Monthly Archives: July 2019

I just got around to seeing last night’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and his first guest, Jeff Daniels, I think hits the Democratic failures of 2016 on the head: Clinton did not take care of her base. He stated, unvetted by me, that some 80,000+ ballots in Michigan were cast that had “Democrats on the undercard, and blank for the President.” And that Clinton lost Michigan by roughly 11,000 votes. While the entire interview is subtly political, the overt political analysis starts around 5:25.

You don’t need me to evaluate his analysis. But Daniels’ analysis of why those voters, blue collar workers who’ve seen their jobs move overseas, seems dead-on, and I appreciated his remark that the most important people in the corporate hierarchy are no longer workers, but shareholders.

I’ll have to call you back, I just realized there’s a badger climbing up my leg.

Behind Green Lights (1946) is a workman-like examination of corruption in a city, and how its twists and turns can enfold good guy and bad. When private detective William Bard’s body is found in his car in front of the police station, it seems to be an open and shut case, as the fingerprints of Janet Bradley are found on the gun lying next to the body in the car. Bradley, the daughter of a leading mayoral candidate, admits holding the gun, but denies shooting the man, and Police Lt. Carson finds her convincing enough to delay charging her for a couple of hours.

Max Calvert, the owner of a newspaper virulently against Bradley’s father, though, pushes for the charge to be put through, and then, when the corrupt medical examiner, Dr. Yager, notes but does not report to Carson, but does to Calvert, that there’s surprisingly little blood flowing from the gunshot, Calvert orders Yager to get rid of the body. Soon the body is lost, and then found, as the twists become more and more interesting.

Eventually, a solution to the entire mystery is found, a solution no audience member will deduce, but this failure is cushioned by some fine acting by bit characters.

Is this an earth-shaking movie? No. It tells a story, teaches a moral, and does it without a lot of flash. But it’s believable without being preachy, and if the comedic touches are a little thick and even squirmy, there’s more to complain about in the quality of the print than the quality of the story.

It’s tightly told at barely an hour long, so if you have an hour you need to burn, Behind Green Lights can present you with an acceptable story and one more mystery: What the hell does this title mean? My guess, using green light as shorthand for giving permission or giving up information indiscriminately, then it’s a lead-in to the dangers of green-lighting everything without consideration of what ethics or morality might restrict.

But that’s just a guess. Let me know if you have any ideas …

Over the weekend, Rep Elijah Cummings (D-MD) became the latest target of a Twitter rant by President Trump. Here’s one example:

Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 27, 2019

And drew predictable responses. Here’s Benen’s:

With the stunning hypocrisy of Trump spending so much energy condemning those he perceives as critics of the United States, only to turn around and express his disgust for one of the country’s oldest and largest cities?

With the fact that Trump, once again, has presented himself as being president of the United States, but only the parts he likes?

Perhaps it’s the pattern that hurts the most. In early 2017, on the weekend in which Americans recognize the Martin Luther King Day, Trump condemned Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) – who marched alongside MLK – before going after his congressional district as an area that’s “falling apart” and “crime infested.”

Benen thinks it’s all part of a divisive political strategy:

The Rev. Al Sharpton and Gov Larry Hogan (R-MD) in WaPo:

The Rev. Al Sharpton on Monday lambasted President Trump for his attacks on Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) and the majority-black district he represents, calling Trump’s remarks “bigoted and racist.”

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), in a separate radio interview, said the president’s comments describing Baltimore as a “rodent-infested mess” were “outrageous and inappropriate.” But he stopped short of calling them racist.

But I think this is the red cape, with Trump the matador, the bull the liberals and NeverTrumpers – and his GOP cohort, however, reluctant, the crowd in the stands. This is to say, that red cape with incendiary words on them is meant to distract the potentially highly destructive bulls from actually inflicting any damage.

Listen, folks, all you pounding your keyboards in a frenzy, blood in your eyes and strategies all forgotten (been there, done that): STOP CHASING THE CAPE. Sure, his remarks are outrageous. Maybe devote the first, very short paragraph to a quick denunciation of his remark anytime one comes out.

But then don’t move on, but return! Remember Jennifer Rubin’s observations on Mueller’s testimony?

To spend hours of airtime and write hundreds of print and online reports pontificating about the “optics” of Mueller’s performance — when [Mueller] confirmed that President Trump accepted help from a hostile foreign power and lied about it, that he lied when he claimed exoneration, that he was not completely truthful in written answers, that he could be prosecuted after leaving office and that he misled Americans by calling the investigation a hoax — tells me that we have become untrustworthy guardians of democracy.

There’s substantial evidence that President Trump has committed crimes worthy of impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate. Trump wants everyone to be distracted, to chase the latest outrage, rather than return to the substantial wounds, leaking pus, that he’s suffering. Those wounds should be the focus, not his latest gibberish.

And a word to the reporters participating in “Chopper talk,” the rapid-fire Q&A he does in the shadow of Marine One: Every single time one reporter must ask, “Sir, in the face of the evidence Special Counsel Mueller found and reported to the AG, when do you plan to resign from office?”

