Author Archives: Hue White

Steve Benen discusses the President’s exceedingly loose grip on facts, the GOP‘s unhinged belief that the other side is as bad they are themselves, and the possibility there will be more Special Counsels:

As for the road ahead, the Washington Post  reported in December, “Attorney General Jeff Sessions is entertaining the idea of appointing a second special counsel to investigate a host of Republican concerns — including alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation and the controversial sale of a uranium company to Russia — and has directed senior federal prosecutors to explore at least some of the matters and report back to him and his top deputy.”

Will the attorney general be able to resist the pressure and acknowledge reality now that the GOP’s story has collapsed?

Speaking as an independent, I say bring on those investigations. Let’s see, once and for all, if any of the GOP‘s concerns have any substance.

And if I were a Democrat, I’d be celebrating the chance of a special investigation, and crying it out to the stars. Why? First, as a Democrat, and given the lack of real evidence so far seen for the supposed scandals, I’d have to believe that there’s nothing there. Second, because of that, the chance to remove any taint of scandal on the Democrats greatly increases – and, with that, the greater the contrast with a scandal-bound Trump Administration, the various GOP legislators who’ve resigned, and a relatively clean Democratic Party.

After all, has not Secretary Clinton been investigated a half dozen times or more regarding the Benghazi tragedy, and found completely clean of any wrong-doing? That would suggest the GOP may be looking for dirt where there isn’t any – and that would reflect well on the Democrats.

This morning’s headlines are reporting that President Trump has agreed to meet with North Korea’s despot, Kim Jong-un. A couple of days ago Ruediger Frank on 38 North discussed the beginning of Cold War 2.0:

The whole idea of a dead end situation depends on the assumption that consent and cooperation by Washington is an essential part of everybody’s calculations. So far, this is certainly true, but the world is turning. China has been rising for many years now. As result of its massive gains in economic, military and political power, Beijing is becoming more assertive in international politics. The South China Sea conflict, the Belt and Road Initiative, and even the recent constitutional change to extend the rule of Xi Jinping are indicators of that. I have for a long time expected a situation when the Chinese are ready for an open challenge to the supremacy of the United States, thus ending the phase of a unipolar world order that started with the demise of the Soviet Union around 1990. I call it the Cold War 2.0, and it will certainly start in China’s own backyard: East Asia. I thought such a development would take at least ten more years to materialize, however. Is this what we are witnessing now, thanks in part to Donald Trump who is acting as a catalyst of such a process by pulling the plug on TPP, expanding THAAD, demanding higher payment for US military presence, and offending his allies with the threat of punitive trade measures? We should keep our eyes open for signs from Beijing.

If this is where the game is headed, Chinese influence could play a critical role in changing the outcome of inter-Korean dialogue. For instance, imagine a scenario where Beijing is trying to capitalize on the current momentum and is ready to stand up to the United States, rather than continuing cooperation in a maximum pressure approach. In that case, it could declare after the upcoming April summit that the current inter-Korean dialogue has created important results, and that these show the international sanctions, at least those to which China has agreed, have fulfilled their task and have now become unnecessary. North Korea would be displayed by the Chinese as a country that is still problematic, but one that has shown willingness to cooperate and thus needs to be rewarded for such positive behavior in the name of peace and prosperity. Beijing could, for instance, submit a resolution to the UN Security Council to lift some of the sanctions, especially those targeting commercial sectors. Such a step would be vetoed by the US and most likely also by the UK and France. China may then declare that it no longer feels bound by previous resolutions and would unilaterally open its markets again for North Korean goods and services, and host those who want to engage in trade and financial transactions with that country. Russia would likely follow suit.

Under such circumstances, South Korea would then have a choice: It could side with the United States and the UNSC, and refrain from re-opening the Kaesong Industrial Zone, resuming trade and other forms of economic exchange. Alternatively, however, Seoul could share Beijing’s position and feel free to do whatever they see is in the national interest of Korea.

In this era of weakening alliances, I could easily see Trump’s alienation of the South Koreans last year, in tandem with the North Korean offer to discuss the future with South Korea, resulting in a realignment. Frank may disagree:

Or this might just be the beginning of the end of the post-1990 world order. If true, this would require a complete rethinking of what we regarded as certainties, including such big issues as the US presence on the Korean peninsula, the status of Taiwan, and in a more distant future, the possible prospect of a Korean unification with Chinese backing. What the US does next will have long-term implications for the role it will play in Asia’s future. To maintain influence, the US should be smart, capture the current process and take a more active stake in dialogue with North Korea, rather than being the only party to remain seated ostentatiously while everybody else is cheering the joint North-South team.

