Category Archives: Uncategorized

Gabion:

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

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

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

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

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare:

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

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

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

Steve Berman of The Resurgent thinks Trump is psychotic:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Liberal Kevin Drum of Mother Jones:

Andrew McCarthy of National Review:

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

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

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

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

Andrew Sullivan:

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

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

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

buy me some peanuts & impeach the motherfucker already

But Fallis almost feels sorry for Trump:

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

It didn’t.

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

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

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

Enough for now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A venting, nothing to see here:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Party of financial responsibility, indeed.

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

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

Arrant:

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

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

THE CHEQUERS|JAMES RUNCIMAN [Dictionary.com]

I used it in this post.

Deb’s favorites:

Brilliant in the morning sun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

An opportunity lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Judge Ho approvingly quotes his colleague, Judge Clement,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And, yet, they are forbidden.

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

A reader writes concerning membership in the mob:

Steve Scalise from Louisiana was there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weaver does understand there might be some objections:

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

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

I have a sad feeling this scheme would prove ineffectual.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pah.

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time to stop the political theater and false accusations.

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

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

— Brad Parscale (@parscale) October 18, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My correspondent responds concerning building strategies:

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

Yes, my hobby horse. Giddyup!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The answers are not easy.

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

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

It’s all about corruption.

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

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

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

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