Just once per session. But every time. Not only will that infuriate him, but it’ll cause that question to echo around the country. Until he can offer up an answer that is neither gibberish nor full of lies, the question should be repeated.

Possibly by a reporter aching to move on to a new assignment, of course.

Does this sound political? Sure it does. But look at it from a free press angle. The free press chases truth, and if it’s not immediately available, they dig after it. The best ones win Pulitzer Prizes^[1]. They are the hounds of democracy, and if someone doesn’t like that, then they need to go back to high school and take Civics again; I have no time for those apologists who will chatter on about it being harassment of the President. Before they can do that, they must address the evidence of his crimes, and that they do not dare do as Mueller and his team appear to have been quite thorough.

That’s why this isn’t political. It’s simply the free press doing its duty. Now it must follow through.

¹ If you think the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism are only handed out to big time newspapers, think again: in 2017 The Storm Lake Times of Iowa took home a prestigious award for editorial writing.

If judicial philosophies interest – or concern – you, Professor Nicholas Bagley of the University of Michigan law school has been out in the wild and collected a specimen of a new species, and reports on it in The Atlantic: Its first prey is the ACA, he says:

The explanation is rooted, I think, in a sort of Know-Nothingism that’s taken hold in some corners of the conservative legal movement. This Know-Nothingism is a cancerous outgrowth of textualism, a method of statutory interpretation to which most Republican-appointed judges now subscribe.

Though I have my quarrels with textualism, its key insight is correct: Close attention to statutory text really is the best way to discern a law’s meaning. As sophisticated textualists understand, however, reading the text doesn’t mean we must ignore what Congress meant to accomplish. To the contrary, as Caleb Nelson (himself a textualist) has explained, “Judges whom we think of as textualists construct their sense of objective meaning from what the evidence that they are willing to consider tells them about the subjective intent of the enacting legislature.”

But, much like evolution, texualism appears to have spawned some dead-end individuals:

The Know-Nothing judge, however, like a 1970s French literary theorist, denies we can ever know what Congress really means to do when it passes a law. And why should we care anyhow? Intentions aren’t laws. If assigning the most literal interpretation to a statute’s text subverts what Congress intended, so be it. The Know-Nothing judge consoles herself with the fable that all she’s doing is applying the law. She’s not an activist. You are.

This is akin to solipsism, the juvenile philosophy that, because there’s no apparent way to prove anyone but your mind exists, one should operate as if the only existent creature is yourself, as the rest is just figments of your imagination.

Bagley’s having none of it. The ACA suit is currently in front of the Fifth Circuit Court:

Maybe the Fifth Circuit judges won’t endorse these Know-Nothing arguments when it comes time to write their opinion. But if they do, they will be willfully ignoring everything we know about the broader statutory language, about Congress’s failed campaign to repeal Obamacare, and about the consolation prize of repealing the mandate.

Because in the hands of a Know-Nothing judge, interpretation is not about fidelity to Congress. It’s a lawyer’s game deployed for partisan ends. Know-Nothing judges may drape themselves in the robes of judicial modesty, but they are activists to the core. And they may decide the fate of health reform.

It’d be interesting to know if judicial procedures have always operated with the knowledge of Congressional intent, thus rendering this ignorance of same to be an untraditional, unconservative approach to the judicial process, or if this is part of the wash of tides of history. While this approach may seem reasonable, when taken into the real-world context that laws are the result of committees working long and hard on, and then the same laws being amended by the efforts of further committees, often separated in time by years and years, it renders the approach quite unrealistic, even ludicrous.

Will it continue? I suspect so. The current conservative mind-set tends to plunge ahead with little reflection on implications. At least until they begin generating ludicrous results – or get themselves impeached out of their chambers.

Beeturia, Hematuria (twofer!):

“I thought, ‘That’s weird.’ I hadn’t eaten beets,” which could cause the temporary discoloration of urine known as beeturia, Hipsher recalled. She had no pain or other symptoms and had never experienced chronic urinary tract infections, which can cause visible blood in the urine known as gross hematuria.”
[“‘Maybe you’re just someone with blood in their urine’,” Sandra G. Boodman, WaPo]


CNN is reporting that the Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, former the Republican Senator from Indiana and lately a target of Trump’s ire, is stepping down (or perhaps was directed to retired) and is to be replaced by Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX):

Dan Coats will step down as the director of national intelligence on August 15, President Donald Trump announced Sunday in a tweet, a departure that marks the most recent chapter in Trump’s tense and puzzling relationship with the US intelligence community.

Texas Republican Rep. John Ratcliffe, who aggressively questioned former special counsel Robert Mueller last week during Congressional hearings involving his report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, will be nominated by the President to replace Coats.

