Monthly Archives: February 2018

The latest Presidential Approval poll from Gallup once again proves the efficacy of the ‘I’ word – that is, indictments. A week or so ago, Trump reached a 40% approval rating for the first time in a while. The announcement of indictments on Friday, and along came a plummet by Sunday of 3%. It appears the public considers an indictment, even one that hardly mentions candidate / President Trump and does not allege any collusion, as a black mark on this Administration.

But I’m betting that, absent any more indictments in the next week, the following rendition of this poll will show Trump recovering. Part of this, I think, is burnout as folks tire of the circus in Washington. I count myself among that crowd.

Another part is really disbelief. The incompetency on show from Trump and his GOP is really quite gob-smacking, and at some point those who voted for him must make the choice of believing they screwed up or that this is really an illusion. Not many people like to admit they’re wrong on something like this, because, despite Governor Ventura’s remark that voting is not horse-racing – it doesn’t matter if you voted for the winner or not – many people do put their ego on it, especially if it’s an ideological thing. Even if the ideology is “liberals suck.”

In the end, some major event will have to occur before Trump leaves office before his term is finished, voluntarily or otherwise. An admission of collusion, a discovery by the intelligence agencies of a critical failure in relation to Russia or possibly China because of Executive Branch incompetence – or Speaker Ryan bringing Articles of Impeachment up for consideration by the House.

Source: Gallup

So, in a sense, I think Speaker Ryan really holds the future of the GOP, as it’s currently composed, in his hands. The way I see it, the more he plays to the GOP base, the more he will alienate the independents and moderate Republicans upon which the Party is truly dependent. The base is ordinarily considered important, but it’s become so rabidly extreme that it’s an anchor dragging this canoe into the depths. And the Republican Party needs to face the reality that they are bleeding. The chart to the left is some proof of that, as Republican share of the electorate has shrunk to 22%. Even more surprising, the Independents are also down 2 points from last month’s poll. The winners? The Democrats, up 5 points. In a month. While I doubt most moderate Republicans would re-register with the Democrats, I don’t doubt that a lot of independents have become so disgusted with the Republicans that they’ve decided to register as Democrats. So if the GOP wishes to continue its dominance in Congress, it must appeal to the independents and moderate Republicans.

Speaker Ryan may be able to stem the tide, though. President Trump has revealed himself as incompetent in foreign relation strategies and personnel, and uninterested in the ways of government – he appears to think it’s just a big corporation to run, but, baby, this animal is truly something other than a company. If Ryan began the process of ridding us of President Trump, he might find that it’s a useful strategy for communicating to the independents and the apostate that the party is reforming itself, and that they’re once again a mature governing Party.

Of course, then he’d run the risk of being stuck with a President Pence, who has kept a lower profile than Trump. He didn’t do so well in Indiana as Governor Pence, so the tea leaves aren’t promising.

But he may figure anything’s better than a President Trump hanging around his neck come 2018 Election Day. Especially if GOP gerrymandering is undone.

At least in Britain, if you’re cute they’ll build a highway for you – and size it for you, too. From Atlas Obscura:

Source: Wikipedia

If you happen to spot a small hole in the bottom of a fence or brick wall in Barnes, a neighborhood in South West London, there’s a good chance that you’ve stumbled upon a hedgehog crossing, and that Michel Birkenwald is responsible for it.

A jeweller by trade, Birkenwald has become one of London’s most enthusiastic engineers of infrastructure for animals. He founded and self-financed Barnes Hedgehogs around four years ago. The group drills the holes for free and generally advocates for the welfare of wild hedgehogs. Once Birkenwald has crafted a passage, he usually affixes a sign reading “Hedgehog Highway,” with the creature’s spiky silhouette.

Definitely an Awwwwwwwwwwww moment. And they have pictures!

Unless, it turns out, it’s themselves. Then they’re special. Politico has the report:

After months of criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, President Donald Trump’s supporters are issuing increasingly bold calls for presidential pardons to limit the investigation’s impact.

“I think he should be pardoning anybody who’s been indicted and make it clear that anybody else who gets indicted would be pardoned immediately,” said Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and senior vice president at the conservative Center for Security Policy.

The pleas for mercy mainly extend to the four former Trump aides who have already been swept up in the Russia probe: former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. But they don’t stop there.

“It’s kind of cruel what’s going on right now and the president should put these defendants out of their misery,” said Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. “I think he should pardon everybody — and pardon himself.”

Apparently the principles of punishment and deterrence only apply to the outsiders. For those Party faithful caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, well, we’ll let them slide by.

But I don’t have any doubts – if the same scandals were to happen in a Democratic administration, we know they’d be howling to the moon, crying out for gobbets of flesh torn from the malefactors. And I wouldn’t have a problem with that.

As an independent, I’m simply appalled at the whining from the Republicans as they find out their leader can’t pick good people. This isn’t the behavior of adults – this is the behavior of spoiled children. Children who think this is all a game and they have the Get Out Of Mail Free card.

Unless they think fellow Republican and Special Prosecutor Mueller is just making charges up – and then those under the thumb are pleading guilty because of Mueller’s crazy hypnotic powers – they need to man up and put Country over Party.

For a Party well on its way to theocracy, of course they can’t do bad. Or, at least, God will forgive them. They’re too damn special to have to endure punishment, now aren’t they? The GOP has fallen so far.

Today’s party trick features not one, but TWO “Presidential Lists.”

The first, courtesy a couple of professors , one at the University of Houston and the other at Boise State University, who surveyed current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, is your standard list of Presidents in perceived best to worst order. Here’s the top ten:

Name	2018 Rating	2018 Rank	2014 Rating
Lincoln	95.03	1	1
Washington	92.59	2	2
FDR	89.09	3	3
T. Roosevelt	81.39	4	4
Jefferson	79.54	5	5
Truman	75.15	6	6
Eisenhower	74.	03	7
Obama	71.13	8	18
Reagan	69.24	9	11
LBJ	69.06	10	12

And the bottom five:

Name	2018 Rating	2018 Rank	2014 Rating
A. Johnson	24.91	40	41
Pierce	23.25	41	40
Wm Harrison	19.02	42	39
Buchanan	15.09	43	43
Trump	12.34	44	n/a

Yeah, that’s Trump at the bottom. But it honestly doesn’t mean much, because it’s too soon to evaluate his entire legacy, no matter how much distaste I have for him now.

Similarly, even though I’ve mentioned that I believe Obama will be considered a top-ten President eventually, his climb to 8th is, again, too soon to take seriously.

I see two factors in waiting fifty years before taking these sorts of polls seriously, even though the respondents are professional political science academics.

First, there is the inevitable political leanings of the academics, and the more recent the subject, the stronger those will wear on the evaluator. A little time and a new team of academics will lend more objectivity to a subjective exercise.

Second, certain decisions will have consequences decades later. For example, the decision to use torture by the Bush 43 Administration will echo down the ages. I fear it’ll have lasting damage on the United States’ reputation, and therefore its ability to do business. Personally, I’m  stunned to see Bush 43 has climbed to position 30 (previously 35). Similarly, will Obama’s strategy vis a vis North Korea turn out to be a disaster? Or will North Korea’s regime fall victim to its own excesses and shortcomings, leaving Obama’s patience strategy the winner?

