of the spider, and Alex is having problems applying poison to the spider. By the time the spider spawns, Karly is another item on the menu. And the spider?

Well, it’s big ass.

This is another entry in the evolution of the role of mythical monsters in the psyche of Western Civ. Representative of the divine in the early centuries, it exchanged those responsibilities for the role of being the devilish offspring of scientists, but now they’re becoming the creatures we must overcome to assert our dominance in the local neighborhood, even as they are a result of our own miscues. For all this may be played for horrific laughs, it can be seen as societal training for future treatment of monsters, extra-terrestrial or domestic, political or physical.

As a movie, it’s not bad, but not great. We had more fun with it than we expected, to be honest, and there are minor names in the cast as well, which may explain why it didn’t descend into that layer of movies known as cultishly bad. It was competently acted.

But, still, it was silly.

I wasn’t paying much attention when our late President, George H. W. Bush, served his one and only term as President. He ran the Gulf War, and I do remember friends in the Reserves going off to serve in the war. He served as a pilot in World War II, shot down and rescued after completing a dangerous mission; went on to a private career in the oil industry; his government service included a stint as a Representative, director of the CIA, and Vice President to Ronald Reagan, before his election to the Presidency. I suspect he was limited to a single term as President because the extremist wing of the party, which had gotten started in earnest under Reagan, couldn’t abide Bush’s vision of an honorable and sober approach to governance, and while he won the nomination, he lost the general election.

Rest in Peace, President Bush. Whatever the blemishes of which I’m not aware, I think they’re more than balanced by dedication to good.

With regard to rank-choice voting in Maine, a reader writes:

Preaching to the choir, of course, but his lawsuit is complete bullshit. RCS [RCV] is effectively like holding actual multiple rounds of voting until someone gets a majority, but does it all in one go, saving a ton of money and time.

But it’s true that most American elections are not majority victory, but simple plurality victory. Incidentally, Minneapolis is using RCV, with the most recent race resulting in the election of Jacob Frey after four rounds. I recall no complaints regarding the use of RCV.

Since the Maine electorate chose through referendum to change to RCV (twice!), I don’t think his lawsuit has a chance of succeeding, but we shall see.

The acting Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, is attracting scandals like rotting meat attracts flies. Steve Benen provides a helpful summary:

The sheer volume of controversies surrounding acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker – who was only appointed to the job three weeks ago – is extraordinary. New reports, each of which are deeply embarrassing to the nation’s top law enforcement official, seem to pop up with alarming frequency.

Just over the last week or so, Whitaker has faced credible allegations of having violated the Hatch Act and having run a dubious child-care facility in Iowa. Today, the news went from bad to worse.

The Washington Post, pointing to Federal Trade Commission documents released in response to a public records request, reports that Whitaker not only helped lead a scam operation called World Patent Marketing, but he was well aware of complaints from defrauded customers.

Despite the complaints, Whitaker “remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years – even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show.”

A Bloomberg News report twisted the knife.

And I’ll just stop there. There’s so much more, but it makes me nauseous.

Matthew Whitaker, tough guy and wannabe AG.

So after I stopped laughing at this zero-peg on the morality scale, and the lying liar who keeps on stocking the swamp with the largest alligators ever seen in the Federal government – much bigger than Obama’s alligators, one might envision Trump saying – I’ve begun to wonder about misdirection.

Whitaker’s ludicrous. Whitaker’s a joke. I’m not a lawyer, and even I can tell he’s a joke. Even if I take into account Trump’s predilection for selecting candidates to fill roles based on physical appearance, and willingly grant that Whitaker looks like an AG, his record still makes him a joke.

So while the reporters and the pundits and the basset hounds those of us venting pressure run around penning pieces on this pathetic joke, I have to wonder what the hell Trump thinks he’s up to behind the smoke and mirrors. This entire AG thing makes so little sense that it’s as if Trump were suffering from dementia.