That it was Ratcliffe, who was aggressive with former Special Counsel (and lifelong Republican) Mueller, immediately made me wonder how much of a Trump ally Ratcliffe might be. One good measure is his TrumpScore, which is currently …

I deliberately included the fact that he voted against Trump on the recently passed budget bill, and while a 92% TrumpScore sounds high, I don’t think it’s as bad as it might be. Ballotpedia notes Ratcliffe endorsed fellow Texan Ted Cruz for President, rather than Trump. FiveThirtyEight also notes that Ratcliffe voted against the President on H.J.Res.30 – Disapproving the President’s proposal to take an action relating to the application of certain sanctions with respect to the Russian Federation, suggesting that Ratcliffe’s reputation as very conservative may include a healthy concern about Russia and its proxies. If it matters, here’s his rating from On The Issues:

Given Trump’s inclination to make rapid decisions, he may have watched the hearings and mistook Ratcliffe’s hard questions, motivated by his years as a prosecutor, as making Ratcliffe a trustworthy ally, someone who’ll feed Trump what he wants to hear. If that’s true, then this is a disaster. But it’s not entirely clear to me that’ll be what Ratcliffe will do. If he’s a principled conservative, he may deliver to Trump what he believes is the truth, as told to him by the various intelligence communities under his remit.

And if he doesn’t, we just have to survive until Trump is bounced out on his ass. OK, I’ll retract that “just,” it makes it sound easy.

A reader remarks on my post concerning pharma pollution in Hyderabad, India:

There’s a lot of missing information here. Are they really just making antibiotics there? Other drugs for chronic diseases are more often under patent and/or highly profitable. Does this really have anything to do with our pursuit of health, as the article suggests? Or is that just a red herring, and it’s more about Big Pharma finding yet another way to increase their already obscene profits? In fact, my unresearched opinion is that “cheap meds” from overseas have nothing do with this despicable practice, and more with the captive government we have in this country driving prices and profits up.

… We know that the majority of antibiotics are actually used by industrial agriculture, not humans, for instance. Perhaps these factories in India are producing agricultural antibiotics? “Some 7 million pounds of antibiotics are sold for human use each year, while 29 million pounds are sold for use in animals, mostly food animals.” [2012].

In the limited I have available I’ve been unable to find any studies identifying the types of drugs manufactured in Hyderabad. I did run across this article from 2016 in Ecologist, indicating NHS (presumably Britain’s National Health System) buys drugs, presumably human, from India:

Yet the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has established that firms with a history of bad practice and pollution are supplying the NHS, and environmental standards do not feature in NHS procurement protocols.

New tests on water samples taken outside pharmaceutical factories in India which sell to the NHS found they contained bacteria which were resistant to the antibiotics made inside the plants.

This suggests industrial waste containing active antibiotic ingredients is being leaked into the surrounding environment. Studies have shown how this causes nearby bacteria to develop immunity to the drugs – creating ‘superbugs’ – and that those resistant bacteria then spread around the world.

Responding to the Bureau’s findings, the Department of Health (DoH) said it would consider bringing in new rules for antibiotic factories which export drugs to Britain.

So at least some India-manufactured drugs are used in humans.

I’m not quite sure about the ‘pursuit of health’ angle, but it’s well known that GPs are often chivvied by virus-stricken patients into dispensing useless antibiotics; in fact, I remember going in to the urgent care and getting grumped at by a doctor on the subject, and I had to promise to wait some period of time before filling the prescription, on the assumption that if it was a viral infection, it’d be gone within that period of time.

The point being is that we’re ravenous for good health, even if we insist on not exercising and eating any old bad thing, and so, yes, our appetite for health, not to mention cheap food, drives the problems in Hyderabad.

I regret not finding any studies on just what is manufactured. This is a lot of hand-waving.

Appointment With Murder (1948) follows the somewhat confusing story of a former policeman, now an investigator with an insurance firm, as he pursues two lost Mantegna masterpieces stolen during the recent war. Events become complex as he runs across an Italian forger who claims to have painted the subject paintings, an art world denizen who swears they are authentic, and the woman who owns the art gallery around which much of the action centers.

Mantegna’s St. Sebastian, 1480; panel; Musée du Louvre

There are a couple of good twists, but when the best character in the movie, the forger Donatti, is murdered early in the story, the air goes out of the balloon and it’s difficult to connect with and wonder about the other characters. Throw in some dubious stage combat, the world’s worst toupee and an accent nearly as bad, and it was fortunate this was roughly an hour long, especially when the audio started to go bad.

Definitely for those hours that would otherwise be wasted by staring, drooling, at a wall.

With the exit of May and the entrance of Johnson, aka Boris, comes the continuation of the evolution of arguably our best and closest ally in Europe, and so where they go is of importance all out of scale with their size. There have been concerns about Johnson’s intellect, temperament, and inclinations, but, at least to the last, this is Andrew Sullivan’s observations in the third part of his weekly tripartite entry on New York Mag:

He has backed this up with a new Cabinet whose members unanimously support a no-deal Brexit if that’s what it takes. But he has also signaled some liberal Toryism by assembling the most ethnically diverse cabinet in British history. Boris’s No. 2 is Sajid Javid, from a Muslim family; Priti Patel, from an Indian immigrant family, is home secretary, another one of the big four posts; Munira Mirza, from a Pakistani family, will head the policy unit at No. 10; Indian-born Alok Sharma will be in charge of international development; the Sierra Leonean–British James Cleverly is a minister without portfolio. All of these members of ethnic minorities say their first inspiration in politics was Margaret Thatcher. Johnson also announced that he would guarantee all 3.2 million E.U. citizens working in the U.K. an unqualified right to stay indefinitely, grant amnesty to 50,000 more undocumented migrants, and rule out bringing immigration down to below 100,000 a year. This mix of “one nation” Toryism and hard-line Euro-skepticism has temporarily outfooted his enemies.

