Category Archives: Uncategorized

Scion:

a young member of a rich and famous family [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Ethics Committee Acknowledges Investigation of John Duncan Jr.”, RollCall:

The House Ethics Committee acknowledged Tuesday an investigation of Rep. John Duncan Jr, a scion of a Tennessee political dynasty who announced his retirement in July.

Duncan, a Republican, came under fire that month after reports that his campaign paid his son, John Duncan III, almost $300,000. In the five years since the younger Duncan pleaded guilty to a felony charge of official misconduct. Those payments were made in monthly installments of $6,000 recorded as salary expenses, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Possibly not young enough to qualify for use of the term if he has a grown child? In fact, the “scion” has been in office since 1965, according to RollCall. He’s more of a patriarch.

You distract the director while I climb out the window!

I hate it when a movie made as a high school project makes it onto the air, and I think that’s the origin of Teenage Zombies (1958). This is the story of a mysterious island off the coast where four kids stop to visit in their homemade speedboat. They find people, strange shambling people, being led about, and they make a run for their boat, but it’s missing! Back to the house, and after some clumsily barbed banter, her personal servant, Ivan, takes them prisoner and they’re locked up behind bars.

Turns out the mysterious woman is heading up a research laboratory in search of a drug which, when released into the atmosphere, will turn everyone into soul-less slaves. Who’s she working for? Well, her bosses show up, and it turns out an unnamed foreign power wants to knock the ol’ United States over.

But a couple of more kids show up in something that probably couldn’t even make the trip to the island, see that something’s going on, and return to the mainland to insist the sheriff take them with when he searches the island. Meanwhile, the two boys have picked the lock and are plotting how to escape, but the girls are still trapped.

In a rock-em-sock-em climax, we discover the sheriff is in cahoots – it explains all of his missing prisoners, we inconveniently learn later – but in a falling out, he gets the short end of the stick. Then the good guys defeat the bad guys and the Army gives them all medals.

Seriously.

Let’s see here. Bad dialogue, echoing sound, blurry cinematography, wooden acting, awful plot, no horror (except in the creation of this bomb), and then there was this ape that appeared at the end to take care of Ivan. I think that was the ape’s only role. Or was it a gorilla? And the fight scene just ground on and on. I think it was all just clumsy dancing.

Don’t waste your time on this third-rate junker.

It occurred to me as I watched the big crowds of high school kids marching in multiple states about the Parkland Massacre that they are … tomorrow’s voters. Has the Republican Party thought about that? I’m sure they have – but for some reason they seem to be beholden to the NRA, an NRA that is led by 2^nd Amendment absolutists.

Do they think those kids are just going to forget that their concerns about their own survival were shrugged off?

This is a moment the Republican Party should seize by putting forth substantive gun legislation. Instead, as many news outlets have noted, the Florida Legislature, controlled by the Republican Party, refused to debate an assault weapon ban, but chose to put forth the assertion that porn is a health hazard. It’s as if they stuck their heads in the sand and declared that The 1950s was a golden age and, by god, we’d better do what they would have – and that’s be worried about porn!

All in front of impressionable folks. I shan’t call them children, at least not the survivors from Parkland, for two reasons. First, they’ve had their childhoods ripped away, and, secondly and more importantly, they have demonstrated the will to change what needs to be changed. This is not a mob milling around mindlessly, these were folks aware that their leaders have let them down, and asking them to do better.

These are people on their way to being adults. They’re aware of the world around them, they’re paying attention to who would help them – and who’ll stand by and counsel them that wiser heads have determined the proper course.

They’ll remember that.

And they’ll remember who taunted them. Who called them “crisis actors.” Who seemed focused on discrediting their efforts, their selves – and the tragedy which has enveloped them.

They’ll remember that, too.

And behind all this is an NRA that is now under investigation by the FBI for possibly illegal financial ties to Russia. Now, I don’t really believe that the NRA has become a mouthpiece for Russian warfare, mostly because the NRA leadership has been around for quite a while now, and I don’t credit Russia’s leadership with the ability to carry out plans that stretch for decades.

But it’s interesting how it’s all coming together. Between stirring up divisions in American society when we should be coming together, putting forth ludicrous arguments that are still taken seriously, and leaving America with only one functioning political party, the Democrats, which much of the populace seems to distrust, the political scene in America is really messed up – and that’s just what Russia would like to see. There’s no proof of their involvement in the public messaging of the NRA, and probably lots of disproof out there.

But I can’t help but notice the congruence.

Just as I can’t help but wonder if the Republicans are in the final act of slow seppuku.

Kevin Drum tidily sums up the effects of partisanship – which I suppose he should keep in mind himself:

This is American conservatism in a nutshell. Goldberg despises Trump, but he despises Obama even more. The end result is pretzel-bending arguments about things like this that ignore every scrap of evidence about Trump and Russia. It’s fair to say that Vladimir Putin hasn’t gotten the breather he hoped for when Trump beat Hillary Clinton, but that’s only because Congress and public opinion have forced Trump to back off. And in any case, surely the fact that Putin was so hellbent on defeating Hillary in the first place is evidence enough of how difficult the Obama administration made his life?

And I do see this in conservative publications. This is the single best reason to read partisan-authored articles and listen to partisans of either side in arguments with substantial skepticism, wondering the whole time how they’re trying to twist your arguments.

As an independent, I have no problem pushing pins into partisans on either side who can’t really see the world around them. Their ideology is more comforting to them than reality, and that’s a recipe for disaster. The pin is a favor to them almost as much as it’s good for me to blow off steam.

Paul Muschick of The Morning Call is, uh, calling for reformation of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court (and other judges) selection process:

I hope Pennsylvania’s politically charged gerrymandering saga has an unintended side effect — encouraging us to reconsider how we select our state Supreme Court and other appellate judges.

Nearly all other states choose their supreme court justices based on their qualifications, through a merit selection process, instead of electing them off a partisan ballot. Forcing candidates to campaign and collect campaign donations can raise questions about political impartiality down the road when they hear cases such as the gerrymandering one.

The fact that four Democratic justices tossed out the state’s Republican-created Congressional district map alone was enough to raise questions about partisanship. The justices’ failure to issue their full opinion in a timely manner, and then to draw a new map themselves when the state Constitution says that’s the Legislature’s job, make it even harder to avoid the appearance of political motivations.

It’s a fair cop, given that judicial candidates are running in partisan races. But I can’t say I like his proposed replacement, which would consist of an initial selection via a complex committee to a list, from which the governor would then select. After an initial four year term, there would be retention election for 10 year terms.

Thus, the pressure of elections is not removed, merely mildly attenuated.