All I can think is maybe, just maybe, his preferred nominee is being kept in the wings until the new Senate convenes, where he’ll have a more substantial majority, and can nominate someone who won’t be blocked by any two GOP Senators by the name of Flake (retired), Corker (retired and utterly irrelevant even when he wasn’t), Murkowski (erratic), or Collins (easily fooled anyways). With a 53-47 majority, Trump can lose three Senators and still have his selection confirmed, since Vice President Pence will always do his bidding.

Will it be Whitaker? Or will he pick some other tough guy, like Clint Eastwood, instead?

Our new Attorney General Eastwood attends every hearing in Congress with a six-shooter on his hip, by command of President Trump. He’s also not permitted to wash his hair.

Or is there something deeper going on? Or is it just that he can’t unglue himself from the TV to pursue this very serious matter any further?

It may be time to compile a list of Senators who appear frantic to not have the President found guilty of various crimes. NBC News has a couple adding themselves to the list right here:

[Senator John] Thune [(R-SD)] added that the Mueller probe should be thorough and complete, but can’t go on forever. He said Trump has important work to do for the American people and it is time to “move on.”

“And the longer these things drag on, it just, it gets, I think, very wearing on the American people,” he said. “The report needs to come out. We need to know what happened, but I agree with my colleagues that the time I think has come to start drawing this to a conclusion.”

Senator, it may be wearing on the shrinking Trump base, and on a GOP membership that is slowly becoming more and more disillusioned with the GOP leadership. The rest of us, however, are settling in with some popcorn to see just how far into the swamp President Trump strayed while claiming he was going to drain it, even as he partook of its dark charms. Your continued support of him will look very poorly indeed on your next re-election effort, especially if he gets marched off in handcuffs.

[Senator Lindsey] Graham (R-SC), who has emerged as one of Trump’s fiercest defenders, said he had “no idea what that’s all about” when asked his reaction to Cohen’s guilty plea, adding that it “seems to be a process crime.”

“I’ve yet to see anybody indicated for actually colluding with the Russians,” Graham told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I don’t know where Mueller is going but it is up to him to get there sooner rather than later.”

No, no, no, Senator. It’s up to Mueller to get it right. If there’s nothing, then there’s nothing, and that’s fine, but all the guilty pleas and indictments would suggest to the logically minded that there’s already a something, and it may point to a huge something.

We already know you’re frantically defending an incompetent President. The question is if you’re trying to blight an investigation into a criminal President.

On to the list you go. I already know you can’t seem to follow simple reasoning. Vapid defenses are not a positive sign for you.

Regarding my bafflement at quantum radar a reader writes:

My understanding of quantum entanglement would seem to say that such a thing is theoretically possible — although I question just how much quantum-level information gets changed by bouncing photons off a target. I’d guess it was a more macroscopic level of information in a radar signal. But assume that much works. The real next problem is how does one generate a few billion entangled photons, and separate them into the 2 described streams? My understanding is that it’s difficult to create and isolate quantum entangled (maybe we should just start calling them QE particles?) particles.

It occurs to me that one of the strategies of stealth aircraft is to absorb and even transmit the absorbed EM radiation out the other side, much like the conceptual “invisibility cloak,” and I wonder if that action of absorption would actually disturb the entangled photons as to dissolve the entanglement. Identify those disentangled photons and you have a picture?

I dunno, just guessing here.

From UMNews:

Researchers have known for years that tumors have patterns that are like little “highways” that cancer cells use to move within the tumors and ultimately toward blood vessels and adjacent tissue to invade the body. Patients who have high numbers of these patterns in their tumors have a lower chance of surviving the cancer.

What the researchers haven’t been able to figure out until now is how the cells recognize these patterns and move along them.

In this study, the University of Minnesota team examined in the lab how breast cancer cells moved and used medicines to try to stop the cells. When they stopped the mechanisms that serve as the motor of the cells, the cells surprisingly changed the way they moved to an oozing-like motion, almost like a blob.

“Cancer cells are very sneaky,” said senior author Paolo Provenzano, a University of Minnesota biomedical engineering associate professor and a Masonic Cancer Center researcher. “We didn’t expect the cells to change their movement. This forced us to change our tactics to target both kinds of movements simultaneously. It’s almost like we destroyed their GPS so they couldn’t find the highways. This stopped the cells in their tracks. The cells just sat there and didn’t move.”