Whether or not you like Johnson, you have to hope he can pull something off, as a collapse of the Brits would make the American job much harder – and endanger the future of democracy, while strengthening the hand of the authoritarians.

Good luck to BJ. I wonder how he’d react to being called Beedge?

A small asteroid, termed a city-killer, surprised astronomers by passing by yesterday, quite closely. From All-Sky Automated Survey (ASAS):

This is the video of the close encounter of Asteroid 2019 OK we have been Twitting all day with the Earth: https://t.co/bjT7uhQJuO pic.twitter.com/3e4UyPcdPl

— ASAS-SN (@SuperASASSN) July 25, 2019

ASAS seems more interested in supernovae, but I think a hit from this asteroid would have been bright even for them. From WaPo:

[Alan Duffy of the Royal Institution of Australia] said astronomers have a nickname for the kind of space rock that just came so close to Earth: “City-killer asteroids.” If the asteroid had struck Earth, most of it would have probably reached the ground, resulting in devastating damage, Brown said.

“It would have gone off like a very large nuclear weapon” with enough force to destroy a city, he said. “Many megatons, perhaps in the ballpark of 10 megatons of TNT, so something not to be messed with.”

In 2013, a significantly smaller meteor — about 20 meters (65 feet) across, or the size of a six-story building — broke up over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk and unleashed an intense shock wave that collapsed roofs, shattered windows and left about 1,200 people injured. The last space rock to strike Earth similar in size to Asteroid 2019 OK was more than a century ago, Brown said. That asteroid, known as the Tunguska event, caused an explosion that leveled 2,000 square kilometers (770 square miles) of forest land in Siberia.

Another reason – and counting – to support efforts to detect NEOs, Near Earth Objects, before they end up hitting us.

Beseech:

to ask for something in a way that shows you need it very much:
Stay a little longer, I beseech you! [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Fact-checking lawmakers’ claims during the Mueller hearings,” Salvador Rizzo and Glen Kessler, WaPo:

Former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon told investigators the purpose of the meeting was not a job interview but to have Mueller “offer a perspective on the institution of the FBI,” according to the special counsel’s report, and “although the White House thought about beseeching Mueller to become Director again, he did not come in looking for the job.”

I freely confess the thought of the Trump White House “beseeching” Mueller to take the job of Director of the FBI amuses me quite a lot.

Paul Waldman comments in The Plum Line concerning GOP refusal to pass a bill aimed at securing elections throughout the United States – not because they disagree with methodologies, but because they believe, or at least say, it’s partisan:

The legislation to which McConnell refers, the one that passed the House, is pretty straightforward. It requires voter-verifiable paper ballots and voting machines that don’t connect directly to the Internet, so that recounts can be done accurately and there’s less vulnerability to hacking. It gives states money to secure their systems. It instructs the Election Assistance Commission to do a study to determine optimal ballot designs to minimize voter confusion and errors.

You wouldn’t think there’s anything there that would particularly advantage one party over another. But that’s only if you didn’t know how voting really works in this country.

That’s because so much of what plagues our election system works to the advantage of Republicans, in part because their voters tend to be older and wealthier, and in part because of all the effort Republicans have put into erecting obstacles in the path of Democratic-leaning constituencies attempting to vote, not to mention the gerrymandering that makes Republican votes worth more and the electoral college that does the same.

Or it may be even worse. Long time readers will recall there have been hints, from non-fringe observers and experts, that voting machines have been compromised – even during primaries.

If these hints of electoral fraud turn out to be true – another case of projection by President Trump, incidentally – it’d constitute one of the biggest scandals in United States history. It’d also explain the ridiculous behavior of Senator McConnell as well, rendering him not an arbitrary and capricious Democrat opponent, but someone protecting the jobs of himself and his GOP colleagues. As a citizen, I prefer to believe McConnell is a crass, corrupt politician, rather than a flying nutcase.

I see that Europe is getting a little warm. Here’s Climate Reanalyzer’s map of temperature variances from averages:

The legend, unfortunately clipped, indicates that the red over Europe is a +10°C (nearly +20°F) over normal, if I understand Climate Reanalyzer properly. Nor does it appear that Scandinavia is far behind. Paris is reported to be setting a new all-time record of nearly 109°F. I also see Antarctica looks a bit warm. Add in Siberia, where there’s been some recent concern about releases of frozen methane deposits.

And CO₂ trends?

The relentless upwards march continues.

