Monthly Archives: October 2019

Steve Benen notes a new undercurrent in the Democratic Party and expresses a little unease at it:

And as a New York Times report noted today, “It’s that time of the election season for Democrats.”

“Since the last debate, just anecdotally, I’ve had five or six people ask me: ‘Is there anybody else?'” said Leah Daughtry, a longtime Democrat who has run two of the party’s recent conventions.

With doubts rising about former Vice President Joseph R. Biden’s ability to finance a multistate primary campaign, persistent questions about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s viability in the general election and skepticism that Mayor Pete Buttigieg, of South Bend, Ind., can broaden his appeal beyond white voters, Democratic leaders are engaging in a familiar rite: fretting about who is in the race and longing for a white knight to enter the contest at the last minute.

…

But even if we put these relevant angles aside, there’s a more obvious concern related to the 2020 cycle: Democrats don’t necessarily need a “white knight” because – and this is important – they’re already winning. General election polling currently shows each of the party’s top contenders ahead of Donald Trump in 2020 match-ups.

While the size of any field is misleading, as the big Republican field of 2016 demonstrated in that it had roughly 17 ambitious but ultimately unimpressive and unqualified, in my judgment, candidates (with the possible exception of Kasich), I think there’s enough qualified candidates in the Democratic field that Benen is right to think the unease of some Democrats is unwarranted.

However, in reviewing the Democratic field today, I think it’s worth noting that recent non-campaign events have stirred the pot quite a lot, specifically the heart attack of Senator Sanders (I-VT). It’s a reminder that an elderly leader, no matter how apparently robust, is at risk of sudden health conditions impairing their competency. For the concerned Democratic primary voter who is not tightly bound to any candidate, the top three candidates, who are former VP and Senator Biden (76), Senator Sanders (78), and Senator Warren (70), become a little more worrisome. The office of the President is stressful, and cleaning up after Trump will make it only moreso.

So who might be seen as moving up? Mayor Buttigieg (37) has the attributes of youth, military service, distinguished academic achievements, and charisma; his civil service is somewhat limited, although it is of the Executive sort. And he is a white guy, which in some Democratic communities might be seen as a necessity for defeating President Trump. But some Democratic voters are still uncomfortable with voting for a gay candidate, and in combination with his rather extreme youth and his limited experience with national and foreign affairs, he may not be the best pick.

Which leads to Senator Klobuchar (59) of Minnesota. True, she’s not charismatic, but she’s in the right age range, a good amount of civil service with some private sector work thrown in, apparently healthy, reportedly highly respected in the Senate, and brings a degree of diversity in her gender to the office desirable to most Democratic primary voters – apologies to the Mayor. She can argue her work as a prosecuting attorney gives her some executive experience, and her time in the Senate has undoubtedly exposed her to national and international issues. She can play mean, as we saw at the last debate (well, I read about it), or in reports of how she treats her campaign workers.

More importantly, Klobuchar is more of a centrist. She has not endorsed Buttigieg’s plan to reconfigure the Supreme Court. She doesn’t support Medicare for All, arguing that most voters are satisfied with their health care insurance and would prefer not to take the big leap into the unknown. While that may engender a thumbs-down from the progressive wing, the fact of the matter is that the Democrats need to win the Presidency, and the progressives may just have to hold their noses and vote for someone who hasn’t received their stamp of approval – just as non-progressives might have found themselves voting for Sanders if it wasn’t for his heart attack.

In terms of dirt, Klobuchar has remarkably little, although I believe a little bit has been dug up from her time as Hennepin County attorney. She may become the compromise candidate for the Democrats, which would certainly be worthy of a party built on compromise.

The key hurdle will be the Iowa caucuses. If she does well, the rest of the field had better look out.

Brad Parscale is the current campaign manager for the Trump campaign. It’s an interesting judgment call he’s exhibiting with this merchandise:

Time to stop the political theater and false accusations.

Time to get back to work for the people of this country.

Time to Get Over It!https://t.co/MEQNVxZEwU

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) October 18, 2019

Get Over It comes from Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, who claimed during a press conference that running foreign policy via quid pro quo is standard practice – right before he tried to deny he ever said any such thing. To Fox News, no less.

I suspect that it’s seen as a tough phrase around which the base can rally since the base runs more on emotion and resentment than actual analysis. I look forward to the Trump Campaign T-shirt that quotes the toughest of the tough, the Soviet Union, with their remarkably brazen assertion, What’s ours is our, what’s your’s is negotiable. Perhaps a little long for a T-shirt, and you’d better put it on the back or the ladies will find themselves stared at it in quite offensive ways, but its amorality would certainly fit into TrumpWorld.

