Monthly Archives: October 2019

It’s all about the butts:

Apparently that’s authentic, and it’s not uncommon to have a cat licking its butt in medieval art. More here at Sad And Useless, and thanks to my Arts Editor.

And it appears the GOP has walked right into the Speaker’s trap: as the resolution affirming the impeachment inquiry passes 232 (232 Democrats, 0 Republicans) to 196 (194 Republicans, 2 Democrats), with 4 not voting (3 Republicans, 1 Democrat).

You’ll hear a lot about polarization from third party analysts and about the allegedly illicit nature of the inquiry from the Republicans.

But here’s what it really comes down to:

The Republicans lack the natural patriotism required to protect the Republic.

Real patriots and leaders would have voted for the inquiry resolution, because that’s all it is. It’s not an impeachment vote. Much like the Merrick Garland debacle, the Republicans don’t even want to deal with the issue, despite the multiple offenses, alleged by the Democrats and the Special Counsel and the White House officials now giving depositions. They don’t want to even have the opportunity to affirm the innocence of their leader, despite all the evidence, just as they didn’t want to have to vote against Judge Garland, who came with recommendations from Republicans.

This absurd, absolutist loyalty to such a damaged and abusive President is the end result of the toxic team politics. This post becomes more applicable than ever to the terrible error of absolute and unending loyalty to the party and all of its apparatchiks.

And, in that sense, I suppose the Republicans never really had a chance with Pelosi holding the whip. She knew what they would do, and set the pitfall accordingly. Now she need only persuade the independent segment of the electorate that this does, indeed, constitute pure anti-patriotism.

In an update on the coal industry in Trump’s America, the number of coal companies to file for bankruptcy YTD is now up to five:

Murray Energy Corp., the private coal giant whose founder pushed the Trump administration for an overhaul of what it called “anti-coal” environmental policy, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Tuesday.

It’s the fifth coal company to land in bankruptcy court this year, in a rapidly shrinking industry that’s being squeezed out of the U.S. power market by cheaper options such as natural gas, solar and wind power.

As noted earlier, the coal industry is reaching the end of its rope, and it’s incumbent on the government to take note and … not save it. I don’t say that because it’s the free market thing to do, because we’re not talking about a free market when various energy sources have notoriously been getting government support for years, but because of the environmental concerns of powering a civilization overpopulating itself. Tomorrow’s generations do not deserve more damage inflicted on the environment upon which they will depend just because that would mean corporate survival for coal mining companies.

But the government should step in:

The legal maneuver also could imperil the solvency of a major pension fund that covers tens of thousands of coal miners and has renewed calls for the federal government to step in and help support the retirement payments.

“We’re talking about 82,000 miners who are going to lose their pensions, and we’re fighting this,” Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), whose state is home to large Murray Energy operations, said in a radio interview on West Virginia MetroNews on Tuesday.

And this is what the country is about – taking care of each other. I’d like to see the government step forward and keep those pensions funded.

On Monday of this week, the House Democrats, led by Speaker Pelosi, announced that there would be a vote for concerning the next phase of the impeachment inquiry. From the letter sent to the members of the House:

This week, we will bring a resolution to the Floor that affirms the ongoing, existing investigation that is currently being conducted by our committees as part of this impeachment inquiry, including all requests for documents, subpoenas for records and testimony, and any other investigative steps previously taken or to be taken as part of this investigation.

This resolution establishes the procedure for hearings that are open to the American people, authorizes the disclosure of deposition transcripts, outlines procedures to transfer evidence to the Judiciary Committee as it considers potential articles of impeachment, and sets forth due process rights for the President and his Counsel.

We are taking this step to eliminate any doubt as to whether the Trump Administration may withhold documents, prevent witness testimony, disregard duly authorized subpoenas, or continue obstructing the House of Representatives.

Nobody is above the law.

Naturally, the Republicans, who’ve been railing about the inquiry’s use of private depositions (as is normal in police investigations and previous impeachments), called for a vote on it (none are necessary, as they well know), and, in some cases, Administration officials who refused to obey the lawful orders and subpoenas issued by the House, are now celebrating a faux-victory, Representatives (there’s so many to pick from), Senators (such as Mark Meadows) and the President alike.

They should all be shaking in their shoes, instead.

Speaker Pelosi, she who, with Senator Schumer, bested Trump easily during the national shutdown, is hunting Republican scalps. She’s already demonstrated her command of tactics, as we saw. Now she and her colleagues in the Democratic House leadership have gathered enough information. Not necessarily to convict the President in the Senate, though, but to put the Republican’s nuts in a nutcracker.

Because now they will be faced with the opportunity to vote on the inquiry, and anyone’s who is interested in, or concerned about, American politics will be paying attention.

If the Republicans vote for the inquiry, the Republican base, still infatuated with President Trump, will take note and try to evict them from their seats.

If they vote against, the independents, the deciding force in many districts, will take note and vote against them.

The only Republicans who won’t be too worried are those that have already announced their retirement. There’s more than a couple of them, especially from Texas.

And then, for the Republican Senators, comes a trial in which they will face a similar, devastating question.

I believe Speaker Pelosi thinks that the conviction trial will fail, but in the 2020 elections the true fruits of the impeachment inquiry will be reaped as more House Republican seats turn Democratic, the Senate Republicans are reduced, possibly to minority status, and quite possibly the Presidency will be in Democratic hands as well, as the trial in the Senate terribly humiliates the President, exposing his chronic corruption and incompetency.

