Category Archives: Uncategorized

A reader reacts to the news that SCOTUS has ruled that states have the right to legalize, or more accurately regulate, sports gambling as they desire:

The sociopaths have gotten near complete control of society, and they are bent on extracting as much wealth and power as possible, never mind the misery and suffering inflicted on the majority. This is just another small step in that pogrom to enrich the 1%, and anyone who fancies him or herself to have a chance at it. “Screw you, I’ve got mine” is the guiding principle today.

While it’s easy to point out that no one is forced to gamble, the reality of the situation is that people, at least in American culture, have an inclination to risk small amounts of wealth in hopes of recouping greater wealth. The gambling business is constructed to take advantage of that inclination.

I suppose we could call this a learning opportunity for the American people, but I fear it’ll never be effective for the vast majority.

Do you wonder how Trump lawyer Michael Cohen might be persuaded to flip? Harry Litman on Lawfare has some details based on his experience with Sammy “the Bull” Gravano:

For this sort of defendant, the adroit prosecutor must deploy a gradual and nuanced psychological campaign to wean them from a total identification with the family and its values, and a disgust at the mere thought of talking with the government. As John Gleeson, the prosecutor who led the prosecution of Gotti and flipped Sammy the Bull, told me, “It’s not something that happens instantly. The heart of it is convincing the would-be cooperator that there is no such thing as honor among thieves. If the tables were turned, the guy he’s reluctant to give up would throw him under the bus in a heartbeat.”

To be sure, the prospect of a long time in jail is a strong start. In fact, few people realize that it was the passage of long mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes—justly controversial in other settings—that, in combination with the mobs’ ill-fated decision to go into the drug business in the first place, broke the back of organized crime. The refrain of the Sammy the Bulls of the world had been, “I can do a nickel standing on my head,” meaning they were more than willing to serve a five-year sentence and keep quiet. That calculus changed with ten- and 20-year sentences.

If Cohen faces a sentence, it will be driven by the amount of money at issue in his putative financial crimes. Given their possible number and magnitude, his exposure could potentially be very long—certainly long enough to deprive Cohen, by all accounts a family man, of seeing his children grow up.

But for Cohen to agree to flip, he’d likely need to undergo a gradual transition that permits him to feel justified in breaking the Trump camp version of the omerta, or code of silence. As Cohen has pledged, “I will always protect Mr. Trump.”And with the intense focus on the case, it is likely that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York would want to apply a soft touch and avoid possible charges from the president’s supporters of overbearing treatment.

Step one in that transition is the isolation of the lieutenant from the family and the daily social life, which usually consists largely of a lot of hanging out and killing time and not all that much actual criminal activity. That much seems already to have happened, notwithstanding that Cohen has yet to be arrested. The Times reported recently that Cohen has told associates that he feels isolated since the FBI search.

With the spell of daily connection to the family broken, the feds will seek to persuade the made man that the Don doesn’t esteem him—or worse—doesn’t even respect him.

Since Trump doesn’t appear to treat his subordinates with much respect, this might be easier than one might think.

On our way to Chicago, we stopped at the House On the Rock (HOTR) in Wisconsin. I find it impossible to give insight into this echo of a guy who seems to have gone completely around the bend, so I’ll just post pics of this part of the trip with very little comment. There’s a lot of pics, I’ll do them over the next few days.

One of our favorite collection items, for that’s one of the themes of HOTR, was the gigantic iron pots decorated with whimsical reptiles.

Our recent vacation trip to Chicago included stops at the Field Museum, where we saw the Mummy exhibit and we holstered the cameras, and the Art Institute of Chicago, which was awash in camera wielding art warriors. We had a great time at both (and Geno’s East as well, where we ate lunch after the Art Institute visit), and snapped a few pictures of our own.

Here’s our Arts Editor gawping at the subject of a recent film:

Here’s a couple of pics, just to prove we were really in the building. Honestly, I didn’t want to live behind the camera during the visit, but I liked these paintings a lot.

I enjoyed these abstract representations of a firebreathing dragon.

And then we finished up with a visit to Geno’s East, Chicago’s finest deep-dish pizza. Excellent!

One of the unexpected consequences of the bitcoin trend has been its impact on specialized graphics processing units (GPUs), which the miners find very useful for the sort of calculations necessary to verify the transactions and thus earn cryptocurrency for themselves. From The Motley Fool:

The conundrum has been that soaring cryptocurrency prices have angered both NVIDIA’s and AMD’s core gaming customers. Rising graphics card prices have made it difficult for these core customers to upgrade, or even replace their graphics cards, should they need to. NVIDIA and AMD were left with a choice: Either risk their long-term success by alienating their core customer, or increase GPU supply and risk cratering near-term GPU prices (and thusly their own margins). As we now know following their respective quarterly reports, these companies have chosen the latter.

Understandably, meeting GPU demand won’t happen overnight. In late March, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang admitted that his company still has a long way to go in an interview with TechCrunch. Said Huang, “We’re sold out of many of our high-end SKUs, and so it’s a real challenge keeping [graphics cards] in the marketplace for games … we have to build a whole lot more.” AMD has echoed this challenge, suggesting that its ramp-up of GPU production may be limited by the ability of its memory partners to meet demand.

While there’s always a certain amount of demand for high end computing resources, this unexpected competition for resources is certainly an interesting aspect of the entire scenario.

I wonder if the computations are amenable to public computing, a la the SETI@Home effort. If so, and if you could find some way to convince your everyday user to dedicate part of their machine to the calculations, that might be a way to alleviate the problem, and even decentralize the generation of the currency, which is a problem noted here.