But this T-shirt could be mocked in so many ways. For example, replace that ‘O’ with Trump’s hair on it with a bald head behind bars. Or in small print, Trump lost the popular vote. Or, post-election, the Electoral College results.

There’s lots of opportunity. All the brave entrepreneur has to do is laugh at Parscale when he sputters and threatens legal action.

But, still, the “conservatives” out there are repeating them anyways. Let’s have David Priess of Lawfare tell us about it:

Law professor and former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo this week declared, “What the framers thought was that the American people would judge a president at the time of an election. They would never have wanted an impeachment within a year of an election.”

He couldn’t be more wrong. Nothing in the Constitution, the framers’ debates or historical practice suggests presidents get a free pass during the final year of their term that allows them to avoid facing the sole constitutional remedy for treason, bribery or high crimes and misdemeanors. Presidential terms have a constitutional time limit; impeachment inquiries and impeachment votes do not.

Sounds a lot like that idiotic SCOTUS nominee argument over Garland, doesn’t it?

I’d add that Congress is the closest thing we have to a group of experts on the President concurrently in office. Congress is elected to take care of government, including oversight of the President, the Judiciary, and each other. In Revolutionary War times, the government may not have been particularly complex, but it was, for many citizens, far away; the Senators and Representatives were picked to make these hard decisions. These days, we’re still a representative democracy, and now it’s gotten quite complex, and the communications masters have become quite sophisticated at obscuring the truth.

People with names from McConnell to McCollum to Pelosi are, once again, responsible for making the decision of whether or not the President is fit to hold the office or not. And this should be done without the dishonorable partisan posturing we’re seeing from names such as Nunes, Graham, and, yes, McConnell.

Yoo is engaging in a partisan fantasy which, as Priess points out, has no basis in the Constitution or records of the debates.

Yoo is an idiot. His argument doesn’t even deserve to be taken seriously.

The Canadian Journal of Anesthesia has published a study on study retractions in the field of anesthesiology. From the abstract:

My correspondent responds concerning building strategies:

Yup, it’s definitely the scale in a lot of ways — which of course goes back to *ahem* population growth.

Yes, my hobby horse. Giddyup!

I disagree with your belief that my chances of getting hit by an F5 tornado are effectively zero. I probably should have said F4, nearly as violent. You do recall the F4 that was on the ground from about Comfrey to St. Peter [in Minnesota] in 1998, do you not? Or how about the F5 in 1992 near Chandler?

Not actually, no, but an event has to be horrific or in my face for me to vividly remember it.

But my point is that any particular residence in the state of Minnesota has a very small chance of being hit by a F4+ tornado in the next N years. I put together this chart, mostly for fun, although it’s not as useful as I anticipated:

(I wish I could find data in a usable form from earlier years. This gave it on a County basis – are you kidding? No more time for this search.)

I had some probably misguided notion to plot these vs the number of residences in the state, which would have been terrible given how residences are not nearly even distributed. Given the lack of F3+ tornadoes, I saw no point in doing so.

So in the last few years we’ve seen nothing worse than an EF2. Does that discredit my reader’s notion of building to withstand an EF5? The flip notion of studies of this sort is that the low-frequency is accompanied by an almost guaranteed high loss: potentially complete erasure of one’s home and the lives of you and your family.

This is why I think we should fund research into detection of and protection from Near Earth Objects (NEOs) – the frequency of impacts of civilization killers may be very low, but if we draw the short straw, we won’t even get to regret our penny-wise, pound-foolish ways. Here is a blog post on the European Space Agency’s work in this area.

My correspondent’s dilemma may be complicated by one more factor: if the construction required to substantially survive an EF5 also adds to the climate change problem, is s/he still justified to choose to go down that path? Indeed, what if those climate change gases are actually making tornadoes stronger and more numerous?

The answers are not easy.

Long, long ago, when people liked to complain about the size of government and asserted that the many intelligence agencies should be combined into one for financial and size reasons, I suggested that the variety of methods and internal competition that likely results from having multiple intelligence agencies was a positive, rather than a negative. Much like the problems to be seen with monoculture agriculture, wherein the appearance of a single pathogen or pest can put an entire crop at risk of failure, a single agency might miss opportunities to gather intel that multiple, independent agencies are more likely to find. The duplication and inherent waste is more than made up for by the improved likelihood of finding all the important intelligence gathering tools.

But while reading this piece by Professor Austin Carson in Lawfare concerning whether intelligence officials should testify to Congress, and how to handle variances with official Administration lines, since the Intelligence agencies are part of the Executive, and this piece by David Nakamura in WaPo concerning how former intelligence and defense officials have disputed official White House stories concerning, well, reality, it occurred to me there’s another reason to have multiple intelligence agencies.

It’s all about corruption.

