Monthly Archives: November 2019

Sometimes billionaires do good, as much as that may sicken lefty ideologists. CNN is reporting on the Bill Gates-backed company Heliogen and its recent achievement:

Heliogen, a clean energy company that emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday, said it has discovered a way to use artificial intelligence and a field of mirrors to reflect so much sunlight that it generates extreme heat above 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Essentially, Heliogen created a solar oven — one capable of reaching temperatures that are roughly a quarter of what you’d find on the surface of the sun.

The breakthrough means that, for the first time, concentrated solar energy can be used to create the extreme heat required to make cement, steel, glass and other industrial processes. In other words, carbon-free sunlight can replace fossil fuels in a heavy carbon-emitting corner of the economy that has been untouched by the clean energy revolution.

I’m somewhat intrigued in that they’re claiming they had to use artificial intelligence to make their scheme fly. Their web site doesn’t really discuss it:

The breakthrough in Heliogen’s technology starts with our patented closed-loop control system that makes our field of mirrors act as a multi-acre magnifying glass to concentrate sunlight. The HelioMax system is an industry first and a critical step in harnessing the power of the sun. Our ability to concentrate and capture sunlight allows us to create carbon-free, ultra-high temperature heat (HelioHeat) commercially for the first time.

Their note about it being patented also piqued my interest. How does patents play into an artificial intelligence system? Think of pharmaceutical patents, where the owners will muck about a bit with drug formulas and patent the new ones as a way to extend their ownership of a drug. Can a patent be taken out on the information that necessarily lies at the heart of the artificial system, the machine intuition which I discussed a few days ago? Or do they extract a static version of that information and patent that?

This is hardly a panacea, either. There’s been a lot of strain on the raw materials for cement and concrete, so perfecting a non-carbon heat source for cement doesn’t relieve all of the problems associated with those materials. Treehugger hasn’t covered the Heliogen story yet, but Lloyd Alter has a connected piece of interest:

This is the fantasy of green hydrogen and carbon-free steel; yes, it can work, but we don’t have time. We would need to transform the entire industry, and produce billions and billions of tons of hydrogen, and build all the infrastructure to make it.

It’s why I always return to the same place. We have to substitute materials that we grow instead of those we dig out of the ground. We have to use less steel, half of which is going into construction and 16 percent of which is going into cars, which are 70 percent steel by weight. So build our buildings out of wood instead of steel; make cars smaller and lighter and get a bike.

Written before Heliogen went public with its claims. Will Heliogen be able to get around these problems? They claim they create hydrogen:

Heliogen said it is generating so much heat that its technology could eventually be used to create clean hydrogen at scale. That carbon-free hydrogen could then be turned into a fuel for trucks and airplanes.

“If you can make hydrogen that’s green, that’s a gamechanger,” said Gross. “Long term, we want to be the green hydrogen company.”

But enough to matter?

Finally, it looks like they plan to commercialize it and run it like any other business. I wonder if they ever considered giving it away. Otherwise, it may be difficult to get those companies involved in the carbon-releasing technology to switch over.

These two li’l trucks for sale are a couple miles from our place.

They have a very humble sense of class.

And this could be unsettling, depending on where you live. From NewScientist (2 November 2019, paywall):

Global warming could contribute to the failure of one in four steel bridges in the US over the next two decades. …

Hussam Mahmoud at Colorado State University and his colleague decided to model the effects of increasing temperatures on steel bridges around the US.

In particular, they focused on what would happen when joints that are clogged with dirt and debris are exposed to the higher temperatures expected in the years ahead as the climate warms. Clogging is a common problem, especially in deteriorating bridges, but it is costly to address. …

They found that current temperatures aren’t extreme enough to cause a problem, but one in four bridges are at risk of a section failing in the next 21 years, rising to 28 per cent by 2060 and 49 per cent by 2080. Almost all are set to fail by 2100.

Lots of risk, but a lot of business for bridge building companies, I sadly suppose.

Manichean:

Manichaeism taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process that takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light, whence it came. Its beliefs were based on local Mesopotamian religious movements and Gnosticism. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “A Glimpse at the Intersectional Left’s Political Endgame,” Andrew Sullivan, New York Intelligencer:

[Ibram X. Kendi’s] capable of conveying the complicated dynamics of that violent mugging on a bus, but somehow insists that the only real violence is the structural “violence” of racist power. After a while, you realize that this worldview cannot be contradicted or informed by any discipline outside itself — sociology, biology, psychology, history. Unlike any standard theory in the social sciences, Kendi’s argument — one that is heavily rooted in critical theory — about a Manichean divide between racist and anti-racist forces cannot be tested or falsified. Because there is no empirical reality outside the “power structures” it posits.