Whatever else you may think of Kim, think of this: he’s been trained for his role as government leader. So far he and his family has displayed long-term thinking skills, where long-term means, at least, decades. So have the Chinese. President Trump? I doubt more than a year – and then it’s all business, with no thoughts to the international political aspects. He has neither the training, family tradition, or intellectual curiosity to be up to speed when it comes to planning for the future of this country in the international arena.

So when Trump meets with Kim, what are the dangers? That the United States gets taken for a ride. Kim will have focused on Trump as his primary antagonist, the man he must best in diplomatic maneuvering. Claiming nuclear weapons, he now will appear to be dealing from a position of strength. It may even appear that he’s summoned the American president to the meeting.

The hardest part will be discerning how we’ve been taken. If Kim is good, he’ll make it appear that some sort of equitable deal has been struck that enshrines his family as the leaders of North Korea, but there’ll be more to it that President Trump will not understand.

And the most dangerous part will be the claims by the incompetent President of political salvation. Remember, he’s focused on biggest and best. He wants to eclipse his predecessors, most notably Obama, in his accomplishments, and spends inordinate amounts of time claiming that he’s done so – all bombast, exaggerations, and outright lies. But this will something of substance, now won’t it? Especially after last year’s verbal fireworks, it’ll look like Trump has actually accomplished something worthwhile.

And sticking us with Trump for the balance of his term – and possibly even the next – would be a masterstroke by Kim. Crippled by trade wars, losing influence so fast you can see the needle dropping, this is Kim’s dream scenario.

Dulcet:

1. Sweet, especially when describing voice or tones; melodious.
2. Generally pleasing; agreeable.
3. (archaic) Sweet to the taste. [Wiktionary]

I’ve used it many times over the years without knowing its precise meaning. For example, this morning I texted my Arts Editor:

Thrice the dulcet tones of cat barfing were heard last night, but only one has been found.

Her reply?

Traps have been set for the unwary.

Oh dear..

NewScientist (24 February 2018) reports on a new strain of avian flu:

A NEW strain of avian flu has infected people for the first time. So far, the virus doesn’t seem to be especially threatening, but its jump from chickens to humans was unexpected: the World Health Organization says no similar strains have ever crossed to people before.

Last week, the Hong Kong government announced that a 68-year-old woman in Jiangsu province in eastern China was hospitalised in January with severe respiratory symptoms. This turned out to be the first recorded case of an H7N4 flu virus infecting humans.

The woman recovered after a month in hospital. She had handled live poultry before falling ill, so probably caught the virus from the birds or the market she bought them in. No one around her developed any symptoms.

 The case highlights the huge amount of unpredictable viral evolution taking place in livestock farming. “This reminds us that virus activity in animal reservoirs is very dynamic, and we should not just focus on one subtype,” says Wenqing Zhang of the World Health Organization.

One such subtype – H7N9 – has infected more than 1500 people in China since it first emerged in the country in 2013. More than half of these cases occurred last winter and spring alone, and 40 per cent were fatal.

I – along with every virologist in the world – fear that one of these high fatality rate flus is going to get the genes that makes it highly contagious for humans. And how much effort is being put into better vaccines or TamiFlu II?

Jonathan Chait of New York thinks the GOP are slackers:

What makes Conaway’s lack of familiarity with the name “George Nader” especially troublesome is that Conaway is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee and putatively running the lower chamber’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

If you’re getting the idea that maybe Conaway and his party aren’t utterly determined to uncover foul play between Moscow and Trump Tower, your suspicions are warranted. Conaway recently declared the investigation to be nearing its completion. “All investigations have a natural conclusion,” he explained. “As soon as we have everybody interviewed, we’ll start working on the report, we’ll get the report finalized, and we’ll move forward. Every investigation ought to have a conclusion, including this one. So we’re coming towards the end of it.”

Investigations, you see, have a “natural” conclusion. It is out of his hands. And so while Conaway’s committee has not forced the witnesses to answer questions Democrats believe they should answer, or even learned the names of major figures in the underlying investigation, there’s no arguing with nature. Anyway, it’s not like they’re investigating something like Benghazi, which took place in 2012 and was still being investigated four years later in a fruitless attempt to establish that the Obama administration deliberately lied.