It’s one thing to corrupt one official, such as, say, the Director of the CIA. Or the head of a hypothetical singular intelligence agency. But it’s a lot harder to corrupt five at the same time.

As multiple and semi-competitive agencies, they act as corroborators of each other, each bringing their peculiar skills and tools to the table, and if one is corrupt and attempting to disseminate false information in the service of a foreign power, the others can cast doubt through their independent investigations and testimony. This is known, by the way, as consilience.

In the age of Trump, where I wonder just how much damage we’re sustaining as Trump betrays allies, secrets, and who knows what else, and the Republicans stand by, letting it happen, I have to wonder if the Founding Fathers were all that wise in the selection of a single person to run the Executive. The Roman Empire equivalent, the office of Consul, was generally split between two men, and they could act as foils for each other.

Sure, implementing that in today’s world rather makes me sweat a bit, but it’s a concept worth considering, given how incompetent Trump has proven – and that he was elected, with no apparent corruption of the election machinery.

The ornamental grass gives up its secrets reluctantly, even as winter tries to move in.

The stripey can be a harsh taskmaster.

Following up on the Rep. Collins (R-NY) resignation post-pleading guilty to insider trading charges, this New York Post article implies they go directly to a special election, not yet scheduled:

There’s no shortage of candidates seeking to replace Rep. Chris Collins in a special election.

“Republicans shouldn’t have much trouble holding the district,” said Kyle Kondik, who helps run the University of Virginia Center for Politics’ congressional race tracking operation, Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

“While the party has been hurt by retirements and resignations in the Trump era, this is the rare instance where a congressman leaving relieves a GOP headache as opposed to creating one.”

In 2018, a then-indicted Collins scraped past Democratic challenger Nate McMurray by just 1,000 votes.

And thus there will be no Democratic appointed incumbent for the special election. The question then is the status of the Trump and Republican brands in the New York 27th district, and whether the nominee makes proper decisions in regards to how tightly s/he clasps themselves to those brands; the strength of the Democratic candidate, whoever that may be, will also come into play. If it’s McMurray, he’ll have some name recognition already in place, but, unless the Republicans nominate a cad or the Republican brand is severely damaged, some Republican but not-Collins-again voters will return to the Republican fold.

Which will be a pity. While the Republicans nearly lost this “safe Republican” seat in 2018 because of the perceived, and now acknowledged, guilt of Collins of insider trading, I suspect the Republican brand has not been sufficiently damaged to lose a safe seat for the general candidate, and thus the Republicans will keep on going, rather than taking another step towards entering the necessary Reformation phase.

And here’s a chart, just because I want to experiment with Datawrapper.

Teetotalism:

Teetotalism is the practice or promotion of complete personal abstinence from alcoholic beverages. A person who practices (and possibly advocates) teetotalism is called a teetotaler (plural teetotalers) or is simply said to be teetotal. The teetotalism movement was first started in Preston, England, in the early 19th century. The Preston Temperance Society was founded in 1833 by Joseph Livesey, who was to become a leader of the temperance movement and the author of The Pledge: “We agree to abstain from all liquors of an intoxicating quality whether ale, porter, wine or ardent spirits, except as medicine.” [Wikipedia]

I used it in an email to a publication to which I subscribe. I was surprised to see the spelling is tee-, not tea-. And, as I typically consume a glass of wine once a year to no known schedule, I do not, much like Groucho Marx, belong.

It may seem that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is reprimanding President Trump for his decision to withdraw troops from Syria, but reading his opinion piece in WaPo reveals that this relatively easy decision to make is also about trying to splash mud on, you guessed it, the Democrats:

Withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria is a grave strategic mistake. It will leave the American people and homeland less safe, embolden our enemies, and weaken important alliances. Sadly, the recently announced pullout risks repeating the Obama administration’s reckless withdrawal from Iraq, which facilitated the rise of the Islamic State in the first place.

And

Long-time readers know that I’m neither a fan nor a respecter of the Evangelical community, although I do try to be polite in my disbelief and distaste. SemDem on The Daily Kos, however, is a lot more pointed than I am in the wake of President Trump’s disastrous Syrian decision:

This current slaughter is exactly what Turkey, Russia, and Syria wanted, and they got it because Trump is the weakest president in history. Trump always, always does what dictators tell him to do: rollover. He has no spine. By the way, those aren’t my words, those are the words from the National Security Council official on the phone call. 

For the record, Trump has retweeted and thanked Wayne Allen Root, who made the claim that Trump was loved like the “second coming of God.” In reality, he is a dangerous sociopath who cages toddlers and now, allows them to be killed for his own nefarious purposes. That isn’t God-like at all. Rather, it is the personification of evil.

I went to an ultra-religious school in my youth run by right-wing Christians. They kept warning us that one day, Satan would return. Even at a very young age, I imagined how they’d fight him when that day arrived.