Fascinating. I assume they’re talking about metastasization. This bit gave me pause, though:

The researchers studied the cells in the lab in two-dimensional, engineered microenvironments, that are almost like a microchip with cells. These microenvironments mimicked how the cells behave as they do in a tumor and allowed researchers to speed up their research.

How good a mimicry might it be? Does the loss of a dimension change how the cells react, or even how the unnamed med works?

Restless impatience over here. Family history of cancer on my Dad’s side.

Karst got back to me concerning me being a curmudgeon about their site in quite a hurry:

Hi Hue!

Thanks for reaching out. We appreciate the feedback and rest assured, I’ll pass this along to our web development team.

We regret that you’ve had this experience and thank you for the chance of improving our services. Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Sincerely,

[Omitted]

Nice of them to do so. On the other hand, as my Arts Editor pointed out, this is not a web development issue. It’s a marketing issue.

Missiologist:

[Concerning John Chau]

Obviously, the long-term strategy did not work, and Chau will become not only a topic of debate but of study for missiologists, people who train missionaries. That’s my field. I have a PhD in the subject and have trained missionaries to go to many places, including India. I am also the dean of the mission school at Wheaton College, where we unapologetically and enthusiastically train missionaries to engage their own cultures, as well as cross-culturally, from their culture to another. [“Slain missionary John Chau prepared much more than we thought, but are missionaries still fools?“, Ed Stetzer, Dean of the School of Mission, Ministry and Leadership at Wheaton College, WaPo]

For those readers following the story of the late missionary John Chau and his attempt to bring Christianity to the isolated Andaman Islanders, this claim may also be of interest:

But new information released Wednesday paints a more complicated picture of Chau, including an interview with Christianity Today. In the interview, Mary Ho, who leads All Nations (the agency that sent Chau on missions), indicated that he was heavily vaccinated and even quarantined before going on the mission.

It sounds good, but I’d rather here hear from an infectious diseases doc and researcher who also knew which vaccinations were employed. I remain worried this was the work of amateurs who only think they know what they’re doing.

I had been planning to write a post about the troubles of discerning truth in an age of political polarization, with a concrete example of the nomination of Thomas Farr for a seat in a U.S. District Court. The Democrats have been four-square against him, both now and back in President Bush’s tenure, when he was also nominated. Their complaint was that he represented Jesse Helms back in the day, and was instrumental in the voter suppression efforts ever since, usually used against black communities.

This was denied by the Republicans, and in fact the lone black GOP Senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, stated he had discussed the matter with Mr. Farr and had come to the conclusion that he could support him. This left only Senator Flake (R-AZ) as the only Republican Senator voting no, and in his case it’s a protest against the failure of Senator McConnell to bring the Special Counsel protective legislation up for a vote. From the News Observer:

Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican and the only black Republican in the Senate, called Farr on Wednesday and spoke with the author of a Department of Justice memo obtained by The Washington Post this week before casting his vote to advance Farr on Wednesday. Scott also spoke with Obama appointees about Farr.

“If he was the architect of that nasty, racist campaign, I would have been a ‘no’ without question. What I found so far from appointees of the Obama administration to my conversations with the author of the memo is that he was in fact not the architect of the campaign and that the character witnesses from the Obama administration coming forward on behalf of Tom Farr have been pretty strong,” Scott told Fox News Channel’s “Fox News at Night” on Wednesday.

So how does a casual observer come to a conclusion on this particular incident? Are the Democrats becoming tribalists, which would be awful for the nation?

However, the story changed in just a couple of hours. From CNN:

Republican Sen. Tim Scott announced Thursday he would oppose President Donald Trump’s nominee to be a US district judge in North Carolina, effectively ending the nomination that had been plagued with accusations that Thomas Farr supported measures that disenfranchised African-American voters.

“This week, a Department of Justice memo written under President George H.W. Bush was released that shed new light on Mr. Farr’s activities. This, in turn, created more concerns. Weighing these important factors, this afternoon I concluded that I could not support Mr. Farr’s nomination,” Scott said in a statement.