When it comes to the future, this headline says it all:

Up to 630 million people could be threatened by rising seas
[NewScientist, 2 November 2019]

So far, forecasts are getting worse, not better.

Up to 630 million people are living on land threatened by flooding from sea level rises by the end of the century – three times as many as previously thought, according to a new analysis.

The greatest increase in risk was found for communities living in Asian megacities, due to the way earlier estimates were worked out.

The change is due to better technology at understanding the true elevation of a city. Skyscrapers were confusing the software doing the estimates.

If these estimates are accurate, I wonder where these 630 million people will go.

President Trump is looking for a quick diplomatic win:

Mr. Chairman, Joe Biden may be Sleepy and Very Slow, but he is not a “rabid dog.” He is actually somewhat better than that, but I am the only one who can get you where you have to be. You should act quickly, get the deal done. See you soon! https://t.co/kO2k14lTf7

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 17, 2019

The AP is reporting on North Korean reaction – or perhaps pouncing – to this latest overture:

North Korea on Monday responded to a tweet by U.S. President Donald Trump that hinted at another summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying it has no interest in giving Trump further meetings to brag about unless it gets something substantial in return.

The statement by Foreign Ministry adviser Kim Kye Gwan is the latest call by North Korea for U.S. concessions ahead of an end-of-year deadline set by Kim Jong Un for the Trump administration to offer mutually acceptable terms for a deal to salvage nuclear diplomacy.

This could be an underrated story, because if Trump becomes desperate for another bit of smoke to distract from his meltdown in Washington, he might knuckle-under to North Korean demands and really give away the store.

“Three rounds of DPRK-U.S. summit meetings and talks were held since June last year, but no particular improvement has been achieved in the DPRK-U.S. relations … the U.S. only seeks to earn time, pretending it has made progress in settling the issue of the Korean Peninsula,” he said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, referring to North Korea by the initials of its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We are no longer interested in such talks that bring nothing to us. As we have got nothing in return, we will no longer gift the U.S. president with something he can boast of, but get compensation for the successes that President Trump is proud of as his administrative achievements.”

I think this is a message to Trump that North Korea won’t help him retain his office without a big present for them, unearned and dangerous as it is. They know that Trump is inexperienced, incurious, temperamental, and won’t listen to advisors and experts – it’s their chance to take advantage of an amateur so hapless that he has no idea just how much he’s failing.

Let’s hope there’s still something left in the picnic basket by the time we’re rid of him.

Let’s go to the drive-in and murder EVERYONE!
Sure thing, honey.

In the category of being an object lesson, Detour (1945) presents Al Roberts, a down on his luck pianist who’s trying to hitch a ride from New York to California in order to rejoin his fiancee, who has insisted that they get on their feet before they marry. She’s in California, trying to jump-start an acting career, while he keeps jabbing at the black & white keys.

But he’s really down on his luck. He’s in Arizona and thinking he’s finally found the last leg of his journey in the form of Charles Haskell and his big, big convertible, when Haskell has the poor taste to die while Al is driving – and Al doesn’t notice until he stops to close up the big car against the driving rain, and Charles falls out of the car on his head.

Al panics, because he doesn’t think the cops will believe his story. He ransacks the body, takes the money and ID, and dumps the body under some bushes and is soon, against his better judgment, back on the road.

And then his luck takes a turn for the worse. He offers a ride to Vera, a woman who just happens to have ridden with Haskell and recognizes the car, but not Roberts-faking-it-as-Haskell. She’s a veritable volcano of poor judgment and rotten ethics, and soon she’s threatened Roberts into giving her a cut of the dough and a ride into San Bernardino.

But her search of the glove compartment is the crowning achievement: a newspaper clipping indicating Haskell’s father is in Los Angeles, is rich, and is dying. Vera guesses Haskell, who ran away from home lo so many years ago, was running back to freshen his stash, as he claimed he was running a little low. She sees a chance to hit it big and forget all about the poverty in which she grew up.

By now, the audience has figured out that Roberts, for all his bluster, tends to blow with the wind, and we settle in to see how he’ll perform as a scammer, but he and Vera play a little game of virtual chicken with a phone, and, in a retro moment for the modern audience, he strangles her, inadvertently, with a phone cord.

Basically a good man, he’s in shock and finishes his narration, a study in self-pity, about how he never had a chance.

The cinematography is a little blurry, and if you object to his initial decision to not trust the cops when Haskell dies, you won’t really much care for this movie. But I do have to give the actress who plays Vera props, she really brought out the pathological side of what appeared to be someone damaged by poverty. It’s the sort of thing that makes you wonder about the applicability of morality to the truly desperate.