Never in my wildest imagination did I think they’d worship him.

SemDem also repeats this tweet:

At the Values Voter Summit, conservative Christians I spoke with had little concern re: Syria pullout and the Kurds:

“I do have a lot faith in President Trump, that he knows things that we don’t know,” Mary Holloway from Texas told me. “People should trust their president.”

— Michelangelo Signorile (@MSignorile) October 12, 2019

Sadly, no. To the extent that he is truthful in public, he’s at least worthy of being given the benefit of the doubt. President Trump, given his volume of outright lies, boasts, attacks on non-white Americans, and his vast incompetency at, well, virtually every function assigned to the Presidency, he doesn’t get that benefit. The person quoted above, Mary Holloway, has abdicated her responsibility, and, if I had to guess, it’s because the alternative, taking responsibility for having supported such an utterly dismal Presidency, whose Administration has resulted in such a disaster for those least able to defend themselves, is too much for her wobbly little sense of morality to bear.

So bear SemDem’s critique in mind next time an Evangelical tries to persuade you of something. Their judgment may be suspect.

This one came out nicely.

But notice how, in this second picture, removing the context by moving in closer heightens the impact.

It almost becomes an abstract. Some of this I attribute to the brilliant blue.

From Gizmodo’s article on the presence of plague out in the Rocky Mountains:

The Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge was forced to undergo a temporary closure as a “precautionary measure” last month while it worked to address the issue affecting colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs and endangered black-footed ferrets dependent on them for shelter and food, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said Saturday.

And all I can imagine are prairie dogs offering the ferrets crumpets and tea.

George Will wants to burnish his old-line conservative credentials by taking down a few liberal candidates for President, but I think he may have stumbled in his rush to nail Senator Warren:

Warren, a policy polymath, has a plan for everything, including for taxing speech that annoys her. The pesky First Amendment (in 2014, 54 Democratic senators voted to amend it to empower Congress to regulate spending that disseminates political speech about Congress) says “Congress shall make no law” abridging the right of the people “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” One name for such petitioning is lobbying. Warren proposes steep taxes (up to 75 percent) on “excessive” lobbying expenditures, as though the amendment says Congress can forbid “excessive” petitioning. Lobbyists are unpopular, and her entire agenda depends on what the amendment was written to prevent: arousing majority passions against an unpopular minority (the wealthy).

I’m certainly not a legal scholar, so perhaps there’s a ruling already in place against me, but a little old-fashioned common-sense will tell us that this is a bit of sleight of hand. When we talk about the people petitioning the government, we need to keep in mind that this is supposed to be an equally distributed right.

Now, let’s be a little nuanced here. I don’t think I’ll disagree^[1] with the assertion that groups of people may come together to petition the government as a group. But characterizing these groups is important: they feel they have a grievance, they come together to address that grievance, and that’s the function of the group.

Most lobbyists, however, are corporate, and that, in fact, is the key differentiator. First, the members of a corporation did not come together to address a common grievance with the government, but to engage in private sector activities. Second, because of the first, those employees may not agree with their company’s lobbyists’ goals, particularly when those goals have to do with politics, and that is almost certainly part of every lobbyist effort. Objections to this statement are easily refuted through references to the fact that, no, information concerning corporate activities is not immediately, or even ever, available to the employees, and for most employees, quitting out of principle is not a practical option. Not when there are mouths to feed at home.

And, third, and most important, corporate lobbyists have, by definition, corporate money behind them, and that pushes the already-faux corporate citizens‘ voices well above those of their fellow … citizens. If common citizens cannot find the time or resources to make that trip to Washington, but are limited to their local constituents’ meetings – if those meetings are even being held, which some politicians haven’t been doing of late – will they be heard? Or will the lobbyists’ voices, more insistently brought to the fore by spokesmen replete with the resources to stay on the job all year long, have disproportionately more influence?

Not because of the quality of their argument, or the smoothness of their rhetoric, but simply because they have the staying power that money can buy, they have the megaphones upon megaphones that dollars can bring them.

And it makes for a very unfair “right.”

Now, whether Warren has the right solution to the disparity, I can’t say. The problem of unforeseen consequences could raise its ugly head, and it’s possible that this will exacerbate the problem of Very Rich Corporations dominating and even destroying the merely Rich Corporation, as the former will be able to get the rich government contracts simply by outstaying their smaller rivals.

And, perhaps, we should really point the finger at the members of Congress who have proven to be vulnerable to lobbying. Although how anyone would approach that problem, given the difficulty of the public detecting such undue vulnerabilities, is a tough question.

But I think Will, in partisan pursuit of points, makes light of a real problem, and accepts the ridiculous assertion that corporations are somehow citizens which should have their voices heard even more strongly than real people.