There is more to this poll than just this. For example, they broke down the respondents by their leanings, in order to see how personal politics might influence the evaluations. Here’s GW Bush, Obama, and Trump:

Name	Republican Rank	Democrat Rank	Independent/ Other Rank	Conservative Rank	Liberal Rank	Moderate Rank
GW Bush	23	30	31	23	33	28
Obama	16	6	12	22	6	11
Trump	40	44	43	40	44	44

Trump impresses no one but his base, apparently. Meanwhile, Obama appears to have impressed at least some of the Republicans, if not the Conservatives. Time will tell.

I mentioned two lists, didn’t I? The second is on Treehugger, and merely asks readers to select which President was the greenest President. Whoever can organize the biggest bloc of Internet users wins, I guess. Have at it.

Envigorate:

Verb

(third-person singular simple present envigorates, present participle envigorating, simple past and past participle envigorated)

1. UK spelling of invigorate. [YourDictionary.com]

Noted in email from the University of Minnesota’s Alumni Angle:

Driven: A Future Filled with Promise
An envigorated and world-class student experience is a goal of Driven: The University of Minnesota Campaign. More students from Minnesota and around the world who need support will receive scholarships and fellowships under this priority, bettering their lives, and ours, according to U Pres. Eric Kaler, Ph.D., ’82.

Or perhaps yesterday. WaPo’s Anne Applebaum reports the shame:

For most Americans, the Parkland shooting was a terrible tragedy. But for social media accounts that promote the interests of Russia in the United States, it was a fantastic opportunity.

On the morning after the tragedy, the Russia-linked accounts were commenting fiercely, pushing the “crazy lone killer” explanation for the shooting and mocking advocates of gun control. According to Hamilton 68, a tracker website created by the German Marshall Fund, a lot of them linked to photos of guns and ammunition on the Instagram account of the suspected killer, plus a screenshot of a Google search for “Allahu akbar.” Others linked to a fact-checking website that debunked some statistics about gun crime. By Friday morning, some of the same accounts were also pushing something slightly different: the hashtag #falseflag. That’s a reference to the conspiracy theory, already widespread 48 hours later, that the shooting never happened, that the attack is a “false flag” operation staged by the U.S. government as a prelude to the seizure of guns.

A false flag operation?

From the Trump Administration?

OK, so for those who were getting all stirred up about a false flag operation in Florida, let’s smack you upside the head like your father would have and note this:

1. The Trump Administration is allies with the NRA. Do you really, really think a single gun law will be enacted by Trump and the GOP over this? Much less sucking up all the guns with a great vacuum cleaner? That’s utterly ludicrous.
2. If you do swallow that, then think of this: you’re disrespecting every single emergency responder who are now having nightmares of finding dead teenagers slumped all about a school. From the front-line cops who went in there knowing a shooter could take them out, yet they bravely did so, to the EMTs who desperately tried to save those dead kids and their teachers. Oh, tell you what, how about you travel down to Florida and accuse one of those first responders of lying about the whole thing, right to their face. PRO TIP: Reserve your spot at the dentist, as you’re likely to lose some teeth.
3. You disrespect the friends and parents of the victims, who have to go to the funerals and mourn their lost loved ones. Still feeling good about yourself?
4. You disrespect those that were lost. They won’t mind, though, since they’re dead. But it marks you as ungraceful.
5. Finally, you disrespect yourself. You’re being dragged around by a bunch of hostile Russians. They’re laughing at you for being so suspiciously naive. Where is your trust in your fellow Americans?

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Learn respect. As Applebaum opines,

And this is just the beginning. Over the next few days, many of these same kinds of accounts will invent a whole range of conspiracy theories about the shooting. If the past repeats itself, pro-Russian, alt-right, white-supremacist and pro-gun social media accounts will promote the same hashtags and indulge in the same conspiracy theories. Each group has its own interests in pushing #falseflag, but the Russian interest is clear. They do it because it helps undermine trust in institutions — the police, the FBI, the media — as well as in the government itself. They also do it because it helps to amplify extremist views that will deepen polarization in U.S. political life and create ever angrier, ever more partisan divides.

I missed the report of another plea deal with Special Prosecutor Mueller, which Lawfare (Sarah Grant, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, Matt Tait, and Benjamin Wittes) helpfully supplies in their summation of the same indictments I covered (although they are, of course, much more professional than this software engineer):

The charges of wire and bank fraud appear related to a second set of court documents released Friday by the special counsel’s office: the plea deal of Richard Pinedo, whom Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged with one count of identity fraud (18 U.S.C. §1028). According to the statement of offense, Pinedo operated an online business called “Auction Essistence” from 2014 through the end of 2017, through which he sold services designed to circumvent the security measures of online payment companies. Reuters reports that Pinedo allegedly provided the services used by the Internet Research Agency to purchase political ads and pay for rallies through PayPal. (Pinedo’s attorney said in a statement that his client “had absolutely no knowledge of the identities and motivations of any of the purchasers of the information he provided.”)

From their legal expertise:

The indictment fills in a number of critical elements in the timeline of L’Affaire Russe. The document is what prosecutors term a “speaking indictment”; that is, it describes facts about the defendants’ activities beyond what is strictly necessary for the counts it charges. The purpose of a speaking indictment is more than to simply list charges; it is to tell a story, and the story this one tells is of the Russian side of the bigger picture—specifically, the Russian side of events that took place outside of the Russian government and intelligence agencies.

But they have a different motivation for the Russian activities:

The indictment doesn’t shed light on why the Internet Research Agency might have chosen to meddle in the 2016 election in 2014—long before either Clinton or Trump announced their intent to run. But notably, the dates in the indictment coincide with the Ukrainian Maidan revolution of early 2014. Amid unrest against Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-aligned politician who was president of Ukraine at the time, Russian officials accused the United States of covertly supporting Ukrainian protesters and seeking to undermine the Kremlin’s influence in the region. So a reasonable person might wonder, reading the indictment, whether the beginning of the operation was a retaliation for perceived U.S. meddling in Ukraine.

They may be right, but it doesn’t really change my conclusion – that the United States has lost a battle in a surreptitious war. And while they also agree there’s no collusion mentioned here, but it isn’t exculpatory, either, they go a step further:

What this indictment does, rather, is establish part of the predicate for a later claim of collusion. That is, the indictment details part of what it was that any Americans might have been colluding with.

That almost sounds like a threat, doesn’t it? Or a warning. But I’m not sure that Trump’s lawyers are experienced enough to realize that.

And while Lawfare points out that the indictment makes no attempt to measure the success or failure of this covert and illegal operation, they point out this:

Here’s what is clear, as U.S. intelligence officials emphasized in Senate testimony earlier this week: The danger described in the indictment is not going away anytime soon. As Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats put it: “There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target.”

If the Russians thought their efforts were a failure, would they repeat them? Our intelligence agencies report finding indications that the Russian operation may be repeated – so we can assume that the Russians really did believe their efforts influenced the past election.

What is their goal in the upcoming election?

By contrast, Andrew McCarthy’s column on National Review appears to be painfully naive:

The Russians are engaged in “information warfare” against the United States. That was the big soundbite at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s press conference Friday afternoon, announcing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s election-meddling indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian businesses.

That is certainly a fair assessment of what the indictment alleges. The account is disturbing, but its form leaves many of us underwhelmed. Our government says Russia is levying war. It is attacking a foundational institution — the electoral system of our democratic society and, more basically, our society’s cohesion as such. Our response should not be, nor appear to be, the filing of a lawsuit. That is provocatively weak.