Paul Rosenzweig’s comment on the elimination of the White House Cyber Coordinator Role:

This is not just nonsense: It is nonsense on stilts.

Ever get the feeling that National Security Advisor Bolton, responsible for this move, has fallen behind the times?

philology:

Philology is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is a combination of literary criticism, history, and linguistics.^[1] Philology is more commonly defined as the study of literary texts as well as oral and written records, the establishment of their authenticity and their original form, and the determination of their meaning. A person who pursues this kind of study is known as a philologist. [Wikipedia]

Noted in “The Eternal Exile,” which is a review of two biographies of Gershom Scholem by Nathan Goldman, The Hedgehog Review:

The resemblance of the Kabbalah as portrayed in Scholem’s work to its actual historical content is a complex subject beyond the purview of both Prochnik and Engel, neither of whom are scholars of Jewish mysticism. But both writers subscribe to the increasingly popular reading of Scholem’s scholarship as a creative project. Engel writes that he sees Scholem “not as an explorer but as a poet.” This is not to say that Scholem was fundamentally a fabricator—though Prochnik notes instances in which he clearly was—but that he shaped what he found; his philology was guided by a philosophy. His scholarly interest in recovering the history of Jewish mysticism was inseparable from his political desire to rejuvenate the Jewish people in the present. Scholem wrote about the Kabbalah as a distinctively Jewish resource for cultural renewal. His spiritual yearning brought him to Palestine, where he became a librarian in the Hebrew department of the National Library and, through his writing and political activity, worked to realize his vision of Zionism.

On The Resurgent, Peter Heck complains that Senator and former GOP Presidential nominee John McCain (R-AZ) is mistaken in seeing his junior partner on that ticket, former half-term Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, as a ball & chain his campaign:

To say that Palin wasn’t ready for the national stage is fair. To say that, in hindsight, she turned out to lack the policy chops that would have made her an effective player in D.C. is fair. But to say that McCain’s margin of loss without her wouldn’t have been staggering is engaging the worst kind of historical revisionism.

I can’t agree. The selection of Governor Palin, especially when she went on display and became the iconic incoherent right wing extremist, was the moment when I believe most independents realized that McCain’s campaign was profoundly flawed. I know that, until then, I was willing to give McCain a fair hearing, but once he had selected Palin, my requirement that competent people, regardless of gender, had to occupy the seats of President and VP had not been met, and cast serious doubt on McCain’s future staff selections.

I agree with the sentiment that Obama was inexperienced at the national level upon his election to the Presidency, although I think Heck overstates the case, but Obama convinced me to vote for him based, in part, on his personnel selections. Let’s face it: no President can do this job without excellent help in the form of his selections to Cabinet posts and subsidiary positions, and that’s why the Senate has confirmation power -to help the President make good selections. To an overwhelming extent, the effectiveness of a President depends on those picks, and, for the non-partisan observer, I think history will prove that Obama made excellent selections. At the time of the campaign, Biden was somewhat suspect based on his previous plagiarism scandals, but he proved to be an articulate and convincing spokesman for the election, and has subsequently proven to be an excellent vice president.

But, more importantly, Heck betrays the limited vision of the extremist which loses elections and causes the party of any persuasion to become more hermetic and estranged. Why the latter? Palin was emblematic of the extremist right wing, and when the McCain campaign lost, and lost to a relatively inexperienced community organizer and only recent Senator, it became a full-scale rejection of the extremist offering of their best. For the citizen of flexible and inquiring intellect, this is an opportunity to learn and grow, but for the dogged zealot, convinced of the rightness of their cause, this is an embittering experience. Their best, stomped by someone they are already convinced is inferior, whether due to race or inexperience – keeping in mind McCain’s years of service in the military and in government, too – had to feel like sand in the teeth.

Palin may have attracted and appeased the extremist wing of the GOP, but she repelled just about everyone else.

And I think Heck overstates the case against Leiberman. Leiberman would have occupied the vice-president slot, not the president slot, and that’s not necessarily a policy making position. The only real consideration against Leiberman from a GOP perspective is if McCain were to die or become incapacitated during his Presidency. In another time, a conservative Democrat wouldn’t have been a problem – and his appeal to the independents would have been undeniable and even huge. But in 2008? The extremists were solidifying their hold on the heart of the GOP, and Leiberman was considered anathema. I think McCain, realizing he had little chance, decided to roll the dice on an unknown who had charisma and unknown other potentialities.

And he rolled snake-eyes.

The latest from Boston Dynamics:

In the hubbub of the SCOTUS ruling that the individual states may legalize gambling, I’ve not run across a certain bit of information: what’s the real worth of gambling. Not this:

While it’s probably impossible to accurately estimate, experts suggest that illegal betting in the United States is a $50 billion to $150 billion business — perhaps significantly more.

According to research by UNLV’s Center for Gaming Research, legal sports betting in Nevada totaled nearly $5 billion last year, led by football — both college and professional — which accounted for $1.76 billion.

A 2017 report from Eilers & Krejcik Gaming estimated that legal sports gambling could be a $6 billion industry — perhaps as much $16 billion if more states eventually get onboard. [WaPo]

The oxygen produced by my little fern garden may be more valuable than the entire gambling industry.

Because that’s merely the churn of the industry, isn’t it? I mean, outside of the minor expense of paying the employees, paying taxes, and skimming profits, we’re not producing anything, are we? It’s not as if we’re buying paper towels, or food, or a handyman’s service – all transitions that have something of value.

So I’m uncomfortable with this terminology that obscures the question of whether this is really an industry like others – or just a lot of financial masturbation. Even entertainment has its value in the stories it produces and how that enhances the lives of those who can learn from those stories.