The results of the third and final gubernatorial contest of 2019 are in, and the Democrats have now won two out of three. All three contests were in Deep South states, so what does Louisiana’s result have to say about the future of the Republicans in the great State of Louisiana?

Approaching this as I did with Kentucky, again I suspect the quality and reputations of local candidates are more important than their ideological labels, although the latter does play into the game. First, some charts. Keep in mind that Louisiana runs a jungle primary for its Senatorial and gubernatorial elections, which can result in highly fragmented votes. If no one wins the primary with > 50% of the vote, it proceeds to a runoff for the top two candidates, and so it can appear that a candidate has beaten their opponents by large margins when it’s not really true from a Party perspective.

And, once again, I have chosen to show vote totals rather than percentages as a way to judge the magnitude of interest in the contests.

While there’s been a declining general interest in the runs for the Senate, perhaps reflecting the quality or reputations of the candidates, it appears the Republicans have been making gains and taking control of late.

Much like Kentucky, Trump’s victory margin in Louisiana appears to reflect a long term trend for the State.

And, yet, when it comes to the governor’s seat, the Democrats have gained control.

This may all come down to the candidates. In 2015, Democrat Edwards, a lawyer with state house and military experience and traditionally conservative credentials, beat Republican Senator Vitter, damaged by scandal; Edwards won again yesterday against political novice and millionaire businessman Eddie Rispone. Coming into the contest, Edwards had high approval ratings from the state’s residents; Rispone, without experience, had President Trump, who endorsed him several times and visited the state for a campaign rally.

It was a close contest, but Edwards wins. Does it mean the Democrats have a bright future in the Bayou State? I think it’ll all hinge on the quality of their candidates, which is good for politics, for local races, but when it comes to the Presidential, it’ll be more difficult to judge. Was Clinton that awful a candidate? Maybe she was. Or maybe the Republican effort to tar her as awful was successful. Trump reportedly has approval ratings in excess of 50% in Louisiana, which sounds positive and roughly in the ballpark of the 2016 election.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

In response to the post about not trusting names of organizations, a reader supplies quite the list:

Here’s a few for you:
* Coalition for Health Insurance Choices
* Wise Use
* Citizens to Protect the Pacific Northwest and Northern California Economy
* National Smokers Alliance
* Americans for Properity
* American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy
* FACES of Coal
* Friends of Coal
* Energy in Depth
* CHANGEPAC
* VOTINGFORJUDGES.ORG
* Citizens for Judicial Integrity
* Consumers for Cable Choice
* Keep It Local New Jersey
* New Millennium Research Council
* Teach Plus
* Education Equity Project
* Educators for Excellence
* Alliance for Excellent Education
* Center on Education Policy
* Foundation for Educational Excellence
* Stop Too Big To Fail
* Consumers for Competitive Choice
* Alliance of Australian Retailers
* Working Families for Walmart
* Paid Critics

I’m not sure Friends of Coal fits the criteria – unless it’s trying to destroy the coal industry. Most of the rest I’ve not noticed. My personal favorite is Judicial Crisis Network, wherein the crisis appears to be that the judiciary doesn’t have enough right-wing activists as judges.

My reader continues:

There are also lots of other tricks, like Comcast’s paying people off the street to fill public spots in the audience of hearings to applaud for them (Comcast) and to take up seats which would otherwise have been filled by people more critical and the media. Or like organizations and politicians paying to set up fake social media accounts to praise them, e.g. https://twitter.com/queensquaykaren who is actually Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s deputy communications director, Fraser Macdonald.

Well, that’s certainly deceptive, but part of the job of the officials running hearings is to disregard hearings as indicators of popular support of any particular position on any issue; if an issue requires gauging public approval, then commission a poll. Hearings should be for collecting information from experts, and for limited public input.

I could research this stuff and list organizations and campaigns all day. Generally speaking, unless you know the source or can otherwise verify it, assume it’s someone trying to lie to you.

A sadly necessary bit of paranoia these days. Another reader remarks:

Al Gore never foresaw any of this when he invented the internet.

Which, for some reason, triggers me to think that the Web is a leading example of the old economic concept The tragedy of the commons. Although exactly whether or not the resource being harvested is of a limited or unlimited quantity isn’t entirely clear, is it? Perhaps the analogy is inapt. I’ll have to think about it.