If this were all about reprimanding Russia for its actions, I might agree. It’s not. It’s about informing the citizens of the United States on a polarizing and divisive issue, namely whether or not Russia attempted to influence the election using illegal and unethical means. The President of the United States has categorically stated that they did not, despite the testimony of his own intelligence agencies. This indictment gives objectives, means, names, and details. It destroys the President’s assertion.

In other words, this is a healing document. It tries to resolve an active and painful division. Before we can move forward and perhaps take action against Russia, we need to come together, recognize that our election was tainted, leaving us with a bumbling incompetent who may, in fact, be beholden to Russia, and decide what to do. Andrew advocates for more direct action, but the truth of the matter is that if we don’t educate our own citizens on what happened and how it happened, it’ll just happen all over again. McCarthy’s response doesn’t look to the future. It’s a visceral response that ill-regards the citizens.

McCarthy’s in a tough spot. He wants to advocate for a conservative position, but his banner-holder is Trump, palpably a failure by McCarthy’s own standards with respect to China and Russia, as well as myriad other subjects other than the federal judiciary – and perhaps even McCarthy recognizes Trump’s failures in this area. I don’t read McCarthy on a regular basis.

Source: Gallup

So I think McCarthy decided to follow the strong conservative tradition of attacking when attacked, and advocated a cyber-warfare response without considering the possibility of providing the citizenry with more information. The latter response would run a risk for the conservatives, because many of them are not as well informed as their liberal counterparts. If they were to become better-informed, whence will they sail? It’s a serious question for a conservative position which has lost quite a lot of support over the last couple of years, despite or even because of its Congressional dominance. In the Gallup poll to the right, the 2-7 Jan 2018 poll suggests 22% of Americans consider themselves Republican, a 3 point drop since December, while the Independents are down to 44%, a 2 point drop, and the Democrats are up to 32%, for a 5 point gain. In late 2016, the numbers were 28-39-29, respectively. It’s a discouraging trend for what calls itself the conservatives these days – and may be quite telling as to the current makeup of the conservatives.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight throws some cold water on the Russian exercise:

The indictment alleges that an organization called the Internet Research Agency had a monthly budget of approximately $1.25 million toward interference efforts by September 2016 and that it employed “hundreds of individuals for its online operation.” This is a fairly significant magnitude — much larger than the paltry sums that Russian operatives had previously been revealed to spend on Facebook advertising.

Nonetheless, it’s small as compared with the campaigns. The Clinton campaign and Clinton-backing super PACs spent a combined $1.2 billionover the course of the campaign. The Trump campaign and pro-Trump super PACs spent $617 million overall.

In terms of headcounts rather than budgets, the gap isn’t quite so dramatic. The “hundreds” of people working for the Internet Research Agency compare with 4,200 paid Clinton staffers² and 880 paid Trump staffers.³Russian per-capita GDP is estimated at around $10,000 U.S. dollars — about one-sixth of what it is in the U.S. — so a $1.25 million monthly budget potentially goes a lot farther there than it does here. The Russian efforts were on the small side as compared with the massive magnitudes of the campaigns, but not so small that you’d consider them a rounding error.

And, yet, it’s worth remembering that the tale of David and Goliath is more than just a fairy tale, it’s an emblematic story of something that can always happen – the small defeating the large because they’re smarter and/or better equipped. Measuring strictly by budget ignores the many other factors involved, of which I’ll pick out just one.

Assumptions. I’ve been thinking about the discussion I had with a reader over the last few weeks concerning the free press and free expression, and whether or not foreign entities should be permitted to participate. I answered No, because they do not have America’s best interests at heart. But I’ve discovered another reason to bar them. Americans make certain assumptions when we have political discussions, or at least we should, and one of those assumptions is that whatever the writer is saying, he does have an interest in the United States prospering. That is, we may disagree strongly on the path forward – but we do agree there should be a path forward.

Not so foreign nationals. Largely by definition, they adhere to their country and wish it to prosper, and if that does not coincide with American interests, tough shit.

So when we evaluate the free speech of foreign nationals, especially those who fraudulently assume American identities, we will be mislead in our interpretations of their free speech. It’s a mockery of free speech, in reality, and that becomes a wild-card factor in the evaluation of their impact. Nate is quite correct that the Russians were heavily outspent – but it may not matter, because they were playing a game with the naive Americanskies, from the rural hamlet inhabitant to the downtown Manhattanite, and we didn’t know the rules.

Nate may be assuming a linear impact based on funding. I don’t think that’s accurate. But Nate is saddled by the burden of proof, frankly, while I’m free to wave my hands quite frantically.

… right up to here.

If you want to see the indictments issued last week by Special Prosecutor Mueller, here’s the link. Here’s my non-lawyer summary of what I’m reading, by paragraph. Commentary will be in italics.

1. The first section notes the United States prohibits foreign nationals from indulging in financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing Federal elections, requires foreign nationals to obtain visas, and that accurate information is required of these foreign nationals.
2. Identifies the Internet Research Agency LLC (“ORGANIZATION”) as a Russian organization “… engaged in operations to interfere with elections and political processes.” To me, this sounds like an assertion that will have to be proven in court. A number of people are then identified as working for or contributing funds to this organization.

   Does an American court have jurisdiction over foreign people who may have committed transgressions against the United States? I suppose a lawyer with international credentials would have an answer, and that answer might reference the International Court of Justice. But more directly, if activities are specifically aimed at disrupting the United States, it cannot be denied that the United States has a right to defending its governmental system. Indeed, one might suggest the Russians should be relieved they attacked a relatively civilized country that is unlikely to send assassins – or armed drones – to effect punishment.

3. The Organization operations time period and funding are described.
4. Assertion that defendants used fraudulent and stolen identities and posed as U.S. citizens, commented on social media accounts on socially divisive issues, and by reaching large numbers of American citizens, influenced their votes and interfered in the election.
5. Some defendants entered the United States under false pretenses to gather intelligence and computing resources. Their Russian identities were concealed.
6. Assertion that the goal of the Organization was “… to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. ” Operations included disparagement of the campaign of Hillary Clinton on social media, staging political rallies, solicitation and compensation of real Americans to promote or disparage candidates, and communicated with certain Trump Campaign workers, at all times using fraudulent American identities.
   Note that this is not collusion, because the Russians represented themselves as Americans.
7. Assertions of illegal activities, as noted earlier, in a conspiracy composed of the Russian persons and Organization noted earlier.
8. Then follows the actual indictments by reference to the earlier paragraphs.
9. Starting in 2014, the defendants conspired to impair the election by obstructing the FEC, DoJ, and Department of State. The Organization is described down to the Department level. Its goals and strategies are described. This is interesting:
   

   By in or around May 2014, the ORGANIZATION’s strategy included interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with the stated goal of “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”

   I wonder where that statement was obtained!