And I think that’s a damn shame.

¹ Although it’s the sort of subject that deserves a re-think from time to time.

A reader responds to Steve Webb’s rant concerning the construction industry:

Hmm. I wonder a bit about his numbers, e.g. a bookcase that weighs 500kg or 1102 pounds, more than half a ton. I’ve never seen a bookcase that heavy.

Seems to me that depends on how big and fancy a bookcase you want.

Another question I had was: how long do those wooden exteriors last compared to brick? Longevity and maintenance are worth something. My Chaska brick home was built in 1883; it’s still standing with the original bricks on the exterior. If it had had wooden siding instead, how many times would that siding have had to be replaced, and at what carbon cost?

Sure. It’s the old question about up-front costs vs continuing costs. I don’t know, but I suspect the siding on the original part of my 1938 home is original.

An interesting question: when it comes time to replace it, should the discarded siding be buried? Or is it not worth the effort?

My current house has concrete walls and a steel roof, both of which should last longer than the alternatives. But is it long enough to offset the higher initial carbon cost? Versus wooden framing, and wooden (cedar shake) shingles (asphalt shingles are probably horrible on the carbon scale, but I’m too lazy to research it right now).

How about how much my personal safety against things like all but direct hits by an F-5 tornado? How much carbon is that worth?

What’s the risk of being hit by a F-5 tornado at your location? Virtually zero. But that does bring up a related topic: when is it appropriate for each family to have their own refuge, and when is it appropriate to have a shared refuge, which should reduce costs, both financial and ecological? Given our current inclination to own our homes on big lots, rather than living in apartment buildings, it’s probably the former.

In general, I think I agree with what he’s getting at. The construction industry is in general a horrible polluter and waster of energy. But if they were not, almost nobody could afford a home. Even that nice wooden building picture above cost a rather large fortune. Nice wood is expensive. Large beams are expensive. Designing like that is expensive. It’s a tough problem to solve.

Very. It’s reminiscent of the palm oil debacle, it’s not the activity, it’s the scale.

Some fall colors to take your mind off the melt-down in our political system:

I should have gotten a close-up as well.

As we enter Fall, headed for Winter and sub-zero temperatures here in Minnesota, I was struck by this description of the heat in areas such as the Middle East nation of Qatar, and how the US Air Force responds to it:

The U.S. Air Force calls very hot days “black flag days” and limits exposure of troops stationed at al-Udeid Air Base. Personnel conducting patrols or aircraft maintenance work for 20 minutes, then rest for 40 minutes and drink two bottles of water an hour. People doing heavy work in the fire department or aircraft repair may work for only 10 minutes at a time, followed by 50 minutes of rest, according to a spokesman for the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing. [WaPo]

Not a situation in much will get done. And when it’s like that in, say, Oklahoma?

For the last two and a half years, we’ve been watching President Trump display incompetence and, allegedly, break multiple laws; I’ll dispense with the less tangible observations.

Most of these have been domestic in nature, or, for those that had international repercussions, they were obscured by Trump’s refusal to share the experiences with relevant White House officials, such as his meetings with Putin, or they were mostly about Trump: Emoluments, allegations of corruption, such as the recent contretemps in Ukraine, etc.

Which is all to say, the Republicans would utter a few words of distress, but do no more.

But the decision to withdraw troops from the border area of Syria and Turkey is a signal event for the Republicans. For those readers unfamiliar with the region (and I’m no expert), the Kurds are an ethnic minority who are mostly concentrated in the area where Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq share borders. For decades, or even centuries, they’ve advocated, sometimes violently, for the re-creation of Kurdistan, carved out from the territories of the aforementioned countries. Those countries take exception to such a potential loss of territory, and Turkey, at least, has labeled the political wings of the Kurds terrorist organizations; the current crop of Turkish leaders seem to have curried hatred of the Kurds as part of their ruling strategy.

In that context, the stabilization of the Syrian / Turkish border included American troops to keep the Kurds, who provide valuable military services, as allies while containing the ambitions of the current Syrian government, which has recently survived a civilian revolt. Our sudden and unexpected withdrawal has left the Kurds, both military and civilians, in the roughly 20 mile strip of land within Syria on the Turkish border, at the mercy of the Turks.

And Turkish President Erdogan has little mercy for the Kurds, who provide a distraction from his economic mismanagement woes at home.

The rest of the world – which is to say, the all-important ruling classes – has seen this Republican President abandon an ally in the field. Obviously, the United States’ immense military and resources makes the Americans an attractive ally, but if you can’t trust them then it’s unwise to cut them the sort of deals which lead to prosperity, because losing the backing of an ally at a key moment is disastrous.