And if she scores a victory in the Senate trial, so much the better.

Erick Erickson of The Resurgent suggests we’re seeing the weaponizing of information:

I am sure people are behind these decisions, but I am also sure they know that stuff like this gets clicks. Clicks generate traffic. Traffic generates revenue. Hate clicks generate the most traffic and so the most revenue. News sites are now specializing in outrageous content that gets the most clicks and that most often is caused by hate clicks.

Those hate clicks then get shared online, fed into algorithms, and recirculated to increase the hate and increase the traffic. Clickbait headlines compound the issue and for good measure outrageous videos and cute puppies pile on too.

I have been thinking a lot about all of this after seeing two separate and unrelated, but very connected, pieces this past Friday. The first is this katherine Miller essay at BuzzFeed on how the 2010s broke our sense of time. The second is the Georgetown University Battleground survey where in a majority of voters think we are headed towards a civil war. In fact, the average voter thinks we are two-thirds of the way to the “edge” of a civil war.

Now I have no idea what the edge of a civil war is, but I do think we are at a moment of serious discontent in the country and I think it is directly related to Katherine Miller’s point about the algorithm. We no longer live chronologically online. We live algorithmically. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the rest of the internet now shows us content in a timeline designed to increase our interaction and increase our clicks. It has taken us out of chronology.

NewScientist’s Carl Miller (19 October 2019, paywall) is all over it and more. A couple of small excerpts:

A powerful illustration of that fragility came on 7 March 2019, when Facebook made an announcement. Among the billions of accounts, groups and pages that inhabit its site and its subsidiary, Instagram, it had identified a network of 137 engaged in what it termed “inauthentic” activity targeting the UK. Yet to the 180,000 people who followed all or part of this network, it would have seemed utterly unremarkable. Tedious even.

On the one hand, nationalists were sharing slogans. “Being a leftist is easy!” one meme said. “If anyone disagrees with you, call them a racist!” But others in the network pushed a different angle. One account called for the leader of the pro-Brexit party UKIP to be charged with hate crimes. Others drew attention to stories that LGBT Christians were being bullied because of their faith. The vitriol and polarisation would be familiar to anyone who has spent time on social media. The one key difference was that none of it was real. Neither the nationalists nor the anti-racism campaigners existed. Both were online masks worn by a single coordinated and hidden group.

This ecosystem of fake identities, false voices and deceptive groups was attempting to provoke broad social change. Its members pumped polarised messages to both ends of the political spectrum not to change anyone’s mind, but to confirm the beliefs their viewers already held. The aim was outrage: to make people angrier and angrier about the injustices they were already convinced were happening. To alter the way that people behaved and thought, they had lured them into a fake society that only existed online.

Having started using telecommunications and social media^[1] near its birth in the early 1980s, I found it was already a tired trope that telecommunications lacked several of the attributes we humans use to communicate, such as body language and sarcasm. Those days were simply text on a computer monitor; today’s Web is far more expressive, but it’s an expressiveness under the direct and total control of the entity pushing the message.

It’s really no surprise that right wing commentators such as Erickson as well as scientific researchers are discovering that the Web, used by so many as a free news source to the extent that it’s superseding and destroying the old news media which had spent decades building operations, reputations, and community trust^[2]. Whether you’re conservative or liberal, if you are a communicator and consider yourself to be, to use an old-fashioned word, earnest, then to discover you’re keeping unintended company with national adversaries for whom concepts such as truth and facts are no more important than lies is a trifle galling. For the earnest, the goal is not to win at all costs, but, in the best cases, to discover truth and uncover the best solution to whatever the problem du jour might be. Not all commentators adhere to such a credo. For some, ideology comes before reality; and, of course, perceiving reality is can be a very tricky business. But, for the best of commentators, pundits, and etc, the ideal is truth, not merely winning an argument.

This frustrating discovery leads to this observation from Miller:

Since the end of the cold war, the militaries of liberal democracies have been bigger, better funded and more powerful than the military of any country that wishes to do them harm. The dangers, however, are no longer physical. Now, coordinated groups can step right into the middle of the politics of any country with an online presence. And this poses a problem that no state can answer alone.

That is, if the liberal societies tear themselves apart at the instigation of authoritarian adversaries such as Russia, then who needs a big military? The authoritarian nation need merely do what it does best – repress its own citizens and sow dissension against its enemy. Simply keeping the enemy in a state of back-biting may be adequate to the needs of the authoritarian, depending on national or religious mythology.

While Facebook and other New Age publishing entities work on solutions – which seems fruitless to me – people like you and me need to take responsibility for how we treat information from the Web, especially free information. Miller presents a good starter list of rules, which I will shamelessly borrow in its entirety:

Blancmange:

Blancmange is a cold dessert that is made from milk, sugar, cornflour or corn starch, and flavouring, and looks rather like jelly. [Collins Dictionary]

Noted in “senate might do the right thing maybe,” Greg Fallis:

An interesting thing happened in the Senate recently. Senator Lindsay Graham, who has the moral courage of a blancmange, said he would ask the Senate for a resolution condemning the House impeachment inquiry. That wasn’t the interesting thing, of course. Since the death of his friend John McCain, Graham has morphed into Comrade Trump’s attack poodle — alternately snarling at Trump’s critics and wagging his tail in the hope that Trump will give him a treat.