10. Describes beginnings of the Organization and how it obscured itself, as well as interior organization. Details are given to an impressive degree – I wonder where they get all these interior details on the alleged Organizations and their interference in the election, including project names.
11. Asserts related Russian Organizations Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering were also involved, serving as a funding conduit from the Russian government to the Organization.
12. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described. I will omit describing these.
13. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
14. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
15. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
16. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
17. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
18. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
19. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
20. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
21. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
22. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
23. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
24. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
25. The FEC and its enabling legislation, FECA, are identified and described.
26. Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) is described.
27. The Department of State’s role as a victim is described.
28. The object of the conspiracy is given.
29. Describing the manner and means of achieving their objective: study of various groups.
30. Details of travel to the United States under false pretenses.
31. Details of Russians posing as Americans in order to gather strategic information from Americans knowledgeable concerning the political scene.
32. Allegations that social media accounts were developed to appear to be American, when they were not.
33. Details on how this was convincingly done.
34. Etc, concerning BLM, religious groups.
35. Purchase of advertising to promote their social media groups.
36. Fraudulent Twitter accounts., for examle “Tennessee GOP” was a Organization-controlled account.
37. Notation of metric collection and analysis.
38. Self-evaluation. Just like a good engineering firm.
39. Use of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks, which I suspect can be difficult to monitor) to conceal the Russian origins of these social media accounts.
40. Use of web-based email accounts, built to appear to be used by Americans.
41. Illegal use of American Social Security numbers and date of birth of real Americans without permission for use with Paypal, all for use to “prove” the social media accounts really were possessed by Americans.
42. Organization plans to interfere in election.
43. Alleges the Organization were using their fraudulent accounts to interfere in the election, in particular to denigrate Clinton, Rubio, and Cruz (!), while supporting Sanders and Trump. A couple of interesting examples are given.
44. The use of hash tags, Twitter and Facebook accounts is noted.
45. Use of fraudulent personas to communicate with Trump supporters, volunteers, and Trump Campaign workers, supplying material for use and re-use by those Americans. This is not an allegation of collusion, as these Americans are described as unwitting.
46. Encouragement of minority groups to decline to vote in the 2016 election through their fraudulent social media accounts. Examples are given.
47. Used their social media accounts to promote the voter fraud meme.
48. Allegations of the defendants using their fraudulent accounts to promote Trump and denigrate Clinton.
49. Payment details using fraudulent information.
50. A nearly full page list of the advertisements bought. Sample: “Donald wants to defeat terrorism . . . Hillary wants to sponsor it”
51. Allegations of political rallies arranged by the defendants in defiance of US law.
52. Promotion of events using fraudulent accounts.
53. Promoted a rally named “Support Hillary. Save American Muslims”.
54. More rallies, more fraud.
55. Rallies in Florida.
56. Rallies in New York and Pennsylvania.
57. POST-ELECTION: Fraudulently organized rallies supporting Trump as well as other rallies to protest the results of the election. This is a fascinating paragraph to run across.
58. Destruction of identifying data. Apparently they didn’t do this very well.
59. Skipping.
60. Details of purchase of Facebook advertising.
61. Press releases for New York rallies.
62. Details on recruitment of Americans.
63. Details
64. Details
65. Details
66. Details
67. Details
68. Details
69. Details
70. Details
71. Details
72. Details
73. Details
74. Details
75. …

Up to paragraph 98, it’s all detail, while 98 & 99 suggests punishment will be forfeiture of assets connected with the scheme.

It’s an interesting, even fascinating document. As President Trump claims, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of collusion in this set of indictments – which doesn’t mean there’s no evidence anywhere. More indictments may be on their way.

But that is an issue of the moment, and not as important as those issues which stretch into the future.

First, this has clearly been a battle that is part of the First Digital War, and the Russians have won. Their chosen candidate now occupies the Oval Office, and yet that’s not the most important part of their scheme. I think the big clue is in paragraph 57, where the allegation is that the Russians staged rallies both for and against Trump, post-election. Why? This is an effort to sow division and discord in American society, with an ultimate goal of weakening the faith of Americans in their chosen form of government, and I think it’s been largely successful, based on the reports of families ripping apart (my own mother-in-law forbade any political discussion at the 2017 Thanksgiving dinner table, although admittedly she was – and is – ill with breast cancer), disdain on the extreme left and right for even moderate members of their own sides, etc.

A United States where we do not trust each other to even have the country’s best interests at heart is not a nation that is operating anywhere near optimality, and as we stagger about, Russia can try to take care of its own interests at the expense of ours.

Readers may wonder about Russian motivations, and I can only offer my own badly-informed speculations. It began with the Russian annexation of the Crimea, which the United States under Obama’s leadership protested and then, I think, punished by forcing an oversupply of oil on the oil market (via coordination with Saudi Arabia, I suspect). Remember the glut? It forced the price of oil so low that it pushed the Russian economy, its biggest export being oil, into a recession. That was Obama’s punishment of Putin.

This is Putin’s return volley, an attach on our government system, an attempt to influence the American voter into selecting an inferior candidate (from a glut of inferior GOP candidates, he was one of the most inferior – but lest I be accused of political bigotry, the Democratic bench has not yet produced a candidate for 2020 to inspire confidence, although if Biden were younger I might pay attention) and succeeding, and then the seeding of the government bureaucracy with administrators who have little use for their responsibilities, and judges often rated incompetent, sometimes laughably so.

And that leads to the most important question: Can we recover, as citizens? Can we repair our polarized divides and once again talk to each other respectably and equably? Or is our form of government, and thus our country, doomed? There will be an awful of people who will not accept that they were duped, that Trump is not a wonderful President but is, objectively speaking, failing spectacularly. Part of that can be put down to the ignorance to which we’re all doomed to suffer, in greater or smaller parts, and to deal with that requires a certain humility. Heck, I think I could be wrong about Trump – but based on the informal but objective measures I try to use and talk about, I don’t think so.

But that may be the hardest cliff to climb here, and I don’t know that many people will be willing to do so.

So in this post I asked whether there is a pill that will destroy addiction, and a few pages later in the same magazine, I see scientists have an injection that seems to do just that – in rats. In NewScientist (3 February 2018, paywall), Alice Klein reports:

This story sounds familiar to Iain McGregor at the University of Sydney, who has been studying substance abuse for over 25 years. One of the hallmarks of addiction is a waning interest in human contact and a growing fixation on seeking out the vice – be it alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, prescription opioids, nicotine or any other addictive substance. …

To try to restore the social behaviour of drug users, McGregor set his sights on oxytocin, known as the love hormone or cuddle chemical. Naturally released during social interactions, sex and when women give birth, it helps to strengthen human bonds.

As a starting point, McGregor tried injecting oxytocin into rats that were so heavily addicted to methamphetamine that they would push a lever hundreds of times just to get one hit. “We actually had to limit their intake or they’d overdose and die,” he says. The results were astounding: the oxytocin-treated rats almost completely stopped pressing the lever, a sign they had lost interest in the drug.

However, people are not rats:

Following these promising findings, several small clinical trials were set up in the US to test the potential of oxytocin for treating dependency on alcohol, cocaine, heroin, prescription opioids, marijuana and nicotine. Unlike in rat studies, the hormone couldn’t be injected in large doses into peoples’ bloodstreams or directly into their brains due to safety issues. So to get the oxytocin into the brain, they sprayed it up the nose.

However, the results from these trials so far have been disappointing: intranasal oxytocin relieves drug cravings only slightly, if at all. This is probably because only a small amount of intranasal oxytocin actually makes it into the brain. The large molecule has trouble crossing the blood-brain barrier and is known to break down easily in the circulation.

But progress continues, resulting in the creation of something called SOC-1. In the animal models, SOC-1 also seems to prevent relapse.

Hope on the horizon? Maybe.

The fact that you’re using a cryptocurrency doesn’t mean you’re immune to taxes, as this WaPo / AP report notes:

The new [Bitcoin mining] industry’s relatively sudden growth prompted lawmaker Smari McCarthy of Iceland’s Pirate Party to suggest taxing the profits of bitcoin mines. The initiative is likely to be well received by Icelanders, who are skeptical of speculative financial ventures after the country’s catastrophic 2008 banking crash.

“Under normal circumstances, companies that are creating value in Iceland pay a certain amount of tax to the government,” McCarthy told The Associated Press. “These companies are not doing that, and we might want to ask ourselves whether they should.”

But even more interesting is this:

Iceland is expected to use more energy “mining” bitcoins and other virtual currencies this year than it uses to power its homes. …

The serene coastal town of Keflavik on Iceland’s desolate southern peninsula has over the past months boomed as an international hub for mining bitcoins and other virtual currencies.

Local fishermen, chatting over steaming cups of coffee at the harbor gas station, are puzzled by the phenomenon, which has spawned oversize construction sites on the outskirts of town.

Among the main attractions of setting up bitcoin mines at the edge of the Arctic Circle is the natural cooling for computer servers and the competitive prices for Iceland’s abundance of renewable energy from geothermal and hydroelectric power plants.

And if the countries of the world decide to outlaw cryptocurrencies – or they go under for some other, more organic reason? Do those new energy generators become abandoned buildings, monuments to a failed experiment?

Oh, and I must say I wish they hadn’t used the word ‘mining.’ They should have made something up, rather than piggybacking.

Zaftig:

adjective, Slang.

1. (of a woman) having a pleasantly plump figure.
2. full-bodied; well-proportioned. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “The Venus of Vlakno,” Zach Zorich, Archaeology (March/April 2018):

A 15,000-year-old bone pendant found at Vlakno Cave in Croatia may be a late type of Venus figurine, such as the famous Venus of Willendorf, which dates to more than 24,000 years ago. The Croatian Venus is a more slender and abstract human figure than the zaftig woman of Willendorf.

A Rough Second Quarter for Crime in New Orleans

I saw that on Jeff Asher’s NOLA Crime News blog, and I thought, well, police are kicking ass in New Orleans, aren’t they? Alas:

NOPD released their unofficially official Uniform Crime Report statistics recently for the second quarter of 2017 and the numbers aren’t particularly pretty. Overall crime is up 11.9 percent relative to the first half of 2016 with a 9.2 percent increase in person crime (murder, rape, robbery and assault) and a 12.6 percent increase in property crime (burglary, theft and auto theft).

I did appreciate Jeff’s thoroughness:

It’s important to remember that New Orleans has grown considerably since Katrina. The Census does not provide quarterly population counts, but the New Orleans Data Center provides a monthly population indicator for every month starting in mid-2006 (I guesstimated the population of the first two quarters of 2006 using that data).

Applying the population data enables the calculation of a crime rate per 100,000 households for both person and property crime. This is provided in the below chart which shows the rate of crimes per quarter in the second quarter of 2017 was the worst since the third quarter of 2007 for person crimes and the third quarter of 2008 for property crimes.

Ever wonder about crimes in your neighborhood? LexisNexis may be able to help. The City Of Falcon Heights sent this link to a map of reported crimes. I have no idea if it’s really accurate. Here’s a sample shot:

That cluster of green and white crime markers on the lower left is Rosedale, a local shopping mall, and surrounding environs. The date range is 1/18/18 to today, or about a month.

But this sort of thing is only as valuable as the data is accurate, and to that point I’ve been sitting on a FiveThirtyEight post by Jeff Asher, the title of which gives the game away – Fewer Crimes Get Counted When Police Are Slow To Respond.

For this piece, I analyzed 2016 data from three cities, New Orleans, Detroitand Cincinnati,³ and found that as response times go up, the likelihood that a crime will be found goes down. Indeed, in all three cities, when police took more than two hours to respond, they were over 2.5 times more likely to report they’d found no evidence that a crime had occurred.

Nationwide, about 86 percent of all major crimes reported by the FBI in 2016 were property crimes (theft, auto theft and burglary). Violent crimes (such as murder and armed robbery) were much less common across the country and often received faster police responses in the cities analyzed here. Looking more closely at 911 calls reporting property crime, therefore, can show how longer response times may deflate the number of crimes that get investigated and ultimately reported.

It’s a good article, giving caveats where necessary – it’s worth a read.

In Detroit, only 16 percent of property crime incidents in which an officer arrived in under two hours received a disposition of unfounded, compared to 40 percent of dispositions following police response times of two hours or longer. Similarly, in New Orleans, 13 percent of incidents with a response time of under two hours received an unfounded disposition, compared to 46 percent of incidents with response times longer than two hours.

The problem was less acute but still apparent in Cincinnati’s data, which showed that 4 percent of 2016 property crime reports that were responded to in under two hours received an unfounded disposition, but 18 percent of such crimes where the response time was over two hours got the same designation. These three cities point to long response times as a contributing factor in the rate of recording of property crimes, though it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about the impact long response times have on national crime figures from such a limited sample.

My takeaway? There’s definitely an opportunity for unscrupulous politicians to reduce their police forces and have their official crime statistics drop. That said, the unscrupulous politician is often a hard-on-crime type, so a municipality with some sort of watchdog of the NGO sort would definitely be a hindrance to that politician.

On the flip side, the scrupulous politician who actually increases the police force may also find their official crime statistics rise. However, the rise might imply the police are investigating these crimes, resulting in arrests and prosecutions. Will this deter other potential crimes? Hard to say.

The whole thing seems to turn into a bit of a conundrum, but I suspect that in the unscrupulous scenario, the community would become unhappy with the general crime wave, whether it’s reported or not, and eventually rid themselves of the politician(s) at fault, either through denying them their seat of power – or the ambition of those politician(s) resulting in their promotion to higher seats of power.

Jessica Hamzelou in NewScientist (3 February 2018, paywall) has a bit of a rage at President Trump’s empty declaration of an opioid crisis, and then goes on to explore the problem of addiction a little further.

A similar approach used scare tactics in an attempt to warn teenagers off methamphetamine in the 2000s. The Montana Meth Project increased people’s awareness of the drug, but did nothing to reduce drug use, says Perry Kendall, a provincial health officer in British Columbia, Canada. In fact, the advertising was associated with increased risk of drug use, says Kendall. “The campaign was so over the top that people dismissed it,” he says. Some teenagers might have started using the drug in order not to feel left out, he says.

Wow. Taking drugs just so you don’t feel left out. Yet, a couple of years ago I was talking to an elderly friend of mine who’d lost his soul mate to lung cancer years earlier. The man’s lover had been a heavy smoker during an era in which we know that smoking is a bad habit to have, so I asked my friend why his lover had continued.

Peer pressure, he said. I’m still shocked. So should I really be astonished that some folks would take dangerous drugs just so they didn’t feel left out? Remind me to tell you the story about the supposed TV show test in which I was an audience member and evaluator someday …

Continuing …

Considering that Trump has said “it’s really, really easy not to take [opioids]”, it’s no wonder that public health officials are worried that the current administration might go down the same route.

Efforts in Canada show this is the wrong approach. There, advertising campaigns target people with addiction, offering advice on where and how to seek treatment. What’s more, they don’t paint drug dependence as a moral failing, and so avoid stigmatising people who need help. …

“Treating it as a crime is the worst thing you can do,” says Scott Weiner at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “If we start to recognise it as the disease that it is, we can treat it and get people back on track. If you criminalise it, you take away a person’s chance of a normal life.”

But it’s not a disease as we typically define disease, is it? Most diseases involve pathogens, bacteria and viruses which infect us and make us feel poorly until our immune systems kill the invaders – or we die. Of course, if we stare more closely, things get a bit fuzzier. Spanish flu, for example, didn’t kill humans directly, but rather by causing our immune systems to rev up and destroy our lungs – victims were literally asphyxiated. Or allergies, where often innocent, non-living debris – pollen, pet dander, even just dust – causes a similar, if less-pronounced reaction. Is that a disease? Well, it’s debilitating, but it’s not caused by bacteria or viruses. We theorize that it’s brought on by childhood environments being too clean.

So, like many specialists in the field of addiction, Weiner wants to call this an illness, but for many people, such as President Trump, they see it as a choice, and they’re not that far wrong, now are they? How can it be a disease if it starts with a free will choice to take the drug?

Skipping the argument about juveniles’ brains not being fully developed and how most addicts start young and thus free will is a problematic assertion, there’s an assumption here: that it’s always a choice. But this is a false assumption because these drugs often rewire the brain (perhaps it’s more accurate to say the brain adapts to the drug) so that there’s a craving for that drug, and there’s no known way (I hope someone tells me I’m wrong) to undo that rewiring. One or two shots and your brain is adapted to the drug. And when it’s a legal drug, prescribed by a physician for, say, pain? Is it still free will?

Yet that’s still not an invasion of the body by some pathogen. I think it’s clear that even if we restrict ourselves merely to an urge for precision, a new term is really needed to properly describe the properties of this condition and how it differs from traditional illness. Addiction is an old, worn-out term, so we may need something better. Mal-adapted Brain Disorder might be properly mystifying.

But I will not adhere to the restriction I mentioned, because I have two worries about this confusion of terminology.

First, it confuses the public, leaving them uncertain as to what to consider addiction. Disease? Possibly illicit choices? Moral simpleton? Uncertainty makes it a little harder to develop that public push to find ways to treat this family of conditions.

Second, and more importantly, I worry that this may place unconscious limits on our studies as to how to solve this problem. Many linguists have suggested that our limits on what we can think are directly traceable to our vocabulary, if I may simplify outrageously (I hope I have not misrepresented this position). Scientists, having taken up the position that addiction is a disease, may unconsciously limit themselves to researching therapies related to those already in use for other diseases. The applicability, to my untrained mind, may be uncertain.

A reader remarks about corporate political giving:

There are likely parallels in other industries whose fortunes rise and fall with the trade winds of political priorities. Defense, law enforcement, construction, healthcare, and others come to mind. As an active investor I am directionally indifferent. Unlike Bob Dylan, I am always looking for a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Those industries have close ties to government spending, while the gun manufacturers do not – you’d think.

My conservative friend replies concerning the closed mind. I’ll intersperse comments:

If the media as truth seekers is silly, then why have a free press at all? Is it all so ridiculous to seek a media which transmits the full facts of a situation, and purveys clearly labeled editorial content as well? That stories are told is both undeniable and highly desirable, given how most human minds function, but the best are fully informed by all the facts, and if they suggest a certain point of view over another, they should do so in a manner testable by the common audience.

The reason we have a free press is so we can have free expression, and a free marketplace of ideas. The good ones get traction, the bad ones get rejected. We rely on the good judgement of readers to separate the good from the bad.

And is the ‘good judgment’ rendered in a vacuum? Such was the point of my post – to suggest to the conservative reader that their favorite media may be mis-serving them.

I can buy the free expression argument for free press, but it’s a leap of faith to suggest that, in a vacuum, “The good ones get traction, the bad ones get rejected.” It assumes a natural rationality that does not exist. That’s why I want to pierce the vacuum and suggest that multiple sources of information are necessary for forming good judgments.

The identification of certain past stories as defective and even malevolent, whether they’re from the Fox News of today or by the yellow journalists of WR Hearst encouraging the Spanish-American War does nothing to evaluate the contention under examination; …

… we may fall short, but we should continue to strive for that perfection we so happily envision.

By all means, choose the news source you believe to be pleasing to your idea of “facts” and to what pleases you. That’s what free press is all about. Don’t suggest that some outlets should be censored, and others certified as “correct”. (and by whom?)

Nor am I suggesting that anyone but the people do the (metaphorical) censoring. But I am suggesting that careful evaluation of evidence, such as that provided by Bruce Bartlett, is in order.

However, it’s critical to differentiate between defective and malevolent. The former, so long as it’s recognized as a problem and processes are developed to remediate and remove defective stories, are of limited concern – and if those responses are not undertaken, I should hope the publication is deserted by its readers and soon shutters its doors.

But I worry about the deliberately malevolent stories, as we often see them today. The specialized technician, by which I mean journalist, has the tools to recognize such stories for what they are. Organizations such as Media Matters are in fact specializing such work (although it’s a poor example, as they apparently only watch conservative media, rather than all media, which I would prefer).

I fail to see the point of this separation. You have a right to choose your news sources. So does everyone else. Beyond that, what are you suggesting to “fix” the problem?

That people think more about their sources. When certain sources are deliberately used for attacks on the entire paradigm of free press, when certain services are vilified despite decades or more of honorable service, is it not worth using the free press (an awkward phrase, to be sure, in these days of digital) to suggest to the citizens who seem to be acting in an irrational manner that perhaps they should reconsider?

But the general audience? I honestly belief that the average audience member does not have the capacity to search out and absorb the information necessary to form judgments about media stories. We are not rational creatures, after all, merely creatures capable of rationality; many of us are controlled by our emotions, which can be deliciously played on by stories in the media written by actors who want specific reactions. That these actors are not acting as ethical journalists is not and should not be expected by members of the free press.

I am always disappointed when I see such condescending attitudes. Clearly *I* am smart and discriminating and can properly digest the results of a free press, but the unwashed masses are just not up to the task. Sorry, if that’s true, we should not have voters. Democratic principles are misguided. We should have a wise elite making decisions for us, because those unwashed masses should not be making major decisions, as they currently do.

Ah, yes, everyone’s an expert – or experts suck. I’ve discussed this problem before. Nevertheless, this has little to do with intelligence, and mostly to do with the pressure of time, not to mention lack of interest.

…We (for the most part) believe that our system is best, and so we broadcast it, clearly labeled, and we believe there’s is antithetical to ours. Since then we’ve seen the Soviet Union collapse, but now Russia attempts to meddle in our system without attribution.

Since when does anyone have control of all messages from all people? If our people are the judge of the quality of news gathering, as must be under a free press, why should foreigners be un-free, even hostile foreigners? Who will be the arbiter of who may speak and what he may say – domestic or foreign? When the USA did VOA and Radio Free Europe, we thought our free speech to the captive citizens of the communist world was more than a right. We saw it as a duty to tell them the truth as we saw it. The Soviet Union & pals worked hard to deny us the right to speak to their citizens, as all good totalitarian governments do. Should we become the Soviet Union, restricting the messages our citizens can receive from them? I think not.

Because foreigners, by definition, don’t have the best interests of America at heart. But if we do choose to permit them play in the field of the free press – or have it thrust upon us – how would my reader suggest they be identified as hostile players?

And, incidentally, there was no duty to tell the truth as we saw it. VOA et al were simply part of our quiver of arrows during the Cold War. To go further is to attribute sentimentality to government, a dubious assertion at best.

And, yes, many nations prohibit private American citizens and public American servants from meddling in their politics, as I suspect do we. Whether it’s right or wrong is another question.

I fail to see the difference between “meddling” and “propagandizing”, and “advertising” and “lobbying”. All boil down to speech. We believe speech should be free. We believe that we (Americans) have a right to hear messages from anyone – domestic or foreign. We do not believe that Americans are too stupid to make good judgements. (see above)

What are you suggesting be done?

First, clarify the remark. The reader confuses motivation with mechanism. Each of the four categories implies a separate motivation; that they can boil down to speech is irrelevant.

Second, I’m suggesting Americans work harder on not hearing speech that plays to their biases, and more to hear speech that gives complete facts – even uncomfortable facts. That was the basic point of my post.

…Russian meddling had no motivation for quality, because quality would ill-serve their goals; the audience merely had to be convinced that the “news” is true when it’s not. A malevolent agency backed by government funding is on a different playing field.

So lies backed by a big bullhorn are irresistable? Who decides what is “malevolent”? Speech is speech, and having a free press leaves people free to mislead and propagandize. That’s inescapable.

But it’d be lovely if we were deluding ourselves, no? Not being deluded by outsiders who, inescapably, do not have the best interests of the United States at heart?

• As part of educating the voters and enhancing their diligence, the Mueller investigation is not mis-guided – it’s critical.

The dueling media armed with FOIA should be able to dig up all relevant facts. If not, the FOIA and friends should be fixed. A special prosecutor does not produce an op-ed. A special prosecutor prosecutes – puts people in jail. A case of free speech should not put people in jail.

The very idea that the American electorate is not smart enough, or wise enough, to withstand a little propaganda should be insulting. Somehow, instead, we are little snowflakes totally snookered by those Russians, and our elites spring into action to “protect” us from those nasty Russians. Nonsense!

… old WC also responsible for the Gallipoli Campaign during World War I, an awful disaster for the Allies, so I try not to mistake WC for being particularly wise – just very quotable.

WC was wise. Careful with the Gallipoli history. Not everyone agrees that it was WC’s fault.

On the scale of Gallipoli, fault is always shared. WC saw a lot and thought a lot and had more than one talent. I enjoyed his history of the Duke of Marlborough, for example, although I don’t recall much about it, now (long time ago). Nevertheless, his statement isn’t something I’d base a philosophy on. It leads to a certain complacency. As an engineer, I’d like to minimize the revisiting of dead-ends.

That said, the close reporting on the President, the investigations, the recognition of the closure of the conservative mind and its manipulation by malevolent actors and the attempts to break those closures, this is all part of the Americans trying to do the Right Thing. It’s what I worry about and gnaw on and worry the rest of us might also be attracted to such closed ways of thinking – …

Be careful of the difference between facts and lies versus opinions. “My ideas are always better than yours.” and “I’m right and you have a closed mind” is the kind of thoughtless “tribalism” that the last article decried.

It is very seldom that a narrative does not have some grain of truth. Free expression allows us to explore all the musty corners of the intellectual and factual landscape to divine The Truth. What scares me is those self-appointed elites who declare other peoples opinions invalid rather than disputing them with their own logic and facts. The left is adroit in its demonization of people it finds inconvenient. The derisive sneer is its specialty. This should not become our standard method of political discussion.

I just call the progressives ‘smarty-pants’, but ‘derisive sneer’ is just as good. Did the right adopt the derisive sneer from the progressives, or vice-versa? I’m not sure.

My reader’s concern is my concern – applied mostly to the conservative “fake news”, “climate scientists are in a big [Chinese] conspiracy”, etc But it certainly applies to the left as well, though, as anyone reading The Daily Kos is aware. I’ve commented on my perception of the progressives’ communication skills – or lack thereof. And I don’t think the left, or at least the non-extreme left, has as much to worry me.

Derek Grossman of the RAND Corporation remarks in Lawfare on the Presidential intelligence briefing process, which is interesting in itself. He concludes:

There are reasonable critiques to be made of the story Pompeo told. Many observers in this politically-charged environment may discount or minimize Pompeo’s observations of Trump’s intelligence-consumption habits. They can argue that Pompeo is a Trump loyalist who would never publicly describe his boss in a negative light. And Pompeo’s comment that Trump can absorb intelligence on par with that of a “25-year intelligence veteran”—when he has no prior intelligence or government experience—might be an example of overstatement. Moreover, tensions exist between the administration and the intelligence community over the Russia investigation, particularly between the president and the FBI. And of course, media reports that Trump prioritizes information from “Fox & Friends” or other television and online sources seem to diminish Pompeo’s account that the president takes his intelligence briefing seriously. Any president should trust that analysis from his intelligence community is produced by experts and, as such, is rigorously vetted and undergirded by multiple, credible sources. This may not always be true with media reporting.

It is impossible for outsiders to fully evaluate what goes on inside the Oval Office. But even if details of Pompeo’s account are questionable, there are reasons to think the presidential intelligence briefing is working well. At a minimum, the president is briefed on a fairly regular basis and, regardless of how the information is presented, he appears engaged in discussions with senior staff and the intelligence community about content. Ideally, this process is informing his national security decision making over less authoritative and distracting sources of information, but unfortunately this may not be the case.

Which, if you worry about the safety of the country with regard to its foreign adversaries, is a mixed bag. I know more liberal critics become more frantic about such things; the RAND Corporation is considered non-partisan, which is a valuable attribute when looking for objective evaluations.

Remington, a gun manufacturer, is planning to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, hoping to reorganize and shed death debt [a typo I found & fixed this morning just before publishing]. To some extent, the election of President Trump is to blame, reports Forbes:

While the Remington name is unlikely to disappear, the company’s travails highlight the shifting fortunes of the firearms industry and its fraught position in the nation’s economic and political life. The company’s fortunes took a hit after the election of Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed “true friend” of the gun industry, because Hillary Clinton’s defeat erased fears among gun enthusiasts about losing access to weapons. Sales plummeted, and retailers stopped re-ordering as they found themselves stuffed with unsold inventory.

But this throw-off line from WaPo caught my eye:

But it’s not all gloom and doom for Remington or for the firearm business, in general. Richard Feldman, president of the Independent Firearm Owners Association, told Bloomberg that the company’s problems stemmed from normal “see-saws” in the industry.

“I suspect that if the Democrats make a resurgence this November,” Feldman said, “gun company stocks will come roaring back with them.”

If I were a gun manufacturer, would I be donating money to Republican campaigns – or Democrat’s campaigns?