Ipso facto:

The Latin term ipso facto translates as “the fact by itself.” It is used in science, philosophy, and law to refer to something that, by the fact that it exists – or that it occurred – means something else is true. For example, if you grew up in San Francisco, ipso facto you’re a Californian. By the very fact of having grown up in a city within the state, you are a Californian. [Legal Dictionary]

Noted in “A Glimpse at the Intersectional Left’s Political Endgame,” Andrew Sullivan, New York Intelligencer:

[How to Be an Antiracist] therefore is not an attempt to persuade anyone. It’s a life story interspersed with a litany of pronouncements about what you have to do to be good rather than evil. It has the tone of a Vatican encyclical, or a Fundamentalist sermon. There is no space in this worldview for studying any factor that might create or exacerbate racial or ethnic differences or inequalities apart from pure racism. If there are any neutral standards that suggest inequalities or differences of any sort between ethnic groups, they are also ipso facto racist standards. In fact, the idea of any higher or lower standard for anything is racist, which is why Kendi has no time either for standardized tests. In this view of the world, difference always means hierarchy.

It sounds like Kendi wants to leap directly to results without traversing the valley standing in the way.

That panicked moment when you realize you haven’t attended class all year, you’re not wearing any pants, and the teacher just painted you red? Wrong. The problem here can only be adequately described by another dream, and you only get to have one dream at a time. Sucks to be you.

First, drop some acid. First, be a schizophrenic. But, first, don’t sleep for 48 hours. And, first, have a dream like many of mine: indescribable, walking the intersection of mad and dull, unrestrained while being deeply constrained.

Then make a movie. You may get something like The Forbidden Room (2015), a feast for the slightly crazed eye, as the film shifts palettes and then melts; a maddening puzzle for the lover of plot and action; a beckoning finger for those who adore the mythic figure, the mythos, and the palm of the god who holds them in their hands.

But it’s more fun with a friend, especially when they try to walk away in frustration and you have to drag them back bodily to finish the epic marathon. Because this can be a mountain, if your temperament so dictates, worthy of cramps, ropes, frenzied breathing, and the random ruined friendship.

Enjoy it. Or not.

Maranasati:

In some corners it’s been suggested that, while President Trump may have committed a minor crime by pressuring Ukraine to publicly commission an investigation into 2020 Democratic candidate for President Joe Biden, surely this doesn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense. After all, Ukraine received the military aid that was being withheld, Trump didn’t know, etc.

But this WaPo summation of the history of the inquiry summarizes why it’s necessary for the future of the United States that this impeachment inquiry take place, even if GOP control of the Senate would seem to negate the possibility of a conviction of President Trump:

I use ‘occult’ in the secondary sense of ‘unseen’ and not mystical, just to be clear, although there may be a tangential connection with the usual meaning, at least for those who don’t mind stretching a point.

Last night, as I tried to relax on the couch following an unfortunate incident while I slept, an analogy between what is erroneously called artificial intelligence and a different human capacity came to mind which I’ve not seen elsewhere. I’ve discussed the topic of machine learning before, which is often taken to be artificial intelligence in some way, but I’d like to reiterate the point of interest (if only to me) right here:

When a programmer is given a task to solve, typically the steps that we’re encoding for the computer to follow are either well-known at the time of the assignment, or they can be deduced through simple inspection, or they can be collected out in the real world. An example of the last choice comes from the world of medicine, where early attempts at creating a diagnosis AI began with collecting information from doctors on how to map symptomology to disease diagnosis.

These steps may be laborious or tricky to code, either due to their nature or the limitations of the computers they will be run on, but at their heart they’re well-known and describable.

My observations of ML, on the other hand, is that ML installations are coded in such a way as to not assume that the recipe is known. At its heart, ML must discover the recipe that leads to the solution through observation and feedback from an authority entity. To take this back to the deferment I requested a moment ago, the encoding of the discovered recipe is often opaque and difficult to understand, as the algorithms are often statistical in nature.

Last night it occurred to me that there’s an analogy to something else than human intelligence, and that’s human intuition. Intuition is

The faculty of knowing or understanding something without reasoning or proof. [wordnik]

Or, more accurately, reasoning without knowing the rules. In my observation on machine learning, above, I suggested that in order for something to qualify as such, the algorithm must work out the rules based on experience, rather than have them encoded by the programmer. This deduction of the rules isn’t necessarily elucidatable, and, to my mind, that obscurity might qualify to suggest that what currently is called artificial intelligence, and is sometimes categorized as machine learning, might even be better described as machine intuition.

And while I can’t think of how that will generally advantage us in the future, it always makes any scientist or engineer happier to have properly categorized something. It’s just the way we are. And my relative lack of respect for same why I more or less inhabit the fringes of the profession.