Mr. Nader is the witness du jour for the Mueller team, according to reports. If Chait is right – and he has a good reputation – then the GOP is basically abdicating one of its most important responsibilities. This shouldn’t be a surprise, given what we’ve seen over the last year. But I just have to ask – what happens if the Democrats take the House after the mid-terms? Do they re-open the investigation and show how to do a proper investigation?

If so, the behavior of Chairman Nunes, Representative Conaway, and the rest of the GOP members of the House Intel Committee will become prime fodder for the 2020 elections, then, and might result in the burial of the GOP as a political party.

We’re seeing another reason to loathe and reject team politics – it’s turning out to be destructive to the Republican Party. That loyalty makes it impossible to do their job like adults. Let’s hope all the other political parties in America never go down that road.

Then some folks make a sacrifice. From the Tampa Bay Times (or WaPo):

In a move that can only be described as utterly Canadian, hundreds of doctors in Quebec are protesting their pay raises, saying they already make too much money.

As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 700 physicians, residents and medical students from the Canadian province had signed an online petition asking for their pay raises to be canceled. A group named Médecins Québécois Pour le Régime (MQRP), which represents Quebec doctors and advocates for public health, started the petition Feb. 25.

“We, Quebec doctors who believe in a strong public system, oppose the recent salary increases negotiated by our medical federations,” the petition reads in French.

The physicians group said it could not in good conscience accept pay raises when working conditions remained difficult for others in their profession — including nurses and clerks — and while patients “live with the lack of access to required services because of drastic cuts in recent years.”

But I wouldn’t call it “utterly Canadian.” Clearly, the system is in trouble. I think this indicates the doctors, etc, have recognized that they’re engaged in an enterprise that is currently struggling because certain, important members of the team are not being treated properly – which results in a failure to recruit new members to replace those who leave the profession.

You have to wonder if American doctors would do something similar, and, actually, I think many would.

Gyre:

1. a ring or circle.
2. a circular course or motion.
3. Oceanography. a ringlike system of ocean currents rotating clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “The world’s oldest message in a bottle survived 132 years. Now it’s been found.” Theresa Vargas, WaPo:

The museum’s report lauds the discovery’s scientific significance.

“Ocean current and drift patterns are still not completely understood, and modern scientific work continues to investigate ocean currents, gyres, and drift patterns using drifters with GPS beacons and other drift targets,” the report reads. “The need to understand long-term climate change patterns has also seen historic data, such as that recorded in Paula’s meteorological journal and other 19th century ships’ logbooks, added as datasets into global climate models.”

My Arts Editor said she likes the composition of this walk by photo, so enjoy!

It looks a little out of focus to me.

Remember the lawsuit from 2016 in which a group of teenagers sued to stop climate change, alleging that governmental actions had encouraged the use of fossil fuels and this was endangering their rights under the Constitution? It’s still rolling onwards:

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled Wednesday that a novel and sweeping case, which the Obama administration first tried to extinguish in 2016, can proceed toward a trial. Trump’s Justice Department is expected to ask the Supreme Court to shut it down.

The group of mostly teenagers in Oregon alleged in a 2015 complaint that government policies have exacerbated global warming in violation of their rights — and those of future generations — under the U.S. Constitution.

They claim that for more than 50 years, the office of the president and eight federal agencies promoted regulations to support the U.S. energy industry’s proliferation of fossil fuels, accounting for a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions. They asked the court to force the government to formulate a formal plan to change course.

I’m not sure what tangible procedures they hope to establish, or if they’d be of much help against climate change, but as a symbolic action, it could be quite powerful.

Jason Bailey on ArtNome discusses the use of blockchains by digital artists:

There are at least four major areas where blockchain will disrupt the art market:

1. Driving digital art sales through digital scarcity
2. Democratizing fine art investment
3. Improving provenance and reducing art forgery
4. Creating a more ethical way of paying artists

…

A big problem with producing and selling digital art is how easily it can be duplicated and pirated. Once something is copied and replicated for free, the value drops and the prospect of a market disappears. For things to be of value they need to have scarcity. Blockchain helps solve this for digital artists by introducing the idea of “digital scarcity”: issuing a limited number of copies and tying them back to unique blocks proving ownership.

Some of what drives Jason’s enthusiasm are the reduction or elimination of transaction friction – i.e., fees paid to middlemen. But later in another post, he talks about the blockchain and how art native to it occurs:

CryptoArt are rare digital artworks, sometimes described as digital trading cards or “rares”, associated with unique and provably rare tokens that exist on the blockchain. The concept is based on the idea of digital scarcity, which allows you to buy, sell, and trade digital goods as if they were physical goods. This system works due to the fact that, like Bitcoins and other cryptocurrency, CryptoArt exist in limited quantity. Popular early examples include CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks, Rare Pepe, CurioCards, and Dada.nyc.

While no single CryptoArtist or CryptoArtwork adheres to a single definition, I believe it is helpful to look at a series of common factors that have shaped the aesthetic and community thus far.

1.Digitally Native: For the first time, artwork can be created, editioned, bought, and sold digitally.
2.Geographically Agnostic: Empowered by the internet, artists participate from all over the world. CryptoArt is the first truly global art movement.
…
4. Pro-Artist: Blockchain platforms often take little to no commission from artists. Artists are often remunerated for every future sale of a single work.
5. Dankness: Because CryptoArt is open to everyone, judging it by traditional artistic standards kills what is great about it. Instead, it is best to judge CryptoArt by “dankness” or potency of expression and creativity.

“Art” is one of my weakest areas of understanding in contemporary society, from individual motivations to create it, onwards to the motivations of collectors, to the role it plays in society – I do understand that historically it often played roles roughly equivalent to propaganda in some part, but whether it does now I’m not so certain. In my (fragmentary) reading so far, it appears that these artists come from technical or financial backgrounds, and I wonder if that colors how they see the future of CryptoArt. On FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder has coverage of CryptoArt, ending with this somewhat cryptic conclusion:

A new order is emerging in the art world. But will it be any different than the old one? People like [John] Zettler make me think not. He and Rare Art Labs may be handling a new type of art, but what they’re doing with it is nothing new; in fact, it’s exactly what the critic Hughes warned us against: the fetishization of art’s prices and the emptying of its higher virtues. As a result, the relationship between art and the blockchain, which seems symbiotic for the moment, could soon become parasitic. Artists can only avoid the art establishment’s capitalistic maw for so long.

I can understand concern about losing the essence of art, and I also am well aware that motivations will wildly vary from individual to individual – did van Gogh hope to become rich on his art? How about Heinlein’s remark that If you ask a writer why he writes and he doesn’t say For money, he’s lying?

But artists do have to eat, too.

Here’s a view across the front yards of the neighbors.

The piles just get deeper and deeper.

Apotheosis:

• The highest point in the development of something; a culmination or climax.
  ‘his appearance as Hamlet was the apotheosis of his career’
• The elevation of someone to divine status.
  ‘death spared Pompey the task of having to account for the apotheosis of Caesar’
  [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Found in this title: “The Troubling Apotheosis of the Notorious RBG,” John O. McGinnis, Law and Liberty. I’m not sure I would have used the same word myself.

I have an interest in those odd little cases which plumb the corners of systems, so even though I’m not a lawyer or Constitutional scholar, I found this article by Michael C. Dorf on Justia Verdict to be interesting:

Last week’s ruling [Patchak v. Zinke] arose out of a dispute over a parcel of land in Michigan known as the Bradley Property, which the federal government obtained in trust for the creation of a casino to be operated by a Native tribe. The owner of a neighboring property sued the government, arguing that the acquisition was illegal. The government defended by, among other things, invoking its sovereign immunity against private lawsuits, and that issue made its way to the Supreme Court. In a 2012 case, the Court ruled that Congress had waived its sovereign immunity and that therefore the litigation could proceed.

But before plaintiff David Patchak could obtain a judgment against the government, Congress stepped in. It passed the Gun Lake Act, which states that any litigation “relating to” the Bradley Property “shall not be filed or maintained in a Federal court and shall be promptly dismissed.” Last week’s case concerned the constitutionality of that enactment.

Patchak argued that the contested provision was a thinly disguised effort by Congress to dictate the result of a pending case and thus a violation of the basic constitutional principle of separation of powers. As anyone who has seen Schoolhouse Rock knows, each branch of government serves a distinctive function. Justice Thomas quoted Chief Justice John Marshall’s 1825 statement that “the legislature makes, the executive executes, and the judiciary construes the law.” Patchak argued that while the Gun Lake Act had the form of legislation, in substance it was an effort to resolve a concrete case—namely his.

Dorf is exceedingly polite, but, reading between the lines, it sounds like SCOTUS may have had a collective mental breakdown. Justices Thomas, Alito, Breyer, and Kagan took one side, while Roberts, Kennedy, and Gorsuch took another, and Ginsburg and Sotomayor “… tried to duck the question that divided their colleagues.” Just the lack of ideological alignment is enough to cross my eyes.

In the end, the weird mix of right-wingers and moderate liberals won the day with a plurality opinion, but the fact that it’s not split sharply or unanimous (or close to it) suggests to me that this is an issue which has not been fully thought out by anyone.

In the end, Dorf says the court may have been hung up on the question of how to measure the generality of a law, as I remember that Bills of Attainder are specifically forbidden in the Constitution:

These practical concerns may ultimately explain why the plurality was unwilling to treat the Gun Lake Act as the functional equivalent of a law that said “Patchak loses.” But if practical administrability was the real reason for the decision, the plurality ought to have said so. By instead paying lip service to the proposition that Congress may not enact a law directing the outcome of a particular case, while in practice allowing Congress to circumvent that principle with some minimally astute drafting, Justice Thomas endorsed an empty formalism.

Sounds exciting! And not just because of my odd taste for odd corner cases, but because sometimes odd corner cases with undesirable outcomes may signal that a detail somewhere … is wrong.

On Dorf On Law, Neil Buchanan has posted an article, “When Shouid Liberals Try to Remove Judges From the Bench?” which didn’t interest me as much as the more general question, When should judges be removed?

Obviously, initiating impeachment out of ideological pique is a non-starter. Just as judges should be beyond political ideology once they take their seats, the safety of their seats should not depend on the ideology of those who can, in certain circumstances, terminate their tenure in those seats.

It seems to me that the sober legislator has at least two recognizable concerns about any particular judge:

Are they competent to the job?

Are their mental faculties up to the job?

These two questions appear to be the same, but are not. The first questions whether they have the skills, temperament, and ability to drop the ideology and simply interpret the law once they are in the seat. The second asks whether the judge is facing a decline in faculties, whether from natural causes or damage to the brain.

The second question might be answerable through medical and psychological tests, although I can see feisty judges dodging the issue.

But what of the first? I think the chief measure of a judge who is simply incompetent is the testimony of attorneys as to his inability to manage the mechanics of the job.

And what of ideology? Simply this: if his decisions continuously are overturned by superior court judges, never to be returned to his favor, it may signal someone seriously out of step with the general judiciary. Certainly, this may signal that all of the superior judges are compromised, but the odds are against it.

The success of the strike in West Virginia may be emboldening teachers in other states, BloombergPolitics reports:

The fury among low-paid teachers that triggered a wildcat teachers’ strike in West Virginia—the longest in its history—may be spreading.

Teachers across the country may soon build on the state’s example. The Oklahoma teachers’ union said it will shut down schools within months if its demands aren’t met, and some teachers said they may strike even if a deal is reached.

“The end goal is funding for public education and our core services, and if it takes us closing down schools to do that, then we are prepared and willing to do so,” said Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association. On Thursday, the OEA will announce a timetable that could culminate in a school shutdown if lawmakers don’t pass teacher raises, something the legislature hasn’t done in a decade. While some teachers may have been on the fence, said Priest, the two-week West Virginia strike “has given them an emboldened sense of purpose and a sense of power.”

That may not be enough for the rank and file. Some Oklahoma teachers are planning a wildcat strike of their own. Leaders from a dozen schools met last week to discuss such an unsanctioned walkout, and they plan to reconvene Wednesday to vote on a strike date. If the union’s plans aren’t to their liking, they may walk out, said Larry Cagle, who teaches advanced placement courses and is one of the organizers behind the independent effort. “We’re going to force this on the union and on the superintendent,”  he said. “Teachers are ready—they are chomping at the bit.”

If there’s anyone that loves education, it’s teachers. While the conservative states may fight to keep their taxes low on the backs of teachers – it’s long been an article of faith among the libertarian wing that teachers unions are evil incarnate – in the long run states with well-educated citizens are usually more prosperous, regardless of taxes.

This is the problem with trying to apply family budget principles to the budget of a state – the priorities differ to the point where parsimony in the wrong quarter can have serious, yet hard-to-trace, long-term consequences.

If you’ve been hearing rumors that Special Counsel Mueller’s legal theory is novel, let Emma Kohse and Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare straighten you out:

The legal theory used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller turns out to be worth pondering in some detail, as it offers considerable insight into where he may be headed next. When news of the indictment broke, a number of commentators—including one of us—suggested that the legal theory was novel. On closer inspection, however, it doesn’t seem new. Still, the indictment is rather clever, drawing on a venerable and well-trodden theory of criminal liability in a fashion that Mueller may be able to leverage into a powerful instrument with respect to both foreign and domestic actors.

 Let’s unpack it.The indictment works like this: It is a crime to conspire to “obstruct the lawful functions of the United States government through fraud and deceit.”

Etc in some detail. Their conclusion?

Which brings us to people on this side of the Atlantic—say, people who knowingly facilitated or participated in the distribution of emails through this mechanism or people who knowingly helped guide the activities of Internet Research Agency trolls. Such people might be inside or outside of the Trump campaign or organization. Their specific activities could all be, in and of themselves, perfectly legal. It’s an interesting question whether they would even need to know their interlocutors were Russian, much less acting at the behest of a foreign intelligence actor. As we read Mueller’s theory under §371, as long as they acted knowingly to join a scheme to deceive the U.S. government to frustrate its enforcement authority and took some action in pursuit of that scheme, they too would be guilty.

To be clear, without knowing details of the conduct of any specific individual, it would be irresponsible to speculate as to how a reasonable prosecutor would evaluate that person’s conduct with respect to this particular alleged conspiracy. For present purposes, our point is twofold: Mueller’s theory involves a well-established legal doctrine that has been deployed in roughly analogous situations, and it is potentially extremely powerful.

To be clear, Emma and Benjamin have no doubt that it is a crime to frustrate the organs of government from pursuing their statutorily defined goals, and anyone knowingly doing so will be guilty and dumped in the pokey.

Including, I suspect, the President.

When you have that hankering for beef!

Some genre fusions are a little more successful than others, but The Beast Of Hollow Mountain (1956) is a shade indifferent to the entire debate. A Mexican village plays hosts to a powerful Don and his son, Enrique, the latter soon to marry the beautiful Sarita. But an Americanos, Jimmy, and his partner, Felipe, who together own a herd of cattle, also live here, and when Sarita engages in some innocent conversation with the Americanos, Enrique is enraged. Fisticuffs are not enough, and soon there are plans afoot to stampede the herd into the hills.

Meanwhile, the herd is also suffering attrition, and Jimmy and Felipe, along with their last workers, Pancho and his little boy Panchito, track down the carcasses – or, more precisely, the disarticulated heads – in the swamp that borders on Hollow Mountain. The blame falls on Enrique. Eventually, Pancho, the town drunkard, ventures into the swamp for fairly unsatisfying reasons of his own, and becomes a breakfast nugget for the … well, the storytellers were wise enough to have Pancho shoot wildly (and quite amateurishly) while screaming as a shadow pans over him. Nicely done.

But soon enough Pancho’s son bullheadedly runs away, in fact on the day of Sarita and Enrique’s marriage, and Sarita, not quite yet clasped to Enrique’s bosom (there’s a bad visual), rides in pursuit. Naturally, they soon encounter the Beast, a clay stop-motion T-Rex with a really really long tongue. After a lot of pointing and laughing and falling down and being afflicted with hiccups

Ahem. Sorry about that. Anyways, Jimmy shows up after Sarita and Panchito take refuge in an abandoned house, and the Beast demonstrates its skills in disassembling stone and wood structures. Does Mr. T-Rex win an award? Noooo! Distracted by Jimmy, who nicks his snout (it’s good to see a dinosaur who’s not completely proof against six-shooters), Sarita and the kid make a break for the horses (which at this point should have been crossing the Canadian border, if they had any sense) and go for help, while Jimmy plays a little hide and seek with a dinosaur which is really awfully damn fast on his feet.

The funny things you find in a Cracker-Jack tree!

Enrique shows up, ready to pick off Jimmy, but has an unpleasant encounter with our dino. But once again, no awards for the dinosaur as Jimmy helps Enrique slip through the dinosaur’s claws. A dash to an empty tree and, for a brief moment, the dinosaur has a bit of success, with Enrique dangling in his clutches, but, damn, he must have ADD or something, because the rescuers have arrived and are busy trying to puncture that hide of his. Tossing lunch aside, he chases the rescuers, but to no effect.

Finally, Jimmy tires of the fun and lures the dino into the swamp, where it takes a bad step, forgets its swimming lessons, and drowns. The actress playing Sarita, ever the professional, hides her head in Jimmy’s bosom so the laughter doesn’t ruin the scene.

I cannot say that this cross between a romantic Western and a monster-horror story really did anything for me. The problem lies in the failure to expose some moral question for a good examination, as the best Westerns (think The Good, The Bad And The Ugly) do so well. Add in the amateuristic dinosaur and predictable and bland village conflict, and it’s a bit of a yawner until the climactic scene. The movie makers made some good decisions, such as not showing the beast until near the end, but the title gives the game away, and leaves us with nothing more than distasteful treacle.

It occurs to me that we in the uproar over President Trump’s business holdings and the Foreign Emoluments clause of the Constitution, the reverse problem has been under-emphasized. And this is the perfect time to consider it. Not sure what I mean?

Suppose President Trump really goes through with the tariffs. Things are going swimmingly, President Trump thinks, why all those arrogant foreigners are so pissed off I must have done something right!

And then comes the news … Jared Kushner comes rushing into the Oval Office with the report … that wonderful Trump Tower you built overseas, so much money invested, so wonderful, biggest in the world, going to make you so much money, Papa? Why, those damn foreigners just nationalized it!

And then the tariffs go away a day later.

See, it’s not just corruption to accept foreign emoluments. It’s also vulnerability, the possibility that a foreign power will threaten a business interest and thus modify the President’s thinking because now he’s personally threatened. This is another reason the guy in the Oval Office must shed those things that make him vulnerable.

And this should be talked about more. It’s too late for Trump, but for the future we should be clear on the stupidity of Trump for not shedding his business ties.

Another pothole for the markets is coming up as the White House economic advisor, Gary Cohn, is resigning in the wake of losing the tariff battle:

Cohn, who had been rumored just weeks ago as a potential next chief of staff, will leave the White House in the wake of his fierce disagreement with the President’s decision to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Cohn is expected to leave in the coming weeks, the White House said. …

Cohn’s resignation sounded alarm bells in establishment circles in Washington and on Wall Street, where many viewed the former Goldman Sachs executive as a steadying influence on economic policy inside the Trump White House. His departure, combined with Trump’s recent moves to recommit himself to his nationalist trade agenda, raised questions about the direction of the Trump administration and sent Dow futures plummeting 300 points.

“Wall Street won’t be happy,” said a senior Republican who has worked both at the White House and in finance. “We knew he was hanging in by a thread, but it is terrible news.” [CNN]

Kevin Drum’s graph of banking profits, indicating those onerous regulations aren’t all that onerous.

I very much doubt this will trigger any major mudslide. This isn’t like the crash during the Great Recession, as that was brought on by a basic flaw in our economic rules, and while I do have concerns with continued moves towards loosening the banking regulations, I don’t see that loosening as provocational to a major stock market crash. Yet.

I see this as understandable investor jitters, possibly compounded by algorithmic trading facing a scenario more or less unexplored and possibly even unforeseen by the authors of those algorithms. There may be some flash crashes in the coming days, some weird ups and downs, as the investment community readies itself for Cohn’s successor and how the tariffs will be handled.

Unless, of course, the tariffs aren’t implemented. Trump is trying to use them as a hammer on NAFTA, but I don’t know if Canada and Mexico are bowing to the pressure. Given the humiliating nature of this approach, they may firm their upper lips and soldier on. In fact, I expect it. Handing Trump a real victory when he uses such a crude approach would only encourage him to continue, and that is not to the long-term advantage of most nations.

Fasten your seatbelts.

Spaceweather is reporting on a problem that comes with having a star reaching a solar minimum:

THE WORSENING COSMIC RAY SITUATION: Cosmic rays are bad–and they’re getting worse. That’s the conclusion of a new paper just published in the research journal Space Weather. The authors, led by Prof. Nathan Schwadron of the University of New Hampshire, show that radiation from deep space is dangerous and intensifying faster than previously predicted.

The story begins four years ago when Schwadron and colleagues first sounded the alarm about cosmic rays. Analyzing data from the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) instrument onboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), they found that cosmic rays in the Earth-Moon system were peaking at levels never before seen in the Space Age. The worsening radiation environment, they pointed out, was a potential peril to astronauts, curtailing how long they could safely travel through space. …

Galactic cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. They are a mixture of high-energy photons and sub-atomic particles accelerated toward Earth by supernova explosions and other violent events in the cosmos. Our first line of defense is the sun: The sun’s magnetic field and solar wind combine to create a porous ‘shield’ that fends off cosmic rays attempting to enter the solar system. The shielding action of the sun is strongest during Solar Maximum and weakest during Solar Minimum–hence the 11-year rhythm of the mission duration plot above.

The problem is, as the authors note in their new paper, the shield is weakening: “Over the last decade, the solar wind has exhibited low densities and magnetic field strengths, representing anomalous states that have never been observed during the Space Age. As a result of this remarkably weak solar activity, we have also observed the highest fluxes of cosmic rays.”