I missed this gem from old-line conservative and Never-Trumper Jennifer Rubin in WaPo concerning the Mueller testimony:

I worry that we — the media, voters, Congress — are dangerously unserious when it comes to preservation of our democracy. To spend hours of airtime and write hundreds of print and online reports pontificating about the “optics” of Mueller’s performance — when he confirmed that President Trump accepted help from a hostile foreign power and lied about it, that he lied when he claimed exoneration, that he was not completely truthful in written answers, that he could be prosecuted after leaving office and that he misled Americans by calling the investigation a hoax — tells me that we have become untrustworthy guardians of democracy. …

Trump reads from the same hymnal of disinformation and recites the same slander of democratic institutions that 20th-century totalitarians deployed, yet too many in the media call him the “winner” because Mueller did not pass their ridiculous tests (e.g. add new information, persuade Republicans).

It’s a beautiful opinion that cuts right through the fluff and gets to the heart of the matter.

Unfortunately, for all that I admire her pithy, stop-the-nonsense piece, I fear too many people have given up on rational thinking, and instead look to presentation to tell them what to think – and Mueller’s presentation was not as compelling as it might have been. Whether he was being lawyerly, overwhelmed with information, or even ill, as he struck me, he didn’t give a compelling story about the morally depraved man whose desperate pursuit of money endangers this country. Perhaps he didn’t have that story to give, perhaps the Republican interlocutors were too good at breaking up the story, or maybe he’s not up to a performance like that.

But a lot of people are going to read the performance, not the facts, and proceed from there.

Not as much detail as I might have liked.

Being a working dude, I didn’t have the time to sit and watch Mueller testify; however, I have been working my way through the transcript. But just is interesting is how partisan pundits are reading the testimony. Liberal Steve Benen of Maddowblog has not, insofar as I can tell, remarked upon some of the lapses present in the testimony, concentrating on what he considers the remarkable testimony, and Trump’s reactions to it. See here and here and here for some examples. The impression I gain from reading Benen’s material is that Trump’s becoming increasingly desperate. The material present in the testimony suggests he can be criminally tried if he loses his re-election, and, meanwhile, he continues to lose on multiple fronts unrelated to the testimony, such as building the wall (not an inch constructed), and not revealing his tax returns.

National Review conservative contributor Kevin Williamson sees the testimony as evidence that impeachment is impossible:

The Mueller circus offers us one lesson and one lesson only: The Democrats still believe they can defeat the star of The Apprentice in a reality-show election.

Ain’t nobody gonna beat Donald J. Trump in a goat rodeo.

The Democrats are running a scorched-earth, high-drama spectacle campaign against President Trump, who specializes in scorched-earth, high-drama spectacles and who today has the power of the presidential bully pulpit to amplify the drama and magnify the spectacle. Put another way, the Democrats apparently are intent on fighting Trump on his own ground, challenging him to a duel in the one thing he’s actually pretty good at: putting on a show.

David Thornton on the theo-conservative The Resurgent has an interesting observation:

For those of us who were unable to watch the hearings but were able to hear parts of it on the radio, Mueller sound calm, collected and careful. However, those who watched the hearings on television thought that Mueller underperformed. Much of the difference seems to be a question of style versus substance.

In the hours that followed, Republicans attacked Mueller’s style as well as his refusal to answer questions about the Steele dossier, even though his opening statement made clear that he would not comment on ongoing matters or privileged information from within the Justice Department. This is consistent with Mueller’s public statement in May in which he said that any testimony would not go beyond his office’s written report.

Mueller’s grueling testimony before two committees seemed to largely consist of Democrats baiting him to attack President Trumpand Republicans attacking the Russia investigation vicariously through him and chortling when he failed to show that he had every passage of his two-volume report memorized. Mr. Mueller didn’t give either side what it wanted, parsing his words carefully as lawyers tend to do.

As a software engineer, I sympathize with the need to parse statements carefully. I fall into the third group Thornton doesn’t mention: a reader. I’m only part way into the morning testimony, and so far Mueller seems a little under-prepared. This, too, is theo-conservative Erick Erickson’s observation:

Bob Mueller may be credible by reputation, but not by delivery. Trading messages yesterday with senior Democrat campaign operatives, even they agreed that Mueller did the Democrats more harm than good. They were hoping for some very clear statements and, while they got them, they were overshadowed by Mueller’s performance and his deflection of questions. Put bluntly — Bob Mueller seemed old and tired and ill prepared for the congressional hearing. It left people wondering if Mueller had even read his report.

Major Garret, CBS News Chief White House Correspondent, stated on the 24 July 2019 CBS Evening Newscast that he felt the testimony, summarizing now, was a disaster. However, I noted in his work history a preponderance of conservative news organizations present, such as Fox News, so I have to take that into account. Without, at the time, having begun reading the testimony, his language struck me as the sort of someone stating a desired conclusion, rather than an observed fact.

Back on National Review, apparent cheerleader Michael Brendan Dougherty believes the Democrats have stepped in a hole:

All along, Democrats were hoping the special counsel would do their dirty work. It’s the same mistake all of Trump’s opponents have made.

Toward the end of today’s long hearings, special counsel Robert Mueller struggled to find even the word “conspiracy” on his lips. Instead of drama, the hearings amounted to a recitation and endless reiteration of the stock phrases: no collusion, no exoneration. No interference from the Justice Department, and no charge of obstruction. That’s just the policy. “The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed,” Mueller said.