Muschick grants that you’ll never get the politics out of judicial selection, but in order to minimize it, we should give the judges the independence from political and popular interference. While it’s important that judges have sufficient credentials at appointment, I’m even wondering if it’s necessary to mandate those credentials. After all, it’s the Executive’s responsibility to find excellent judges; isn’t it legislative interference to set standards? Isn’t it enough that the legislative branch can impeach and convict a judge for bad behavior or poor legal performance, reducing partisanship through some sort of super-majority requirement?

Still, a call for changing the direct election approach to selecting judges is encouraging.

Law Professor Chesney has a new phrase and an urgent warning about our shared computer future – it’s gonna suck. But didn’t we get this warning before? Here he is on Lawfare:

“We are truly fucked.” That was Motherboard’s spot-on reaction to deep fake sex videos (realistic-looking videos that swap a person’s face into sex scenes actually involving other people). And that sleazy application is just the tip of the iceberg. As Julian Sanchez tweeted, “The prospect of any Internet rando being able to swap anyone’s face into porn is incredibly creepy. But my first thought is that we have not even scratched the surface of how bad ‘fake news’ is going to get.” Indeed.

Recent events amply demonstrate that false claims—even preposterous ones—can be peddled with unprecedented success today thanks to a combination of social media ubiquity and virality, cognitive biases, filter bubbles, and group polarization. The resulting harms are significant for individuals, businesses, and democracy. Belated recognition of the problem has spurred a variety of efforts to address this most recent illustration of truth decay, and at first blush there seems to be reason for optimism. Alas, the problem may soon take a significant turn for the worse thanks to deep fakes.

Get used to hearing that phrase. It refers to digital manipulation of sound, images, or video to impersonate someone or make it appear that a person did something—and to do so in a manner that is increasingly realistic, to the point that the unaided observer cannot detect the fake. Think of it as a destructive variation of the Turing test: imitation designed to mislead and deceive rather than to emulate and iterate.

Deep fakes. An example:

Fueled by artificial intelligence, digital impersonation is on the rise. Machine-learning algorithms (often neural networks) combined with facial-mapping software enable the cheap and easy fabrication of content that hijacks one’s identity—voice, face, body. Deep fake technology inserts individuals’ faces into videos without their permission. The result is “believable videos of people doing and saying things they never did.”

Maybe we’ll soon be seeing film of Ted Cruz father assassinating JFK – like candidate-Trump once claimed. Or, for that matter, Obama assassinating JFK – keeping in mind he was all of 2 years old.

Or maybe it’ll be your face captured by security cameras during that midnight bank robbery. You end up in jail for five years.

Removing the technology seems unlikely – the cat is out of the bag and sufficient computing power and necessary algorithms are already available. Unless we’re willing to give up computers, or at least this kind of processing, which I think unlikely in the extreme, we’re facing a new sort of society, one in which constant tracking and recording may be necessary simply to protect one’s privacy – one of those apparent contradictions fraught with peril.

Chesney seems to indicate there are no technologies available for detecting this sort of fraudulent behavior:

Unfortunately, it is not clear that the defense is keeping pace for now. An arms race to fortify the technology is on, but Dartmouth professor Hany Farid, the pioneer of PhotoDNA (a technology that identifies and blocks child pornography), warns: “We’re decades away from having forensic technology that … [could] conclusively tell a real from a fake. If you really want to fool the system you will start building into the deepfake ways to break the forensic system.” This suggests the need for an increase—perhaps a vast increase—in the resources being devoted to the development of such technologies.

The only thought I’d have on the subject is that we need to detect a change to a recording between its initial creation and the viewing of it. Quantum encrypted communications depends on quantum entanglement to detect when communications has been compromised. I don’t imagine it’s really practical, but if an initial recording could be linked to something such that the disturbance of the recording broke the link, that might make it possible to detect forgeries. Perhaps some clever physicist could push that thought along.

And that previous warning? Wag The Dog (1997), where we actually see how the public could be manipulated using computer-generated images.

From one Democratic organization or another yesterday:

Breaking news from Kentucky: Democrat Linda Belcher just won the reddest district we’ve flipped since Trump was elected!

Kentucky’s 49th House District gave Donald Trump a colossal 72% of the vote in 2016, but Linda just turned it blue, winning the support of more than 68% of voters.

According to Ballotpedia, in 2016 President Trump won Kentucky 62.5% – 32.7%, a 2-1 victory over Clinton. But it’s also worth noting that the same day Trump won Kentucky, the local Republican candidate for the seat just won by Ms Belcher, the late Dan Johnson, only won by roughly a single point.

A swing from 49.5% to 68+% is quite significant. However, the late Mr. Johnson had been accused of a drunken sexual assault just prior to his suicide, and this may have motivated the GOP voters in the district to stay home, especially if the GOP special election candidate was unpopular or unknown. Additionally, yesterday’s winner is a known quantity to the local voters, having held the seat twice before, and lost it twice before. It appears to be a competitive district at the state level.

So it’s hard to judge the significance of this Democratic victory, although the victory gap (68 – 31) does make it tempting to see this not boding well for the Republicans. That’s a much larger gap than this district usually would have. I’d draw a graph but I’m out of time.

I’m a little worried by this report concerning former close allies Egypt and Turkey from Ahmed Aleem in AL Monitor:

Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid warned in an official statement Feb. 7 against contesting the agreement on the demarcation of the maritime border between Egypt and Cyprus. He also warned against infringing on Egypt’s sovereign rights in the delimited area, asserting that any attempt to do so was unacceptable and would be rejected.

The Egyptian position came in response to statements by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in an interview Feb. 4 with the Greek daily Kathimerini. Cavusoglu described as “null and void” the agreement signed between Egypt and Cyprus in December 2013 on the joint exploitation of hydrocarbon reserves on the median line between the two countries’ respective exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the eastern Mediterranean. “We have clearly stated that the agreement violates Turkey’s continental shelf,” he noted.

Turkey’s President Erdogan has transformed from a democratically elected leader into a strongman following the failed coup of a few years ago in Turkey. Strongmen take power because a large enough percentage of the populace initially wants a strongman, although this may not be true after power has been achieved. And what keeps a strongman going?

Being strong.

Egypt has clearly told him to take his marbles elsewhere, as he regards the removal of former Egyptian President Morsi to be illicit, to Egypt’s current government’s irritation. What will Erdogan do when Egypt disregards his protest? He can’t really afford to look weak to his supporters.

I hope there’s no war over this.

I’ve been fascinated by the story of the Pennsylvania gerrymandering case because it has the potential for major consequences in the next election, and the State Supreme Court appears to have little patience for putting this off too long. The GOP initially threatened to impeach the judges, but the State Supreme Court just keeps rolling along. The Philadelphia Inquirer has the latest information on it – namely, that the court issued a map of the district boundaries, and the Republicans are furious:

National Republicans say state and federal GOP officials plan to challenge Pennsylvania’s new congressional map in federal court as early as Wednesday.