It’s an example of colliding Sector optimization strategies, no? If you’re of a political mindset, the answer to the above question is straightforward – the party which best exemplifies what you think is good for the country is your probable pick in an ideal world where the candidates themselves are generally acceptable in terms of personal behavior and competency and that sort of thing. But when you’re the CEO of a company? Then, in all probability, your optimizations are focused on making money. In the current political climate, gun owners and enthusiasts spook like a herd of prey animals, as they’ve been fed a diet of gun rights absolutism and, not unjustified, the idea that the Democrats want to implement gun-control. Obama’s in office, the NRA sang the song of confiscation, and they all ran to the gun and ammo manufacturers and bought and bought and bought.

But with Trump in office, that song is a crow’s call. Recent examples of NRA entreaties to their members have been quite laughable.

So if you were a gun & ammo manufacturer, would you give to those who sooth their customers into somnolescence? Or those who cause the customer to soil themselves in their panic?

The circus in the American capital tends to take my eye off of international developments, but this one is a doozy and shouldn’t be missed: Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel, under investigation for corruption, may now be facing indictments on bribery and corruption charges. AL Monitor‘s Ben Caspit has the report:

The police described Netanyahu’s relationship with billionaire Arnon Milchan as “based on bribery.” They determined that on more than one occasion, Netanyahu acted counter to the country’s interests to receive benefits valued at around $280,000. The police similarly described his relationship with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes as one of “give and take,” or in other words, bribery in every sense of the word. In the case of Netanyahu’s relationship with Australian billionaire James Packer, the police recommended that he “only” be indicted for fraud and breach of trust.

The recommendations by the police on Feb. 13 kicked off a political earthquake, rocking Israel’s political and legal systems. Netanyahu has yet to be deposed. The last word must come from Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. Nevertheless, Netanyahu has become a lame duck. Going forward, the slightest injury could end Netanyahu’s political career. Olmert found himself in the same situation right after the Second Lebanon War, in 2006. Right now, the keys to Netanyahu’s political survival lie with Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon. Everything will come to an end once the finance minister decides that holding on to them is more painful than the thought of cutting his successful tenure short over the Netanyahu investigations. It might never happen, but it could also come about much quicker than Netanyahu imagines.

And Ben says there’s more shit flying Netanyahu’s way. I’m going to assume he’ll be out of power soon, no matter how hard he dances.

There’s little point in trying to find lessons between Trump and Netanyahu. The Israeli politician has had more than 12 years of power and has been exceedingly devious, even as he considered Trump to be his ally – until Trump’s random moves left Netanyahu flat footed. Trump is little more than an amateur, with a gift for campaigning, and even that gift may be overwhelmed by his continuing gaffes in the governance department.

The real question is where Israel will go once Netanyahu is gone. Will they continue their rightward slide into something not really resembling a democracy any longer? It’d be lovely to think that the shock of the corruption would make the Israeli citizen reconsider their judgment, but quite honestly it’s easier – and even more sensible – to blame the man, not the ideology.

Therefore, I’m not really expecting any substantive changes in Israeli policy because I expect another Likud victory in the next elections, and simply another face at the helm. Perhaps a more honest politician will take over, but I’m not sure that’ll really help matters all that much.

From Forbes:

© Aquatic Architects Design Studio

Who says food trucks have to be on land? For those yachters, jet skiers and other aquatic adventurers with sudden hunger pangs, here’s a sustainable floating kitchen to satisfy your needs.

Named Aqua Pod, this sustainable floating drive-through with a capacity of up to six staff will serve The Dubai Palm Lagoon, Al Sufouh and Kite Beach of Dubai’s Jumeirah region starting on February 2.

he special project is created and developed under the helm of award-winning architect Ahmed Youssef—Founder of Aquatic Architects Design Studio (AADS) in Dubai—who spent a little bit under a year with his team working on everything from concept development, design development alongside expert marine consultants, and commercial licensing to about four months of construction.

Lloyd Alter on Treehugger is delighted to discover this food truck picks up after its customers – and he likes the design:

If only every food truck picked up after their customers. We have been going on for years about dubious designs in what we called Dubious Dubai, but this isn’t dubious at all, and I hope a version of it comes to Algonquin Park soon.

It makes me smile.

Akiva Eldar discusses the madness going on in Israel in AL Monitor:

On Feb. 5, Rabbi Itamar Ben-Gal of the West Bank settlement Har Bracha was murdered in a terror attack outside Ariel, another settlement. Eliezer Melamed, the rabbi of Har Bracha and founder of the rabbinical seminar located on the outskirts of the Palestinian city of Nablus, delivered a eulogy at his graveside. “Recently, Rabbi Itamar and his wife Miriam spoke about the possibility that one of them would be killed for the sanctification of God’s name, and agreed that they were prepared to courageously rise to the challenge,” Melamed said. This spiritual leader of a significant religious Zionist group, a community rabbi whose salary is paid by Israeli taxpayers, consoled the mourners by saying, “Blessed is one who merits dying for the mitzvah [godly command] of settling the Land of Israel.”

Ordinary people watching four children accompany their father to his grave see a human tragedy. For some, the murder of an Israeli citizen by an Arab is further proof that there’s no partner for peace. For others, it shows that the time has come to vacate the Israeli settlements. Melamed and his disciples view the death of a friend or relative at the hands of a terrorist as the realization of a divine mission. “The best revenge is to keep building, to build another neighborhood and another neighborhood, and to turn Har Bracha into a city,” Melamed exhorted the mourners.

Followed by:

The two-state solution — the only alternative to Israel’s becoming a binational or apartheid state — would involve vacating isolated West Bank settlements such as Har Bracha, Itamar and Havat Gilad to make way for a Palestinian state. However, successive Israeli governments have taught the settlers that every murder of one of their own holds the potential for another outpost, for another obstacle on the road to compromise. For example, following the March 2011 murder of five members of the Fogel family from Itamar, their friends established a new outpost adjacent to the settlement, and the government approved the construction of hundreds of new housing units in the occupied territory. Thirty days after the terror attack, the cornerstone was laid for a rabbinical house of study in Itamar that would bear the name of the head of the family, Ehud Fogel.

To me, it’s slow-motion imperialism. For them, it’s fulfilling some imagined will of God. And if the outposts are eventually pushed down, will there be acceptance? No. It’s the will of God.

And Hell on Earth.

Spaceweather.com has a warning:

On Feb. 12th, the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR2699 exploded–for more than 6 hours. The slow-motion blast produced a C1-class solar flare and hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) almost directly toward Earth. This movie from the Solar and Heliospheric Observtory (SOHO) shows the CME leaving the sun:

[omitted – go see the link, though, it’s a cool movie]

My oh my. Gotta remember to take a look outside at night the next few nights.

Along with simply not liking the taste of fish, I also cringe whenever some medical authority recommends some X helpings of fish a week because I know from reports that a lot of fisheries have shrunk or even collapsed. So this report from Katherine Martinko on Treehugger came as unwelcome confirmation of my concerns:

[fish biologist Laura] McDonnell is not alone in choosing to eliminate seafood from her diet. Famed marine biologist Sylvia Earle will not eat any fish, based on the sharp decline in fish populations she’s observed over a lifetime of work. Similarly, Lori Marino, president of the Whale Sanctuary Project, chooses not to eat fish because, “just like land animals, they are ‘sentient beings and we do not need to eat them to live healthy lives’.” (via NewsDeeply)

Of course,  if we all follow along then either we become land meat eaters – or vegans. If the former, then we push along industries which use up vegetable matter at alarming rates or may put chickens in inhumanely crowded quarters.

There’s too many of us, and we’re eating too much meat. And I’m one of them.