But gamblers? Some are vaguely entertained, obviously, but others are addicts.

Where’s the value?

As had been speculated, President Trump has decided to kick over the sandcastle called the JCPOA, which happened while I was on vacation. His reasons, according to this WaPo article, appear to be specious (or he’s desperately confused, take your pick), and in some cases, I’d judge them not to be relevant. But how do others see things? Former Senator Jim Talent (R-MO) on National Review:

I’m not saying the regime is about to fall, but it is overextended, and that makes it peculiarly vulnerable now to the re-imposition of American sanctions. One of the few good national-security developments in the last 15 years is that the United States has figured out how to make sanctions particularly effective. You target the banks. The world trades in dollars, which means that every transaction — including the sale of oil — has to surface eventually in a bank which cannot operate if it must disconnect from the American financial system.

Yes, the rogues can and do launder cash and pursue other illicit activities, such as the drug trade, to get some resources. But you can’t run a country on that, not for long anyway, and especially not when you want your country to be the hegemon of the Middle East. That was why the Iranians were so desperate for a deal three years ago; the tough sanctions which Congress passed over the opposition of the Obama administration had brought them to their knees.

Let’s see what happens now as the sanctions go back into force. The Europeans will complain, but Trump can mollify them by cutting them a little more slack in his tariff policy. The Iranians may promote a conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, but that was coming anyway, and the Israelis wouldn’t still be around if they weren’t a very tough nut to crack. Besides, Hezbollah has a lot on its hands already in Syria.

He thinks Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize if this works. Someone who breaks a deal should be a prize winner? Talent also likes to dance around the fine points, such as Iran’s agreement not to ever build nuclear weapons.

Kevin Drum in the adroitly title post “Trump Frees Iran to Pursue Nuclear Weapons“:

Anyway, I guess we’re now back to the North Korea strategy: keep ratcheting up sanctions in hopes that their economy will collapse before they successfully build a nuclear bomb. That worked great! I’m sure it will work great with Iran too.

The North Korean population appears to be completely cowed, while the Iranians have had their tastes of freedom – the situations are not really analogous.

Dan Drezner on PostEverything:

Reinstating sanctions undercuts the U.N. Security Council, as well as our European allies that are signatories to the JCPOA. But the only way Iran feels any uptick in economic pressure is through secondary sanctions pressuring European countries to scale back their trade and investment in Iran. So, in essence, the Trump administration is deciding that the way they will improve the Iran deal is by threatening to sanction our NATO allies.

Nicholas Miller on Monkey Cage:

President Trump has argued for a better deal — one in which, for instance, Iran accepts permanent limits on its enrichment program or its missile development. But is that realistic?

A look at past nonproliferation diplomacy with Iran suggests that any U.S. effort to win still more concessions would fail. Three factors made the 2015 concessions possible: an uptick in Iranian nuclear provocations, a powerful multilateral coalition to stop those and domestic receptivity in Iran. None of those conditions exists now.

In particular, Nicholas notes that Russia is no longer willing to play along, and they were a key part of the JCPOA. Miller’s conclusion?

It took 30 years of diplomacy and an unlikely confluence of factors to get Iran to agree to the JCPOA’s limits on its nuclear program. Attempting to achieve a better deal without any of these favorable conditions would be quixotic at best.

But characteristic of Trump’s approach to damn near anything.

The Iranian government is unhappy, of course, as they’ve been certified as being in compliance. From the Tehran Times is the transcript of the Iranian letter to the United Nations:

As you are aware, on 8 May 2018, the President of the United States announced his unilateral and unlawful decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, in material breach of Security Council Resolution 2231 (2015) to which the JCPOA is annexed. Simultaneously, he signed a Presidential Memorandum instructing relevant U.S. authorities “to cease the participation of the United States in the JCPOA” and “to re-impose all United States sanctions lifted or waived in connection with the JCPOA”, thus committing multiple cases of “significant non-performance” with the JCPOA, and in clear non-compliance with Security Council Resolution 2231.  These acts constitute a complete disregard for international law and the United Nations Charter, undermine the principle of peaceful settlement of disputes, endanger multilateralism and its institutions, indicate a regress to the failed and disastrous era of unilateralism, and encourage intransigence and illegality.

There’s more – more than I cared to read – at the link, so make of it what you will. I think that, handled properly, the Iranian government can make this into a propaganda victory. However, it’s not clear how much of a problem the Iranian hard-liners, destitute of the Presidency for a second Presidential term (4 years) and deeply resentful of the JCPOA, will pose for the Rouhani Administration – and keep in mind that President Rouhani is subject to the will of Supreme Leader Khamenei, who is more conservative than the reform-speaking Rouhani. It’s no slam-dunk for the Iranian government, but it’s certainly an opportunity to weaken American influence globally.

On Lawfare Jack Goldsmith explains the legal basis of the original agreement:

The particular manner in which President Obama crafted the Iran deal paved the way for President Trump to withdraw from it.  Obama made the deal on his own presidential authority, in the face of significant domestic opposition, without seeking or receiving approval from the Senate or the Congress.  He was able to do this, and to skirt constitutional requirements for senatorial or congressional consent, because he made the deal as a political commitment rather than a binding legal obligation. As Curt Bradley and I recently explained, a political commitment “imposes no obligation under international law,” a nation “incurs no state responsibility for its violation,” and thus “a successor President is not bound by a previous President’s political commitment under either domestic or international law and can thus legally disregard it at will.”

Which is to say, the GOP’s control of the Senate, and their desperate series of NO! to anything President Obama tried to do made this approach necessary – and necessarily fragile.