Scott, who is the Senate’s sole black Republican, told reporters Wednesday that he wanted to speak to the author of a 1991 memo obtained by the Washington Post, which outlines a controversial postcard campaign distributed by the 1990 campaign of Sen. Jesse Helms that the Justice Department said were used to intimidate black voters from going to the polls.

Scott’s decision to oppose Farr prevented Farr from being confirmed by the Senate, where Republicans hold a 51-to-49 seat majority. Also opposing Farr was Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, who has sworn off advancing Trump judicial nominees until the chamber votes on a bill to protect special counsels such as Robert Mueller. All 49 Democrats opposed the nomination.

There’s not a lot of insight to be drawn from this. We know that Trump’s selections for judges is not guided by good judgment or some sort of process that rewards both competency and good character. We know that both sides are becoming more and more tribalistic, and I believe that this will lead to a breakdown in one of these parties in the not too distant future, and I think the GOP is the leading contender.

The Democrats have to find a way to stand strong while preserving their trademark penchant for disagreements and even, yes, squabbles. That’s the yeast that keeps them going. The lack of that will turn the GOP into a pillar of salt.

Reporter: President Trump, how much foreign money has entered the Treasury’s coffers due to your tariffs on China and other countries?

President Trump: Billions & billions, I tell you –

Reporter: No, sir. Those countries do not pay the United States anything –

Trump: Sure they do!

Reporter: No sir, as your own Administration knows, foreign governments don’t send money in response to tariffs –

Trump: Well, then, if you’re so smart, then who does, young woman?

Reporter: The customers do, sir. The American citizens who voted you into office. Those billions and billions of dollars come out of the pockets of the blue collar workers of America.

Trump: No, no, no –

Reporter: Which leads to a second question, sir: Are you lying to the American citizens about how tariffs work, or do you truly not understand how they work themselves?

Trump: <stomps off cursing>

Reporter: <barely audible> Dumbshit.

One must indulge one’s fantasies from time to time. Since the rest are X-rated fantasies involving Trump and our favorite Minnesota herbivore, the moose, I’ll stick with this one.

While I was poking around the web, looking for a Christmas gift for my Arts Editor, I ran across a site which occasionally pops up a soft sub-window announcing that, “Joe just bought XYZ”. It lingers for a moment, and then goes away.

And I Hated It.

It’s one thing when social nudges are used to move folks to make good social choices, such as utilizing employer 401Ks or becoming Organ Donors in case of death.

But on a commercial site, it’s not appropriate. Hell, how do I even know these are authentic?

And the sad part is that this is a site selling products which – they claim – are eco-friendly. It’s Karst, who sell stone paper and woodless pencils, for which trees are not consumed. Or – now – so they say. Now I’m inclined not to buy from them, because I dislike manipulation.

They’ve pissed me off.

For those of us with an interest in civil asset forfeiture, the case of Timbs v. Indiana was argued in front of SCOTUS yesterday, and observers have walked away with a positive impression of the proceedings. From Bloomberg News, among others:

Supreme Court justices signaled they will curb the power of cities and states to levy fines and seize property, hearing arguments in the case of a man trying to keep his Land Rover after he pleaded guilty to selling drugs. …

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said it was “too late in the day” to argue that states are exempt from particular parts of the Bill of Rights. Justice Neil Gorsuch said the only question was what exactly the excessive fines clause prohibits.

“Whatever it in fact is, it applies against the states, right?” he asked Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher. When Fisher hedged, Gorsuch added, “Really? Come on, general.” …

The liberals seemed similarly skeptical of the Indiana case as well. Ilya Somin, who writes about the proceedings in a readable manner here, sounds convinced that civil asset forfeiture will go down in flaming defeat.

Hurrah!

Apparently the body of the missionary killed by the Andaman Islanders will not be retrieved, WaPo reports:

The fishermen have been arrested, as has a friend of Chau’s who helped organize the boat trip. Police have no strategy to retrieve his body and don’t plan to confront the islanders, Pathak said.