It’s really a ridiculous remark to make. Trump has been caught in lies by judges, who then have punished him for it. He lost the popular vote, his legislative agenda is in ruins, as are most of his promises, judiciary nomination exception duly noted. I find Dougherty so hard to believe I didn’t bother to finish the article.

Of course, the problem is reading partisan pundits can be misleading. Thornton seemed ambivalent, but didn’t say a whole lot. So where does a reader who’s more interested in analysis than cultish mumbo-jumbo go for an evaluation? In this case, it’s hard to think of any truly third-party, disinterested observers.

But I think the Lawfare analysis is interesting, as their angle is both scholarly and concerned with national security. Here’s the crew opining on the important factors of the testimony. After some performance-related disappointments, they get onto the meat of the exercise:

Yet Mueller’s testimony, notwithstanding the atmospherics, was a productive exercise. Over the course of the day, he seemed to gain confidence and by the end managed to have some genuinely moving exchanges with key members on important issues. He proved sharper, and more forthcoming, about matters directly related to President Trump in the afternoon Intelligence Committee hearing than he did in the morning before the Judiciary Committee. Perhaps he had better command over the subject matter of Russian electoral interference, which dominated the second half of the day, than he did over the discussion of obstruction that dominated the first half. Perhaps it was just his getting used to the high-pressure setting of public testimony after years out of the spotlight. But by the end of the Intelligence Committee hearing, he was offering thoughts and views that went ever-so-slightly beyond the four corners of the report itself. And they are thoughts and views every American should pause over.

An important note about what is being established in the legislative record:

One notable feature of the day was that the Republicans essentially accepted the assertions of the Mueller report as factual. By and large, they did not seek to contest the facts Mueller reported, but rather attacked alleged bias and the legal significance of the facts in the document. One of the functions of the report was to establish a common set of facts, and today’s hearing—in its own peculiar way—suggests that it has done that, at least to a point. The Republican members’ questions did not seem to doubt that McGahn was telling the truth and that Trump was lying. They accepted that Trump had asked Corey Lewandowski to get Sessions to unrecuse. While they fought on other matters, they didn’t contest the factual ground that Mueller has staked out.

A possible future tactic is to accuse the Republicans of supporting a liar, and that they have acknowledged exactly that.

My own reading has been limited, but one thing I’ve noticed is that the Republicans seemed to be tuned in to using a tactic in which they’d spend most of their 5 minute slots to raise irrelevant issues, and then with time running out, they’d make some accusation – often outlandish, as Committee chair Rep Nadler called them on time, thus leaving Mueller with no time to reply. Combined with his reluctance to speak, it left some interesting remarks unanswered, and I think that was unfortunate.

I haven’t made it to the Intel committee as of yet.

We’re putting one over on this audience!

Travelers on a trans-Pacific flight have an unfortunate crash that kills all but one member of the flight crew, but leaves the passengers unharmed, if a bit flustered. Washing up on a beach, they soon happen on the inhabitants – an American, Jim Taylor, and a Chinese, Ping, living quietly together. It’s a veritable Sinners in Paradise (1938), because everyone has a secret, it seems – or at least a sin.

Soon enough, the passengers discover there’s a boat available, and lean on Taylor to use it to rescue them. Taylor caves to the pressure and, because of the limitations of the boat, constructs a plan for conveying the passengers some thousand miles to inhabited land. Before he can implement his plan, though, two of the passengers, competing salesmen for ammunition suppliers intent on getting to China in order to supply either of the two sides with ammo, hijack the ship and fire on the other survivors, killing the one innocent in the group, an old lady who was going to China to visit her son.

There’s more to it than that, and it zips right along, but because no time is spent letting us bond with any character in particular, it’s all fairly pain-free and dull. Unless you’re a completist for one of these actors, I wouldn’t bother with this one.

Nasturtium.

I’m not sure.

And someone else’s lovely tiger lilies.

As a homeowner who hesitates to spend the dollars to add on to my home, I must say I find this tidbit in AL Monitor’s weekly email concerning Washington lobbying intimidating:

Saudi Arabia began building the planned $500 billion city from scratch earlier this year, but its future remains in doubt. Several members of Neom’s board withdrew after Khashoggi’s murder in October, and the crown prince himself reportedly admitted to a business delegation that he expected “no one” to invest in the project “for years.” Teneo is notably tasked with helping to “rebuild and recalibrate Neom’s advisory board over time to ensure the organization has the right advisers and advocates.” (The advisory board includes Andrew Liveris, the former chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical, who is a senior adviser at Teneo).

The “crown prince” refers, of course, to Mohammad bin Salman, first in line for the throne of Saudi Arabia, better known as MBS, and associated with the murder of WaPo columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Whether or not this new city is needed or not, this sure looks like the 33 year old MBS is trying to salt away an heritage on the same order as Pharaoh Akhenaten, who notably built the city of Akhetaten as part of his effort to discard the old religion of Egypt and replace it with a worship of the Sun. While I think the analogy is a little stretched even at this point, it’s worth noting that Akhenaten was, post-reign, erased from Egyptian history by new dynasties; MBS’ ambition may be his undoing, as it doesn’t appear his association with the murder of Khashoggi has placed his eventual succession to the throne in any danger.