J. Dana Stuster on Lawfare:

Trump suggested in his statement on Tuesday that the goal of withdrawing from the JCPOA is to eventually secure a new agreement that goes further than the current deal. “The fact is they [the Iranian government] are going to want to make a new and lasting deal, one that benefits all of Iran and the Iranian people,” Trump said on Tuesday. “When they do, I am ready, willing, and able.” What that might entail exactly is unclear, but administration officials have often expressed frustration that Iran retained any enrichment capacity and that the deal did not include constraints on Iran’s ballistic missile development. The Obama administration, when the JCPOA was negotiated, argued that eliminating Iran’s civil nuclear research and its missile program were unrealistic concessions that the Iranian regime would not accept—and that was when the United States had the cooperation of its negotiating partners and an international sanctions campaign on its side. The Trump administration seems to think it can get more concessions with less leverage. How? There is no plan. The United States is now lurching toward a direct confrontation with Iran with an ad hoc strategy.

Don’t take my word for it. That comes straight from the State Department. In a background briefing on Tuesday, a befuddled reporter pressed two State officials for how the United States would work with its partners to constrain Iran’s nuclear program now that the White House had shot down the supplementary agreement being worked on by France, Germany, and Britain. The State Department’s response: “We did not talk about a Plan B in our discussions because we were focused on negotiating a supplemental agreement, so we did not—we did not talk about Plan B.” The administration does not have a plan for how to make the sanctions, which they valued more than the agreement and their relations with Europe, work. It also does not have a plan for how else to pressure Iran. The Washington Free Beacon reports that officials are now mulling a proposal from the Security Studies Group—a small think tank founded by veterans of Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy, a hotbed of paranoid and misinformed policy—that advocates the Trump administration adopt a clear policy of regime change in Iran, including support for groups trying to destabilize the government. “U.S. policy toward Iran currently does not publicly articulate two components vital to success: That a new birth of liberty based in self-determination for the Iranian people should be official policy; and that military action should be anticipated if other measures fail,” the paper states.

This entire Administration appears to have no concept of how to plan – but they’re mostly amateurs who’ve learned contempt for government at the teat of the conservative media and haven’t the wit to think for themselves. They’re hip-deep in serious business with one of the most deluded men in the country at the helm. We can only hope he scares everyone so much that they keep out of the way of our madly careening ship of state.

Stewart Baker discussing a podcast on The Volokh Conspiracy:

Speaking of cyberattacks, you’d better buckle up, because Iranian retribution for US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is probably being prepared as you read this. And according to a highly educational Recorded Future/Insikt report, Iran’s semi-privatized hacking ecosystem is likely to err on the side of escalation.

And given the vulnerabilities built into the Internet, it could get messy. But that might be intemperate of them, since it’d be necessary to leave a fingerprint behind in order for the message to be loud and clear.

And China? From WaPo:

New freight train connections usually have limited potential to make global headlines, but a new service launched from China on Thursday could be different. Its cargo — 1,150 tons of sunflower seeds — may appear unremarkable, but its destination is far more interesting: Tehran, the capital of Iran.

The launch of a new rail connection between Bayannur, in China’s Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, and Iran was announced by the official news agency Xinhua on Thursday. Its exact path was not described in the dispatch, but travel times will apparently be shortened by at least 20 days in comparison to cargo ship. The sunflower seeds are now expected to arrive in Tehran in about two weeks.

A clear signal that China may ignore U.S. sanctions – a move that may have influenced Trump’s decision to succor China’s ZTE Communications firm today, a move which otherwise appears to be madness. Trump may twist himself into a pretzel trying to make his withdrawal from the JCPOA pay off.

And our nightmares?

And they want me to wear this creepy wig, too!

It can be a bit unsettling when a movie combines traditional horror schlock with some actual quality elements, and Gargoyles (1972) does that. It postulates that the gargoyles found on buildings from the Medieval period are actually a reference to a race of creatures competing with humanity for mastery of the planet. Set in the late 20th century, the story revolves around the suggestion that the lifecycle of the gargoyle race is that they are an egg-laying race in which the eggs can lay unattended for long periods of time, and then hatch. In our story’s case, the setting is the Southwest desert of the United States, in and around the small town of, well, I forget.

A local man, Uncle Willie, who specializes in oddities of nature, has discovered an unusual winged skeleton in the desert and contacted a naturalist, Dr. Boley, offering to sell it to him. The naturalist shows up with his adult daughter, Diana, in tow, but as they discuss the skeleton, the house is assaulted by unknown forces and caves in, killing Willie, and then catches fire. The skull of the skeleton is saved, and Dr. Boley and Diana escape the inferno. However, their car is damaged by the unknown forces, and they can only make it back to town, where they put their car in for repairs and take a room at the little hotel.

The next day they report the incident and return to the scene with the police. There they discover some trouble making dirt-bikers, who the police blame for the trouble. That evening, though, their hotel room is broken into, they are assaulted, and the skull is stolen by men in rubber suits leathery creatures. Making their escape, one of the two creatures is hit a semi and killed. Dr. Boley deems swapping the skull for the body of his attacker to be a fair deal and begins examining it. Harassed by the proprietor of the hotel, Dr. Boley and Diana decide to leave with their prize in their repaired car, but, delayed by Diana’s failed attempt to free the dirt bikers, they are intercepted by more of the, uh, leathery guys, who rip the doors off their car, tip it over, pull out the body of their fallen comrade, and finally kidnap Diana, the latter effected by a winged creature.

Dr. Boley discovers the lair of the monsters is a nearby cave system, and is briefly captured but breaks away, and now it’s time for your good old-fashioned monster hunt, complete with yelping dogs and guys with guns; the dirt-bikers also volunteer to help. One on one, the critters’ claws outclass mankind, mostly, but guns even the odds, and in the end all but two of the creatures are dead in a heap – the last two flying off to breed and keep up the clandestine battle for the world.

For all that this fits into the hokey sub-genre of monster movies, of the “there’s more to history than you might guess” variety, there are some competent elements here. The chemistry between Dr. Boley and his daughter Diana is warm and relaxed. Dr. Boley himself is written as a believable character, doggedly logical in his approach to the skeleton and the creatures which appear; he only gives in to manly hysterics when his daughter disappears. Unfortunately, the cops and the dirt-bikers add little to the story; Uncle Willie, as well as the proprietor of the hotel, give us a little more gristle to chew on, although they’re clearly not central characters.

And the gargoyles themselves, for all that their costumes are sometimes too obviously rubber suits, are given some thought by the storytellers. They display concern for each other, they shower affection on their young, and their actions towards humans, given the history of genocide between the two races, makes sense. It wasn’t just a bunch of guys in costume running around caves killing each other.

Still, the miasma of bad horror movies tends to cling to this movie in the persons of some of the supporting characters and elements of the plot itself, not to mention the occasional plot hole. I certainly don’t recommend it, but simply note that there are some thoughtful elements present.

I’m somewhat dismayed, if unsurprised, at this report by Bruce Reidel in AL Monitor on the military spending habits of Saudi Arabia, particularly this bit concerning the current Administration’s reaction to the spending choices of the Saudis:

Saudi Arabia has the third-largest defense budget in the world; Saudi military spending last year was almost $70 billion — only the United States and China spent more. However, the level of spending is unsustainable and inconsistent with the kingdom’s stated intent to retool the economy. And the Saudis are not buying what the White House is selling. …

Much to the annoyance of President Donald Trump, the Saudis have not been buying big new weapons from the United States. Trump visited Riyadh a year ago and said the Saudis had agreed to a $110 billion arms package. None of it was actually finalized. The president upbraided Saudi Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman on television this year when he was in the Oval Office for only spending “peanuts” on American weapons. A resupply of munitions and spare parts does continue due to the Yemeni war, but big new platform sales are on hold. They will be controversial on Capitol Hill.

Implied in that paragraph is the idea that we should be selling, and thereby profiting, to the Saudis – or to anyone purely on a profit basis.

I am, probably to an excessive extent, a realist concerning international politics. Some countries irrationally hate us, some rationally hate us, some simply have ambitions of various sorts that are incompatible with our ambitions, and yet others are nominal allies. We have to deal with these realities on the ground in various ways, and some of them include arming other countries. It’s a dangerous game wherein people get killed, but I fear the alternatives may be worse.

But we cannot and should not select our customers based on their ability to pay, and that’s precisely the implication of that second paragraph up there. The Saudis are flush with cash and looking to upgrade their military technology – and Trump sees green and a sorely needed boost for his prestige and is put out when it doesn’t happen.

Is this a wise way to evaluate the situation? We didn’t get the sale and thus we’ve failed?

The government is not a big profit-making corporation, and the longer we pretend it is, the more precarious our international situation will become, because rather than focusing on whatever is important, whether it be peacefully persuading countries to convert to democracy or mediating conflicts, we’ll be focused on financial profit. That gets us so little, because – in extreme cases – we may end up arming our enemies, if not directly then indirectly through arms transfers.

These sales must be evaluated through the lenses of national security and international diplomacy. Traditionally, they have been. I fear, though, with the State Department in disarray and a profit-addled President in power, we may make critical errors which will cost us dearly in the future.

In the third part of his weekly tri-partite diary, Andrew Sullivan discusses the subject of the Evangelical movement’s relationship with Donald Trump in the context of Trump possibly paying one of his paramours to have an abortion:

But what intrigues me is whether this would actually be enough to get the religious right to abandon their cult-leader. The pro-Trump evangelicals have already staked out a position: Nothing in Trump’s personal character or history matters compared with his advancement more generally of a Christianist agenda in the federal government and especially the judiciary. And if that’s truly the standard, if evangelical Christians have absolutely no interest in the fact that Trump is a serial liar, adulterer, and philanderer, then surely an abortion in his wake wouldn’t matter either.

I think of it as a litmus test for their tribalism. Some small part of me would love to believe that this indeed would be a deal-breaker, that even though Trump has boasted he could shoot someone dead on Fifth Avenue and face no political repercussions from his base, maybe the killing of an unborn child could shake what’s left of American evangelicalism out of its trance.

And then I snap out of it. They’d weigh one abortion against the millions of others sustained by the Roe regime, and give Trump yet another Mulligan. Once you’ve turned Christianity into a mere instrument for wielding political power over others, the logic becomes entirely utilitarian. There is, in many ways, no going back now. It is simply a matter of how great the moral cost of the entire, grisly transaction will be.

Which leads to the question, what will be sufficient to make an Evangelical group, convinced that it’s a victim of America, finally give up on their hold on power? Will it take an outrage of momentous quality?

Or a leader who’ll talk some sense into them?

Or is it all too much to hope for, and we’ll just have to wait for inevitable demographics to extinguish the current corrupt crop of them? I say corrupt because that’s the horse they’re riding here, both metaphorically, as Trump is not only not an Evangelical, but almost violently not, and literally, as Trump and his Administration appears, simply based on the behavior of many in his Cabinet and himself, to be literally corrupt.

If their horse is this corrupt, it’s a monstrous blot on their belief system, as well as on their souls, if such exist.

On Lawfare, Stephen Rickard and Elisa Massimino, in reaction to Benjamin Wittes’ support of Gina Haspel’s nomination to the position of CIA Director, have a telling remark:

For this reason, Haspel’s involvement with the RDI program calls into question her ability not only to stand up to the president but to be an effective leader within the agency. She was promoted to the Deputy Director of the CIA, but, as Sen. Dianne Feinstein has said, “the top position is another matter entirely.” The Senate is evaluating her ability to make sound moral, ethical, and strategic judgments under intense pressure. How, for instance, can Haspel be expected to foster a culture at the CIA where officers are encouraged to resist political pressures or orders to engage in legally and morally dubious conduct if one of her major arguments against her critics is that she was “just following orders” when she helped destroy evidence and facilitated torture?

Haspel is reportedly hard-working, dedicated and effective. But she applied those talents over several years to support and assist Jose Rodriguez, and by all accounts there was never a more gung-ho advocate of brutal interrogations in the agency.  She was, as Rodriguez puts it in his memoir, his “right arm.”

Bold mine. That’s an excellent discussion of the problem Haspel would face in a less partisan Senate. Of course, the problem of discerning legal vs illegal orders can be a difficult issue, and this issue came with an added thumb on the scales, a legal opinion that the interrogation methods to be used were legal.

But this doesn’t free Haspel from criticism, but makes it even more significant. The post-Bush Administration world has concluded that those methods were, in fact, torture. Haspel’s failure to discern this fact in a situation in which she was intimately involved can only leave one to wonder how much she was motivated by professionalism, and how much by the vengeance mindset of the Bush Administration, a mindset ultimately damaging to the position of the United States in terms of prestige and influence.

I’ll be very uncomfortable with Haspel in this position.

A reader comments on the Ohio redistricting amendment:

I’m still of the mind that districts should be drawn by computer, and that no political factor should be included in the software. It should be all be simple demographics and geographic similarities/impediments.

I’m still at a loss as to how this would work. In a highly partisan polity, a representational democracy really isn’t – those who don’t approve of the victors in an election also find their viewpoints unrepresented.

In at least some European countries, my understanding is that the result of a vote is used to allocate how many representatives a given party will have. This, however, leads to team politics, which long-time readers know has a host of problems leading to second- and third-raters in the national representative bodies.

Governance is a tough business.

Jessica Hamzelou notes in NewScientist (5 May 2018) that some bacteria are now munching on penicillin:

Gautam Dantas at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, and his colleagues discovered [the consumption of penicillin by bacteria] by accident 10 years ago. They were growing soil bacteria in the presence of penicillin, expecting that it would stop them from growing.

“But we saw exceptional growth on antibiotics,” says Dantas. His team found that some strains were around 50 times above the threshold at which bacteria are normally classed as antibiotic-resistant, and that they were feeding on the penicillin.

Now, Dantas and his colleagues have figured out how these bacteria do it, by focusing on the genes that became active in four strains. Deleting these genes and observing the effects revealed that the bacteria are able to thrive on penicillin using a cocktail of enzymes: proteins that catalyse chemical reactions.

And they know how. It seems Nature is just one big toolbox, at least for bacteria, what with the swapping of genes (“horizontal gene transfer”). Jessica notes that the researchers are having some thoughts towards using this discovery for removing waste antibiotics from our water supply.

I wonder what unintended consequence that might have.

Way back on this thread, I suggested that Obama waged an undeclared war on Russia, following their forcible annexation of the Crimea, by forcing down the price of oil through various means. Mark Sumner on The Daily Kos now suggests that Trump’s bizarre rejection of the Iran nuclear deal may, in fact, be linked to Russia’s financial problems resulting from Obama’s move against Putin:

A report on Russian state media shows that Donald Trump has already delivered not just a gift to Vladimir Putin, but possibly the gift that Putin has wanted all along. In a conversation on RT, the two hosts note that to implement all the domestic programs Putin has promised for Russia, the cost will be 8 trillion rubles ($127 billion). But, where, the host questions, is Russia to get such a huge amount when the government has long been strapped for cash?

Female host says: “Looks like we found it. Trump is withdrawing US from the Iran nuclear deal. Oil prices should go up, which is good for us.”

Crude oil futures have leapt from $26 at the time of Trump’s election to $77 today. Back in January, Trump actually certified that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear agreement. However, Trump threatened to end the agreement if it wasn’t expanded to include items unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program and “strengthened” in unspecified ways.

Trump increased his warnings that he would end the deal in February, and by Marchwas engaged in talks with European allies—talks at which allies consistently urged Trump to remain in the deal and Trump consistently announced his intention to walk away. As the talks wore on, and Trump’s intransigence became clear, fears of a destabilized Middle East began to shore up oil prices.

Russian oil production hovers around 10 million barrels a day. That means the increase that has already happened in oil prices is providing Putin with an extra $520 million a day. If the prices were to continue at the level generated by Trump’s actions for a year, Putin could meet all his promises to Russia—and have $60 billion to spare—just out of the net increase.

Of course, Putin will have expenses, but he’ll still be left with a pretty penny at the end of the day, if all this is true. And I have the appalling feeling that it is true. Sumner also reiterates a point I made quite a while ago:

Breaking the agreement didn’t really cost Trump much. Just the faith of every other nation on the planet, who now see that the US is willing to violate a treaty over the objections of allies and the evidence that the other party is living up to the deal. In other words, nothing that will concern his supporters.

An aggressive adversary is reinvigorated, our reputation is damaged, and the validity of democracy as a functioning governmental system is thrown into doubt. Not bad for a little bit of manipulation.

Oleaginous:

1. having the nature or qualities of oil.
2. containing oil.
3. producing oil.
4. unctuous; fawning; smarmy. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “Trump is no longer the worst person in government,” George F. Will, WaPo:

Donald Trump, with his feral cunning, knew. The oleaginous Mike Pence, with his talent for toadyism and appetite for obsequiousness, could, Trump knew, become America’s most repulsive public figure. And Pence, who has reached this pinnacle by dethroning his benefactor, is augmenting the public stock of useful knowledge. Because his is the authentic voice of today’s lickspittle Republican Party, he clarifies this year’s elections: Vote Republican to ratify groveling as governing.

I wonder if such big and unusual words are truly effective rhetoric, or mere posturing by the author.

And we’re back from a short vacation trip to Chicago, a whirlwind tour of two museums, one madman’s hidey-hole, Geno’s East, and the Broadway production of Hamilton: An American Musical at the CIBC Theatre in eastern Chicago. That last item is the subject of this post.

I’m going to keep this short, partly because I couldn’t appreciate all the nuances of this lovely production. This was due to my own failing: I do not pick up on accents or extremely rapid patter very well, especially when there is musical accompaniment, and that is the essence of this play: a biography of the American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, warts and all, told mostly through the musical form rap. The use of this musical form in this play is important in that it connects a profoundly American musical form (though built on preceding imported forms), still relatively recently developed, to the beginnings of the American experiment in government, in perhaps the most important possible way – each began in the depths of alienation and struggle. Rap started as a street music developed by a black community struggling with centuries of American racism, and all it that has implied for members of a black community who have the spirit of the poet moving through them, the desire to chronicle their stories and how injustice impacts them.

The Founding Fathers were reacting to the sometimes arbitrary rule and taxation of a sovereign far, far away, who knew little of their situation and cared less, a monarchy the history of which contained acts of extreme barbarity inflicted not only on enemies, but on citizens of the British Empire as well, often justified through appeals to religious orthodoxies not applicable or accepted by the colonists of America. Thus, the alienation felt by the colonists who were of various religious sects, were belabored by the monarch’s representatives, and often felt like afterthoughts who were managed not for their prosperity, but for what they could produce for the faraway homeland. In this alienation, there is a connection, and that connection is important to making the play significant for American audiences familiar with the history and themes of both.

But the play is also interesting in that it recognizes there’s more than one story here, and that this is an inevitability. We learn the story of Alexander Hamilton (and how many Americans know the story of Alexander Hamilton – I certainly didn’t, and in fact as the play progressed towards the infamously tragic duel, I realized that I knew of the duel, but not the why), but the playwright also deliberately introduces the story of Hamilton’s eventual antagonist, Aaron Burr, another orphan and his friend and rival, and how their differences made Hamilton both better and worse. We also catch parts of the story of Hamilton’s mentor, George Washington, and of Hamilton’s wife, Eliza, who brings us to the real end of the story as we discover she is responsible for founding the first private orphanage after his death in the duel.

Orphaned, ambitious, amatory, brilliant, and infuriating – it’s a fascinating story, and well told if you can hear it. We loved the story, presentation and the music, except when we couldn’t quite hear the words, as well as the costumes. If you have a chance, please go see Hamilton, and see that American politics has always had an element of the dirty about it.

Recommended.

Ohio is another state which has been gerrymandered by the GOP, who have retained a vast majority in the legislature ever since. However, they’ve apparently been watching what’s been happening to other states such as Pennsylvania (GOP gerrymander) and Maryland (Democratic gerrymander) and decided to be proactive on the matter. They offered an Amendment to the Ohio Constitution on the matter, known as Issue 1, to change the process from a simple majority vote + signature of the governor to a more complext process, as described in Vox by Andrew Prokop:

1. To start off, the Ohio legislature would be tasked with drawing a new map. But they could no longer pass it with a simple majority vote. They’d need three-fifths support and the support of at least half the members of both major parties, in each chamber, as well as the governor’s signature.
2. If there’s no deal, the congressional map-drawing would be punted over to the seven-member Ohio commission that exists to handle the state legislature’s redistricting. Here, again, bipartisanship would be necessary — at least two minority-party members would have to agree to approve a new map.
3. If the commission fails, the job would be tossed back to the Ohio legislature. In that case, the threshold for success would fall, but bipartisanship would still be necessary to pass a map — at least one-third of each party’s members would have to vote for it, to pass it and send it for the governor’s signature.
4. Finally, if all these efforts fail, the legislature would be permitted to pass a map with simple majority support. But the catch is that this new map would only last four years, rather than the usual 10. And again, the governor’s signature would be required.

From the same article:

“I think it largely enshrines the process that we have,” says Republican state Sen. Matt Huffman. “It still leaves it in the hands of the majority party in the legislature, because people elected the majority party to make these decisions. But it also enshrines the concept of minority rights.”

Not really. This will be an opportunity for corruption in three ways, all related to the commission in #2. First, there’s old-fashioned bribery, whether it’s cash or special consideration for the minority party members of the commission. Second, what’s to keep a member of the commission from switching parties? And, related to number two, the third would be a ‘mole’ in the other party, although that’s admittedly a little far-fetched.

And since step 4 exists, the status quo is maintained in the event of failure. Big win for the Republicans. In fact, step 4 is the hammer of the process – Either agree to our marginally better map or you’re stuck with the Big Bad One for another four years! It’s all about the power politics, folks.

The best way to do these things is to have an objective, non-political mechanism. So far, I haven’t seen one for the American system, but that doesn’t mean one cannot be devised. Perhaps having the judiciary devise a redistricting map as constrained by the efficiency gap would work. I haven’t given it a lot of thought.

This thread concerns the candidacy of CEO Don Blankenship for the GOP nomination of Senator from West Virginia, who was convicted of a misdemeanor in connection with a coal mine disaster which killed 20+ miners, and I am glad I can bring it to a positive conclusion. Via Reuters:

[West Virginia] State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey won the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in West Virginia on Tuesday, beating former coal executive Don Blankenship and calming the fears of party leaders who thought the brash ex-convict would spoil their chance to pick up a Senate seat. …

Blankenship had panicked Republican leaders by showing signs of a late surge, but he faded to a third-place finish behind Morrisey and U.S. Representative Evan Jenkins after President Donald Trump intervened to urge voters to reject him. …

Blankenship told supporters in Charleston, West Virginia, that he had no regrets about his campaign and blamed the “establishment” for the loss.

“I think if there was any single factor … it was President Trump’s lack of endorsement,” he said.

Is he saying that Trump is now the establishment? The swamp, so to speak? Forgive my snark!

More seriously, his comment does bring up the question of whether the GOP primary voters had the good sense to reject a former CEO who ignored safety regulations in favor of profits, or if the voters just fell into line at Trump’s command. I have no idea which is a more accurate description of reality.

And will Blankenship’s comments discourage his supporters from coming to the polls this November? Current holder of the seat Senator Manchin (D) is considered to be one of the more vulnerable Democrats, but also one of the more conservative Democrats. Right now, in my mind this is a toss up until we start seeing polls indicating how the West Virginians views the two.

The data smuggler also liked to do community theater on the side, as he felt he could become an actor. Sadly, he was wrong.

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) has some interesting elements to it, but it ultimately fails because there’s no real hook from which the audience might learn^[1]. Consider the categories of characters with which we’re presented: a data smuggler who uses a brain implant, which has displaced his childhood memories, in order to make room for the huge data downloads with which he’s entrusted; the Yakuza, a collection of Japanese-based international organized crime syndicates (these are reality-based); a senior executive of PharmaKom, a pharmaceutical company whose data is being stolen, who has personally been devastated by the death of his only child by the disease his company may have found a cure for; the mainframe-based ghost of the founder of PharmaKom; the Lo-Teks, an outlaw group bound together by the belief that this world’s intensive information society is damaging its members; a man turning himself into a cyborg who raises the funds by hiring himself out for assassinations, which he performs as a Christian-based ritual death; a bodyguard who maintains her edge through the use of debilitating drugs while fighting off a terminal disease; and a dolphin.

This is set in the future, a future where that new, terminal illness has emerged, called Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS), a disease characterized by the “black shakes”. The plot is that a group of Lo-Teks has stolen unknown data from PharmaKom, and hired the data smuggler to move it securely from their location to the headquarters of the Lo-Teks. The data smuggler’s implant doesn’t actually have enough capacity for the download, and the extra is stored in his brain, thus endangering his sanity and life. He’s motivated to take the job because he wants his childhood memories back; he currently feels isolated from the world. This job will provide the funds to remove the implant.

The Yakuza show up just as the download finishes, massacring the scientists but missing out on the data smuggler. In the fray, the encryption key, consisting of three images, is torn in half and the smuggler emerges with only one of the images. While it seems the Yakuza were hired by the PharmaKom executive, they may later decide to take the data for themselves, but it’s not really clear. In any case, he hires the aspiring cyborg to finish the job, which is to acquire the data smuggler’s head. The implant is not enough, you see, because the data overflowed; the entire head is necessary.

And the smuggler is having none of that. He’s struggling to find a way to download and decrypt the data, and eventually he shows up at Lo-Tek headquarters, who appear to be little more than a streetgang that happens to hold a wrecked bridge in New Jersey. Along the way he acquires the services of the bodyguard, who rescues him from a group trying to take his head. The Lo-Teks have the services of a code-breaking US Navy dolphin, because that’s useful to have at this point in the plot, never mind how silly it may be, and in the midst of the mutual massacres of the Yakuza, the Lo-Teks, and the PharmaKom dudes, the data is decrypted and spread through public channels for all to see.

And what is the data? A how-to for curing NAS.

Oh, and that ghost has been torturing the PharmaKom exec with assertions that PharmaKom used his own child for testing the cure.

So, how about us little guys, the common citizen? Are there any in this story? In short, no. Most of these folks are so far beyond your typical audience’s experience that an instant connection is not possible. Nor does the movie, at least the one cut for the TV, provide much of a hook to any of these characters. That exec who lost his child to experimentation? We saw nothing, we’re just told that’s what happened. The data smuggler’s lost childhood, is it really that awful for him? We can’t tell. Maybe his parents beat him everyday, for all we know.

And NAS is supposedly widespread and kills most of the victims – so are there riots in the streets? Have the citizens all given up on whatever activity is causing the disease? Well, hell, we don’t know – and if some version of the movie does tell us, that’ll be the problem – they tell us.

Stories are about showing. How about an old-fashioned riot in the streets with some characters with which we can identify?

The special effects are a little goofy, the acting is OK, but the story feels like a first draft, and could have used two or three more, not to mention a few brainstorming sessions. In the end, the characters aren’t much more than dull cardboard cutouts. The ideas are OK, especially that of NAS, but the suggestion that PharmaKom sacrificed little kids, especially the exec’s own child, to find a cure for the disease seems both stale and, in its particulars, a bit unbelievable. A man building himself into a cyborg doesn’t seem unrealistic, given today’s body modification fetishists, but it just seems out of place in this story.

And a dolphin? Really? Why?

¹Keeping in mind I’m analyzing in the context of the theory that stories provide keys to survival to the audiences, and the better they do so, the better a story they will be considered.