To this agnostic, his diary entries sound quite disrespectful of the natives:

Chau spent years planning and training to travel illegally to remote North Sentinel Island on a mission to convert its residents to Christianity, including learning emergency medicine, and studying linguistics and cultural anthropology, his missionary group said. Though he knew the islanders had long violently resisted outsiders, he conducted a covert mission to the protected island this month. …

“God, I don’t want to die,” Chau scrawled in his journal while sitting in a fishing boat off the coast of the island where the North Sentinelese people live, shortly before he was killed. “WHO WILL TAKE MY PLACE IF I DO?” …

“Lord, is this island Satan’s last stronghold where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?” he wrote.

By the third day, he became convinced he was going to die.

“Watching the sunset and it’s beautiful — crying a bit . . . wondering if it will be the last sunset I see,” he wrote.

I’m appalled, actually.

Bruce Riedel is hoping the travails of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) continue and, I suspect, end in MBS crashing and burning, if only metaphorically, as he opines in AL Monitor:

The premeditated murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last month was an act of terrorism. The Saudis are desperately trying to salvage the reputation and credibility of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who undoubtedly ordered the assassination. The Donald Trump administration is colluding with Riyadh. But revelations about the prince continue to emerge, further sullying his brand. At home there is unease in the royal family about what his tarnished reputation means for the kingdom. …

Desperately seeking rehabilitation, the crown prince is hoping the world will forget about Khashoggi and move on. So is Trump. But the reality is that the Saudi leader has a closet full of skeletons and horrors that won’t be shut.

The war in Yemen tops the list. After more than three years of war, 18,000 coalition airstrikes and the crippling blockade, 18 million Yemenis are at risk of malnutrition and disease. Save the Children estimates that more than 85,000 children under the age of five have already starved to death in the war. The coalition is pouring weapons in to the country, arming various fractious militias. There are so many weapons in the country that Yemen is an exporter of small arms to other countries in the region.

The Yemeni catastrophe is MBS’s signature policy initiative, and he has been the biggest obstacle to a cease-fire. According to several sources, MBS threw a temper tantrum when the British suggested a truce earlier this month.

A temper-tantrum? Grown-up leaders do not throw temper-tantrums. They may narrow their eyes and veil their thoughts and swear revenge to their lovers, but hopefully their obscured rage results in strokes and heart attacks before they do anything serious.

And I’m really quite serious. The idea that the successor to the King of a major country is impulsive, vain about his capabilities, and ambitious to put his stamp on history is deeply unsettling to me. Saudi Arabia, despite our national incompatability, is an important American ally, and is consequently well-armed. Whether Saudi impotence in Yemen is due to wretched Saudi planning, inferior troops, improper weaponry for the war terrain, or the heroism of the Yemenis is really irrelevant; the fact that MBS stepped into such a situation and is consequently failing is really all the current King should need to know in order to can his ass – or worse.

And so we see why nepotism is frowned upon in enlightened countries. Too often, it’s merely another word for tolerated incompetence.

Because of their continuing, and perhaps mistaken, importance as an ally, we can’t just laugh at them as clowns. But it should also be clear that the United States will not be clearing them off the table as an ally. President Trump’s alleged financial ties to the Kingdom won’t permit that (and, thus, why no President should be permitted to retain commercial interests as has Trump).

So we’ll just have to grit our teeth and hope King Salman decides his kingdom is more important than his pride and his son and dumps him as Crown Prince. Will the King exercise good judgment? Let’s ask Riedel:

The crown prince rules by terror, not consensus. His ascent to power has been entirely the work of his father, and the king seems determined to stick with his son. Nonetheless, the region is rife with speculation about the kingdom’s future and how it will play out. Will the king retire early? Will the family accept MBS? Will the security apparatus turn on the crown prince if he executes officials who were doing his bidding?

The only certainty is that the crown prince is likely to remain a reckless and dangerous player. Istanbul will not be the last debacle he leads the kingdom into.

Yeah, seems unlikely.