Another challenge to meet. This is possibly the most intriguing part of the report:

Cosmic rays will intensify even more in the years ahead as the sun plunges toward what may be the deepest Solar Minimum in more than a century. Stay tuned for updates.

And what will that portend?

With regards to Resident Evil (2002) a reader writes:

Modern video games often have writing and design talent equivalent to movies, so I guess the cross over is perhaps somewhat less surprising than at first glance.

While it’s true I’m not a gamer, I have heard the quality has improved since the days of Zork.

For long time readers who remember Kevin Drum’s fascination with lead in the environment and how it correlates with crime, he’s popped up with some more:

Got it? Good. The upshot is that the researchers could determine lead concentration levels in Europe down to the individual year. Here they are:

Source: AGU Publications

It turns out that lead has been poisoning Europe for at least 2,000 years, with one notable exception: the few years during and after the Black Death. Apparently the plague killed off all the lead miners, and for a period of a decade or two ambient lead levels plummeted to low levels. …

Here’s my theory: Lead levels plummeted from about 1350-1370, and children born during those years entered adulthood around 1370-1390. I propose that they were smarter and more focused than your average medieval scholar, and this extra IQ boost from the plague is the real origin of the Renaissance. Generation P gave it enough of a kickstart that it then kept going of its own accord even after lead concentrations returned to their previous levels.

Fun! We have a Renaissance because all the lead miners died!

A movie based on a video game. How good can it be?

When it’s Resident Evil (2002), it’s surprisingly good. The trick is in the pacing and the context. We start off in a bioresearch lab, where a spill mysteriously occurs and the place starts to shut down. Then the elevators start malfunctioning – what’s going on?

Next thing we know a military team has invaded a large home, alarming the already confused occupants. They’re suffering from amnesia, and the team tells them they’re intelligence operatives, responsible for guarding this house. Memories are slow to return, disjoint and confusing.

All the while they and the team are heading towards The Hive, a research lab which has gone offline. What has happened? All they know is the main computer has shutdown the lab, and a rail line terminating at their house leads to the Hive.

Upon reaching the Hive, they discover the suite of labs is abandoned. There are nearly no bodies, and they decide to shutdown the mainframe, which requires the use of an EMP-like device be activated in a specific location.

But on the way there, the team suffers losses as the computer’s self-defense routines come into play, but despite their shock at the loss of their comrades, they press on, eventually reaching their target and deactivating the computer.

And out come the zombies from where they were contained. That’s the core of the movie – this is a movie about zombies in the future. In this case, they are the result of the research at the lab, a weaponized virus which kills and then reanimates the corpses. The movie becomes the Run back to the safety of the outside world! sort of movie. And it’s about the computer that killed everyone in the lab out of concern that the virus might get out into the the world.

And that mysterious bioresearch spill? That’s covered, too, most satisfyingly. And there’s just one more surprise from the labs.

We hardly get to know these characters, yet we care for them because they care for each other, which functions as a social cue for the audience to care as well. It appears to be a well-oiled team, and watching them try to hang together after losing part of the team reinforces that link.

Wisely, pauses are inserted into this breathless sprint, giving us just a moment to think about what’s happening, and try to think of what might come next – and then those expectations are confounded.

If you like being breathless, this movie may be for you. I was surprised to find myself on the edge of my seat. I won’t recommend it, but it was a heckuva lot of fun.

There’s the old bit about history repeating itself that rang at the back of my mind as I read Matt O’Brien on Wonkblog describe Venezuela’s current status:

It’s hard to think of a government that, absent a war, revolution or Stalinist-style purge, has done a worse job running its economy than Venezuela’s. Maybe the United States’ in 1929 or Zimbabwe’s in 2003. What separates Venezuela, though, is that it’s managed to combine the economic collapse of the first with the hyperinflation of the second despite the fact that it has the largest oil reserves in the world. Indeed, the International Monetary Fund estimates that, by the end of the year, Venezuela’s economy will have shrunk 38 percent since the start of 2014, and its prices will be 2,176 times higher. That’s what happens when you put incompetent cronies in charge of the state-owned oil company but keep spending money as if you’re pumping as much oil as ever. You have to print what you need instead, until eventually all this new money pushes up prices so fast that it’s difficult for any part of the economy to function. Going by black market prices, that’s translated into Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, losing 99.99 percent of its value the past six years.

For me, it’s that bit about putting incompetent cronies in charge. It feels like, oh, I don’t know, the current American distrust of experts?

And Venezuela’s the current mosquito splat against the window. Can we learn from that?