And that sure is a lot of money.

An example of a challenge to the cultists (and the rest of us) pops up in the pages of WaPo:

A network of out-of-state political consultants, secret donors and activists with close ties to President Trump is behind an effort to change the Florida constitution to explicitly state that only citizens may vote in elections, a measure that would amplify the issue of immigration in the 2020 battleground state. …

The exact legal effect the amendment would have remains unclear. While federal law explicitly bars noncitizen voting, the language in the Florida constitution — like that of many states — says that “every” citizen who is 18 may vote. The proposed amendment would change the language to say “only” a citizen may vote.

To which I mumbled, Sounds silly enough. Some political maneuvering, no doubt. But wait, there’s more:

Updating the constitutional language is necessary to challenge any future local laws that allow noncitizens to cast ballots, he said. “It needs to be in the constitution,” [John Loudon, chairman of Florida Citizen Voters,] said. “You have to be a citizen to vote.”

Noncitizens can cast ballots in local elections in about 10 Maryland towns or cities, such as College Park, and in local school elections in San Francisco and Chicago. Some Massachusetts towns also have passed resolutions supporting such laws. Supporters say immigrant voting, which was permitted in much of the United States through the 19th century, helps promote civic participation among all residents.

And then there’s GOP political strategist Tim Mooney:

Mooney cited the number of local jurisdictions that are considering expanding voting rights to noncitizens, such as Portland, Maine.

“Leftist activists have termed noncitizen voting ‘the newest civil right,’ ” he said, adding, “How is this possible? Citizen Voters wants every state to pass the Citizen Voters Amendment.”^[1]

Clearly, this is an attempt to use nationalism to stir up the Republican base, and that’s very unfortunate because this sounds like an issue that could use a good discussion. After all, what is the point of citizenship?

It varies from location to location, doesn’t it? In some places, it just means you live here and owe taxes, and maybe we’ll defend you next time the insurgents come. Other places, like the United States, it can mean much more: the right to representation in local, state, and national governments, the right to Social Security, the right to sign up with the military services, even the right to become an elected member of government.

And the right to vote?

It may be worth enumerating all the problems that might pop up if the citizenship requirement is removed. Let me be paranoid, way out on the extreme, just to start, and then we’ll move towards more likely problems:

1. The possibility of the flooding of localities with non-citizens who have a substantially different agenda than might be desirable for those localities. That is, an invasion of hostiles whose weapon is the vote. Sure, that’s paranoid. Really paranoid. But it’s not impossible.
2. It devalues the entire notion of being a member of the nation. Millions of immigrants over a couple of centuries – much to the dismay of the American Indians – have gone through varying amounts of work and stress to earn their citizenship, and part of that citizenship is the right to vote. The vote is the passport to participation in American society, and to make it worth so little – near nothing – is dispiriting.
3. This may have strategic consequences for the Democrats. The Democrats would like to think they have  a coalition of many groups and ethnicities, but one of the largest, the Hispanics, have shown signs of leaning towards stronger enforcement of immigration laws. I suspect this is a case of “we did the work to earn citizenship, why shouldn’t they?” It’s a valid and strong question.

Now, I’m not here to come to a final conclusion on the question. I’m here to suggest that if the Democrats react to this Florida Constitutional Amendment by suggesting, in blind counter-reaction, that citizenship should be passed out like peanuts, we’ll be missing out on a valuable debate. The Democrats should not permit themselves the lazy luxury of simply opposing everything the Republicans want. They must give it a good debate – and, occasionally, rise above petty jealousies and agree with the Republicans.

Even if the Republicans are blindly unable to do that themselves.

The strategic realities of not doing so may cripple them.

¹ This is known as strategic incredulity, and is a signal, often fake, that the position being criticized is so out in left field that it’s over the wall and shouldn’t even need discussion. Such a critical approach is often a signal that the critiquers are trying to hide something, and often persuade me to look deeper than I might otherwise look.

Ya gotta love the little hats. I’m sure it marks them as Generals, but to Western eyes…

In some ways, The 14 Amazons (1972) is a quintessential war movie, driven by collective character rather than the requirements of war. The Yang family, the embodiment of a war-like clan in service to the Emperor, is finally defeated on the field of battle, and 14 of the leaders killed. Back home, when the wives are informed of their deaths at the hands of the barbaric and dishonorable invaders from West Hsia, they resolve to bring their own not inconsiderable battle skills to bear on the killers of their husbands, but find they must recruit their own army as the Minister of War refuses to back them.

They set out to wage war, and find the tides of war wash thick with blood of both enemy and friend. This story does not shy away from disposing of many of the fourteen widowed wives, but few go down without earning their payment for the trip to the afterlife. Without going into too much detail, the story didn’t hesitate to have plans go awry, as they must in wartime, and depend on the improvisational skills of the leaders when faced with setbacks. Eventually, the king and his sons are cornered and killed, but not at no cost.