Hyde-Smith (R) wins the contest to occupy the open Mississippi Senate seat, beating former Ag Secretary Espy (D); WaPo reports the margin to be about 8%.

So I think this shrinkage in victory margin in Senatorial race (recent history has the GOP winning by 20 points, remember) may be the political version of Hyde-Smith breaking a mirror: 7 more years of bad luck for Mississippi. The base won’t be badly shaken enough to start reconsidering. They’ll just keep doing whatever it is they’re doing, no matter how destructive it is, and that’s just about it.

Tough to be them right now.

Returning to this quiet thread following the recent roller-coaster, today the markets went blasting upwards, as the chart for the DJI shows:

That’s 2.5%. Still nowhere near it’s high, but still a respectable jump. So what happened?

CNN/Business suggests a reason:

Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell gave investors reason to cheer on Wednesday when he suggested that the Fed may slow down its interest rate hikes.

The Dow surged on the news, finishing the day with a gain of 618 points, or 2.5%. It was the fifth-biggest point jump for the Dow ever. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq each rose more than 2% as well.

Powell reassured investors that the Fed wouldn’t risk killing off economic growth by continuing to aggressively raise rates next year.

I heard similar reasoning on NPR tonight. But I have to wonder if there’s a bit more going on here. Remember that President Trump was yelling at the Fed a week or two ago?

….The United States should not be penalized because we are doing so well. Tightening now hurts all that we have done. The U.S. should be allowed to recapture what was lost due to illegal currency manipulation and BAD Trade Deals. Debt coming due & we are raising rates – Really?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 20, 2018

Some might wonder if Powell is kow-towing to the President, but I doubt it. In the face of Trump’s persistent claims of credit when the markets are doing well, and marked lack of remarks when the markets collapse, I think Jerome just dropped his pants and showed Trump just who has the bigger penis.

Yeah, guys can be that way sometimes.

Comets plunge into the Sun all the time. Quite often we see this happen using a coronagraph.

But when I clicked on this link, provided by Spaceweather.com, to see the latest, I was also greeted with a fairly eerie narration. I have no idea what’s going on.

Untrammeled:

Not deprived of freedom of action or expression; not restricted or hampered.
‘a mind untrammeled by convention’ [Oxford Dictionaries]

Noted in “Trump Threatening GM Over Its Plant Closure Is the Real ‘Gangster Government’,” Jonathan Chait, New York Intelligencer:

The Obama administration considered its dilemma carefully. The administration had strong reservations about wading into the economy on a firm-by-firm or sector-by-sector basis. Obama ultimately decided the economic and social repercussions of the auto industry failing was too great a calamity to bear, and extended loans to Detroit. (They have since been repaid.) As part of the deal, the administration forced both unions to accept wage reductions and creditors to take some losses.

It is almost impossible to convey the tenor of the freak-out this generated on the political right. Conservatives, already whipped into a lather by the fiscal stimulus and Obama’s plans to reform health care and create a cap-and-trade system, treated the auto bailout as the literal death knell for capitalism. Michael Barone quickly coined the phrase “gangster government” to capture the conservative belief that the Obama administration was threatening the private sector with the untrammeled power of government. Denunciations of “gangster government echoed from editorials (the Washington Examiner “the way Obama strong-armed creditors who rightfully expected to be treated justly under the law was right out of Juan Peron’s playbook”) to tea-party rallies to a book by David Fredosso (Gangster Government: Barack Obama and the New Washington Thugocracy.)

The weekly Gallup Presidential Approval / Disapproval poll has the pundits stirred up this week because of the change from last week:

It’s a bit like a roller-coaster, isn’t it? I had not expected the drop in approval to 38%, although the jump to 60% disapproval is more striking. I still find it a little difficult to find any serious conclusions to draw, especially short-term, but Jennifer Rubin thinks there’s more bubbling under the surface than I do, based on a poll taken concerning Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation:

The poll, conducted after the midterm election, found that 76 percent of voters say Mueller should be allowed to finish his work. While there are differences by party, Trump should be alarmed to find large bipartisan majorities standing up for Mueller:

Majorities of Democrats (94%), independents (78%), and Republicans (55%) say that Mueller should be allowed to complete his investigation. In this regard:

— 83% of voters, including 68% of Republicans, agree that “it would be an abuse of power for Donald Trump to try to stop an ongoing investigation of him and his campaign because no one is above the law, not even the president.” Fifty-nine percent strongly agree.