So now – regardless of the announcement that the Turks have agreed to a cease-fire, because they have doubtless achieved their objectives and can throw a bone to Pence, the negotiator, and Trump – the Republicans have to decide:

Do they take their international responsibilities seriously enough to vote to get rid of Trump in an impeachment?

If they don’t, then every other nation in the world will know that whenever the Republicans are in charge, they are not to be trusted. Rather than favorable trade terms, unfavorable. Don’t back them in military conflicts. View their links to the Russians with suspicion.

It’s a great pity that the person who was the closest to being a conscience for the Republicans has passed away. Senator McCain (R-AZ) certainly had one of the finest understandings of foreign relations and the dynamics inherent in same of the current generation of Congressional members on either side of the aisle, and he would be leading the charge to remove the President in the face of this outright betrayal of our allies. McCain would have taken Trump’s irrelevant statement that the Kurds “are no angels” and jammed it right up his ass.

Do the Republicans realize this? They might. When the House offered a resolution to rebuke the Administration over the matter, it passed.

The House on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution condemning President Donald Trump‘s decision to end U.S. military support of Kurdish forces in Syria.

The measure received bipartisan support with a 354-60 vote. All those who voted against were Republicans. [UPI]

However, the Senate Republicans may not have the opportunity to display their displeasure, due to the meddling of one Senator Rand Paul (R-KY):

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blocked an effort to bring a House-passed resolution formally breaking with President Trump’s Syria strategy up for a vote.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) tried to get consent Thursday to bring up the resolution, arguing that “we’re in real trouble.” …

Paul, a libertarian-leaning GOP senator, objected to Schumer’s request for a vote, arguing that he was trying to sidestep the Constitution.

“He should come to the floor and say that we are ready to declare war. We are ready to authorize force, and we are going to stick our troops in the middle of this messy, messy, five-sided civil war where we would be ostensibly opposed to the Turkish government that has made an incursion,” Paul argued. [The Hill]

A resolution to rebuke the President is just that. Paul is projecting possible consequences on what is essentially a motion to tell the President to stop being an impulsive idiot. Paul has a history of trying to meddle in foreign relations, and, like most libertarian thought on the matter, it’s ill-advised.

For the moment, the Republicans are teetering on the knife’s edge. This is the moment in which they should display leadership by defying the Trump base and voting, at least, to rebuke him. If the base complains, they should be told why the rebuke was necessary, and if an opportunity to remove Trump comes up, they should vote for it as well.

Otherwise, we can only assume their taste for holding power is stronger than their loyalty to the nation.

Those who voted against the House resolution will face hard questions in 2020. Will they still have a shield to hide behind in the person of President Trump? Or will he have been impeached and convicted, and be in hiding from other prosecutions?

Only time will tell.

A sad loss for the nation today as Representative Cummings (D-MD) has passed away from unannounced causes. I have not followed his career, but his standing as a long time civil rights leader and his reputation as a man of integrity and determination are well-known. Voices which clearly spell out the moral failings and requirements of today are one of the most important elements of the public conversation, and his has been stilled.

I’ve never been much for celebrity, I’ve not put up posters of movie stars and whatnot, with the exception of a couple of posters my uncle gave me 45 years ago. I just regard the whole thing as suspicious – why do they want to be celebrities, anyways? I can understand the drive for excellence, of course, and the importance of society pointing at the excellent as role models. But when they strut about, chase the cameras, and etc, it just gets to be too much.

Better to glorify Stephen Hawking.

But this article on the use of celebrity culture to deprive the baby boomers of their wealth justifies my admittedly suspicious ways. Take it away, Craig Silverman of BuzzFeed.news (itself an uncomfortable link to celebrity):

Since 2015, Ads Inc. has made money — lots of it — by executing one of the internet’s most persistent, lucrative, and sophisticated scams: the subscription trap. The subscription trap works by tricking people into buying what they think is a single free trial of a celebrity-endorsed product. Although the customers would receive the product — which in most cases was not made by Ads Inc. itself — in reality, the celebrity has nothing to do with the offer. And in purchasing the free trial, the customer unwittingly commits to a pricey monthly subscription designed to be hard to cancel.

Yep, it’s a classic. And I have to say, the last 70 years has been a concerted, if uncoordinated, plan to train those legions of consumers into buying eagerly into celebrity culture.

“This is clearly a massive worldwide problem,” said Steve Baker, who spent two decades investigating scams at the FTC and now runs the Baker Fraud Report, a website that reports on consumer fraud. Last December, he published a detailed report on subscription traps for the Better Business Bureau, which found that most people are charged roughly $100 by the time they’ve figured out what had happened.

“There are millions of victims of this, certainly,” he told BuzzFeed News.