The battle scenes are, I think, standard for this sort of movie, which is to say that sometimes they go on for far too long, and appreciating the finer points of the tactical moves that both sides employ is often, but not always, a lost cause. But I enjoyed the innovative approach to bridging a chasm, and the use of a river is, I suppose, classic but effective.

But there are too many characters to become attached to any particular one, while the bad guys are really rather awful. I also noticed the bad guys are, per usual for Chinese war movies (or wuxia, as I see Wikipedia calls it, or “martial heroes”) and kung fu movies, very difficult to kill. Are they endowed with super powers, while the good guys snuff it on a simple spear thrust? Of course, sometimes we see the same thing in Hollywood films, I suppose, but it almost seems to be a requirement of wuxia.

If this sort of thing is to your taste, you’ve probably already seen it, but see it if you haven’t. It’s fairly epic, and the theme of Never give up! is greatly appreciated. But if you’re not into semi-mystical battle scenes, you may want to give this one a skip.

From Andrew Sullivan:

The way to fight [Trump’s use of white panic] is to highlight his extremism, to show America that mass immigration can be controlled humanely, and aim for the center. But Trump’s rhetoric makes this emotionally impossible for many Democrats who are triggered and appalled by this man’s depravity. This polarizing dynamic all but guarantees a Democratic nominee further to the left on cultural and racial issues than any in recent times, if only to balance the emotional intensity of the Trump base. Our politics has thereby become a kind of tribal Twitter war, a non-discourse in which arguments almost instantly reduce themselves to bigotry, insults, ad hominem attacks, slurs, and deepening intransigence. It is becoming a crude racial battle for power, each side doubling down further and further, rallying their bases with racial rhetoric, reaching a climax in base mobilization in 2020. Democrats may be right that in the long run, in a fast-diversifying America, this kind of white nationalism has an expiration date. And given Trump’s anemic ratings, maybe a landslide in 2020 against him with the right candidate is still possible.

One of the most difficult challenges facing any Trump opponent is to separate the man from his proposals, even those that are throwaways. Why? Because, ideally, proposals exist on their own terms, and should be evaluated as such. When two groups become vociferously opposed to each other, otherwise notable proposals become little more than targets of opportunity. An example, perhaps the only such, of a possibly fine proposal from President Trump was his suggestion, in his United Nations speech that evoked so much laughter, that investigating and helping those nations from which immigration to the United States is originating might be an effective approach to drastically lessening that immigration, and not, by implication, this “the fox is in the henhouse” tactics of walls and mass deportations. As long-time readers of this blog know, I have little use for Trump or the GOP that elected him, but on the issue of immigration, I agree with him on this strategy: what is going on in Honduras and Guatemala and other origin countries is of critical importance to resolving the problem^[1].

More generally, this entire pro-Trump cult vs anti-Trump cult has a negative impact on our entire political culture in the sense that proposals are no longer receiving evaluation without their political context stripped; that is, the first thing the cultists are doing is asking, Who proposed this?, and then reacting accordingly.

It’s dumb. The GOP has been doing it since at least the beginning of the Obama Administration, in the person of the incompetent Senator Mitch “Obama will be a one-term President!” McConnell (R-KY); I suspect political historians will point at Representative Newt Gingrich (R-GA) as the true originator of blind political cultism. Now I worry, especially when reading The Daily Kos, that this canker sore has spread to the Democrats.

But the real problem is the “us vs. them” attitude engendered by Trump, his base, and the GOP. Fighting against it is a difficult requirement of being a political adult, especially given the lack of respect Trump has for the critical political procedures, institutions, and traditions of this country.

¹ Not that I took Trump to be serious since, and I have heard nothing more from the conservatives since that speech.

At least when it comes to information and open-mindedness. Here’s David Epstein in WaPo:

This should not be entirely surprising. University of Pennsylvania psychologist Philip Tetlock made a similar finding in a 20-year study that tested the ability of experts to make accurate predictions about geopolitical events. The results, in short, showed that the average expert in a given subject was also, on average, a horrific forecaster. Their areas of specialty, academic degrees and (for some) access to classified information made no difference. Some of the most narrowly specialized experts actually performed worse as they accumulated credentials. It seemed that the more vested they were in a worldview, the more easily they could always find information to fit it.

There was, however, one subgroup of scholars that did markedly better: those who were not intellectually anchored to a narrow area of expertise. They did not hide from contrary and apparently contradictory views, but rather crossed disciplines and political boundaries to seek them out.

Tetlock gave the forecasters nicknames, borrowed from a well-known philosophy essay: the narrow-view hedgehogs, who “know one big thing” (and are terrible forecasters), and the broad-minded foxes, who “know many little things” (and make better predictions). The latter group’s hunt for information was a bit like a real fox’s hunt for prey: They roam freely, listen carefully and consume omnivorously.

And the foxes are much better at forecasting than the hedgehogs, even within the hedgehogs’ discipline. We’ve seen a report like this before here, and it does remain a fascinating subject, doesn’t it? I have to wonder if part of the problem is an emotional attachment by the experts to their particular area of expertise, such that, even unconsciously, they incline their forecasts such that their area of expertise remains important and foremost, when perhaps it diminishes.