Gabion:

A gabion (from Italian gabbione meaning “big cage”; from Italian gabbia and Latin cavea meaning “cage”) is a cage, cylinder, or box filled with rocks, concrete, or sometimes sand and soil for use in civil engineering, road building, military applications and landscaping. [Wikipedia]

Noted in a reply to a letter to Archaeology (November / December 2019, not available online, extracted here):

One [head]stone was rescued from a pile of rocks being used to build the gabions protecting the base of the minaret, another was photographed in a side valley – the locals who showed it to us did not want it moved – and two others were in the ministry storeroom for safekeeping – David Thomas

My feelings on impeachment are, I trust, apparent – I’m for it. Simply on the volume of lies, if nothing else. How about others?

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare:

President Trump’s substantive defense against the ongoing impeachment inquiry has crumbled entirely—not just eroded or weakened, but been flattened like a sandcastle hit with a large wave.

It was never a strong defense. After all, Trump himself released the smoking gun early in L’Affaire Ukrainienne when the White House published its memo of Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. That document erased any question as to whether Trump had asked a foreign head of state to “investigate”—a euphemism for digging up dirt on—his political opponents. There was no longer any doubt that he had asked a foreign country to violate the civil liberties of American citizens by way of interfering in the coming presidential campaign. That much we have known for certain for weeks.

The clarity of the evidence did not stop the president’s allies from trying to fashion some semblance of defense. But the past few days of damaging testimony have stripped away the remaining fig leaves. There was no quid pro quo, we were told—except that it’s now clear that there was one. If there was a quid pro quo, we were told, it was the good kind of quid pro quo that happens all the time in foreign relations—except that, we now learn, it wasn’t that kind at all but the very corrupt kind instead. The Ukrainians didn’t even know that the president was holding up their military aid, we were told—except that, it turns out, they did know. And, the president said, it was all about anti-corruption. This was the most Orwellian inversion; describing such a corrupt demand as a request for an investigation of corruption is a bit like describing a speakeasy as an alcoholism treatment facility.

Steve Berman of The Resurgent thinks Trump is psychotic:

The impeachment of President Donald Trump is now near inevitable, as the Act 3 finale to his teleplay we call a presidency. We don’t know whether he will be removed. He might be. He doesn’t even know.

This is no different than Trump’s campaign. He never gave two turds over what he said, or who he maligned, or who he offended (other than his troll base, who cheered him for simply being a maligning, crass offender). He spoke what many were thinking, but never thought out to its logical conclusion. Trump didn’t know if he’d win, and was surprised as anyone when it happened. That’s an indictment of the left, the Democrats, and the horrible, horrible Hillary Clinton, who, with her husband, and her daughter, is Trump’s personal friend.

The impeachment offends the actual office of the President. It offends Congress, both Democrats and Republicans. It elevates blowhard hacks like Rep. Adam Schiff, who gets to conduct a Star Chamber and cause Republicans to behave like college brats occupying the dean’s office.

It’s a s**t show. But it’s Trump’s show, because he brought all this upon himself.

He would have it no other way. Trump’s presidency is art. He needs the big comeback. He wants to paint himself into a terrible cliffhanger, and have a deus ex-machina bail him out. On the issues themselves, Trump has more ears and cheers than the Democrats, who have flown the coop into the wild blue yonder of nuttiness. But the price of admission to his sane ideas is living through his opus.

His analysis has its attractions, although his antipathy towards a Democratic Party which is more or less middle of the road rather ruins it. However, I still incline towards the Russian asset theory, as it seems to be congruent with the facts we know.

Liberal Kevin Drum of Mother Jones:

Andrew McCarthy of National Review:

The “no quid pro quo” claim is misguided because it is largely irrelevant to an impeachment inquiry. As explained in part one, we are not here talking about a criminal court prosecution in which a prosecutor must prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. If a majority of the Democratic-controlled House was satisfied (or at least said they were satisfied) that an egregious abuse of power occurred, they could vote an article of impeachment even if a corrupt quid pro quo could not be proved to criminal-law specifications.

More important, the president’s camp should stick with and relentlessly argue his best point: The president’s actions in conducting Ukrainian relations do not establish an impeachable offense under the circumstances. Let’s consider the relevant issues.

McCarthy has the following points: “No harm, no foul” (laughably unethical), the Democrats didn’t give Ukraine any aid (so utterly irrelevant), “Assistance to U.S. investigations”, which frantically dances around the credible allegation that this is all about asking a foreign power to take actions damaging a political rival, “Investigating Vice President Biden’s influence over Ukraine,” for which there is no evidence of corruption, but may be the best of the bunch, “Investigating Hunter Biden and Burisma corruption,” which McCarthy admits is a problematic defense, and “The Shadow State Department,” in which he attempts to justify Rudy Guiliani’s interference with United States’ relations with Ukraine.

McCarthy has certainly mastered the art of writing authoritatively, but it seems every time I read him, he’s writing on a narrow subject beyond my expertise, or it’s impossible to take him seriously due to spinning. And I’m troubled that he doesn’t see the cumulative misdeeds of Trump as a more than adequate reason to throw Trump under the bus.