I will win at RISK! Oh, wait, you’ve already won.

Perhaps it’s a sign that I’ve watched too many movies, digested too many stories. Years and years ago, good friends of ours highly recommended Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011), and we recently finally took them up.

It was meh.

This is the story of the rehydration of the dry river bed of the Yemen, the population of it with salmon from Britain, and the personal drama surrounding the project. The latter ranges from incredulity at the scope and even arrogance of the project, financed by a rich Arabian sheik who’s a fly fishing fanatic, to the breakup of the chief expert’s marriage, and ranging onwards to the coordinator of the project, who, midway through, loses her military boyfriend in a firefight in Afghanistan.

And then comes the Yemen locals who, being who they are, can’t stand the thought of a river going through their homeland. They’re going to do something about this sheik and his dam, you know?

The various elements of an interesting story are present, the conflict, the setbacks, new strategies, personal anguish, and the sheik has some nice charisma going for him, but it just didn’t come together for us. Some of it was simply that, for the major characters, all the disasters were cleaned up and dispensed with. The minor characters, well, who cares? They were basically spear-carriers, window-dressing to the drama.

It all felt just not quite right. And maybe that’s because I’ve seen the form too many times, and this was not as well done as some. I can’t fault the technical aspects of the production, and the concept has a nice tinge of outrageousness to it. But, in the end, I felt like maybe another two drafts of the script, concentrating on throwing some actual tragedy at the major characters and spicing up the supporting characters, might have benefited this story greatly.

Part of an occasional series examining President Trump’s progress against Candidate Trump’s promises.

The promise: Candidate Trump promises to build a wall on the southern border of the continental United States.

Results So Far: No new border wall has been built as of this writing (November, 2019), despite Trump’s many florid claims to the contrary.

It is true that certain parts of the barrier that predates the Trump Administration on certain parts of the southern border have been replaced during the Trump Administration, but, for the fair-minded observer, this is not equivalent to building the wall; it’s merely upkeep.

To be fair, one does not simply erect a wall. Like any such building project, financing must be arranged; contractors attracted and signed; problem analyzed, designs created, validated, and accepted; and land acquired. Only then may actual construction commence. Here’s Trump’s progress on these fronts, as I understand it.

Financing. This is perhaps the highest profile failure of the Trump Administration in building the wall, as he likes to put it at campaign rallies. Congress holds the power of the purse, it’s true, but for the first two years of Trump’s term in office he had compliant GOP allies in control of both the House and the Senate. It stands to reason that adequate appropriations could have been arranged, but nothing occurred as the White House leadership permitted its attention to be distracted by other issues, such as tax reform and healthcare. When the GOP lost control of the House at the 2018 midterm elections, a shocked President Trump attempted to demand funding for the wall from the House, now controlled by the Democrats, precipitating a funding crisis as the Federal debt ceiling was pierced. In the following months, professionals Speaker of the House Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Schumer (D-NY) easily crushed the amateur politician Trump, forcing him to accept a deal dictated by the Democrats which had no wall funding. Trump then resorted to declaring a National Emergency; this decision resulted in numerous court cases, the latest result of which that I can find is Trump losing in U.S. District Court in early October; he’s lost in other Courts as well, but the conservative wing of SCOTUS may eventually side with him. Time will tell.

Contractors attracted and signed. This is the sort of thing the U.S. Government does everyday, and it has cut and dried procedures for it. Yet, there has been some controversy in this part of the process, as President Trump has attempted to interfere with the selection of contractors.

Problem analyzed, designs created, validated, and accepted. President Trump has interfered in this process as well, changing the requirements by changing how long the wall should be, requiring the wall have a certain look (at one time transparent!), that it be built in a certain way, and while he may or may not have a certain expertise in appearance, deriving from his days as a reality TV star, his interference generally results in inferior products. This has been illustrated with some of the replacement wall, built to his specifications, reportedly being easily pierced by Mexican smugglers.

Land acquired. Some portions of the southern border are actually privately owned land, thus requiring that land be either bought or “taken,” and this has caused an uproar from those owners. I do wonder if an easement is possible, but I have not seen any mentions of such a concept.

The Bigger Picture: The border wall has been the most popular aspect of Trump’s political career, and also the most cause of what appears to be mendacity as he has repeatedly lied and mislead the public about the status of the wall.

The future of the wall remains hazy, as financing remains a question mark in the courts and in Congress. And its efficacy remains a highly controversial topic, as I’ve discussed in the past.