The Ads Inc. employee said its victims often have one thing in common: age.

“There is one demo that this workflow is targeted towards, and that’s baby boomers,” they said. “You run this toward anyone else, and it’s a disaster. But you do this fake news shit with a trial offer scam and you send it to somebody that’s not that savvy [and it works].”

So if you’re not a boomer, maybe you’re not infected with that celebrity meme. The thing is, it’s such a silly scam, you have to wonder if the victims’ minds are even turning over anymore:

You don’t know Ads Inc., but you may have seen one of its ads on Facebook: a tabloid-style image that claims a celebrity has been caught saying or doing something scandalous that puts their career or life in jeopardy. The ad leads to a webpage that mimics a media brand such as TMZ, Fox News, or People magazine. But it’s all fake: the “news” article, the website, and the additional claim that this star has, for example, discovered an amazing new skin cream that you can try for a small fee. The fake celebrity scandal hinted at in the ad is the hook that gets people to click so they can be pitched on what appears to be a no-risk, free product trial for a small price, such as $4.99.

And it never occurred to the victims to wonder how their favorite C&W singer or football player discovered this new product or principle or whatever?

It’s just dumb.

Here’s the real hitch in this Old West town:

Prior to these revelations, Ads Inc.’s public image has been that of a digital marketing firm led by a charismatic twentysomething with tight connections in San Diego GOP politics. “Ads Inc. is a rebel alliance of hustlers and doers on a mission to disrupt the lifestyle industry with our advanced approach to product creation and marketing,” states the company’s LinkedIn page, which boasts that it’s “one of the fastest-growing advertising agencies in California.”

Burke presented himself as the archetype of a successful, young tech industry CEO. His social media posts showed him and his statuesque girlfriend boarding helicopters, private planes, and first-class cabins to party in Las Vegas, tour Japan, and safari in Africa, where Burke would eventually invest in Ol Malo, a ranch, game sanctuary, and lodge in Kenya, hoping to turn it into an “entrepreneur playground.”

Another Republican. It’s disappointing. But unsurprising. After all, who rode the lying dreams train into the White House on the backs of the boomers? That’s right.

Just another data point indicating boomers are easily taken in.

Benny Hill in an early role?

While The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) gets off to a good enough start, pulling Holmes out of retirement due to a secret communique from an associate of arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty and the mysterious death of a man at Birlstone Castle, once Holmes has it half figured out, it goes to pieces. The long reminiscence of the dead man’s wife is far too detailed and knows too much for a man who had reputedly told her that his past was not her business.

Add in the fact that the attraction between them is not apparent, and Professor Moriarty’s connection to the entire matter is barely visible and not compelling, and this story became a disappointment, reinforced by the poor production values, or at least the quality of this print.

If you’re a Holmes completist, you may wish to see this, but otherwise it’s a bit of a slog for no great return at the end.

The Louisiana election results are in, and this gives me the opportunity to contrast two reports. The first is from a DLCC (Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee) mailing:

Last night, Democrats won in multiple Louisiana legislative districts that went for Trump in 2016, including one district where Trump won by over 43 points.

But the elections are nowhere near over. Dozens of other Democrats in toss-up districts had impressive results that are taking them to runoff elections on November 16.

An upbeat report, it seems. Here’s The Hill’s report:

Louisiana voters took a significant step to the right on Saturday, as Republicans notched wins up and down the ballot, giving their party an outside chance of sweeping to power just ahead of a crucial redistricting cycle that could cement their control of the state for years to come.

Amid record turnout for what is usually a sleepy off-year, irregular election, Louisiana Republicans locked up enough seats in the state Senate to amount to a super majority. The party came within seven seats of winning a super majority in the state House, too, with eight runoff elections to come in November.

Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) easily led the field of candidates running for the state’s top office, but he did not win a majority of the vote, which would have allowed him to avoid the Nov. 16 runoff.

Instead, his two leading opponents — businessman Eddie Rispone (R) and Rep. Ralph Abraham (R) — captured a combined 52 percent of the vote. That gives Rispone, who finished about 4 percentage points ahead of Abraham, a path to win the runoff.

The lesson here is to be careful of mono-sourcing your news.

These results should raise some questions for the Democrats. Is the Louisiana result due to endogenous or exogenous reasons? Was Trump really influential? Towards the latter question, prior to the election Edwards was polling 48%, and achieved 47%, well within the margin of error, so perhaps he had little influence.

The Hill’s report does have one clue in it:

Edwards grabbed about 91 percent of the African American vote, according to Couvillon’s estimates, a solid and necessary performance for any Democrat who hopes to win statewide office in a conservative Southern state.

But worryingly for the Democratic incumbent, African Americans made up a smaller percentage of the overall electorate than they have in past elections.

That suggests Edwards is not inspiring the black community to vote, although it’s hardly dispositive.

Once again, we’ve seen the fourth movie in a series, and once again I’m impressed with the quality. Toy Story 4 (2019) features the same amazing animation, acting, and imagination that has been present throughout this series. And it continues the tradition of telling a story which touches on the heart of the human condition, in this case the question of what to do when one’s purpose in life disappears.

Our continual hero, Sheriff Woody, and most of his companion toys have moved on to a new family and a new child to help raise, Bonnie. Unlike Andy, who considered Woody to be his best friend, Bonnie likes to create her toys, and when she creates Forky from a discarded plastic fork and some trash, it’s up to Woody to train Forky for toy-hood.

In fact, for the heavy responsibility of being Bonnie’s favorite.

During the training, they encounter the long missing Bo Peep, who had been a toy of Andy’s sister, and given away years earlier. Woody discovers his affection for Bo is undiminished, even as he learns that she is not only a Lost Toy, supposedly a horror for any toy, but she revels in it.

But lurking in the small town Bonnie’s family is visiting is the Antique Store, the home of the eerie Gabby Gabby, a doll full of dark purposes and manic drive, assisted by several Charlie McCarthy dolls. And she wants? Something of Woody’s, and she’ll do anything to get it – including holding Forky hostage.

In Woody, we see the relentless drive to do right, even in the face of the high cost of doing so, and how that can work out against all the odds. More importantly, we also watch as Woody realizes that in order to grow and mature, one must learn to accept that sometimes you are not the center of someone else’s existence, and that transitions, as painful as they may be, are a necessity of life.

Some new characters, and a new purpose in life, finish the lesson.

Strongly recommended.

So it looks like the United States military forces are being pushed towards becoming a mercenary outfit, if President Trump has anything to do with it. From a WhiteHouse.gov transcript of a traditional Trump helicopter press conference:

Q    Mr. President, why are you sending more troops to Saudi Arabia when you just said it’s a mistake to be in the Middle East?

THE PRESIDENT:  So we’re sending more troops to Saudi Arabia.  Saudi Arabia is a very good ally, from the standpoint that we get along with them very well — a very important player in the Middle East.  The relationship has been very good.  And they buy hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise from us, not only military equipment.  In military equipment, about $110 billion.  It’s millions of jobs.

Now, with that being said, we are sending troops and other things to the Middle East to help Saudi Arabia.  But are you ready?  Saudi Arabia, at my request, has agreed to pay us for everything we’re doing.  That’s a first.

But Saudi Arabia — and other countries, too, now — but Saudi Arabia has agreed to pay us for everything we’re doing to help them.  And we appreciate that.

It really makes me wonder what Trump would do if Iran began bidding for American military services. Would he abandon the Saudis if the price were right?

No doubt some readers wonder why we send military aid without financial compensation to other nations. The reason is that the system of international diplomacy doesn’t operate on a financial basis, nor can it; the goals of diplomacy are not facilitated by the transactional nature of the financial system. Why? A financial system is not about national existential questions, it’s about facilitating economic activity. It doesn’t foster analysis, or institutional memory.

And those two latter elements, among others, are critical elements of international diplomacy. Understanding what another nation’s ruling class intends to do – to you -requires institutional memory and analysis. Making wise decisions which increase your country’s prosperity by discouraging or, worse, defeating, an adversary’s armies and, thus, ambitions is the role of government.

On the other hand, sending your army off at the beckon of a pocketbook may increase accounts temporary, and they may not be used against you, but it may deprive you of needed troops elsewhere.

But that’s just the surface layer. A mercenary player in international diplomacy may think they’re taking advantage of international tensions to reap a windfall, but they’re assuming a static situation. Their clients soon become aware of the chaos caused by mercenaries who are allies in one conflict, enemies in the next, and always collecting intelligence on their own clients.

This is not a stable situation, and soon the mercenaries are dispatched. If they’re lucky, they’re boycotted; the unfortunate mercenary armies are massacred. Allegiance to national interests remains the gold standard, even today; the blue helmets of the United Nations are not considered to be an elite fighting force.

And the reputation of the mercenary army’s homeland? Besmirched. Funny word, isn’t it? It means a lower level of trust, less influence in the world.

President Trump has proven to be a very limited man. He’s a real estate developer of mediocre ability, who moved on to television stardom as the guy whose primary talent was his catchphrase: You’re fired! Not electrifying credentials for holding the top job in the United States, and he’s proving it. His emphasis on money puts his limits up in neon: I’ll do anything for a bit of cash.

United States parents, for all President Trump tells us he hates foreign wars, don’t believe him, it’s not true.

He hates not being paid like a mercenary for a foreign war.

It’s not nearly the same thing.