Andrew Sullivan:

… close to 50 percent or so of the country supports impeachment and/or removal — far higher than previous polling for Nixon (until the summer of 1974, when he quit) or Clinton (ever). And the particular nature of the Trump offense — a secret attempt to pressure a foreign government to influence U.S. elections on the president’s behalf — is smack-dab in the center of the high-crime category the Founders were obsessed with. I’ve not been an impeachment fan, even as I have regarded the president as mentally ill and characteristically tyrannical from the get-go. I was long unconvinced by the Russia “collusion/conspiracy” claims, saw impeachment as inapplicable in most cases of executive wrongdoing, and only switched sides this year when evidence of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report became undeniable. But the Ukraine matter? If you were to look up an impeachable offense in a metaphorical dictionary, you’d see Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas as illustrations.

I think Sullivan sees the situation clearly, but then he’s never been a Trump or GOP fan.

Greg Fallis’ post title is all you need to know:

buy me some peanuts & impeach the motherfucker already

But Fallis almost feels sorry for Trump:

Last night he attended game five of the World Series. He’d spent most of the day being celebrated and celebrating himself for having given the order for a Delta Force team to kill or capture Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS. Clearly, he expected that celebration to continue at the ballpark.

It didn’t.

Some fans displayed a large banner reading “Impeach Trump”. A group of veterans behind home plate held up signs stating “Veterans for Impeachment.” When the park introduced some members of the military, the crowd began to cheer — but when the introduction included Comrade Trump, the cheering immediately turned to boos. Loud boos, measured at around 100 decibels. That’s just slightly less loud than a chainsaw. And if that wasn’t enough, a large segment of the crowd began chanting “Lock him up! Lock him up!”

Why would Trump, knowing, if disbelieving, polls showing his low approval ratings, think he would be universally applauded? Because he’s transactional. His latest act was a great achievement, and so now everyone should love him, that’s the transactional way.

Well, sorry. We all have memories. One good act – almost befouled by the pullout from Syria, reportedly – doesn’t make up for everything else.

Enough for now.

A reader doesn’t mind the government getting its fingers into consumer computing devices:

I think this is a novel idea with real potential. Most pedophiles are not going to be hackers, or even very computer literate. They instead will be like most of the populace, barely able to operate their devices. 😉 It’s far better than nothing, and also better than having my cryptography intentionally hamstrung and backdoors.

Unfortunately, it’s not the average or even median technical competency of a pedophilic community that matters – it only takes one smart, methodical operator who puts together a solution and gets the word out for most of the rest to find and use that solution.

There are smart criminals. Think of Jeffery Epstein, who committed suicide in police custody after repeated accusations of what amounted to pedophilia. He was reportedly quite bright, although undisciplined and not inclined to respect almost any rules.

The spread of a capability to evade detection of their anti-social activities is the result of computers, which automate many things that previously afflicted humanity – for good or ill.

The Administration announced the assassination, if you will, of Islamic State top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Given the barbarity and authoritarianism of the Islamic State, it seems well-deserved, although to those given to favor such a way to organize a nation, his tactics may have seemed justified, and his death a blow.

But, and I say this with a degree of sadness, what came first to mind was this:

In the coming days, how will the information from non-Administration sources deviate from the information delivered by President Trump and his minions?

The video in the above link seems to be only part of the announcement – this CNN post has a link to a longer announcement. But that was my immediate reaction, and I think it’s sad that we have an Administration that is so untrustworthy that I look forward more to behind-the-scenes information than the official announcements.

Here’s looking at you, kid.
Image source: WWF, supposedly.

Asian elephants in Sri Lanka like to eat crops, which, despite local respect for elephants, leads to conflict. The obvious question gets an elegant answer, as detailed in NewScientist (19 October 2019, paywall):

[Zoologist Lucy King of the University of Oxford] has since designed elephant-deterring beehive fences. With 15 beehives and 15 dummy hives strung along a 300-metre wire, the fences are elevated so that people and cattle can pass safely beneath. But if an elephant tries to push through, the wire swings, triggering a flurry of buzzing wings and stings. King’s studies suggest the bees are an effective deterrent. The fences reduce crop raids by 80 per cent, on average, which explains why they have now been installed at 62 sites in 20 countries.

King is currently experimenting with introducing the concept in Sri Lanka, where human-elephant conflict is particularly intense. She found that Indian bees are more placid than African ones, reducing the effectiveness of the fences. But beehive fencing could still be a worthy investment for Sri Lankan farmers, who would enjoy a reduction in elephant raids, ensure their crops are well pollinated and get honey to sell. As King says: “This is the only fence that, once you build it, makes money for you.”

It’s a delightful idea, and sounds like it works. No unintended consequences, beyond perhaps the honey, are mentioned, and getting the hives near the crops might be a plus for the bees as well.

Now I’m wondering if putting the hives up fifteen feet makes them more vulnerable to their predators …

The cleome and nasturtium gave it up in the last few days, and anomalous hollyhocks are beginning to fade.

A venting, nothing to see here:

For evidence of the ongoing failure of GOP predictions and the Laffer Curve, it’s harder to get more graphic than Steve Benen’s graph of budget deficits:

Yep, the 2019 Federal Budget Deficit grew again, by 26%, in grievous defiance of GOP orders predictions that it shrink because they cut taxes.

It’s also worth savoring those Golden Clinton Years when the budget was in the black and the economy was roaring, before the spendthrift Republicans^[1] took over in 2001 and forced it back into the red, followed by the Great Recession, caused by Republican deregulation.