But, more importantly, I wonder if Trump and the media have really misinterpreted the point of the Build The Wall! chants that erupt at Trump’s ongoing campaign rallies. At their heart, they are about concerns about immigration, the impact of cheap labor on local labor markets, and the impact of foreign cultural constructs on local cultural identity. Are they really a call for building the wall, or are they simply a way to communicate the concerns I’ve just listed, and that Trump should be investigating why immigrants are attempting to come to the United States, and how to ameliorate those conditions in the homelands of the immigrants?

I know I’ve brought this up before, but it bears repeating. Trump could become a far more effective leader if he brought this sort of thinking to his Administration.

Acrostic:

1. A poem or series of lines in which certain letters, usually the first in each line, form a name, motto, or message when read in sequence.
2. See word square.
3. A word puzzle in which the answers to several different clues form an anagram of a quotation, phrase, or other text. [The Free Dictionary]

Noted in “A GOP congressman hid a meme about Jeffrey Epstein’s death in his impeachment tweets,” Teo Armus, WaPo:

A friend sent me a link to Museum of Artifacts, a website that presents various artifacts of ancient civilizations for your viewing pleasure:

The amber bear amulet was found in 1887 in a peat bog near Slupsk, Poland. When the figure was examined it turned out to be the amulet of a bear hunter, originating from the Neolithic period. It was dated at between 1700 B.C. and 650 B.C.

More here. I can only hope it’s not gone dormant.

The Keebler-Elf-In-Chief in action!

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III would appear to have no concerns that he might be perceived as a complete and total lickspittle, a word I use for the literal visuals it brings immediately to mind. Here’s his latest ad, reportedly airing tomorrow:

Out of the 100 United State Senators, I was the very first one to stand with @realDonaldTrump and I will keep fighting for him and his agenda. pic.twitter.com/Cf0tN8nzGl

— Jeff Sessions (@jeffsessions) November 14, 2019

The verbiage should be a source of shame, not pride, and the ad itself almost makes me hurt for the guy and his total lack of self-respect. Jeff-boy, you can still cancel the ad!

But then a reader provides this on the history of Mr. Sessions:

And he was a criminal while he was the AG of Alabama. He’d have been in prison, except that powerful friends kept him from being prosecuted. (I suspect the crimes may have been committed slightly before he became the AL AG, but am too lazy to go re-research that bit of history.)

In response to my query for more information:

Fairly well documented. Don’t know if I’ll be able to find them now, but during his confirmation hearings for USAG, a woman was arrested and charged for an expletive-like comment (i.e. the statement to which she reacted was of such blatant dishonesty and complete opposite to fact, she could hardly help herself from saying something like “bullshit” — I don’t remember what she actually said). In the reporting by a reputable paper (maybe the WaPo?) on that event, the writer explained that the women responded this way because she knew of Sessions time as AG in Alabama, where he was a whisker’s width from being charged with felonies and then miraculously the crimes were just forgotten about. I’ll see if I can find anything.

Here’s a pile of stuff to whet your appetite: https://slate.com/…/the-terrible-things-jeff-sessions…

While Slate qualifies as a news source that is on the liberal side of the spectrum, the information in the article, based on a official sources, does appear to paint a pattern of petty corruption on Sessions’ part.

In addition to his fervent loyalty to Trump during the campaign, there are several pieces of evidence from his time as Alabama attorney general that indicate Sessions would act as a rubber stamp for potential acts of executive corruption. As detailed in this new examination of archived news reports and original source documents, at least twice during his mere two years in office, Sessions produced legally flawed opinions that were favorable to Alabama Gov. Fob James that also, conveniently, aligned with the interests of one of Alabama’s most politically powerful and deep-pocketed organizations. That organization also happened to have spent substantial sums on, and taken credit for, electing James and Sessions to office.

Years later, Sessions’ legal reasoning in these opinions was overruled by broad majorities of the Alabama Supreme Court—including in one ruling written by a Republican justice.

Sessions’ brief, troubling record doesn’t end there. As a state attorney general, he also cleared the way for a politically connected insurance company’s planned no-bid coverage of state road work; urged the Alabama Ethics Commission to approve corporate-funded junkets for state employees; fought successfully against seating the first black intermediate appellate court judges in Alabama’s history; and, no joke, provided formal support for a local sheriff’s use of actual chain gangs.

While I’m aware that this could be a political hit job, his spineless whining to get his Senate seat back is certainly congruent with the implications of this Slate article.

I can’t wait to see more of his spineless ads.

Which is really a slippery question. Yesterday, the President experienced another defeat:

A federal appeals court on Wednesday let stand a ruling allowing lawmakers to subpoena President Donald Trump’s accountants for years of his financial records. A lawyer for the president promised to appeal to the Supreme Court.

