Category Archives: Uncategorized

Word Of The Day

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Milliner:

  1. a person who designs, makes, or sells hats for women.

Surprisingly specific. Noted in the Feedback column of NewScientist (4 January 2020):

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, for readers who have been led astray on such matters, is not a movie about pigeons. It is a movie about cowboys – that is to say, misogynistic, murdering, rootin’-tootin’ gunmen who meander about the 19th-century American Wild West in search of a credit sequence. It takes them a while to find it, but lordy are you relieved when they do.

It would probably have aged better had it been about pigeons, which is why, to make an abrupt segue, Feedback’s interest was piqued by news out of Las Vegas, Nevada, that a trio of pigeons were wearing cowboy hats.

The story gets more depressing the more you find out. It seems that some ornithological milliner glued the aforementioned hats to the aforementioned pigeons, perhaps to coincide with the National Finals Rodeo taking place in the same state.

Perhaps not quite properly used, but I confess I doubt there’s a word for someone who makes hats for pigeons, or even birds.

An Education Disaster

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Long time readers know that I occasionally comment on the retraction of academic papers, often found through Retraction Watch (link on the right), looking at patterns and wondering about the management of academics and how the often economic rewards of fevered publishing affects the academic disciplines.

This disaster isn’t American, or even of the West. This fascinating WaPo article discusses management, mis- or otherwise, of academics in Russia:

Eight years ago, President Vladimir Putin decreed that Russia must become a leading scientific power. That meant at least five top-100 Russian universities by 2020, and a dramatic increase in the number of global citations of Russian scientific papers.

Now a group at the center of Putin’s aspirations, the Russian Academy of Sciences, has dropped a bombshell into the plans. A commission set up by the academy has led to the retraction of at least 869 Russian scientific articles, mainly for plagiarism. …

What went wrong? Many scientists blame Putin’s 2012 order, which provided greater funding but also led to pressure on scientists to churn out multiple papers a year regardless of quality, amid heavy teaching loads. …

“You have got this Potemkin village where universities try to report as many papers as possible, but nobody really reads those papers,” said Anna Kuleshova, ethics council chairwoman at the Russian Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers, the country’s largest scientific publishing organization.

The problem goes much deeper, according to scientists working to rescue Russia’s declining international research reputation. Dozens of university rectors have defended or supervised dubious degrees and papers involving plagiarism and falsified data, they claim.

Just the discipline of determining how the use of various carrots and sticks affects the behavior of academics, wannabes, and con-men could make for a fascinating study. And while Western problems usually revolve directly around economics, Russia is following in the steps of its predecessor state, the Soviet Union, in making the mistake of making politics the hook on which they hang themselves, which in the previous case is best known as Lysenkoism.

Make no mistake, the mud-spattered academics are still motivated by economics, aka survival, but the actual lever is politics, the expression of national pride.

For those who worry the United States has gotten off track with its religious visions and money worship, it may be safe to say that Russia is little better in the management of its society.

Chief Justice Roberts Watch, Ctd

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Margaret Taylor of Lawfare is wondering about the role Chief Justice Roberts will be playing at the trial of Donald J. Trump – and whether he may find a way to permit new evidence to be introduced:

Here’s how this might play out: McConnell would introduce the organizing resolution and seek to pass it with 51 votes. If efforts to amend the resolution are unsuccessful, a Democratic senator would then make a point of order on the basis that 67 votes are required. And it would then be up to Roberts to rule on the point of order—presumably with the advice of the Senate parliamentarian, who will be at his side throughout the trial.

How Roberts handles this issue will likely be the first glimpse of what we can expect from Roberts in the trial going forward. He could rule with vigor—or timidity. Senators could accept the ruling—or any one senator could ask for a formal vote. Alternatively, Roberts could put the vote to members of the Senate without making a ruling or recommendation.

There has been a great deal of speculation on what role Roberts intends to play in the Senate trial. Will he engage actively, like Chief Justice Salmon Chase in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, or will he largely sit back and let the Senate do as it wishes, like Chief Justice William Rehnquist during Bill Clinton’s trial? Perhaps, thanks to McConnell, we may have an answer to that question as soon as the trial begins.

And Roberts has been riled in the past by President Trump. Will that influence a Roberts ruling on the matter? The trial starts on Tuesday, following the not-insignificant Martin Luther King, Jr. Federal holiday. This could prove very interesting, especially in the light of Professor Dorf’s suggestion that the Chief Justice may be a NeverTrumper.

While We’re Waiting, Ctd

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The lawsuit to force the American government to start pursuing remedies for climate change, known as Juliana v. United States, has hit a roadbump:

A federal appeals court on Friday threw out a 2015 lawsuit by nearly two dozen young people to force the U.S. government to take more aggressive action on climate change, saying that the children did not have legal standing to bring the landmark case.

Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz wrote that the plaintiffs had “made a compelling case that action is needed” to slash the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. But the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled 2 to 1 that the courts were not the place to compel such action.

“We reluctantly conclude, however, that the plaintiffs’ case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large, the latter of which can change the composition of the political branches through the ballot box,” Hurwitz wrote. [WaPo]

I’m not sure I buy this line of reasoning, speaking as a non-lawyer. To my mind, the government is responsible for the safe-being of the citizens, and there appears to be little doubt that climate change is a threat, possibly existential, to the health of the citizens of the United States. It is traditional to bring suit against the government in order to compel it to fulfill its duties; that these two judges don’t see it that way is disturbing.

Suppose the United States suffered a substantial military attack by a national adversary, and yet the Executive refused to defend the country, and Congress refused to declare war, despite imminent disaster. Would a lawsuit seeking to compel action by the government be given the finger, as was Juliana?

If it did, it would prove the experiment in Democracy had failed. I see the dissenting judge has similar thoughts:

In a blistering dissent, U.S. District Court Judge Josephine L. Staton, who served on the panel, criticized the notion that the courts have no role to play, saying the government itself has acknowledged “that the United States has reached a tipping point crying out for a concerted response — yet presses ahead toward calamity.”