Now, as we near a chronic and, so far, unforced^[2] annual deficit of $1 trillion, we’ll be either exploring the new territory of how monstrous deficits and possible looming government defaults on the loans financing the deficit play out.

But what about inflation? Here’s a chart which should remove the influence of inflation, I think:

As we can see, the deficit as a percentage of GDP jumps under the Trump Administration. Interestingly, though, is this:

The drop in percentage would appear, to this non-economist, to be a combination of the growth in GDP and a some change in the Federal budget. Trading Economics has a handy chart on GDP growth, which is no where near it needs to be for the Laffer Curve to work:

It would probably need to be closer to 6% or even better for the deficits to shrink, rather than rapidly expanding. The Federal Budget isn’t shrinking either, as the St. Louis Fed makes clear:

The above lacks the 2019 data; Wikipedia suggests it will come in at $4.407 trillion, while the 2018 data show at $4.1 trillion.

So why the deficits? The failed 2017 tax reform. From Trading Economics comes this rather brutal chart:

Once we let go of the fairy tale that the Laffer Curve will always kick in and save your ass, the twin events of the 2017 tax bill becoming law and the elevation of the annual Federal deficit comes as no surprise. Anyone who has struggled with a budget will understsand it. And with the Republicans in control during the critical period, all responsibility is dumped on them.

Party of financial responsibility, indeed.

¹ I should start a petition on change.org advocating the Republican Party change its name to the Spendthrift Republican Party.

2 Certainly, Bush and Obama ran larger deficits for a couple of years, but it’s worth noting they were fighting the Great Recession using the time honored tool of pumping money into the economy. Trump was handed a great economy and pumped up the deficit for no good reason. To ignore these facts is to mark yourself an idiot. Yeah, I’m crabby today.

Arrant:

1. downright; thorough; unmitigated; notorious:
   an arrant fool.
2. wandering; errant. …

Few people know that large numbers of the splendid seamen who man our North Sea fishing fleets are arrant Cockneys.

THE CHEQUERS|JAMES RUNCIMAN [Dictionary.com]

I used it in this post.

Deb’s favorites:

Brilliant in the morning sun.

The Wichita Eagle had a chance to interview home-state boy made, uh, pick your adjective Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and threw a little salt in a wound:

Eagle: And what good really is the word of the U.S. in light of the president’s treatment of the Kurds? Has that undercut U.S. credibility?

Pompeo: The whole predicate of your question is insane. The word the United States– I’ll give you a good example– the word of the United States is much more respected today than it was just two and a half years ago. The previous administration in Syria, where you asked the question earlier, the previous administration said, ‘Boy, if you use chemical weapons that’s going to be bad,’ and the president drew a red line, President Obama drew a red line. He then duly ignored it. This president said, ‘If you use chemical weapons, I’m going to take action.’ And we fired Tomahawk missiles in to take down that threat to let them know that the cost of violating this, this massive violation of human dignity, these massive human rights violations by using chemical weapons, that there would be a cost imposed for that. And when the President said he would do it. He did. I see that all across the world, we make clear the things that we will do. We also make clear the things that we’re not prepared to do. I think it’s important for people to understand that other countries have to step up too. Other countries must share the burden for not just the security of the world, but security for their own countries. So this president’s been very clear that we have high expectations for how other countries, not just our European partners, but countries in Africa, countries in the Middle East, countries throughout Asia, who depend on the Strait of Hormuz to be up, they need to, they need to do that for themselves as well. And when they do, America will continue to be an enormous partner. I get a chance to travel the world. And when I show up, people want to meet the American secretary of state. They don’t want to meet Mike. They want to meet the American secretary of state who they know can work alongside them to deliver security for their people in an important way.

And now follow-up! Egad, that much should Whoever the interviewer was, they should have gone with:

Eagle: And what third-party information, such as polls and interviews, do you have to verify your claim that the Trump Administration has more respect from around the world than the Obama Administration?

Because, of course, he offered mere eyewitness accounts, which is both a poor way to collect data and, not to insult the Secretary or anything like that, but could be falsified.

An opportunity lost.

Note to Attorney General Barr: If you’re really just digging around, hoping to save the President from onrushing doom, and have no real evidence, you may want to pay attention to Maddowblog, it’s eponymous heroine, and Steve Benen, her author and scribe of message:

But Team Trump is going considerably further, firing prominent U.S. officials who did nothing wrong, taking steps to strip some officials of their security clearances, and now opening a criminal inquiry into the work of American law enforcement and intelligence professionals.

The Republican president has long hoped to turn the Justice Department into a political weapon, to be used against his perceived enemies. It’s the stuff of banana republics, and there’s reason to be concerned about it happening in the United States right now.

Postscript: For the sake of historical context, Rachel noted at the end of last night’s show that that Americans have lived through a scandal in which a U.S. attorney general was sent to prison for misusing the powers of the Justice Department, using federal law enforcement as part of a political scheme to benefit the president.

Something I’ve learned from fencing: trying really, really, REALLY hard to do something often results in over-reaching, loss of balance, and disaster.

If Barr thinks he has strong evidence of something wrong, fine. Investigate it. Find something, even better. It may not be fun to be corrected, but I adhere to the view that truth is better than lies.

But if he’s indulging in some misguided loyalty to a President who has set historical records, unlikely to ever be beat, for lying, boasting, and grasping, then he may find himself occupying a jail cell next to Trump himself.