On an 8-3 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to grant a hearing before the full court, upholding a ruling last month by a three-judge panel of the court to allow the subpoena.

The decision means that unless Trump appeals to the Supreme Court and wins, the House Oversight and Reform Committee can enforce its subpoena ordering the accounting firm, Mazars USA LLP, to hand over any documents in its possession related to accounts of the Trump Organization dating to January 2009. [NBC News]

So onward to SCOTUS, which Steve Benen reminds his readers, as if we needed reminding, of former Speaker of the House Gingrich’s very cry of corruption:

During a live interview on Oct. 25 [2018] at The Washington Post, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said that if Democrats re-take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections and subpoena the president’s tax returns, it would likely force a fight in the U.S. Supreme Court. “And,” Gingrich said,”we’ll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it.” [WaPo]

And now the question for every single member of SCOTUS is whether ideological loyalty is more important than loyalty to the country and its laws, or whether they’re congruent, liberal and conservative alike. And for the non-lawyer, it’ll be hard to tell who answered which way; we’ll have to listen to the experts in the matter to see who appears to have let their loyalties rule their behavior to the detriment of their legacy.

Or not. There’s four outcomes possible here.

1. SCOTUS refuses to hear the appeal. Enough of them agree with the lower court decision that they get to not be part of this mess.
2. SCOTUS takes the case and decides for the President.
3. SCOTUS takes the case and decides against the President.
4. SCOTUS takes the case and sends it back to the lower courts for reconsideration on a technical point.

I think 2 & 4 are functionally equivalent for partisan purposes.

Image: TradeZero

Brexit continues to fascinate me as a marker for how a nation is struggling with the clash of nationalism, which is neither bad nor good but simply exists, vs economic factors. Andrew Sullivan continues to illuminate how the generic Brexiteer regards the situation in an epic take down of Nick Kristof in the second part of his weekly tri-partite diary for New York Mag’s Intelligencer:

It is instead baffling as a distant friend of Kristof’s to see that he has “gone nuts” over Brexit. He cites the various projections of lower economic growth, which are plausible. And yet, far worse scenarios of economic calamity were broadcast prior to the referendum by the Remain campaign — it was known as “Project Fear” — and they still lost. It is as if (and I hope Nick is sitting down) the British were prepared to sacrifice some wealth in order to ensure that the British Parliament will have the sole say in how Britain is governed. He cites the possibility of breakup, ridiculing the idea that the English, whose nationhood is just as deep as the Scots and the Welsh and Irish, might actually end up as a “little” nation of 53 million, as opposed to a “great” nation with almost 67 million people. (Here’s a map of the British Isles, according to population density.)

I was surprised at my own shocked reaction, to be honest – the idea that “… the British were prepared to sacrifice some wealth in order to ensure that the British Parliament will have the sole say in how Britain is governed.” And yet it’s an obvious trade-off, isn’t it? Why didn’t I see it?

But if the Brits see the decisions of the European Parliament and allied bureaucrats in Brussels as deleterious to the metaphorical fortunes of themselves, as opposed to their literal fortunes, it’s certainly their right to stand up and say, Yeah, wealth is not as important to us as having a say in how our lives are run!

Bloody obvious, really, once I sit and think about it. I’m almost embarrassed to have really missed that viewpoint. And I suspect ridicule by Kristof (“[Brexiteers have] gone nuts“) and other anti-Brexiteers will merely result in heels digging in; perhaps those who are incredulous at what’s happening all around them across the Pond should perhaps sit down and really listen to their opposition. And re-examine their own reasoning.

A story teaching us to be suspicious of the titles of organizations whose names are a trifle too true-blue:

An attack ad in the [Louisiana] governor’s race was pulled from airwaves Friday after claiming Edwards’ military buddy landed a contract worth up to $65 million, even though the contract was never awarded.

Truth in Politics, a 501(c)(4) co-founded by GOP donor Lane Grigsby, launched the attack ad, which claims that after Edwards was elected, “backroom deals begin” and that his roommate at West Point, Murray Starkel, “lands a state contract worth up to $65 million.”

But the contract in question, for coastal restoration work, was never awarded to any of the four bidders who were deemed qualified, including Starkel’s firm, Ecological Service Partners, LLC. [The Advocate]

Truth In Politics, eh? That’s a name that soothes the nerves and practically shouts Let’s drain the swamp, doesn’t it? But wait, it gets better!

Truth in Politics spokesman Jay Connaughton, in a lengthy statement, appeared to stand by the ad and said “just highlighting one project that didn’t move forward is misleading,” calling the deal “shady.” The ad only references the $65 million project, however, and the ad was replaced with a new version. The new spot changed the wording from Starkel landing a contract to his being “poised to cash in.”