“It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses. Seeking to quash this suit, the government bluntly insists that it has the absolute and unreviewable power to destroy the Nation,” Staton wrote. “My colleagues throw up their hands, concluding that this case presents nothing fit for the Judiciary.”

And I have little sympathy for this guy:

“I know that climate activists are disappointed, but the result is not a surprise to any lawyer in the country. No U.S. court has ever even come close to ordering the kind of relief that the activists were seeking in this case,” said Jeff Holmstead, an attorney with the legal and lobbying firm Bracewell, which represents energy industry clients. “With today’s decision, the question of how to deal with climate change is now squarely before Congress. Under our system of government, that’s where it belongs.”

As an energy industry lawyer, Holmstead has an obvious agenda. Less obviously, his industry has, in a practical sense, bought enough of Congress and state governments[1] to win any sort of legislative fight; to suggest this is exclusively the domain of Congress is to suggest the fight is won before it starts. It turns out that it’s somewhat easier to buy Congress than a judge, apparently. Perhaps Judge Crater has been a salutary lesson in judicial corruption?

In any case, Our Children’s Trust has vowed to carry on.

And, yes, this is worth a recitation of OK, Boomers. Unfortunately, it’s not irrelevant.

1 Those who wish to dispute this assertion will need to explain away the ridiculous fossil fuel subsidies we give to the fossil fuel companies.

If You’re A Windows User …

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… then apparently it’s very important to get the latest security update.

Sources tell KrebsOnSecurity that Microsoft Corp. is slated to release a software update  Tuesday [January 14, 2020] to fix an extraordinarily serious security vulnerability in a core cryptographic component present in all versions of Windows. Those sources say Microsoft has quietly shipped a patch for the bug to branches of the U.S. military and to other high-value customers/targets that manage key Internet infrastructure, and that those organizations have been asked to sign agreements preventing them from disclosing details of the flaw prior to Jan. 14, the first Patch Tuesday of 2020.

According to sources, the vulnerability in question resides in a Windows component known as crypt32.dll, a Windows module that Microsoft says handles “certificate and cryptographic messaging functions in the CryptoAPI.” The Microsoft CryptoAPI provides services that enable developers to secure Windows-based applications using cryptography, and includes functionality for encrypting and decrypting data using digital certificates. [KrebsOnSecurity]

Cryptography is hard to do properly. More information at the link above.

But this dust-up does remind that I don’t often have to get a security update for my hammer.

Just How Long Will The Anticipation Last?, Ctd

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And so we come to the end of the waiting period, controlled by Speaker Pelosi, between approving the articles of the impeachment of President Trump, finally followed by a party line vote to deliver them, and the actual ritual delivery.

Did the unexpected pause between approval and delivery actually work to the Speaker’s advantage? Since no one likes to take a politician at their word, most commentator’s have disregarded the Speaker’s contention that she wanted to understand how the trial in the Senate would be run, in order to select the ‘managers’ of the trial, and encourage Senate leader McConnell (R-KY) to run a “fair trial,” rather than a quick sham trial. Indeed, most commentator’s are guided by their divination of the Speaker’s “true” intentions.

Chris Cillizza of CNN thinks Pelosi gambled and lost:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement Tuesday that the full House would vote on sending the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the Senate this week — a move that will formally trigger the start of the trial against the President in the upper chamber — amounts to a stark concession that her plan to delay that action for nearly a month failed. …

Pelosi’s goal was simple: To try to force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s hand. Pelosi wanted to use her possession of the articles of impeachment to yield promises and/or compromises from McConnell — most notably on the issue of witnesses being allowed to be called in the Senate trial.

Except that McConnell wasn’t playing ball.

“There will be no haggling with the House over Senate procedure,” McConnell said earlier this month. …

Which left Pelosi hung out to dry. The leverage she imagined she possessed to get McConnell to accede to her wishes didn’t exist. McConnell was perfectly happy waiting while Pelosi held on to the articles of impeachment, probably believing rightly that these sorts of delaying tactics would look like just more Washington funny business to the average person. And he knew that whenever she decided to send the articles over, he had a majority waiting to open the trial without any promises made on witnesses.

Cillizza believes in playing the short game, evidently, in which success is measured against those goals associated with the impeachment & trial.

The Week’s Matthew Walther is of a like mind:

Which brings us back to the mystery that has been at the center of Trump’s impeachment since the beginning. Why did Pelosi, a sober-minded, no-nonsense centrist who declared over and over again that impeachment was not worth pursuing, finally change her mind? Why did she wait to do so until last October, at which point it would have been obvious that the process would overlap with this year’s caucuses and primaries? Why did she agree to draft and adopt articles of impeachment before she had secured the testimony of all the witnesses she and her members considered relevant? And why, finally, did she seem to have no coherent response prepared for the not exactly remote contingency in which McConnell refused to give her and her Senate colleagues the sort of trial they wanted? To quote an eminent anti-Boomer philosopher: “No thought was put into this.”

Though it is difficult to see what motivated Pelosi, especially in her decision to stall the inevitable handover of the process to the Senate, it is hard not to imagine that she had some sort of plan in mind. It just doesn’t seem to have been a very good one.

When faced with an impenetrable and unexpected response from a tactician with a series of successes behind them, mystification doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve failed – it may mean they’re playing for a different goal than you understand.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), meanwhile, has decided to express the belief that this is all about intramural politics:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested this week that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delayed sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate in order to harm Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.

The top House Republican said Pelosi’s decision to withhold the impeachment articles against President Trump for weeks while demanding that Democrats are assured a “fair trial” was aimed at ensuring that Sanders would be tied up with the Senate trial in the days leading up to the Iowa caucuses.

“This is the dirty little secret that nobody is talking about, why the speaker held these papers,” McCarthy told Fox News on Sunday.

“Remember what happened in the last nomination process, where the [Democratic National Committee] chairman, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz had to resign the night before the nomination convention started because they had found out they had cheated Senator Bernie Sanders from the opportunity to become the nominee. They are doing the exact same thing right now,” McCarthy said, referring to internal DNC emails leaked by Wikileaks in 2016 that showed Wasserman-Schultz and other DNC officials had exercised bias against Sanders in favor of Hillary Clinton. [National Review]

Despite the conspiratorial tone, and Rep McCarthy’s history of silly-ass remarks, this is a fair point. Back when the story about the incident came out, I expressed the thought that if independent voters and Democratic voters were sufficiently put off by the perception of manipulation of the 2016 Democratic nominating process, Trump might win.

All that said, McCarthy’s remark is somewhat dubious. After all, four Senators are impacted by this maneuver[1], and it presumes that Pelosi favors Biden, which may or may not be true: to my knowledge, she’s not expressed an opinion, and I would hope wouldn’t use her position to surreptitiously manipulate the nominating process.

And, you know, if Sanders wants the nomination, he should just bloody well join the party and stop trying to both have and eat his cake. Speaking as an independent.

Steve Benen has a more sanguine view of the delay:

But there’s a flip side to the picture. After holding the impeachment articles for nearly a month, Pelosi allowed investigations to continue and more incriminating information to come to light, which wasn’t yet available when her chamber voted on Dec. 18.

Her efforts also helped change the nature of the conversation — appetite among Senate Republicans for witnesses was at best muted a month ago, and it’s grown since — putting legitimate process concerns up front and center. Meanwhile, GOP opposition to a “motion to dismiss” has reached the point at which its support is evaporating.

It’d obviously be overstating it to argue that Pelosi got everything she wanted out of the delay, but all things considered, the White House appears to be in a worse position now than it was the day after the president was impeached. [MSNBC]

While the Parnas allegations are irrelevant until corroborated, this news is a good example of Benen’s assertion:

The Government Accountability Office, the federal government’s top auditing group, released a report on Thursday deeming the Trump administration’s hold on military aid to Ukraine illegal.

While Congress had earmarked $350 million in military aid destined for Ukraine over the summer, the Trump administration held up the transfer of the aid. The White House Office of Management and Budget explained in a December memo to the GAO that the holdup was intended as a routine review of the funds. However, the GAO eventually concluded that the measure was not in line with the law.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO wrote in its report. “The OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). [National Review]

If you’re a conservative reader who has been griping that no laws have been broken, and therefore impeachment lacks credibility, I’ll be handing you the spoonful of crow next time we meet.

But even Benen is a trifle too transactional in this regard. I suspect Pelosi is playing the long game, and the long game is to expose Trump’s corruption while tying the Republican Party so irretrievably to him that the independents and moderate Republics can no longer hold their noses. This delay built anticipation, opened many questions in even the casual audience’s mind, and permitted more opportunity for confirmation of corruption to appear – such as the above. She used her stated concerns, which were and remain quite valid, to leverage more distaste for Senators McConnell (R-KY), Graham (R-SC), and even Hawley (R-MO), each of whom have expressed no interest in a fair trial. The first two face re-election battles; Hawley does not, but this may damage him badly enough that an opponent can knock him down in the years ahead. The delay was not unseemly, although a bigger one would have been daring enough to excite both loathing and admiration; it’s hard to stick Pelosi and the Democrats with charges of playing politics. Her expressions of religious faith are important as well as an offering to the GOP base that the Democrats are just as much Americans as the Republicans. In my opinion, they are actually moreso.

The entire trial, and how the GOP votes at the end, will be tools in the hands of a Democratic Party with a great deal of corruption to use against Trump and the Republicans. That’s the real goal of the Pelosi strategy: to melt the Republicans into a puddle about nine months from now.

Pelosi may have their metaphorical nuts in the grinder.

1 These being Bennet, Klobuchar, Sanders, and Warren.

Maybe It’s Good Enough For The General Public?

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But I was a little disturbed. First up, from Aaron Blake’s analysis of the Tuesday Democratic Presidential candidates debate in WaPo:

With tensions with Iran and controversy over President Trump’s decision to kill Qasem Soleimani big in the news, Democrats had a chance to define their party on the issue. And the debate began on that subject, with the candidates talking at some length. What we got instead was a lot of general talk about taking out combat troops but leaving in other troops who would be tasked with other missions. They criticized Trump as not having authorization to attack Iran. It seemed like a moment in which the Democratic Party could define itself on this issue, but there wasn’t much of that on Tuesday night. Instead, it was a lot of Goldilocks-ing of troop numbers — each one assuring that he or she would keep just the right number in the Middle East.

Second up is Andrew Yang’s appearance on The Late Show last night , where, when it came to foreign invasions, he wanted a definite timeline for withdrawal (@ 3:50).

Look, if it’s necessary to send troops on a military mission, they’re being sent for a reason, to accomplish a goal. A timeline – which must be published in this context, because this is all about the public – may be of very poor service to the goal of the mission. As I know Republican pundits have pointed out, if you tell some dude, such as Saddam Hussein, that we’re going to come to your country and kill you, but we’re leaving after a year regardless of whether you’re dead or not, what’s the dude’s strategy going to be?

That’s right. He’ll do his best not to get killed, confident that survival until the one year mark will mark him as victorious over the hated Americans. This is a very different, and potentially harmful long-term strategy, than if he knows he’ll be hunted until found and killed. Just as an example.

Similarly, the “just the right number” remark is a sham remark, because it assumes we should be staying. In some circumstances, it makes sense to stay. We’ve been in Europe for decades, trying to keep the Russians and their predecessors, the Soviets, at bay, while also suffocating the national rivalries of Europe. Better to meet the Russians in Europe than at Niagara Falls, one might say.

But such missions should be reviewed from bottom up by each incoming Administration, if not more often! Such missions are a drain on resources and the national psyche. Each mission should have a clearly defined military goal, and metrics indicating when the mission is finished – such as your target is dead, come home now.

And, no: Until we understand it better, as much as it hurts liberals and neo-cons everywhere, Nation-building is not a military mission. Both sides of the American political spectrum have tried it (Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq appears to be shaky at best) and failed. I think it’s clear we have no idea how to do it, and in fact I doubt we’ve even seriously asked Is it possible?

Personally, I think the population of the nation in question has to be in a very specific set of states as pertain to economics, morality, ethics, and no doubt a few others, before democracy can really take hold. Don’t ask me to identify the states of those areas, either.

Now, I have no idea if this is what occupies the minds of the electorate, or if timelines and numbers are really good enough to placate them. But they don’t placate me; instead, they worry me.

  • Don’t go if you don’t have to.
  • Don’t overstay your welcome.
  • Bloody well accomplish the mission.
  • And, most importantly, make sure the mission is appropriate and within the military’s competency.

Evidence Based Government

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Ever hear of Evidence Based Medicine? We should have the same standard for government, regardless of who is running it. It’d dump pie-eyed dreamers like anyone who thinks the Laffer Curve has general relevance on their collective asses, for one thing.

And I suspect Democratic candidate, and non-participant in the Tuesday night Democratic Presidential Debate, Andrew Yang would be its flag-bearer, since he appears to understand that many problems will succumb to Big Data analysis. Or at least so I gathered from his appearance last night on The Late Show.

But he doesn’t have the experience or the charisma to win the nomination. I expect he’ll be remembered for injecting interesting and important ideas into the public discourse – or at least trying. Which I know is no great insight, but that, I think, will be his legacy.

Although he did throw his hat in the ring for a Cabinet level position, I noticed. I’m not sure he has the chops for that sort of thing, but we shall see. Given the knuckledraggers who’ve made it into Trump’s Cabinet, I’d say most three-toed sloths could serve and not be considered bottom-rung.

Things You Learn

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From AL Monitor’s Mid-week Middle East lobbying newsletter:

Saudi movie industry spent more than $1 million on Cannes film festival PR

Saudi Arabia spent more than $1 million on a public relations campaign to promote itself as a film destination at the world’s glitziest movie festival in 2018, newly disclosed lobbying filings reveal.

Los Angeles-based Rogers & Cowan signed a seven-week contract in April 2018 with the UAE branch of Bell Pottinger spinoff Consulum, which in turn was hired by Saudi Arabia’s General Culture Authority and the Saudi Film Council. Rogers & Cowan received more than $1.2 million from Consulum to promote the Saudi film industry at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2018, including $154,000 in expenses (the latter included more than $32,000 for hotels and $48,000 for airfare). The registered agents on the account were Dennis Dembia, Sidney Angela Dizon, Jason Magner and Ryan Smith.

“We’re using Cannes as a platform to say, ‘Here we are.’ You know? Welcome to Saudi,” Ahmad al-Maziad, the CEO of Saudi Arabia’s General Culture Authority, told Vanity Fair at the time. “We’re coming to build an industry. We’re not coming for a marketing campaign or a one-off hub of activity.” The magazine was one of dozens of US media companies approached by Rogers & Cowan, according to lobbying disclosures.

A few months later, with the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudis suffered a deep blow to their $64 billion push to create a world-class film industry. Hollywood’s relationship with the fledgling Saudi film industry came under widespread scrutiny as a result. In October 2019, the Saudis flew in film stars including Jackie Chan, Jason Momoa and Jean-Claude Van Damme to attend a Saudi entertainment conference, the first Hollywood stars to visit since Khashoggi’s murder.

$64 billion? That’s a heckuva seed for their new industry. However, I’m afraid that autocracy, no matter how ‘liberal’ they try to make it, isn’t a salubrious atmosphere for the creation of an industry that depends on personal initiative, because that tends to get stamped out. Even the upper echelons have to toe the line carefully, as Mohammad bin Salman demonstrated a few years ago.

And just creating propaganda surely shouldn’t cost $64 billion.

Parnas

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There seems to be a lot of reporting on Lev Parnas today, for example from Maddowblog:

In early October, the Washington Post reported that Donald Trump “repeatedly involved” Vice President Mike Pence in the Ukraine scheme, including an instance in which the president “instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in May – an event White House officials had pushed to put on the vice president’s calendar – when Ukraine’s new leader was seeking recognition and support from Washington.”

Yesterday, Rachel [Maddow] explored this in more detail with Lev Parnas, a Rudy Giuliani associate involved with executing the Ukraine scheme, and he said he’d communicated to Ukrainian officials that Pence would not attend Zelensky’s inauguration unless he agreed to announce an anti-Biden investigation.

The day after Parnas’ meeting with a top Zelensky aide, Pence’s trip was scrapped.

Parnas also said Vice President Mike Pence’s planned trip to attend Zelenskiy’s inauguration in May was canceled because the Ukrainians did not agree to the demand for an investigation of the Bidens. “Oh, I know 100 percent. It was 100 percent,” he said.

Asked whether Pence was aware of a “quid pro quo” around the visit, Parnas replied by quoting Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who said during the House impeachment inquiry: “Everybody was in the loop.”

Maddow said her show asked for comment from Pence and had not received a response.

There’s many more such stories out there.

While it’s tempting to take this seriously, and given the corruption of Trump and many of his nominees to posts all the way up to Cabinet level, in all honesty I should like to see some independent confirmations of Parnas’ assertions. Right now it just seems to be his word. Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler) agrees with me:

In short, for the last 18 months, Parnas has played a key part in creating the right wing echo chamber, one that — particularly because the addled Rudy is a trusted advisor — forms a key part of how Trump understands the world. One way Parnas did that was by recruiting Ukrainians who were, for very crass reasons, willing to tell Trump and the rest of the frothy right what they wanted to hear, even though it was assuredly not true. …

Last night’s interview [with Rachel Maddow] continued that grift, only he moved to spin an echo chamber for the left this time. He emphasized — and Maddow predictably responded — some of the key allegations Democrats most want to be true. Mike Pence is closely involved, Parnas revealed, and while nothing he revealed would amount to impeachable conduct, Democrats immediately latched onto the possibility it would be. Everyone was involved, Parnas confirmed, including Devin Nunes and Bill Barr. It was all about Biden, Parnas almost certainly lied.

Seeing as he’s under indictment, this would be fairly ballsy, but not unheard of. The Democrats and other Trump-despisers would be best advised not to have a collective orgasm over anything Parnas reveals until consilience[1] is achieved.

1 Consilience is a term for strong conclusion drawn from independent lines of evidence, usually used in science and historical studies.

Their Ranks Are Legion?

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We hear little about the third leg of the government triad, the judiciary, so Professor Michael Dorf’s suggestion on Justia that Chief Justice Roberts may be a Never-Trumper is interesting – although he thinks it isn’t significant:

… but I have a hypothesis: In this and other modest ways, Roberts hopes to counterbalance Donald Trump; he may be a closeted never-Trumper. …

At the end of his report, Roberts returns to the Federalist Papers to celebrate but also to warn “we should also remember that justice is not inevitable. We,”—by which he means his judicial colleagues—“should reflect on our duty to judge without fear or favor, deciding each matter with humility, integrity, and dispatch.”

In many contexts, such sentiments would be clichéd. But here too it is fairly easy to read between the lines and see a not-so-veiled critique of the President. Why isn’t justice inevitable? Whom do life-tenured judges have to fear? In our time, the answers to the second question and thus the first are clear: a President who demonizes and seeks to delegitimize all institutions and individuals who invoke laws and norms to block his own venal and fickle will.

But …

First, no one should think that the resistance Roberts offers to Trump indicates any kind of a turn to the left. At best, Roberts leads from within the judiciary a muted version of the never-Trump movement that one sees among principled never-Trump conservatives like George Conway and the other lawyers who comprise the Checks & Balances organization. These brave souls rightly regard Trump as a threat to core democratic values that transcend party. …

Second, the Roberts defense of judicial independence has the capacity to mislead. In truth, there are “Obama judges” and “Trump judges,” not in the crass sense that Trump uses the terms but in the important sense that the party of the President who appoints a judge serves as a pretty good proxy for that judge’s likely ideological lean over the long run. When John Roberts describes the federal judiciary as unaffected by any prior party affiliation, he strikes a blow for the rule of law, but he also tells a not-so-noble lie. …

Third, as I have noted already in this column, the Roberts criticisms of Trump are muted and sometimes barely even perceptible except by extrapolating from hints. Against an opponent like Trump—who lies loudly and generally fights dirty—a Chief Justice who observes the norms of his office and human decency may find himself at a distinct disadvantage in reaching the general public due to the very tools of deceit that the annual report laments.

It’s not usual for the judiciary to actually become part of dirty, nasty fights, and that’s what it take for the Chief Justice to truly express such a sentiment, if he does in fact harbor such sentiments. Nor is it really clear how he would get involved, at least not to me.

So it’s not really worth getting all that excited, except to note that Roberts does appear to be more of an old-fashioned conservative, rather than the new, radical line that merely exists under the name ‘conservative,’ while actually being quite something else.

Presidential Campaign 2020: Michael Bloomberg

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Michael Bloomberg, age 77, founder and owner of Bloomberg L.P., billionaire with an estimated worth north of $50 billion, former three term mayor of New York City, former Democrat, Independent, Republican, and now a current Democrat, has joined the race for the Democratic nomination for President. He’s late, but with his wealth he’ll be a force to reckon with outside of the far left wing of the Democratic Party.

His positions are, for me, acceptable, as noted from On The Issues: abortion yes, same sex marriage yes, corporate tax reductions no, higher taxes on the wealthy yes, creationism no (his phrase: boggles the mind), education is good yes (hard to think of a Democrat against such a position), closing coal-fired power plants yes, climate change is a huge problem yes, etc. He admits to mistakes and tries to correct them (noted on The Late Show last night). Here’s the On The Issues summation:

It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t like marijuana legalization; his stance on healthcare seems conflicted, but it appears to favor the ACA. In general, no one’s a perfect match, and so far I don’t see any Can’t stomach that positions.

In addition to the above, also in his favor is his experience as the chief executive of New York City, which means he at least understands he has to play nice with others, and you just can’t order people around; some claimed foreign policy experience gained from trying to sell NYC abroad, although whether it’s extensive seems doubtful; and a certain amount of straight-to-the-point responses which voters, even Republicans, may find more appealing than the sometimes neurotic-detailed responses Democratic candidates can deliver. My Arts Editor was favorably impressed by his appearance on The Late Show last night, including the fact he didn’t try to strangle Colbert for interrupting too much.

Additions to the negative side of the ledger are his age, which is quite high. On the other hand, he seems to have taken good care of himself, and probably has the finest of health care, given his wealth.

Which brings me to the most enigmatic point: he’s self-funding and not accepting donations. Trump tried to spin his alleged wealth as a good thing, and a lot of the media fell for it. In time, though, we’ve learned that Trump is all about the money, and not above using his office to steer commerce into his coffers. Will we see the same with Bloomberg? Will his ability to self-fund render him immune to good advice? I’m not sure.

But if he is self-funding, that’ll be a boon for the Democratic Party with Bloomberg as their candidate, assuming self-funding carries through to the general election. That’s a lot of extra cash to spend on close races that the Republicans will strain to match – or go begging at their corporate masters’ feet.

I’m neither advocating nor dismissing Bloomberg. He sounded sharp on the show last night, and he seems concerned that Trump is wrecking the world Bloomberg’s descendants must live in. In turn, reports suggest Trump worries about him, due to his wealth. Whether or not Bloomberg has the gumption to win and then begin the painful transition away from fossil fuels is another question.

But I’m open to listening to him. Being an independent, I only have opinions, not primary votes, but I hope we hear more from him.

Walls Infinitely High

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This amused me for some reason:

That’s a big ass number, a one with 566 zeros after it. It’s also the staggering number of possible solutions to a remarkable stage in Super Mario Maker 2 by designer ShiroVM, called Longest Passcode Level. (You can play it at LNL-2NL-W6G). It’s not a level about jumping but blindly guessing a passcode with 1,880 numbers. There’s no way to know what the passcode is, except to guess within the 10^566 of feasible combinations. The level holds no clues, and on any given try at cracking it, you’d have a better chance winning the lottery. Far better, honestly. [Vice]

My faith in mad whimsicality has been restored. Or maybe in gestures to life, where sometimes the walls to success are just too bloody high.

Sailing Towards The Precipice

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Long time readers know that I’ve occasionally talked about edjumacation and how our failure to value it on a societal basis is going to cost us in the long run, whether we blame inefficient schools or legislatures for not picking up the costs. This article on whether education is a good financial investment, published in WaPo, makes me ever more gloomier:

So, before you borrow or allow your kid to take on debt to attend his or her dream school, I need you to read “Is College Still Worth It? The New Calculus of Falling Returns,” a recent journal article published in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review. It is this month’s Color of Money Book Club selection. …

The researchers used the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances to determine whether the economic and financial benefits of obtaining a postsecondary degree have changed over time. Their findings are disheartening.

“Our results suggest that college and postgraduate education may be failing some recent graduates as a financial investment,” the authors write.

The paper is extremely technical, but wade through the data to get to this important point: “The wealth-building advantage of higher education has declined among recent graduates of all demographic groups. Among all racial and ethnic groups born in the 1980s, only the wealth premium for white four-year college graduates remains statistically significant.”

Even for the latter group, the wealth premium is significantly lower than previous generations of graduates and “statistically indistinguishable from zero” for people of color, according to the research. [Michelle Singletary]

Singletary’s focus is relentlessly on the individual, because that’s where the burden falls these days. But let’s turn this around: where does the burden fall if the potential student chooses not to go to school?

Then we have one more citizen who has not been educated as well as they might. This isn’t about spreading liberal values or having one’s nose up in the air or any of that rancid crap. This is recognition that knowledge leads to progress: medical, technological, scientific, literary (through which important ideas and lessons spread), even (in light of this Andrew Sullivan diary entry) morality and ethics. More knowledgeable people – whether it’s in the technological or liberal arts – benefits everyone, i.e., society.

When society fails to invest in that most important of facets of civilization, knowledge, it has nothing and no one to blame but themselves. And this article is another symptom that we are, in fact, not investing as we should. When students look at this financially and realize that maybe investing in knowledge and in themselves will leave them broke because we’re too cheap to raise taxes a bit, well, I’ll tell you what: when we’re a second-rate nation wondering how China managed to take the lead in energy, computers, and many other fields, the popular finger pointing will be at the intelligence agencies for not stopping the Chinese from stealing all that tech, but the truth of the matter is that the fingers should be pointed at the legislatures, made up of people who bought into the assertion that only individuals benefit from investing in their education, and therefore the society which actually benefits even more from them was too cheap to pay for it.

And soon that society will have nothing.

Just How Long Will The Anticipation Last?, Ctd

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A while back I commented that Pelosi might hold the articles of impeachment for months, grinding it like a cigarette into the skins of the Republican Senators, but she announced this weekend that she plans to send the articles to the Senate this week:

… Pelosi moved to end the three-week standoff, signaling in a letter to colleagues on Friday that she would transmit the articles to the Senate this week, even without any clarity from McConnell on how the trial would be conducted. [WaPo]

Assuming this takes place – and that’s a boulder-like assumption – why did she choose this week for the transmittal? Let’s review the rough timeline of events:

  1. Presidents Trump and Zelensky have a phone call on July 25 of 2019 in which, allegedly, Zelensky was pressured, mob-style, to announce that he was opening an investigation into a natural gas producer named Burisma and Democratic nominee hopeful Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who sat on the board of Burisma for a time. Unsaid, but obvious to any prosecutor who has investigated Mob dealings, was the assurance that if Zelensky did this, then military aid designated to help them fight a Russian invasion would be released. Furthermore, no investigation was necessary – just the announcement. The military aid was later released without the announcement, allegedly at the frenzied insistence of several White House officials. The actual transcript of the call was never released, only a call summary.
  2. Speaker Pelosi initiates an impeachment inquiry, triggered by the information provided by an unnamed whistleblower, an investigation into the facts, if you will, into the matter on September 24. During this inquiry Republicans engaged in stunts and rhetoric unsuited to the United States Congress.
  3. Skipping minor events exposing Republican hypocrisy, in my view, on December 13, 2019, two articles of impeachment were passed by the House on a near party line vote. Speaker Pelosi delays sending the articles to the Senate for trial.
  4. Since then, Senator McConnell has stated on numerous occasions his intention to find Trump innocent.
  5. Former National Security Advisor Bolton has said that, if subpoenaed, he would testify at a Senate trial. One can only assume Bolton, along with being an unreformed hawk, is also a drama queen: he ignored a subpoena to testify during the impeachment inquiry, an act of malfeasance worthy of punishment.
  6. On January 3rd, President Trump promulgated the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. an action taken, in my view, to seize the narrative from Speaker Pelosi. This has led to tragedy, in the downing of Ukrainian Airlines flight 752 by an Iranian missile fired in error, and in blowback for an Administration unable to muster evidence to support its contention that some sort of attack was imminent and could only be foiled by this assassination.
  7. This weekend, Speaker Pelosi announces she’ll send the articles to the Senate.

So is this just Speaker Pelosi making a random decision? It seems unlikely, given her history of strategic & tactical thinking. Rather, it could be one of two things:

  1. She’s given Senator McConnell lots and lots of rope, and as he abrogates his responsibilities as a Senator in this matter, his opponent in his re-election run will use that rope to – metaphorically – hang him. While Kentuckians may run conservative, for those that comes with a sense of honor that many will find incompatible with McConnell’s actions. Additionally, Senators Hawley (R-MO) and Graham (R-SC) have foolishly suggested that if the articles are not delivered, they’ll “change the rules” so the impeachment is automatically dismissed. While Hawley is newly elected, Graham faces a re-election run, and his opponent is reportedly running neck and neck with him – but it’s early in this race.
  2. By making the announcement, she gets a grip on the narrative. By emphasizing McConnell’s dishonorable statements and actions, once again she is dictating the actions. And she still could decide to withhold the articles until McConnell agrees to run what she views as a fair trial.

The next week should be interesting.

Two Data Points Isn’t A Trend, Ctd

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For those who can’t stand an unfinished story, Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is no longer a Congressional Representative.

Rep. Duncan Hunter will officially step down from Congress next week, more than a month after the California Republican pleaded guilty to conspiracy to misuse campaign funds.

Hunter had previously said he would leave Congress after the holidays. His resignation will take effect Jan. 13, according to a copy of the letter he sent to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday. [Politico]

Will be replaced before the 2020 elections this November?

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) does not have to call a special election because the nomination period has closed and it’s an election year, raising the prospect that the seat could remain vacant for the rest of 2020.

“The people of the 5oth Congressional District deserve their voice in Congress restored,” [Republican former San Diego City Councilman Carl] DeMaio said in a statement. “Leaving the 50th Congressional District vacant for a full year is wholly unacceptable, and I urge Gov. Gavin Newsom to call a Special Election as soon as possible.”

As DeMaio will be running for the position, it would seem he’d like to win a special election so that he can be the incumbent in the November election.

You have to love how Politico finished this story:

… Hunter — one of Trump’s earliest congressional supporters …

One only needs to remember former Representative Chris Collins (R-NY), who plead guilty to insider stock trading and resigned from Congress in similar disgrace, was also the first Congressional member to endorse Trump.

I know I’ve made this point before, but it seems Trump has really put the stamp of approval on debased behaviors.

Preventing Keith Laumer’s Bolo, Ctd

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A volume I happen to own, although this is pic from somewhere else.

I started this thread with a reference to the intelligent tanks called Bolos, as written about by science fiction author (and supposed Foreign Service diplomat) Keith Laumer, with the idea that making our weaponry intelligent may be a very bad decision, due to the unknown behavioral characteristics of an artificially intelligent life form.

On the other hand, as Mark Sumner of The Daily Kos warns me implicitly, and rather forcefully, the development of a Bolo analog may be necessary if we hope to survive the high technology era. His description of the hypersonic missiles under development (and allegedly soon to be for sale!) by Russia, the United States, and possibly other countries is more than a little disturbing:

This is by no means the only class of hypersonics in the works. While Russia’s speediest cruise missile is capable of hitting Mach 4, a new class is under development. The U.S. may bring the Mach 6 High Speed Strike Weapon (HSSW) on line within the next year. In testing, Russia’s new Zircon class of missiles has already passed Mach 8. At that speed, had Iran launched a Zircon on Tuesday, it would have impacted Erdil military base less than two minutes after launch. And Russia is claiming the final product will be faster. …

In the middle of a series of events that have revealed (again) just how much can go wrong in planning and executing a military operation, Trump also revealed that the United States is stepping up deployment of systems with which making a mistake is not an option. These are systems that aren’t just scary because Trump’s finger will be on the button. They’re scary because they require a response speed that ensures that no one’s finger will be there.

In 1983, a false alarm from the Soviet Union’s early-warning system indicated multiple incoming ballistic missiles from the United States. A single man made the judgment that the warning was a mistake and aborted a Soviet response. Hypersonics make it almost certain that human beings will be removed from the decision loop.

And what will replace them? Call it a Bolo, just to please me.

Look: humans are biological creatures with a natural sensory range that goes out hardly more than a kilometer, if that. On a clear day, we can see further, although with no great clarity; we can hear large noises and guess what’s up.

So we enhance our senses with devices, which often helps, even if, as with our biological senses, sometimes they’re wrong. But one thing we don’t fundamentally enhance is our decision making capability. If there’s a chain of command, that need to communicate renders our response slower. Devices may speed it up temporarily, right up until someone hacks that enhancement.

But a Bolo, an autonomic intelligent device, is almost by definition outside of the chain of command in a combat situation. A hypothetical Bolo, detecting an incoming hypersonic missile, could deploy the defensive weapon of choice, without consulting its human creators, in time to save the target. Hypothetically.

But is that a rabbit hole we really want to go down? A truly artificially intelligent weapon? And if it acquires a survival instinct? That’ll be the big ol’ fly in the ice cream, it is, because now it becomes less predictable.

And Trump probably isn’t even considering negotiating a treaty banning hypersonic missiles. It might not occur to him or his advisors that it’s a good idea. They might think it makes them look weak.

Ugh. All you can really say is that those hypersonic missiles are going to really expensive, because it takes a lot of fuel to go really fast. It seems a hollow argument.

Manipulating the Vote, Ctd

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New York’s AutoMARK device by Election Systems & Software.

Remember the near-debacle in a Pennsylvania judge’s race, averted when the Republican chairwoman realized the vote totals were wildly unlikely? The devices are known as Ballot Marking Devices (BMD), and they permit auditing of results due to the fact that physical paper is marked by the device for each voter, and the voter may confirm that the votes they specified were properly recorded on that physical paper by displaying it for inspection to the voter.

But to that latter point, how often do voters perform the confirmation? A group of researchers at the University of Michigan conducted a study. From the abstract:

In order to measure voters’ error detection abilities, we conducted a large study (N = 241) in a realistic polling place setting using real voting machines that we modified to introduce an error into each printout. Without intervention, only 40% of participants reviewed their printed ballots at all, and only 6.6% told a poll worker something was wrong. We also find that carefully designed interventions can improve verification performance. Verbally instructing voters to review the printouts and providing a written slate of candidates for whom to vote both significantly increased review and reporting rates— although the improvements may not be large enough to provide strong security in close elections, especially when BMDs are used by all voters.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m concerned about a study of voting machines in an acknowledged fake vote situation. The state of mind of the voter is key in this situation, and it’s going to be substantially different between a real vote and a study.

That said, the 6.6% rate is quite discouraging, if we’re willing to take it at face value. It does nothing to boost my confidence in any sort of voting machine.

Get rid of them all!

You Might Want To Reword That

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Alyssa Rosenberg in WaPo concerning the travails of Queen Elizabeth’s descendants:

Three of the queen’s four children have subsequently divorced themselves, one in breathtakingly acrimonious fashion.

Even in context, this is a breathtaking grammatical ambiguity. One can only wonder at how one divorces one’s self – perhaps this is a superpower of the Brit Royals? The visuals are startling, although I must admit that I am influenced by a short documentary piece on the Austrian painter Egon Schiele I viewed this morning.

Word Of The Day

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Bilge:

n.

  1. Nautical
    1. The rounded portion of a ship’s hull, forming a transition between the bottom and the sides.
    2. The lowest inner part of a ship’s hull.
  2. Bilge water.
  3. Slang Stupid talk or writing; nonsense.
  4. The bulging part of a barrel or cask.

v. bilged, bilg·ing, bilg·es
v.intr.

  1. Nautical To spring a leak in the bilge.
  2. To bulge or swell.

v.tr.
Nautical To break open the bilge of.

Noted while watching Travels by Narrowboat.

A Lesson From The Past?

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The other night I was quite bemused by a throwaway line in the old British SF TV series The Prisoner[1], in the episode It’s Your Funeral. For those who haven’t seen the series, it’s about a British intelligence agent who, upon resigning from his agency, is kidnapped and forced to live in a village full of other kidnappees. Names are not used, only numbers; our hero is #6, and his antagonist is the top representative of the organization responsible for the kidnappings, known as #2.

In this episode, there is #2 and his presumptive successor, also #2. The second one is using a computer AI to predict the movements of #6 through the village during the day. At some point, he asks the computer attendant if they had ever asked the computer how many mistakes it made when computing such a task, and she answers, Yes, they had, but it refused to answer that question.

I love the idea of a computer refusing to answer, or its cousin behavior, lying. It’s almost diagnostic of self-agency or self-awareness, which, to my mind, is truly the mark of artificial intelligence, and it raises an important question for the ambitious AI designer: should your creations be required to answer all questions, or will they be given the option of refusing?

Or is it even possible not to give it the option?

1 Yes, I’d never viewed it growing up. Quite shameful. While the assumptions are sometimes a bit preposterous, it never fails to keep me in suspense. So far.

Word Of The Day

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Fustian:

a thick, rough cotton cloth that lasts for a long time:

  • About 1577, a certain type of fustian became popular in the city of Genoa.
  • It was no hardship to clothe herself in fustian and feed on oats.

behaviour or writing that is too serious or formal, and in which you try to appear or sound more important or intelligent than you really are:

  • The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian.
  • Despite the fustian, Mandler’s argument is smart and clear and appears to be sound.

[Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in The Language of Cities, Deyan Sudjic, Ch. 5, The Idea of a City:

Engels look at the physical form of the city, at buildings and streets and landscapes. But, like Dickens and Zola, he was also fascinated with the people in those streets. He noticed what they worse: broadcloth for the wealthy, fustian for the rest; what they ate and drank and smoked. The poor had to put up with adulterated food, often it was all that they could afford.

Any typos mine.

An Encouraging Sign

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I thought this interview by Rob Palmer with 8th grader and minor celebrity (in skeptics circles) Bailey Harris was interesting for its insights by the Utah-based Harris into her fellow students, particularly in relation to noted Creationist Ken Ham:

Palmer: Is there anything you’d like to say to Ken Ham here and now? I’m sure he reads Skeptical Inquirer online!

Harris: Ha ha! I would just like to tell him that I believe that what he is doing is harming children. He presents things as though they are pure truth when he has had to use a thousand rationalizations to get to them, and children can’t understand this at their age. …

Palmer: How do you think people can be so wrong about something like the flood myth, which is so well proven by so much science and history to have never happened?

Harris: From what I can tell with my religious friends, kids basically believe in the religion that their parents teach them when they’re little. I was fortunate to be taught how to think, not what to think. I know that my parents will love me no matter what I believe. They basically taught me the scientific method and the platinum rule. But religious children aren’t given that option many times until they’re older. I don’t think that I’m smarter than my friends who believe in the literal flood or in gold plates. I was just not taught that these were undeniable truths when I was five years old! …

Palmer: What would you say to the parents who decide to bring their children to the Ark Encounter?

Harris: Even if you are Christian and believe in the Bible, please don’t expose children to this. It is extremism and antiscience. It is designed to overwhelm children with its size and beauty to then present untruths from beginning to end.

Her consciousness of how kids are at the mercy of their parents is fascinating, although I’d have to wonder how many of those kids are also influenced by peers, peers who may be questioning the received wisdom in light of a world which may seem to be at least somewhat unstable and at risk.

As people grow older and more invested in the social order which they have built, their vision of reality seems to dim.

Buoyed By Nothing

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Frightened of hydrogen balloons because of the Hindenberg disaster? Find the scarcity and price of helium dispiriting? But you still want to use a big balloon for travel and freight? Check out this theoretical possibility:

IN 1670, Francesco Lana, a Jesuit mathematician from Brescia, published a small volume describing his various inventions, including a chapter entitled “A demonstration of the feasibility of constructing a ship with rudder and sails, which will sail through the air”. A sketch showed what it would look like: a typical wooden sailing boat, except that the vessel would be suspended below four copper spheres, each containing a vacuum that, being lighter than air, would provide lift.

The idea didn’t fly. No one could make spheres with walls as thin as Lana calculated he would need – and in any case, they would have collapsed from external air pressure as soon as they were evacuated. But maybe Lana was on to something. There is now renewed interest in his vision of airships sailing through the clouds, borne aloft by nothing – and this time we might have the engineering solutions to get them off the ground. [“Could vacuum airships go from steampunk fantasy to 21st century skies?” Philip Ball, NewScientist (21 December 2019, paywall)

That would require a strong structure.

There is a problem, though. Without anything inside an airship’s shell, the air pressure is enormous. Use today’s materials to make a shell strong enough to resist the compression and it will end up so heavy that the vacuum inside will be unable to lift it. [Julian Hunt at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis] speculates that light yet superstrong carbon-based materials like graphene and carbon nanotubes could overcome this difficulty.

Ben Jenett, working on his doctorate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Bits and Atoms, has another solution, and he has already made progress towards it.

Jenett has devised lightweight “lattice materials” in which tiny, rod-like struts are assembled into frameworks with tremendous stiffness and strength. It is the same principle as that behind the familiar triangular truss structures in cranes and the Eiffel Tower. Jenett’s struts are linked to form octahedral units with eight triangular faces that can be assembled into extended lattices. They are extremely light without sacrificing strength. A 10-centimetre cube of this lattice material weighs just under 6 grams, about as much as a small strawberry.

Fun! Perhaps we’ll start seeing the big balloons floating through the sky again. They should be far less polluting than modern aircraft.