Your allegiance is to the Constitution, not to the President, Mr. Attorney General Barr.

CNN has a report on a Trump/Federalist Society-nominated-and-confirmed Judge James Ho, and why he believes mass shootings occur:

One of President Donald Trump’s appointees to the federal bench issued a controversial opinion this week with a startling opening line that amounted to a ringing endorsement of law enforcement and a dire warning to its critics.

“If we want to stop mass shootings, we should stop punishing police officers who put their lives on the line to prevent them,” James Ho of the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said in an opinion released Monday.

Ho, a former solicitor general of Texas, served in the Justice Department as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and then as an attorney-advisor to the Office of Legal Counsel. He is a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and was nominated in 2017 and confirmed 53-43 to the conservative-leaning appeals court.

Judge Ho has an impressive academic record, but his dissent, starting on Page 4 of the opinion, fails to bring a full and convincing argument to bear to support his contention.

First of all, it’s confined to the incident at hand. This may be a requirement of writing a legal opinion, but it opens with that very general statement, which is blaming courts for enforcing laws constraining police behavior when using their weapons, and then tries to connect the incident at hand to that statement.

It just doesn’t succeed as a work of general analysis. Why? Because it’s so easy to raise questions undermining his thesis. What are a few?

• Since the loosening of gun laws, have police officers displayed arrant cowardice when it comes to responding to emergency calls associated with gun violence? In Judge Ho’s defense, I can recall the behavior of the police officers at the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, where they hesitated to enter the school. However, that’s the only one I can recall. Worse for Judge Ho, the negative case – of prompt & brave response, possibly preventing a mass shooting – is difficult to successfully measure. This casts grave doubt on any attempts to numerically analyze this question.
• Are mass shootings even susceptible to police interference? This is more of a mixed bag, as some mass shootings take place at remote locations, such as farming locations, or that take place so quickly that the police, despite quick response, cannot stop the shootings. Shootings such as the recent Las Vegas incident, in which the shooter barricaded himself in a high-rise hotel, and the University of Texas tower shooting (1966), in which the shooter was located on a tower’s observation deck and thus isolated for more than an hour and a half, fall into another category that might be characterized as Rational planning is not alien to an irrational or murderous person. But the fact of the matter is that giving someone with a murderous temperament a high powered automatic weapon greatly raises the odds of a mass shooting being successful, no matter how well the police respond.
• Does Judge Ho’s assertion work on a historical basis? If we’re going to examine his hypothesis scientifically, we need to collect data. Generating data is clearly unethical, but collecting data – examining the historical record – is ethical and necessary. Does the historical data support his hypothesis, or are there hypotheses which better fit the data? Judge Ho neglects this important facet in attempting to support his assertion.

Unfortunately, given current Second Amendment interpretation, Judge Ho is slightly constrained in finding an interpretation for the mass shootings we’ve been experiencing, but he could have railed against the faulty interpretation in his analysis, and perhaps found a more reasonable explanation for mass shootings. But add in his ideological leanings, he’s desperately hemmed in by a set of quickly constricting walls. Here’s NPR on his ideology:

More recently, in a case involving the ban on interstate handgun sales, Ho complained, “the Second Amendment continues to be rated as a ‘second class’ right,” borrowing language from his mentor, Clarence Thomas, and new Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.

“Law-abiding Americans should not be conflated with dangerous criminals,” Ho added. “Constitutional rights must not give way to hoplophobia.”

The Urban Dictionary defines that term as an “irrational, morbid fear of guns.”

And so we find the distortion point: when an ideology (that is, a description of a wished-for reality) clashes with reality, and still takes precedence over reality, then the explanations begin to take on surrealistic qualities. I don’t care if a Federal Court judge is asserting them; they remain surrealistic, even clownish. Think of all the Sandy Hook massacre deniers.

When Judge Ho approvingly quotes his colleague, Judge Clement,

“No member of this court has stared down a fleeing felon on the interstate or confronted a mentally disturbed teenager who is brandishing a loaded gun near his school. . . . [We have] no basis for sneering at cops on the beat from the safety of our chambers.”

he has, perhaps unknowingly, begun walking down the path that he has consciously repudiated: gun control.

From the Willamette Week.
Secondary: Nearly one in four Portland police shootings involves a replica gun. But the city has no restrictions on such weapons.

Here’s the problem implicit in this case: the officers are being placed in an impossible situation. The wide availability of anything less than a machine gun to members of the public, who merely have to slap down anywhere from a few bucks to a couple of thousand bucks to acquire weaponry, and the persistent and acrid encouragement of more and more self-armament by groups such as the National Rifle Association (NRA), moves police officers from the realm of law enforcement, in which they are allies of the public in the pursuit of domestic tranquility, to quasi-military personnel. It’s not the armament that really concerns me, though, but the fact that now the public has become a potential enemy for the police to be concerned with, as the officers in many shootings have demonstrated. rather than the people they are sworn to protect. Add in the fact that toy makers have been manufacturing toys that resemble the real thing to a high degree, and the problem is only compounded for our police officers.

The dubious reasoning behind the recent Second Amendment decisions seems to ignore questions of basic neurobiology, such as when, if ever, does a brain achieve rationality, and is rationality a default mode for the brain? This should be taken into account as the implicit basis for these decisions is that, after the ascendancy of individualism over the common good and fear of the government, that people are naturally rational.

To wrap this up, I’d like to return to a quote from Judge Ho, which I will repeat:

“Law-abiding Americans should not be conflated with dangerous criminals,” Ho added. “Constitutional rights must not give way to hoplophobia.”

I must ask, then, upon what basis is the ban on individuals owning machine guns or anthrax rationalized? Without a doubt, most owners of these weapons – for that’s how anthrax is perceived – would be perfectly law-abiding.

And, yet, they are forbidden.

The answer lies in the ratio of destructiveness to individual. In the Revolutionary War days, a musket, while devastating compared to its predecessors, wasn’t much compared to today. Add in irrationality, and the argument behind Ho’s quote is completely invalidated, a smoking crater from which little can be salvaged.

A reader writes concerning membership in the mob:

Steve Scalise from Louisiana was there.

I ran across his name after I published. Rep Scalise (R-LA) has a TS of 98.4%. He must be quite worried.

Nicholas Weaver on Lawfare proposes a technological solution to a very human problem – child pornography:

… the ideal legislative solution would not try to weaken encryption. Instead, an effective proposal would go around encryption by mandating that everyone’s device examine every image—turning the current centralized mass surveillance system into a privacy-sensitive, distributed surveillance system. In this world, everyone’s phone and computer would check to see if the machine contained known child-abuse images; if present, those images would then be reported to the government or NCMEC. This would ensure that the status quo results of the current bulk surveillance system are maintained even if every communication were encrypted.

Such legislation would require that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), working with the private sector, develop and publish a public version of PhotoDNA. It needs to be public because introducing it onto phones and computers would naturally reveal the details of the algorithm, and NIST has the experience necessary to select public algorithms in the same manner it selects cryptographic algorithms.

A public version would be less resistant to someone permuting images—but this is acceptable, as once a permuted version is discovered through some other means, the image is once again detectable. Additionally, both phones and computers currently have protected computing environments, usually for digital rights management, that could also be used to protect the “public” PhotoDNA algorithm from tampering.

NCMEC would then provide a downloadable approximate hash database. Such a database wouldn’t list all hashes but would use a probabilistic data structure to save space. That is, if a hash matches in the database, the database will say with certainty “yes, there is a match,” but if a hash is not in the database, it will only indicate that there is probably not a match.

The legislation would finally require that all major operating system vendors, notably Apple (MacOS/iOS), Microsoft (Windows) and Google (Android), include code to automatically scan every image and video when it is downloaded or displayed, calculate the hash and check against a local copy of the database. If the image matches, the system must query NCMEC to see if there is an exact hash match and, if so, upload a copy to NCMEC with associated identifying information for the computer or phone.

This would offer several advantages over the existing system. Cryptographic protections would simply become a nonissue, as the scanning would take place when the image is displayed. It would also significantly reduce the number of companies that need to be involved, as only a few operating system vendors, rather than a plethora of image hosters and other service providers, need to deploy the resulting system.

Weaver does understand there might be some objections:

Of course, civil libertarians will object. After all, this is mandating that every device be a participant in government-mandated mass surveillance—so perhaps it might be called a “modest” proposal. It is privacy-sensitive mass surveillance, as devices only report images that probably match the known NCMEC database of child exploitation images, but it is still mass surveillance.

PhotoDNA is a program that generates a hash value for use in comparisons from various types of media files, and it appears that its virtue in this application is that, unlike some hash programs, a minor change in the content of the media file results in only a minor change in resultant hash file, thus permitting “approximate” searches. More here.

I have a sad feeling this scheme would prove ineffectual.

First, while I’m not familiar with PhotoDNA, I suspect Weaver’s hanging his hat on NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) expertise is a mistake. Not that I doubt NIST, but, at its basic, cryptography vs the basics of PhotoDNA would appear to be quite different from each other. Cryptography algorithms depend on one-way mathematical functions, which is to say running a calculation in reverse is extremely expensive without key parts of the data – that is, the key itself.

PhotoDNA doesn’t seem to require that type of processing, and while I recognize that it can detect some minor changes to a picture, this capability is notoriously touchy. If the algorithms do go public, all it takes is a pedophile with good programming skills to sniff out those weaknesses, and then write a program which either builds a randomly changed picture with those weaknesses in mind, or even worse changes the picture, queries the proposed database for a match, and doesn’t show the picture if it gets a match; it could also run PhotoDNA on the original and the changed picture and not show the picture if PhotoDNA’s emitted hash values are approximately the same, and instead introduce another random change, rinse and repeat. Another approach is in the communications channel, where the child porn software could randomly change the picture on each transmission, thus foiling Weaver’s remark concerning database updating each time an unacceptable picture is intercepted.

The problem is that the goals of those attempting to subvert cryptography programs and those attempting to evade detection by PhotoDNA are fundamentally different. Cryptography programs are responsible for transforming the intelligible into the unintelligible and back into the intelligible; subverters must either gain access to the mathematical keys, or subvert the mathematical functions themselves. Those involved in child porn, on the other hand, will be attempting to evade detection by PhotoDNA. They don’t need to break a complex mathematical formula, using skills on the level of a Nobel prize winner. All they need to do is manipulate the data so that it goes beyond detection by PhotoDNA. This is why NIST may not perform up to snuff, although I am not aware of all of their competencies. I simply note that if Weaver is depending on their cryptography expertise in algorithm selection, he may be disappointed.

And, finally, the mass surveillance is a real concern, and a probable show stopper. Not because it’s monitoring pictures, but because it sets up a government run communications system that can be used by anything, say any bit of government-sponsored piece of malware. Not that these government communication nets don’t already exist on our phones, I’m sure, but to do so officially is not an acceptable proposition to the civil libertarians.

There may be a technological solution to the problem of child porn, but I don’t think this one will work.

A couple of weeks ago my Arts Editor and I visited a friend and former colleague as he protested President Trump on a street corner in St. Paul. (My favorite of his signs: a picture of Trump with the word L I A R overlayed on it.)

My observation was that most drivers were giving thumbs-up or honking in approval, with the occasional thumbs-down, a frowny shake of the head, or, more memorably, a yelled FOUR MORE YEARS! We were not favored with thrown objects, as my friend has reported on previous occasions.

Anyways, watching the continual meltdown of one of the most powerful offices ever seen in the world made me think, as we raked leaves in the front yard this evening, that the perfect rejoinder might be this:

FOUR MORE YEARS? HE’LL BE LUCKY TO MAKE IT FOUR MORE MONTHS!

Or even four more weeks. It’s getting that bad, between the evidence and big bad Senator McConnell (R-KY), leader of the Senate Republican majority, beginning to put some space between himself and Trump.

All the little Trump-lite Congress critters had better start figuring out their exit strategies, because re-election will be hell for those who clasped the Father of Lies to their bosoms.

Well, this incident gives us a good list of those Republicans who have tied their boat to President Trump and are terrified that his impeachment – or resignation – will be the end of their political careers.

House Republicans stormed a closed-door impeachment hearing on Wednesday to protest the inquiry and refused to leave until Democrats held an open hearing.

About 30 House Republicans, headed by Rep. Matt Gaetz, forced their way into the hearing as Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, was providing private testimony as part of the impeachment inquiry inside the House Intelligence Committee’s Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF), according to Axios.

They said they were protesting the lack of transparency in the impeachment process, and refused to leave until the hearings were made public, despite longstanding rules that witnesses are interviewed in classified settings. [Business Insider]

I’ve not yet ascertained a list of Trump’s Little Boys, although I’ve noted notorious Trump adherent Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL) (TrumpScore: 83.2%, which is surprisingly low) claims to be the leader. Rep Marshall (R-KS) (TS: 97.9%), Rep Mark Walker (R-NC) (TS: 93.2%), Rep Buddy Carter (R-GA) (TS: 95.7%), Rep Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) (TS: 96.0%), and Mo Brooks (R-AL) (TS: 88%, again a bit low) all appear to be part of this little theater stunt doomed to go wrong. They see disaster looming for their leader and therefore their ideology – and thus this panic reaction.

Their excuse that secret hearings are inappropriate is bullshit, as I said before.

And, to them, I will say good riddance. Their inability to see what’s been in front of their noses for just about four years now marks them as a bunch of morally inferior creatures, unworthy of the seats they occupy.

Moderate Republicans take note! This makes for a good list of primary challenges.

I see that Senator McConnell (R-KY) has taken the next step in the process of separating himself from President Trump, as Politico reports:

President Donald Trump claimed earlier this month that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told him that his phone call with the Ukrainian president was “the most innocent phone call that I’ve ever read.”

But McConnell said Tuesday he’s never discussed the phone call with the president.

In combination with yesterday’s testimony from diplomat Bill Taylor, including this opening statement, which is certainly worth a read as it gives the lie to the no quid pro quo chant, it appears the walls are beginning to collapse on President Trump. Given the evidence which continues to appear, this may all transition to the question of whether he resigns before he’s shown the door.

Although running for re-election after resigning would be something of a stretch.

I’m getting really tired of this idiotic talking point:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) stuck to GOP talking points in his defense of the White House’s handling of the impeachment inquiry, asserting that Trump’s options are limited because the Democrats aren’t conducting a fair process.

“I don’t know what they’re supposed to be doing,” Rubio said. “They’re not allowed in the room, they’re not allowed to have attorneys there, they’re not allowed to have anybody there listening to the evidence that’s being presented against them. So I’m not sure what more they can do.” [WaPo]

Look, this is the inquiry, not the impeachment itself. To make a rough analogy, this is where the police are gathering up the evidence, and the police are not required to share evidence or make it public; indeed, they shouldn’t, and recent reveals of bodycam footage sometimes bothers me, as it can be prejudicial against either side in a case.

If & when the actual impeachment comes up, by necessity the evidence relevant to the findings and the final vote will be revealed, and if the motion is carried, then the trial in the Senate may reveal even more.

But the notion of fairness is better considered as how this could potentially protect President Trump. Irrelevant information that comes out during the inquiry is not public, which means it never need be public if it’s not deemed relevant to the inquiry. In this way, President Trump may be saved needless embarrassment, such as, say, the discovery there were even more paramours.

And if the House decides not to proceed with impeachment at the end of the inquiry, then Trump may be saved a shitload of embarrassment by this “secret” process.

Win, lose, or draw, though, Trump’s talking point, so faithfully repeated by his idiot followers in the House & Senate, has no ethical, moral, or rational basis. It’s more like a cult chant, evoking the mumbo-jumbo God to come and save them from the big bad Democrats.

Pah.