“The suit will highlight the state Supreme Court’s rushed decision that created chaos, confusion, and unnecessary expense in the 2018 election cycle,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Matt Gorman said in a statement Tuesday morning. He said state and federal Republicans will sue in federal court “as soon as tomorrow to prevent the new partisan map from taking effect.”

You can find the map at the above link. And while the Republicans may be waving their stick about, history suggests it’s a little stick:

[Senate President Pro Tempore] Scarnati and [House Speaker] Turzai have tried unsuccessfully before to convince federal courts to intervene in the gerrymandering case, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stay the order just days after the state Supreme Court overturned the congressional district map. That request was denied by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who did not refer the matter to the full court, as is often done, noted Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

“If you’re a Republican defending a map and you can’t even get Justice Alito to refer the thing to the whole court, that’s a pretty weak challenge,” he said Monday, saying he could not think of a challenge that would be successful.

While SCOTUS is looking at the Wisconsin gerrymandering case, this may be a signal that it doesn’t want to see more of these cases – or that it expects the Wisconsin decision to be decisive.

It must be particularly discouraging that Alito turned them down earlier without even requesting the rest of the court to look at the appeal. Perhaps five Justices have made it particularly clear that gerrymandering won’t be tolerated with a big decision in the Wisconsin case. Will this second appeal be more successful? Or are the Republicans just wasting money frantically defending the indefensible?

I’m looking forward to the response to their second appeal. It’ll tell us a lot about the future of gerrymandering by either party – and maybe we’ll also find out how SCOTUS hopes to measure the injustice of gerrymandering as well as remedy it, a topic I touched briefly on earlier.

On Lawfare Timothy Edgar compares and contrasts the Mueller indictment of the Internet Research Agency with a previous indictment of Chinese PLA (Army) officers for hacking into U.S. companies for purposes of stealing intellectual property, an indictment of which Edgar approved in both theory and handling by the Obama Administration:

The Chinese ultimately decided to forgo issuing retaliatory indictments in favor of diplomacy.  No one went to jail, but the U.S. indictments worked: China and the United States eventually agreed that neither side would “conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property.”

But there are two big differences that will make such a happy outcome much more difficult in the case of the Russian hackers.  First, the issue of interference in the U.S. presidential election of 2016 is more significant than theft of intellectual property by Chinese hackers.  Russia’s interference implicates both U.S. sovereignty and ideals that are at the core of American identity.  The fact that the Russian campaign was directed against such vital national security interests weighs in favor of a very tough response by the United States.

Second—and more problematic, from the U.S. point of view—is that the United States is on weaker ground when it comes to international norms in this case than it was in the case of the Chinese hackers. In the latter instance, the Obama administration argued that the theft of intellectual property is distinct from the work of the NSA and other U.S. intelligence agencies.  Articulating this principle put the U.S. on a firm footing in discussions with the Chinese.  It helped that President Obama had issued Presidential Policy Directive 28 just months before the indictment of the Chinese hackers, which explicitly banned corporate espionage by the U.S. intelligence community.

Much like my evaluation of the recent indictments, Edgar doesn’t see it as a threat so much as a discussion starting point:

But the indictment does serve a useful purpose.  It sends a warning—not to Putin, but to Americans.  The U.S. government can’t control what Putin does by issuing indictments. But Americans can—and must—do a whole lot more to defend ourselves against foreign interference in our elections.  We can start by 1) encrypting our communications and data; 2) securing our election infrastructure; and 3) working with social media companies to combat “fake news” by exposing state-sponsored trolls. This threat is not going away any time soon.

And yet, here’s how I think this should really work out.

1. The President sends a diplomatic note to the Russians requesting immediate extradition.
2. The Russians reply with a suitably snarky No.
3. The sunny reply to that is, We’re pleased you have agreed to our request, and the entire United States 5th Fleet will be coming to the port of Vladivostok in order to place them under arrest. Your cooperation will be appreciated. We’ll send in an LST for the actual pickup.

Sure, it’s lurid and ridiculous. It also amuses me greatly. And you just know Theodore Roosevelt would have done it.

The latest Presidential Approval poll from Gallup once again proves the efficacy of the ‘I’ word – that is, indictments. A week or so ago, Trump reached a 40% approval rating for the first time in a while. The announcement of indictments on Friday, and along came a plummet by Sunday of 3%. It appears the public considers an indictment, even one that hardly mentions candidate / President Trump and does not allege any collusion, as a black mark on this Administration.

But I’m betting that, absent any more indictments in the next week, the following rendition of this poll will show Trump recovering. Part of this, I think, is burnout as folks tire of the circus in Washington. I count myself among that crowd.

Another part is really disbelief. The incompetency on show from Trump and his GOP is really quite gob-smacking, and at some point those who voted for him must make the choice of believing they screwed up or that this is really an illusion. Not many people like to admit they’re wrong on something like this, because, despite Governor Ventura’s remark that voting is not horse-racing – it doesn’t matter if you voted for the winner or not – many people do put their ego on it, especially if it’s an ideological thing. Even if the ideology is “liberals suck.”

In the end, some major event will have to occur before Trump leaves office before his term is finished, voluntarily or otherwise. An admission of collusion, a discovery by the intelligence agencies of a critical failure in relation to Russia or possibly China because of Executive Branch incompetence – or Speaker Ryan bringing Articles of Impeachment up for consideration by the House.

Source: Gallup

So, in a sense, I think Speaker Ryan really holds the future of the GOP, as it’s currently composed, in his hands. The way I see it, the more he plays to the GOP base, the more he will alienate the independents and moderate Republicans upon which the Party is truly dependent. The base is ordinarily considered important, but it’s become so rabidly extreme that it’s an anchor dragging this canoe into the depths. And the Republican Party needs to face the reality that they are bleeding. The chart to the left is some proof of that, as Republican share of the electorate has shrunk to 22%. Even more surprising, the Independents are also down 2 points from last month’s poll. The winners? The Democrats, up 5 points. In a month. While I doubt most moderate Republicans would re-register with the Democrats, I don’t doubt that a lot of independents have become so disgusted with the Republicans that they’ve decided to register as Democrats. So if the GOP wishes to continue its dominance in Congress, it must appeal to the independents and moderate Republicans.

Speaker Ryan may be able to stem the tide, though. President Trump has revealed himself as incompetent in foreign relation strategies and personnel, and uninterested in the ways of government – he appears to think it’s just a big corporation to run, but, baby, this animal is truly something other than a company. If Ryan began the process of ridding us of President Trump, he might find that it’s a useful strategy for communicating to the independents and the apostate that the party is reforming itself, and that they’re once again a mature governing Party.

Of course, then he’d run the risk of being stuck with a President Pence, who has kept a lower profile than Trump. He didn’t do so well in Indiana as Governor Pence, so the tea leaves aren’t promising.

But he may figure anything’s better than a President Trump hanging around his neck come 2018 Election Day. Especially if GOP gerrymandering is undone.

At least in Britain, if you’re cute they’ll build a highway for you – and size it for you, too. From Atlas Obscura:

Source: Wikipedia

If you happen to spot a small hole in the bottom of a fence or brick wall in Barnes, a neighborhood in South West London, there’s a good chance that you’ve stumbled upon a hedgehog crossing, and that Michel Birkenwald is responsible for it.

A jeweller by trade, Birkenwald has become one of London’s most enthusiastic engineers of infrastructure for animals. He founded and self-financed Barnes Hedgehogs around four years ago. The group drills the holes for free and generally advocates for the welfare of wild hedgehogs. Once Birkenwald has crafted a passage, he usually affixes a sign reading “Hedgehog Highway,” with the creature’s spiky silhouette.

Definitely an Awwwwwwwwwwww moment. And they have pictures!

Unless, it turns out, it’s themselves. Then they’re special. Politico has the report:

After months of criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, President Donald Trump’s supporters are issuing increasingly bold calls for presidential pardons to limit the investigation’s impact.

“I think he should be pardoning anybody who’s been indicted and make it clear that anybody else who gets indicted would be pardoned immediately,” said Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and senior vice president at the conservative Center for Security Policy.

The pleas for mercy mainly extend to the four former Trump aides who have already been swept up in the Russia probe: former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. But they don’t stop there.

“It’s kind of cruel what’s going on right now and the president should put these defendants out of their misery,” said Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. “I think he should pardon everybody — and pardon himself.”

Apparently the principles of punishment and deterrence only apply to the outsiders. For those Party faithful caught with their fingers in the cookie jar, well, we’ll let them slide by.

But I don’t have any doubts – if the same scandals were to happen in a Democratic administration, we know they’d be howling to the moon, crying out for gobbets of flesh torn from the malefactors. And I wouldn’t have a problem with that.

As an independent, I’m simply appalled at the whining from the Republicans as they find out their leader can’t pick good people. This isn’t the behavior of adults – this is the behavior of spoiled children. Children who think this is all a game and they have the Get Out Of Mail Free card.

Unless they think fellow Republican and Special Prosecutor Mueller is just making charges up – and then those under the thumb are pleading guilty because of Mueller’s crazy hypnotic powers – they need to man up and put Country over Party.

For a Party well on its way to theocracy, of course they can’t do bad. Or, at least, God will forgive them. They’re too damn special to have to endure punishment, now aren’t they? The GOP has fallen so far.

Today’s party trick features not one, but TWO “Presidential Lists.”

The first, courtesy a couple of professors , one at the University of Houston and the other at Boise State University, who surveyed current and recent members of the Presidents & Executive Politics Section of the American Political Science Association, is your standard list of Presidents in perceived best to worst order. Here’s the top ten:

Name	2018 Rating	2018 Rank	2014 Rating
Lincoln	95.03	1	1
Washington	92.59	2	2
FDR	89.09	3	3
T. Roosevelt	81.39	4	4
Jefferson	79.54	5	5
Truman	75.15	6	6
Eisenhower	74.	03	7
Obama	71.13	8	18
Reagan	69.24	9	11
LBJ	69.06	10	12

And the bottom five:

Name	2018 Rating	2018 Rank	2014 Rating
A. Johnson	24.91	40	41
Pierce	23.25	41	40
Wm Harrison	19.02	42	39
Buchanan	15.09	43	43
Trump	12.34	44	n/a

Yeah, that’s Trump at the bottom. But it honestly doesn’t mean much, because it’s too soon to evaluate his entire legacy, no matter how much distaste I have for him now.

Similarly, even though I’ve mentioned that I believe Obama will be considered a top-ten President eventually, his climb to 8th is, again, too soon to take seriously.

I see two factors in waiting fifty years before taking these sorts of polls seriously, even though the respondents are professional political science academics.

First, there is the inevitable political leanings of the academics, and the more recent the subject, the stronger those will wear on the evaluator. A little time and a new team of academics will lend more objectivity to a subjective exercise.

Second, certain decisions will have consequences decades later. For example, the decision to use torture by the Bush 43 Administration will echo down the ages. I fear it’ll have lasting damage on the United States’ reputation, and therefore its ability to do business. Personally, I’m  stunned to see Bush 43 has climbed to position 30 (previously 35). Similarly, will Obama’s strategy vis a vis North Korea turn out to be a disaster? Or will North Korea’s regime fall victim to its own excesses and shortcomings, leaving Obama’s patience strategy the winner?

There is more to this poll than just this. For example, they broke down the respondents by their leanings, in order to see how personal politics might influence the evaluations. Here’s GW Bush, Obama, and Trump:

Name	Republican Rank	Democrat Rank	Independent/ Other Rank	Conservative Rank	Liberal Rank	Moderate Rank
GW Bush	23	30	31	23	33	28
Obama	16	6	12	22	6	11
Trump	40	44	43	40	44	44

Trump impresses no one but his base, apparently. Meanwhile, Obama appears to have impressed at least some of the Republicans, if not the Conservatives. Time will tell.

I mentioned two lists, didn’t I? The second is on Treehugger, and merely asks readers to select which President was the greenest President. Whoever can organize the biggest bloc of Internet users wins, I guess. Have at it.

Envigorate:

Verb

(third-person singular simple present envigorates, present participle envigorating, simple past and past participle envigorated)

1. UK spelling of invigorate. [YourDictionary.com]

Noted in email from the University of Minnesota’s Alumni Angle:

Driven: A Future Filled with Promise
An envigorated and world-class student experience is a goal of Driven: The University of Minnesota Campaign. More students from Minnesota and around the world who need support will receive scholarships and fellowships under this priority, bettering their lives, and ours, according to U Pres. Eric Kaler, Ph.D., ’82.

Or perhaps yesterday. WaPo’s Anne Applebaum reports the shame:

For most Americans, the Parkland shooting was a terrible tragedy. But for social media accounts that promote the interests of Russia in the United States, it was a fantastic opportunity.

On the morning after the tragedy, the Russia-linked accounts were commenting fiercely, pushing the “crazy lone killer” explanation for the shooting and mocking advocates of gun control. According to Hamilton 68, a tracker website created by the German Marshall Fund, a lot of them linked to photos of guns and ammunition on the Instagram account of the suspected killer, plus a screenshot of a Google search for “Allahu akbar.” Others linked to a fact-checking website that debunked some statistics about gun crime. By Friday morning, some of the same accounts were also pushing something slightly different: the hashtag #falseflag. That’s a reference to the conspiracy theory, already widespread 48 hours later, that the shooting never happened, that the attack is a “false flag” operation staged by the U.S. government as a prelude to the seizure of guns.

A false flag operation?

From the Trump Administration?

OK, so for those who were getting all stirred up about a false flag operation in Florida, let’s smack you upside the head like your father would have and note this:

1. The Trump Administration is allies with the NRA. Do you really, really think a single gun law will be enacted by Trump and the GOP over this? Much less sucking up all the guns with a great vacuum cleaner? That’s utterly ludicrous.
2. If you do swallow that, then think of this: you’re disrespecting every single emergency responder who are now having nightmares of finding dead teenagers slumped all about a school. From the front-line cops who went in there knowing a shooter could take them out, yet they bravely did so, to the EMTs who desperately tried to save those dead kids and their teachers. Oh, tell you what, how about you travel down to Florida and accuse one of those first responders of lying about the whole thing, right to their face. PRO TIP: Reserve your spot at the dentist, as you’re likely to lose some teeth.
3. You disrespect the friends and parents of the victims, who have to go to the funerals and mourn their lost loved ones. Still feeling good about yourself?
4. You disrespect those that were lost. They won’t mind, though, since they’re dead. But it marks you as ungraceful.
5. Finally, you disrespect yourself. You’re being dragged around by a bunch of hostile Russians. They’re laughing at you for being so suspiciously naive. Where is your trust in your fellow Americans?

Stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Learn respect. As Applebaum opines,

And this is just the beginning. Over the next few days, many of these same kinds of accounts will invent a whole range of conspiracy theories about the shooting. If the past repeats itself, pro-Russian, alt-right, white-supremacist and pro-gun social media accounts will promote the same hashtags and indulge in the same conspiracy theories. Each group has its own interests in pushing #falseflag, but the Russian interest is clear. They do it because it helps undermine trust in institutions — the police, the FBI, the media — as well as in the government itself. They also do it because it helps to amplify extremist views that will deepen polarization in U.S. political life and create ever angrier, ever more partisan divides.

I missed the report of another plea deal with Special Prosecutor Mueller, which Lawfare (Sarah Grant, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, Matt Tait, and Benjamin Wittes) helpfully supplies in their summation of the same indictments I covered (although they are, of course, much more professional than this software engineer):

The charges of wire and bank fraud appear related to a second set of court documents released Friday by the special counsel’s office: the plea deal of Richard Pinedo, whom Special Counsel Robert Mueller charged with one count of identity fraud (18 U.S.C. §1028). According to the statement of offense, Pinedo operated an online business called “Auction Essistence” from 2014 through the end of 2017, through which he sold services designed to circumvent the security measures of online payment companies. Reuters reports that Pinedo allegedly provided the services used by the Internet Research Agency to purchase political ads and pay for rallies through PayPal. (Pinedo’s attorney said in a statement that his client “had absolutely no knowledge of the identities and motivations of any of the purchasers of the information he provided.”)

From their legal expertise:

The indictment fills in a number of critical elements in the timeline of L’Affaire Russe. The document is what prosecutors term a “speaking indictment”; that is, it describes facts about the defendants’ activities beyond what is strictly necessary for the counts it charges. The purpose of a speaking indictment is more than to simply list charges; it is to tell a story, and the story this one tells is of the Russian side of the bigger picture—specifically, the Russian side of events that took place outside of the Russian government and intelligence agencies.

But they have a different motivation for the Russian activities:

The indictment doesn’t shed light on why the Internet Research Agency might have chosen to meddle in the 2016 election in 2014—long before either Clinton or Trump announced their intent to run. But notably, the dates in the indictment coincide with the Ukrainian Maidan revolution of early 2014. Amid unrest against Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-aligned politician who was president of Ukraine at the time, Russian officials accused the United States of covertly supporting Ukrainian protesters and seeking to undermine the Kremlin’s influence in the region. So a reasonable person might wonder, reading the indictment, whether the beginning of the operation was a retaliation for perceived U.S. meddling in Ukraine.

They may be right, but it doesn’t really change my conclusion – that the United States has lost a battle in a surreptitious war. And while they also agree there’s no collusion mentioned here, but it isn’t exculpatory, either, they go a step further:

What this indictment does, rather, is establish part of the predicate for a later claim of collusion. That is, the indictment details part of what it was that any Americans might have been colluding with.

That almost sounds like a threat, doesn’t it? Or a warning. But I’m not sure that Trump’s lawyers are experienced enough to realize that.

And while Lawfare points out that the indictment makes no attempt to measure the success or failure of this covert and illegal operation, they point out this:

Here’s what is clear, as U.S. intelligence officials emphasized in Senate testimony earlier this week: The danger described in the indictment is not going away anytime soon. As Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats put it: “There should be no doubt that Russia perceives its past efforts as successful and views the 2018 U.S. midterm elections as a potential target.”

If the Russians thought their efforts were a failure, would they repeat them? Our intelligence agencies report finding indications that the Russian operation may be repeated – so we can assume that the Russians really did believe their efforts influenced the past election.

What is their goal in the upcoming election?

By contrast, Andrew McCarthy’s column on National Review appears to be painfully naive:

The Russians are engaged in “information warfare” against the United States. That was the big soundbite at Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s press conference Friday afternoon, announcing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s election-meddling indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian businesses.

That is certainly a fair assessment of what the indictment alleges. The account is disturbing, but its form leaves many of us underwhelmed. Our government says Russia is levying war. It is attacking a foundational institution — the electoral system of our democratic society and, more basically, our society’s cohesion as such. Our response should not be, nor appear to be, the filing of a lawsuit. That is provocatively weak.

If this were all about reprimanding Russia for its actions, I might agree. It’s not. It’s about informing the citizens of the United States on a polarizing and divisive issue, namely whether or not Russia attempted to influence the election using illegal and unethical means. The President of the United States has categorically stated that they did not, despite the testimony of his own intelligence agencies. This indictment gives objectives, means, names, and details. It destroys the President’s assertion.

In other words, this is a healing document. It tries to resolve an active and painful division. Before we can move forward and perhaps take action against Russia, we need to come together, recognize that our election was tainted, leaving us with a bumbling incompetent who may, in fact, be beholden to Russia, and decide what to do. Andrew advocates for more direct action, but the truth of the matter is that if we don’t educate our own citizens on what happened and how it happened, it’ll just happen all over again. McCarthy’s response doesn’t look to the future. It’s a visceral response that ill-regards the citizens.

McCarthy’s in a tough spot. He wants to advocate for a conservative position, but his banner-holder is Trump, palpably a failure by McCarthy’s own standards with respect to China and Russia, as well as myriad other subjects other than the federal judiciary – and perhaps even McCarthy recognizes Trump’s failures in this area. I don’t read McCarthy on a regular basis.

Source: Gallup

So I think McCarthy decided to follow the strong conservative tradition of attacking when attacked, and advocated a cyber-warfare response without considering the possibility of providing the citizenry with more information. The latter response would run a risk for the conservatives, because many of them are not as well informed as their liberal counterparts. If they were to become better-informed, whence will they sail? It’s a serious question for a conservative position which has lost quite a lot of support over the last couple of years, despite or even because of its Congressional dominance. In the Gallup poll to the right, the 2-7 Jan 2018 poll suggests 22% of Americans consider themselves Republican, a 3 point drop since December, while the Independents are down to 44%, a 2 point drop, and the Democrats are up to 32%, for a 5 point gain. In late 2016, the numbers were 28-39-29, respectively. It’s a discouraging trend for what calls itself the conservatives these days – and may be quite telling as to the current makeup of the conservatives.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight throws some cold water on the Russian exercise:

The indictment alleges that an organization called the Internet Research Agency had a monthly budget of approximately $1.25 million toward interference efforts by September 2016 and that it employed “hundreds of individuals for its online operation.” This is a fairly significant magnitude — much larger than the paltry sums that Russian operatives had previously been revealed to spend on Facebook advertising.

Nonetheless, it’s small as compared with the campaigns. The Clinton campaign and Clinton-backing super PACs spent a combined $1.2 billionover the course of the campaign. The Trump campaign and pro-Trump super PACs spent $617 million overall.

In terms of headcounts rather than budgets, the gap isn’t quite so dramatic. The “hundreds” of people working for the Internet Research Agency compare with 4,200 paid Clinton staffers² and 880 paid Trump staffers.³Russian per-capita GDP is estimated at around $10,000 U.S. dollars — about one-sixth of what it is in the U.S. — so a $1.25 million monthly budget potentially goes a lot farther there than it does here. The Russian efforts were on the small side as compared with the massive magnitudes of the campaigns, but not so small that you’d consider them a rounding error.

And, yet, it’s worth remembering that the tale of David and Goliath is more than just a fairy tale, it’s an emblematic story of something that can always happen – the small defeating the large because they’re smarter and/or better equipped. Measuring strictly by budget ignores the many other factors involved, of which I’ll pick out just one.

Assumptions. I’ve been thinking about the discussion I had with a reader over the last few weeks concerning the free press and free expression, and whether or not foreign entities should be permitted to participate. I answered No, because they do not have America’s best interests at heart. But I’ve discovered another reason to bar them. Americans make certain assumptions when we have political discussions, or at least we should, and one of those assumptions is that whatever the writer is saying, he does have an interest in the United States prospering. That is, we may disagree strongly on the path forward – but we do agree there should be a path forward.

Not so foreign nationals. Largely by definition, they adhere to their country and wish it to prosper, and if that does not coincide with American interests, tough shit.

So when we evaluate the free speech of foreign nationals, especially those who fraudulently assume American identities, we will be mislead in our interpretations of their free speech. It’s a mockery of free speech, in reality, and that becomes a wild-card factor in the evaluation of their impact. Nate is quite correct that the Russians were heavily outspent – but it may not matter, because they were playing a game with the naive Americanskies, from the rural hamlet inhabitant to the downtown Manhattanite, and we didn’t know the rules.

Nate may be assuming a linear impact based on funding. I don’t think that’s accurate. But Nate is saddled by the burden of proof, frankly, while I’m free to wave my hands quite frantically.

… right up to here.

If you want to see the indictments issued last week by Special Prosecutor Mueller, here’s the link. Here’s my non-lawyer summary of what I’m reading, by paragraph. Commentary will be in italics.

1. The first section notes the United States prohibits foreign nationals from indulging in financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing Federal elections, requires foreign nationals to obtain visas, and that accurate information is required of these foreign nationals.
2. Identifies the Internet Research Agency LLC (“ORGANIZATION”) as a Russian organization “… engaged in operations to interfere with elections and political processes.” To me, this sounds like an assertion that will have to be proven in court. A number of people are then identified as working for or contributing funds to this organization.

   Does an American court have jurisdiction over foreign people who may have committed transgressions against the United States? I suppose a lawyer with international credentials would have an answer, and that answer might reference the International Court of Justice. But more directly, if activities are specifically aimed at disrupting the United States, it cannot be denied that the United States has a right to defending its governmental system. Indeed, one might suggest the Russians should be relieved they attacked a relatively civilized country that is unlikely to send assassins – or armed drones – to effect punishment.

3. The Organization operations time period and funding are described.
4. Assertion that defendants used fraudulent and stolen identities and posed as U.S. citizens, commented on social media accounts on socially divisive issues, and by reaching large numbers of American citizens, influenced their votes and interfered in the election.
5. Some defendants entered the United States under false pretenses to gather intelligence and computing resources. Their Russian identities were concealed.
6. Assertion that the goal of the Organization was “… to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. ” Operations included disparagement of the campaign of Hillary Clinton on social media, staging political rallies, solicitation and compensation of real Americans to promote or disparage candidates, and communicated with certain Trump Campaign workers, at all times using fraudulent American identities.
   Note that this is not collusion, because the Russians represented themselves as Americans.
7. Assertions of illegal activities, as noted earlier, in a conspiracy composed of the Russian persons and Organization noted earlier.
8. Then follows the actual indictments by reference to the earlier paragraphs.
9. Starting in 2014, the defendants conspired to impair the election by obstructing the FEC, DoJ, and Department of State. The Organization is described down to the Department level. Its goals and strategies are described. This is interesting:
   

   By in or around May 2014, the ORGANIZATION’s strategy included interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with the stated goal of “spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.”

   I wonder where that statement was obtained!

10. Describes beginnings of the Organization and how it obscured itself, as well as interior organization. Details are given to an impressive degree – I wonder where they get all these interior details on the alleged Organizations and their interference in the election, including project names.
11. Asserts related Russian Organizations Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering were also involved, serving as a funding conduit from the Russian government to the Organization.
12. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described. I will omit describing these.
13. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
14. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
15. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
16. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
17. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
18. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
19. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
20. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
21. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
22. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
23. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
24. Individual named and alleged illegal behavior described.
25. The FEC and its enabling legislation, FECA, are identified and described.
26. Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) is described.
27. The Department of State’s role as a victim is described.
28. The object of the conspiracy is given.
29. Describing the manner and means of achieving their objective: study of various groups.
30. Details of travel to the United States under false pretenses.
31. Details of Russians posing as Americans in order to gather strategic information from Americans knowledgeable concerning the political scene.
32. Allegations that social media accounts were developed to appear to be American, when they were not.
33. Details on how this was convincingly done.
34. Etc, concerning BLM, religious groups.
35. Purchase of advertising to promote their social media groups.
36. Fraudulent Twitter accounts., for examle “Tennessee GOP” was a Organization-controlled account.
37. Notation of metric collection and analysis.
38. Self-evaluation. Just like a good engineering firm.
39. Use of VPNs (Virtual Private Networks, which I suspect can be difficult to monitor) to conceal the Russian origins of these social media accounts.
40. Use of web-based email accounts, built to appear to be used by Americans.
41. Illegal use of American Social Security numbers and date of birth of real Americans without permission for use with Paypal, all for use to “prove” the social media accounts really were possessed by Americans.
42. Organization plans to interfere in election.
43. Alleges the Organization were using their fraudulent accounts to interfere in the election, in particular to denigrate Clinton, Rubio, and Cruz (!), while supporting Sanders and Trump. A couple of interesting examples are given.
44. The use of hash tags, Twitter and Facebook accounts is noted.
45. Use of fraudulent personas to communicate with Trump supporters, volunteers, and Trump Campaign workers, supplying material for use and re-use by those Americans. This is not an allegation of collusion, as these Americans are described as unwitting.
46. Encouragement of minority groups to decline to vote in the 2016 election through their fraudulent social media accounts. Examples are given.
47. Used their social media accounts to promote the voter fraud meme.
48. Allegations of the defendants using their fraudulent accounts to promote Trump and denigrate Clinton.
49. Payment details using fraudulent information.
50. A nearly full page list of the advertisements bought. Sample: “Donald wants to defeat terrorism . . . Hillary wants to sponsor it”
51. Allegations of political rallies arranged by the defendants in defiance of US law.
52. Promotion of events using fraudulent accounts.
53. Promoted a rally named “Support Hillary. Save American Muslims”.
54. More rallies, more fraud.
55. Rallies in Florida.
56. Rallies in New York and Pennsylvania.
57. POST-ELECTION: Fraudulently organized rallies supporting Trump as well as other rallies to protest the results of the election. This is a fascinating paragraph to run across.
58. Destruction of identifying data. Apparently they didn’t do this very well.
59. Skipping.
60. Details of purchase of Facebook advertising.
61. Press releases for New York rallies.
62. Details on recruitment of Americans.
63. Details
64. Details
65. Details
66. Details
67. Details
68. Details
69. Details
70. Details
71. Details
72. Details
73. Details
74. Details
75. …

Up to paragraph 98, it’s all detail, while 98 & 99 suggests punishment will be forfeiture of assets connected with the scheme.

It’s an interesting, even fascinating document. As President Trump claims, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence of collusion in this set of indictments – which doesn’t mean there’s no evidence anywhere. More indictments may be on their way.

But that is an issue of the moment, and not as important as those issues which stretch into the future.

First, this has clearly been a battle that is part of the First Digital War, and the Russians have won. Their chosen candidate now occupies the Oval Office, and yet that’s not the most important part of their scheme. I think the big clue is in paragraph 57, where the allegation is that the Russians staged rallies both for and against Trump, post-election. Why? This is an effort to sow division and discord in American society, with an ultimate goal of weakening the faith of Americans in their chosen form of government, and I think it’s been largely successful, based on the reports of families ripping apart (my own mother-in-law forbade any political discussion at the 2017 Thanksgiving dinner table, although admittedly she was – and is – ill with breast cancer), disdain on the extreme left and right for even moderate members of their own sides, etc.

A United States where we do not trust each other to even have the country’s best interests at heart is not a nation that is operating anywhere near optimality, and as we stagger about, Russia can try to take care of its own interests at the expense of ours.

Readers may wonder about Russian motivations, and I can only offer my own badly-informed speculations. It began with the Russian annexation of the Crimea, which the United States under Obama’s leadership protested and then, I think, punished by forcing an oversupply of oil on the oil market (via coordination with Saudi Arabia, I suspect). Remember the glut? It forced the price of oil so low that it pushed the Russian economy, its biggest export being oil, into a recession. That was Obama’s punishment of Putin.

This is Putin’s return volley, an attach on our government system, an attempt to influence the American voter into selecting an inferior candidate (from a glut of inferior GOP candidates, he was one of the most inferior – but lest I be accused of political bigotry, the Democratic bench has not yet produced a candidate for 2020 to inspire confidence, although if Biden were younger I might pay attention) and succeeding, and then the seeding of the government bureaucracy with administrators who have little use for their responsibilities, and judges often rated incompetent, sometimes laughably so.

And that leads to the most important question: Can we recover, as citizens? Can we repair our polarized divides and once again talk to each other respectably and equably? Or is our form of government, and thus our country, doomed? There will be an awful of people who will not accept that they were duped, that Trump is not a wonderful President but is, objectively speaking, failing spectacularly. Part of that can be put down to the ignorance to which we’re all doomed to suffer, in greater or smaller parts, and to deal with that requires a certain humility. Heck, I think I could be wrong about Trump – but based on the informal but objective measures I try to use and talk about, I don’t think so.

But that may be the hardest cliff to climb here, and I don’t know that many people will be willing to do so.

So in this post I asked whether there is a pill that will destroy addiction, and a few pages later in the same magazine, I see scientists have an injection that seems to do just that – in rats. In NewScientist (3 February 2018, paywall), Alice Klein reports:

This story sounds familiar to Iain McGregor at the University of Sydney, who has been studying substance abuse for over 25 years. One of the hallmarks of addiction is a waning interest in human contact and a growing fixation on seeking out the vice – be it alcohol, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, prescription opioids, nicotine or any other addictive substance. …

To try to restore the social behaviour of drug users, McGregor set his sights on oxytocin, known as the love hormone or cuddle chemical. Naturally released during social interactions, sex and when women give birth, it helps to strengthen human bonds.

As a starting point, McGregor tried injecting oxytocin into rats that were so heavily addicted to methamphetamine that they would push a lever hundreds of times just to get one hit. “We actually had to limit their intake or they’d overdose and die,” he says. The results were astounding: the oxytocin-treated rats almost completely stopped pressing the lever, a sign they had lost interest in the drug.

However, people are not rats:

Following these promising findings, several small clinical trials were set up in the US to test the potential of oxytocin for treating dependency on alcohol, cocaine, heroin, prescription opioids, marijuana and nicotine. Unlike in rat studies, the hormone couldn’t be injected in large doses into peoples’ bloodstreams or directly into their brains due to safety issues. So to get the oxytocin into the brain, they sprayed it up the nose.

However, the results from these trials so far have been disappointing: intranasal oxytocin relieves drug cravings only slightly, if at all. This is probably because only a small amount of intranasal oxytocin actually makes it into the brain. The large molecule has trouble crossing the blood-brain barrier and is known to break down easily in the circulation.

But progress continues, resulting in the creation of something called SOC-1. In the animal models, SOC-1 also seems to prevent relapse.

Hope on the horizon? Maybe.

The fact that you’re using a cryptocurrency doesn’t mean you’re immune to taxes, as this WaPo / AP report notes:

The new [Bitcoin mining] industry’s relatively sudden growth prompted lawmaker Smari McCarthy of Iceland’s Pirate Party to suggest taxing the profits of bitcoin mines. The initiative is likely to be well received by Icelanders, who are skeptical of speculative financial ventures after the country’s catastrophic 2008 banking crash.

“Under normal circumstances, companies that are creating value in Iceland pay a certain amount of tax to the government,” McCarthy told The Associated Press. “These companies are not doing that, and we might want to ask ourselves whether they should.”

But even more interesting is this:

Iceland is expected to use more energy “mining” bitcoins and other virtual currencies this year than it uses to power its homes. …

The serene coastal town of Keflavik on Iceland’s desolate southern peninsula has over the past months boomed as an international hub for mining bitcoins and other virtual currencies.

Local fishermen, chatting over steaming cups of coffee at the harbor gas station, are puzzled by the phenomenon, which has spawned oversize construction sites on the outskirts of town.

Among the main attractions of setting up bitcoin mines at the edge of the Arctic Circle is the natural cooling for computer servers and the competitive prices for Iceland’s abundance of renewable energy from geothermal and hydroelectric power plants.

And if the countries of the world decide to outlaw cryptocurrencies – or they go under for some other, more organic reason? Do those new energy generators become abandoned buildings, monuments to a failed experiment?

Oh, and I must say I wish they hadn’t used the word ‘mining.’ They should have made something up, rather than piggybacking.

Zaftig:

adjective, Slang.

1. (of a woman) having a pleasantly plump figure.
2. full-bodied; well-proportioned. [Dictionary.com]

Noted in “The Venus of Vlakno,” Zach Zorich, Archaeology (March/April 2018):

A 15,000-year-old bone pendant found at Vlakno Cave in Croatia may be a late type of Venus figurine, such as the famous Venus of Willendorf, which dates to more than 24,000 years ago. The Croatian Venus is a more slender and abstract human figure than the zaftig woman of Willendorf.

A Rough Second Quarter for Crime in New Orleans

I saw that on Jeff Asher’s NOLA Crime News blog, and I thought, well, police are kicking ass in New Orleans, aren’t they? Alas:

NOPD released their unofficially official Uniform Crime Report statistics recently for the second quarter of 2017 and the numbers aren’t particularly pretty. Overall crime is up 11.9 percent relative to the first half of 2016 with a 9.2 percent increase in person crime (murder, rape, robbery and assault) and a 12.6 percent increase in property crime (burglary, theft and auto theft).

I did appreciate Jeff’s thoroughness:

It’s important to remember that New Orleans has grown considerably since Katrina. The Census does not provide quarterly population counts, but the New Orleans Data Center provides a monthly population indicator for every month starting in mid-2006 (I guesstimated the population of the first two quarters of 2006 using that data).

Applying the population data enables the calculation of a crime rate per 100,000 households for both person and property crime. This is provided in the below chart which shows the rate of crimes per quarter in the second quarter of 2017 was the worst since the third quarter of 2007 for person crimes and the third quarter of 2008 for property crimes.

Ever wonder about crimes in your neighborhood? LexisNexis may be able to help. The City Of Falcon Heights sent this link to a map of reported crimes. I have no idea if it’s really accurate. Here’s a sample shot:

That cluster of green and white crime markers on the lower left is Rosedale, a local shopping mall, and surrounding environs. The date range is 1/18/18 to today, or about a month.

But this sort of thing is only as valuable as the data is accurate, and to that point I’ve been sitting on a FiveThirtyEight post by Jeff Asher, the title of which gives the game away – Fewer Crimes Get Counted When Police Are Slow To Respond.

For this piece, I analyzed 2016 data from three cities, New Orleans, Detroitand Cincinnati,³ and found that as response times go up, the likelihood that a crime will be found goes down. Indeed, in all three cities, when police took more than two hours to respond, they were over 2.5 times more likely to report they’d found no evidence that a crime had occurred.

Nationwide, about 86 percent of all major crimes reported by the FBI in 2016 were property crimes (theft, auto theft and burglary). Violent crimes (such as murder and armed robbery) were much less common across the country and often received faster police responses in the cities analyzed here. Looking more closely at 911 calls reporting property crime, therefore, can show how longer response times may deflate the number of crimes that get investigated and ultimately reported.

It’s a good article, giving caveats where necessary – it’s worth a read.

In Detroit, only 16 percent of property crime incidents in which an officer arrived in under two hours received a disposition of unfounded, compared to 40 percent of dispositions following police response times of two hours or longer. Similarly, in New Orleans, 13 percent of incidents with a response time of under two hours received an unfounded disposition, compared to 46 percent of incidents with response times longer than two hours.

The problem was less acute but still apparent in Cincinnati’s data, which showed that 4 percent of 2016 property crime reports that were responded to in under two hours received an unfounded disposition, but 18 percent of such crimes where the response time was over two hours got the same designation. These three cities point to long response times as a contributing factor in the rate of recording of property crimes, though it’s hard to draw firm conclusions about the impact long response times have on national crime figures from such a limited sample.

My takeaway? There’s definitely an opportunity for unscrupulous politicians to reduce their police forces and have their official crime statistics drop. That said, the unscrupulous politician is often a hard-on-crime type, so a municipality with some sort of watchdog of the NGO sort would definitely be a hindrance to that politician.

On the flip side, the scrupulous politician who actually increases the police force may also find their official crime statistics rise. However, the rise might imply the police are investigating these crimes, resulting in arrests and prosecutions. Will this deter other potential crimes? Hard to say.

The whole thing seems to turn into a bit of a conundrum, but I suspect that in the unscrupulous scenario, the community would become unhappy with the general crime wave, whether it’s reported or not, and eventually rid themselves of the politician(s) at fault, either through denying them their seat of power – or the ambition of those politician(s) resulting in their promotion to higher seats of power.