— 82% of voters, including 66% of Republicans, agree that “Robert Mueller should be allowed to finish his investigation and follow the facts wherever they lead, because everyone must abide by the rule of law, even the president.” Fifty-eight percent strongly agree.

Even though they think the investigation is biased (as a vast majority of Republicans do), large majorities of Republicans want the investigation completed. …

Amplifying the support in the Senate and among ordinary Republicans to keep Mueller at work, GOP ads run by Republicans for the Rule of Law have been pushing Republicans to defend Mueller. The cumulative effect of these developments finally may have registered. “While Republicans have at times over the last two years been swayed by the demagoguery of Trump and [Rep. Devin] Nunes and Fox, they’ve come back around to the core American belief in the rule of law,” says Bill Kristol, the group’s co-founder. “The GOP is less solidly Trump’s party than people think.” Even if they still support Trump, Republicans may have figured out that firing or interfering with the special counsel would be politically disastrous for the president and the party.

Does this all have an endpoint advantageous to the nation? Hard to say. The cult of the leader that has paralyzed the GOP over the last two years may be running into the rock of reality, and the latter is more of a mountain the Trump.

But I’ll keep my optimism on the back burner.

Trump wants to take away General Motor’s subsidies, according to CNN/Business. But there’s a problem:

President Donald Trump threatened on Tuesday to cut all General Motors subsidies after the automaker announced thousands of jobs cuts.

“Very disappointed with General Motors and their CEO, Mary Barra, for closing plants in Ohio, Michigan and Maryland,” Trump tweeted. “We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including for electric cars.”

GM (GM) stock declined as much as 3.8% on the comments. GM closed 2.6% lower, wiping out a chunk of Monday’s gains.

Trump’s threat came a day after GM announced plans to cut 14,000 jobs and shut five facilities in North America, dealing a blow to the president’s promise to help auto workers. GM said the moves are designed to prepare the company for a future of driverless and electric vehicles. GM is also responding to a consumer shift away from sedans in favor of trucks and SUVs.

It’s not clear what subsidies Trump was referring to.

A person familiar with the matter told CNN Business that GM is unaware of any significant federal subsidies the company is receiving beyond a $7,500 plug-in tax credit, which goes to the consumer, not the company.

It doesn’t matter which mythical subsidy he’s whining about, because it’s not about the subsidies. It’s about sustaining the tough guy myth that Donny-boy always punches back twice as hard. He made promises to his base that he’d bring back all those automotive jobs that went away, and now he’s going to look bad because GM is closing those plants.

So he has to look like he’s doing something to ward it off, and, whether or not he actually talked to GM, he has to make it look like he’s working ever-so-hard to back the little guy.

But, as GM notes, this is partially about the Trump tariffs, and partially about an environment that is perceived to be in the midst of rapid change. Now, I may have my doubts concerning whether or not anyone is going to come up with a reasonable driverless vehicle, but that’s neither here nor there. GM, who has far more resources than I do, thinks it’s coming, and that those manufacturing plants will become superfluous. Given those facts and today’s private sector ethical system, the shuttering of those plants is almost unavoidable.

In reality, Trump would do the exact same thing as GM is doing if he was the CEO. But he can’t be seen to be that cold to the workers who are being tragically hit by the winds of change, so he’s out there making loud noises in the confident hope that his “failure,” which is only partially self-inflicted, will not hurt him with his base.

Ironically, Trump is interfering in the free market, which is certainly a violation of one of the tenets of the Republican Party. Would Obama do the same thing? I doubt it. I’d expect to hear such words as retraining in any speech he gave on the subect, because his advisors would tell him that the plant closings were irreversible, and Obama always seemed to be oriented on the future, not the past. And to listening to expert advice.

While Trump remains the ever-incompetent and overconfident amateur.