To me, that says that in Truth In Politics’ frenzy to splash mud on Democratic Governor Edwards during his re-election bid, truth has been thrown under the bus; victory is all.

Now, perhaps my cynical reader will shrug and says this happens all the time. However, to my jaundiced eye, Truth In Politics has an implicit promise in its name. A message from the RNC (Republican National Committee) or the DNC (guess) can be expected to shade the truth a little bit, because they are obviously partisan organizations, and while I’d like to see them be truthful, human nature being what it is, blah blah blah.

But when someone says Truth In Politics, well, I expect them to step forward and be truthful. Not just make shit up, not be right on 80% of the facts and wrong on that one critical fact that makes the whole piece into a shameful pill of false blame.

I expect them to live up to their name to the best of their abilities, not frantically defend their piece when even those bastions of low standards, revenue hungry TV stations, won’t run the damn ad.

Spokesman Connaughton and whoever runs Truth In Politics (some dude named Grigsby, apparently) should be utterly embarrassed and ashamed at this behavior, but they won’t be. They’ve swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, the old lie that Victory is the only thing. I would hate to know them on a personal level because, based on this behavior, I would know that I couldn’t trust them. They’d use illegal foils on the piste, they’d move the chess pieces when you’re not looking, they’d rig every game they play, and they’d have that pathetic excuse.

And now I’ll know never to trust anything Truth In Politics puts out.

Michael Gerson comments in WaPo on the relevation from former U. N. Ambassador and GOP star Nikki Haley that senior White House officials Tillerson and Kelly came to her with the notion of joining them in restraining and subverting Trump’s worst impulses:

… Haley is confusing two categories. If a Cabinet member has a policy objection of sufficient seriousness, he or she should take that concern to the president. If the president then chooses against their position — and if implementing the decision would amount to a violation of conscience — an official should resign. Staying in office to undermine, say, a law or war you disapprove of would be a disturbing arrogation of presidential authority.

But there is an equally important moral priority to consider: If you are a national security official working for a malignant, infantile, impulsive, authoritarian wannabe, you need to stay in your job as long as you can to mitigate whatever damage you can — before the mad king tires of your sanity and fires you.

This paradox is one tragic outcome of Trumpism. It is generally a bad and dangerous idea for appointed officials to put their judgment above an elected official’s. And yet it would have been irresponsible for Mattis, Kelly, Tillerson and others not to follow their own judgments in cases where an incompetent, delusional or corrupt president was threatening the national interest.

But it’s not a paradox. All these people swear an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution. That is the paramount applicable behavioral standard. The fact that the President has been elected, via the Electoral College, by the people^[1], is of secondary importance.

The fact of the matter is that once it became clear that Trump is inadequate to the position of the Presidency, whether it be due to general incompetence, mental illness, or malicious intent, these appointed officials should have gone to the Cabinet and asked for a 25^th Amendment proceeding. Succeed or fail, that’s where they should have gone, and the obvious concern that the Cabinet members may have made the intellectual mistake of supposing their Party loyalty and gratitude supersedes their oaths to the Constitution is irrelevant; indeed, if news of the proceeding were to leak to the media, and the names of the nay-sayers with it, then at least we’d know who in the Cabinet was unworthy of the public, or even private trust. That would be a public service in and of itself.

But in the end, the perception that there’s a paradox is an illusion. If Haley truly believed Trump is doing a good job, then it’s acceptable that she turned down Kelly and Tillerson. If Kelly and Tillerson refused to pursue the 25^th Amendment option at her urging, then it’s a less palatable, but still acceptable reason not to join them in their efforts.

But if she, like Gerson, finds herself in uncomfortable awe of the President, then I must say that she misapprehends her position, her oath, and the position of the Presidency. The President is the Executive, an implementor of law, head of defense, and top diplomat, but the President doesn’t make law. That capability, supreme among powers, is Congress, and is only moderated by the President when Congress is sufficiently fractured that it cannot override a veto.

That doesn’t make the President an angel not to be dealt with, Stephen Miller’s quaint little diatribe notwithstanding.

And Haley becomes, if only in my eyes, another fatally flawed Republican. Where have all the good ones gone?^[2]

¹ Sort of.

² Yes, yes, that was purely rhetorical. Most of them quit the party when they realized it was in sepsis and unrecoverable.

If you consider Trump to be your guy, you may want to consider this post by Steve Benen, where he lists the four points Republicans are being instructed to use, and then analyzes them: