Category Archives: Uncategorized

Pellucid:

1. allowing the maximum passage of light, as glass; translucent.
2. clear or limpid:
   pellucid waters.
3. clear in meaning, expression, or style:
   a pellucid way of writing.

[Dictionary.com]

Noted in “What on earth is Trump saying?” Max Boot, WaPo:

Trump’s ramblings about Vladi­mir Putin were positively pellucid in their clarity compared with his March 29 comments on the U.S.-South Korea trade deal: “So we’ve redone it, and that’s going to level the playing field on steel and cars and trucks coming into this country. And I may hold it up till after a deal is made with North Korea. Does everybody understand that? You know why, right? You know why? Because it’s a very strong card.”

Yep, this falls into the Lookie what we accomplished! category, followed by the slap upside the head. Fred Pearce of NewScientist (31 March 2018, paywall) has a review of how corporations are trying to take advantage of green-washing, the movement to make what they do sustainable and socially positive. I loved this observation:

Pepsi proudly outlined how 27 per cent of its turnover is now in “nutritious” food and beverages that are helping meet the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals]. “In sub-Saharan Africa, we provide nutritious food to undernourished people,” said a spokesperson. That left the rather uncomfortable impression that 73 per cent of its products, sold in Africa and elsewhere, are not nutritious.

I’m sure Pepsi can argue that far more than 27% of their output is nutritious, but given that this is Pepsi, it has that piquant flavor of someone falling face first into the pig-sty in their Sunday best.

The Guardian notes that our effluvia is choking our support systems:

River systems around the world are coursing with over-the-counter and prescription drugs waste which harms the environment, researchers have found.

If trends persist, the amount of pharmaceutical effluence leaching into waterways could increase by two-thirds before 2050, scientists told the European Geosciences Union conference in Vienna on Tuesday.

“A large part of the freshwater ecosystems is potentially endangered by the high concentration of pharmaceuticals,” said Francesco Bregoli, a researcher at the IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands, and leader of an international team that developed a method for tracking drug pollution “hotspots”.

For an engineer, this sounded interesting.

Bregoli and his team developed a computer model to predict current and future pharma pollution based on criteria such as population densities, sewage systems and drugs sales.

They compared the results to data gathered from 1,400 spot measurements of diclofenac toxicity taken from around the world. Most of the data points were in Europe and North America.

Pollution levels are likely to be substantially higher in much of Latin America, Africa and Asia where less than a quarter of waste water is treated, and with technology unable to filter out most pharmaceuticals.

Technology alone cannot solve the problem, said Bregoli.

“We need a substantial reduction in consumption,” he said.

Lots of options for reducing consumption, but none are all that attractive.

1. Clean the water.
2. Take fewer drugs.
3. Stop issuing drugs.
4. Reduce the population which may take drugs.
5. Reduce the population.
6. Find ways to better regulate dosages so that less excess – much less excess – is shed by the patients.

Neither do they seem all that likely to occur in the short-term, except, sadly, #5.

On 38 North, Jongsoo Lee wonders if North Korea is trading in its old leadership for a newer version:

The recent developments since Kim Jong Un’s New Year’s speech raise the possibility of a generational shift in the leadership and political culture of North Korea at the highest level. Combined with a recent significant increase in the role for market forces in the North Korean economy, this generational change may present an opportunity for the global community to spur North Korea on a more peaceful and prosperous path, especially if Kim emerges as a North Korean Deng Xiaoping or even Mikhail Gorbachev.

The most visible manifestation of this generational shift was Kim’s decision to dispatch his younger sister Kim Yo Jong to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during the recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. That Kim entrusted a relatively inexperienced young woman, barely 30 years old, with this critically important mission came as a surprise because it was largely unprecedented in North Korean history. There have been a few prominent women in the top North Korean leadership—Kim Kyong Hui, Kim Jong Un’s aunt, being the most recent example. However, Kim Yo Jong is the first woman to not only play such a high-profile public role, but also to do so at such a young age in such a strict patriarchal culture. Kim Yo Jong, who was educated along with Kim Jong Un in Switzerland and is likely her brother’s most trusted political confidant, is now among the most powerful figures in North Korea after Kim himself and possibly his young wife, Ri Sol Ju. It is reported that Kim Yo Jong has been the choreographer of the Kim regime’s public image. It was apparently Kim Yo Jong who encouraged her brother to cultivate a friendship with Dennis Rodman in an effort to “humanize” his image. On her visit to South Korea, she captured the world’s attention and won the hearts of many South Koreans with her winning smiles, youthful charm and western-style dress.

Sounds like there’s a firm  hand on the wheel in North Korea, so President Trump is unlikely to overawe or manipulate Kim. If Jongsoo is right, then what does this portend for the future of North Korea? A bloody-minded culture, as indicated by the assassination of Jong-Un’s half brother a couple of years ago, mixed with a confident leadership and an economy moving towards a market approach could be a pathological business. Just think of the Mob taking care of rivals.

Or at least I hope it is. From the CNN front page:

GOP wages bipartisan attack on James Comey

What, the GOP is bifurcating itself?

Jeff Rosen has been guest-blogging on The Volokh Conspiracy, presenting parts of his new book, William Howard Taft, a biography of the late President. From what I’ve read so far, WHT was a Constitutional scholar who, as President, used that knowledge to guide himself with regards to what actions he could and could not take as President. I found this bit on a potential dustup between the United States and Mexico in 1911 both interesting and revealing:

But although [Mexican] President Diaz expected an invasion, Taft carefully instructed his commanders not to cross the Mexican border, believing that the President lacked the constitutional authority to declare war without Congressional approval. In the end, Congress refused to authorize an invasion and Taft kept the troops waiting at the border as a deterrent, resisting populist cries for war.

In acting with constitutional restraint at the Mexican border, Taft was putting the national interest above his partisan interests. When he read that four Americans had been killed in Mexico, his wife asked if there would be war. Taft replied, “I only know that I am going to do everything in my power to prevent one. Already there is a movement in the Grand Old Party” — he intoned the words sarcastically — “to utilize this trouble for party ends…. I am afraid I am a constant disappointment to my party. The fact of the matter is, the longer I am President the less of a party man I seem to become…. [I]t seems to me to be impossible to be a strict party man and serve the whole country impartially.”

Taft’s legalistic precision at the border evoked our greatest constitutionally minded president, Abraham Lincoln. In 1846, President James K. Polk sent troops to the Mexican border, in response to what he claimed was a Mexican invasion. Lincoln — elected later year as a young Whig Congressman — would introduce his famous “spot resolutions,” demanding that Polk identify the precise spot where blood had been shed, to establish it was on U.S. soil. (This earned him the nickname “Spotty Lincoln.”)

It’s a reminder that both party and citizens pay scant attention to the restrictions placed on us by the Constitution and Laws, no matter what the era. That’s why it’s important that we elect law-respecting citizens to all such positions, as they are the first and most important gate-keepers for such matters; laws are only as good as the people who are in charge of enforcing them.

I think Taft’s election to the office of the President forced him to look beyond his Party’s interests, because it became apparent the disasters which awaited the United States if he followed the self-centered interests of the Party. Would that Trump could learn such a lesson, eh?

Following up on the Nevada State Senator recall effort, plural, The Nevada Independent reports that the Nevada GOP has failed in its attempt to qualify for a special election to recall two Democratic State Senators:

Nevada election officials say that signatures for the two recall campaigns targeting Democratic state senators have failed to trigger a special election, though an appeal is possible.

According to correspondence sent to District Court Judge Jerry Wiese, the secretary of state and Clark County registrar of voters have determined that signatures submitted to recall state Sens. Joyce Woodhouse and Nicole Cannizzaro do not meet the threshold necessary to trigger a special election.

The full review also indicates that even if a higher court reverses Wiese’s earlier decision to count a batch of signature removal requests turned in after the recall petition was submitted, the number of valid signatures would still be too low to qualify for a special recall election.

I doubt the Nevada GOP has learned anything from the experience. That lesson, if there is one, will come at the next Nevada State Legislature election.

Carolyn Fiddler @ The Daily Kos has more.

The sun, the most massive object in the solar system, the source of the biggest wrinkle in the fabric of space, you’d think it would be easy to approach. Not so, as NewScientist (31 March 2018, paywall) makes clear in this interview with the planners of the Parker Solar Probe:

“When you launch a spacecraft from Earth, it possesses Earth’s orbital velocity, about 30 kilometres a second. To get to the sun, you have to cancel out most of that, slow it down so it can fall in under gravity. That takes a lot of energy. If you want to launch directly from Earth to the sun, you need 55 times more energy than to get to Mars. It’s more than twice even what you need to get to Pluto.

For five decades, we had been studying this problem on and off, and had come to the same conclusion: to get to the sun you need a Jupiter gravity assist. Instead of going directly to the sun, you launch out to Jupiter, and use its gravity to reduce the spacecraft’s speed so it falls inwards.

But at Jupiter’s distance, solar power won’t work: you need nuclear. Everyone said the problem was impossible, but I started looking at whether you might use the gravity of the inner planets instead. Venus is much smaller than Jupiter, so its gravity assist is much less. You can flyby multiple times, each time losing some velocity and falling in closer to the sun, but that means manoeuvring to pass Venus in the right orbit each time, which is tricky and uses up fuel.

Eventually, I found a trajectory with seven Venus assists that passes the sun 26 times, each time closer. The closer the probe falls, the faster it gets. At its fastest, it will be travelling at 200 kilometres a second – the fastest spacecraft ever.”

The spaceflight folks do get to work on some fascinating problems, don’t they? Sure wish I had been smart enough to give it a swing when I was younger. From the NASA introductory page:

Credit: NASA

Parker Solar Probe will use seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shrink its orbit around the sun, coming as close as 3.7 million miles (5.9 million kilometers) to the sun, well within the orbit of Mercury and about eight times closer than any spacecraft has come before.

Parker Solar Probe is a true mission of exploration; for example, the spacecraft will go close enough to the sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly though the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles. Still, as with any great mission of discovery, Parker Solar Probe is likely to generate more questions than it answers.

Which is not what this Senator is doing, whoever he is. Erick Erickson, the conservative who founded RedState, relays in The Resurgent an interview he conducted with an unnamed GOP Senator while treading the aisles of a grocery store:

“I say a lot of shit on TV defending him, even over this. But honestly, I wish the motherf*cker would just go away. We’re going to lose the House, lose the Senate, and lose a bunch of states because of him. All his supporters will blame us for what we have or have not done, but he hasn’t led. He wakes up in the morning, sh*ts all over Twitter, sh*ts all over us, sh*ts all over his staff, then hits golf balls. F*ck him. Of course, I can’t say that in public or I’d get run out of town.”

Sigh. Misplaced loyalty, party over country. If this politician really wants to look like a leader, then do what Senator McCain does – criticize the President when he screws up. If the GOP leadership would do that instead of simpering, the GOP would be in a lot better shape for the upcoming midterms.

But they’re caught up in their right-wing psychosis, and don’t really get what it means to lead in a democratic republic.

The rest of the interview is a bit of a hoot, I must say.

The announcement by Speaker of the House Ryan (R-WI) that he’s retiring at the end of this term suggests that the most extreme Speaker we’ve seen in a century has discovered the party is zooming along to the right, and has passed him by.

One of the attributes of a right-wing extremist party is the hunt for a strong-man to lead them in preference to the complex, slow-moving structure of a democracy or republic. After all, the end point of the right-wing, the terminus of the right side of the political spectrum, is fascism, wherein the strongest person who, non-incidentally, happens to be best at ignoring all rules and conventions and laws in their relentless gathering of power, becomes the all-powerful leader who can do things for his followers.

In this case, the extremist base of the GOP has, ironically, selected one of the weakest Presidents in modern history as its flag bearer, and left Speaker Ryan with little power or influence. Since his position as Speaker is being steadily diminished, mostly through is own inadequacies as a leader as shown at the House’s non-contribution to the failed AHCA bill, and its irresponsibly rushed passage of the Tax Change bill, he might as well leave. His inability to bring his caucus together, and the low quality of the legislation which passed through the House, will forever be on his name.

No doubt the polls showing a disastrous upcoming mid-term election for the Republicans is also influencing his decision, as serving in the minority would be a distinct ego-deflator – if, in fact, he achieved re-election at all. He would be facing challenges from both sides, as I’m sure he would have had a serious primary challenge from those who view him as a RINO (!), and then faced the problem of an energetic Democratic candidate and backers who might very well overwhelm him.

So Speaker Ryan has chosen to exit with some shreds of dignity, rather than be ousted in much the same way as former House Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) failed in an upset primary loss 4 years ago. This is a signal to contemplate two thoughts.

First, is this the beginning of the end of the United States as a democratic republic, or is it another marker of the end of the GOP as a valid American political party?

Secondly, this should be a big red flag to the moderate Republicans who belong to the Party and insistently vote for the GOP candidates blindly. Your party is not anything near what it used to be, and it’s walking away from Democracy itself. Is this a path you really want to walk down?

Black Panther (2018) asks the question What do the well-off owe those less well off, and how should they deliver? The country of Wakanda appears to be another backward, poverty-stricken African nation, but hidden behind illusions, both technical and cultural, is a technologically advanced society, careful of its secrecy, monarchical, well-off, and happy. The King is known as Black Panther, not just a title, but a description of his physical prowess, enhanced through a secret botanical concoction, as well as some fun technological aids.

But the plight of African Americans is a troubling issue for the King in the abstract, an attribute soon transformed into the personal when an hitherto unknown American relation, appalled at the condition of the people of Africa in America, and knowledgeable of the true nature of Wakanda, appears with a claim on the throne.

A deadly claim, which he asserts with skill.

The King gone, the usurper gives full vent to his emotional fury at how his fellow Africans have been treated, vowing to arm them and subjugate the descendants of the colonialists and slavers. Orphaned, and then abandoned by his extended family, he has little respect for limitations or morality, only for vengeance over the past abuses which still echo through today’s society. Wakanda’s leadership is torn between loyalty to the throne and horror at this departure from Wakanda’s chosen path of withdrawal from the greater world. Soon families are disputing over the proper path to take.

But at the point of no return, Wakandan society plunging into civil war and advanced weaponry about to be delivered into the hands of the oppressed, a savior appears, and the usurper meets the personification of a mature leader, congnizant of his responsibilities to both Wakanda as well as greater humanity – not just oppressed African descendants, but everyone else as well. The usurper, soaked in his emotional rage, is swallowed by it, and lost.

The victor now must choose whether continued withdrawal is best for Wakanda, or a move designed to ease oppression wherever it exists. What will they choose?

This movie is an embodiment of the real-world questions mentioned above, leading to both intellectual and emotional meditations of great relevance to today’s various societies concerning wealth, poverty, and responsibility. The Wakandan leadership’s various discoveries concerning the world skillfully introduce us to the issues at hand, and more importantly the possible reactions, from vengeance to defense of the status quo to the difficult quest of reducing the oppression without setting off a world wide war, as those who hold the power are usually loathe to let it go.

The acting is excellent, the story well-constructed, and thankfully not interlaced with sex, which would have been distracting. There are some very good special effects, and also some reminders of the world as it is today: African landscapes, a link to our past that reminds us that the past is not necessarily something to be forgotten, but remembered for the lessons it can bring to our world today.

Recommended.

A reader’s remarks concerning corporate behaviors and government which I’ve neglected:

I’ve always agreed that the good of the people is the remit of government. Where I’ve changed my view over the past decades of railing against various kinds of malfeasance and misfeasance by groups is I think the corporate form of business with its near personhood is now antithetical to civilized society and any kind form of democracy. The ultimate end of that kind of lack of personal responsibility is that it will grow and grow to the point of becoming powerful enough to change laws to allow itself more freedom to behave horribly while claiming larger profits in a self-reinforcing cycle.

To my mind, it’s the misfeasance of government. The government is responsible for ensuring the health of the marketplace, and part of that is the breakup, or exceptional regulation, of monopolies, which are definitionally a malevolent entity in a system dependent on competition in order to provide choices and progress in products and services. By avoiding partition, monopolies, can utilize their outsized products to produce leverage on the government, usually through undue influence on individuals elected representatives and appointed officials, although the messaging element over the long-term has, I think, also had results unappreciated by most folks.

As we are more productive when working in teams, there’ll always be organizations, and I have no desire to outlaw corporations. I simply want to limit them, as we have done so in the past through anti-monopoly efforts, and move further into the realm of understanding the limits of corporate entities so that we no longer have to puzzle over rulings that seem to indicate that corporations have personhood.

Paul Rosenzweig on Lawfare gives an overview of the crime-fraud exception used in yesterday’s FBI raid on President Trump’s personal attorney’s office. Once he elucidates that for the non-specialist, he gives his opinion:

You can readily imagine other examples of when and how a lawyer’s services might be used to commit a crime. The lawyer helps set up a shell corporation (perfectly legal generally) and the corporation is used to foster a Ponzi scheme. The lawyer is asked about how to secure insurance, but the insurance is then used to collect on an insurance fraud. And so on. In other words, the crime-fraud exception applies when an attorney’s advice is used to futher the crime. Or, as the Supreme Court put it in Clark v. United States, 289 U.S. 1 (1933), “A client who consults an attorney for advice that will serve him in the commission of a fraud will have no help from the law. He must let the truth be told.”

And that, one suspects, is where the rubber meets the road. It may well be that President Trump sought Cohen’s legal advice regarding the Daniels affair for an illegal purpose (e.g. to avoid federal campaign-finance laws or to conceal the true source of the funds with which she was paid or to threaten her). In that circumstance, it seems clear that the crime-fraud exception might apply—and it appears highly likely that the FBI and the lawyers in New York have made that showing to a federal magistrate. Or, as one observer put it: “Michael Cohen is in serious legal trouble.” President Trump may be as well.

I keep trying to imagine seeing President Trump led off in handcuffs, but I’m not reasonably getting there. Still, as Steve Benen notes, President Trump is facing a tidal wave of scandals, so it may happen. You have to wonder how much of his base would take that to heart, and how many would remain convinced that bumbling, ill-advised amateur is being railroaded – and become embittered.

It’s best to keep in mind that the Democrats are forced to sit on the sidelines and merely offer advice and observation; the key people, the sandpaper on Trump’s ass, are all Republicans or ex-Republicans.

Republicans who remember their first allegiance is to the United States, not to the Presidency. In that respect, they are all truly equals before the law.

Derogation (derogate):

1. To take away; detract: an error that will derogate from your reputation.
2. To deviate from a standard or expectation; go astray: a clause allowing signers of the agreement to derogate from its principles during a state of emergency. [The Free Dictionary]

Noted in “Michael Cohen, the Attorney-Client Privilege, and the Crime-Fraud Exception,” Paul Rosenzweig, Lawfare:

Let’s begin with a seemingly obvious question: Why do we have an attorney-client privilege in the first place? After all, the privilege is nothing more, nor less, than permission for an attorney to withhold truthful information from investigating authorities. There aren’t many other situations in which we say “you know the truth but you don’t have to tell us.” Quite to the contrary, the general rule is that federal grand jury investigations are entitled to “every man’s evidence.” (Apologies for the traditional, gendered phrase.) As the Supreme Court has put it, the exceptions to this general rule are: “not lightly created nor expansively construed, for they are in derogation of the search for truth.”

Over the weekend The Denver Post, the 125 year old newspaper, winner of multiple Pulitzers, basically revolted against its ownership after yet another round of layoffs came down the line. The New York Times reports:

Angry and frustrated journalists at the 125-year-old newspaper took the extraordinary step this weekend of publicly blasting its New York-based hedge-fund owner and making the case for its own survival in several articles that went online Friday and are scheduled to run in The Post’s Sunday opinion section.

“News matters,” the main headline reads. “Colo. should demand the newspaper it deserves.”

The owners are Alden Global Capital, and you just have to wonder what they’re thinking. My suspicion is not that they don’t understand the business they’re screwing into the ground, although more conservative readers might think so. It’s that they don’t understand the sector with which they’ve foolishly encumbered themselves.

I think the Mayor, probably unconsciously, gets it as well:

“Denver is so proud of our flagship newspaper for speaking out,” Mayor Michael B. Hancock said in a statement. “The Denver Post said it best — they are necessary to this ‘grand democratic experiment,’ especially at a time when the press and facts are under constant attack by the White House. For a New York hedge fund to treat our paper like any old business and not a critical member of our community is offensive. We urge the owners to rethink their business strategy or get out of the news business. Denver stands with our paper and stands ready to be part of the solution that supports local journalism and saves the 125-year-old Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire.”

Right, “… or get out of the news business.” Alden is not going to revive The Denver Post by downsizing or rightsizing. All they’re doing is throwing away talented members of the reporting staff, and at some point the qualities of the newspaper that made it great will be gone – and they’ll be out their investment.

I’m not a knowledgeable member of the free press sector, so the strongest prescription I can give is that the Post needs more knowledgeable, loyal subscribers who understand that having a talented, dedicated staff requires more than a willingness to look at, or around, ads – but to actually pay up front.

Whether that will actually happen is up in the air for me.

In the third part of Andrew Sullivan’s tri-partite column, he bemoans the tendency of today’s political class to pick sides in foreign disputes and rivalries, between Trump and his autocrats of whom he speaks so highly, and the liberals being sucked in by Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince’s charm. Then he mentions, almost in passing, one of the most important principles of foreign relations management:

I have no time for the despicable Iranian regime, although the gamble that it could be forced to abstain from nuclear brinksmanship has been proven right. But the case that it is in America’s interests to take a firm side in the Sunni-Shiite feud in the Middle East — and simply back the Sunnis — makes no sense to me. American power is, in my view, best wielded through playing the two sides off each other, and providing some way for co-existence without devastating conflict. We have no interest whatever in the Shiite-Sunni theological struggles which now go back centuries. Yes, we should cautiously encourage any kind of democratic opening in Saudi Arabia (though count me super-skeptical), just as we should (and have) in Iran. But another war — this time for the Sunnis? Led by the neoconservatives? In defense of an absolute monarchy? In a cynical alliance with the Israeli far right? This is what this Saudi charm offensive is all about. And all of Washington seems to be falling for it.

Right. The danger of backing one side over the other is that we then inherit their sins – and, especially in the Middle East, there’s plenty of sin to go around. I don’t mean this theologically. I mean this in the practical sense that other nations will notice who we back and what we’re willing to tolerate, and our reputation will suffer accordingly.

Let them use themselves up between each other, and provide mediation services when possible. Putting our troops in harm’s way is the option of the man ambitious for legacy – or money.

I was fascinated to see what is generally considered body paint in the archaeological record may have been far more functional, as noted in Discover (April 2018):

Riaan Rifkin, an archaeologist at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, has been one of the leading proponents of a new, functional interpretation of ochre in the story of human evolution. For nearly a decade, his experiments, along with those of colleagues, have pointed to prehistoric use of the material not just as a sunscreen and adhesive but also an insect repellent and leather preservative.

Rifkin believes, in fact, that ochre’s functional applications may have contributed directly to H. sapiens’ greatest early achievement: spreading across the world. “The use of red ochre as a sunscreen must have enabled humans to traverse longer distances without getting excessively sunburnt. This was an amazing adaptive advantage. They could forage longer and explore further,” says Rifkin. He suspects ochre sunscreen evolved about the same time humans began using ostrich eggshells as containers for water and other provisions, about 65,000 years ago. “As soon as we could carry water with us, had a good [ochre-based] sunscreen and mosquito repellent, and warm [ochre-tanned] clothing, we were able to expand from Africa.”

It’s not a generally accepted theory just yet, but it’s most interesting, not only for what it says about ochre, but also what it says about scientists’ interpretations of evidence. It speaks to the quality of the evidence as much as the preconceptions of the interpreters.

And it sort of thrills me, as well.

E. J. Dionne of WaPo thinks the GOP and President Trump are in trouble due to their selection of tactics:

A fifth of the country can provide an ample audience for a cable network and a lot of radio hosts. It is not enough to win an election. In the nominally nonpartisan Wisconsin judge’s race, as Michael Tomasky noted in the Daily Beast, several counties that had moved from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016 swung back to Rebecca Dallet, the choice strongly endorsed by Democrats. And this came in a low-turnout race. In the Obama years, small turnouts benefited Republicans. The energy gap means that this pattern is now reversed.

A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Friday brought home additional concrete results of this imbalance. It found an astonishing 1 in 5 Americans reporting that they had joined protests and rallies since the beginning of 2016 — and that 70 percent of them disapproved of Trump.

The dilemma for Republican politicians tempted to cut and run from Trump is that doing so might only further dispirit the party’s core and diminish Trump’s already parlous popularity. For his part, Trump knows only the politics of outrage. It is looking like a strategy with a very short shelf life.

But for me, there’s 7 months left before the mid-term elections. Will those who’ve been stirred up by Trump’s incompetence remain politically engaged for those seven months? For that matter, for the next 2 years and 7 months?

It’s one thing to have become interested because you had to, which means speaking out and voting. But how about running for office? If you’re frozen out by the local politicos because you’re the newbie on the block, will that alienate the public-spirited citizen, and will she then broadcast her negative experience with (presumably) the Democratic machine that disallowed her desire to serve? The Democrats are going to need to make the new guys welcome.

This may not be difficult in districts where the Democrats have not been noticeably active, i.e., those districts dominated by the Republicans. The Democrats may welcome anyone willing to invest their time and energies in a possibly fruitless run for a seat, be it at the state level or the Federal level, just so they can say they competed. But if the novice wins? Can the Democrats stomach that, work with the new legislator? I’ve been wondering about recent unexpected special election victors Senator Doug Jones (D-AL) and Representative Conor Lamb (D-PA), who are reportedly both relatively conservative Democrats. Can the progressive wing of the Democratic Party temper their leftward, and allegedly intolerant, lean enough to work creatively and positively with these two on projects of importance?

These are just two of the questions which face the Democrats over the coming months.

Betsy DeVos, Secretary for Education, has a long history of advocating for private, for-profit schools – and that implies a dislike for teachers’ unions. That would explain this rather ridiculous remark concerning the current Oklahoma school teacher walkout, as noted by WaPo:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Oklahoma teachers who walked out of their classrooms to protest school funding cuts should “keep adult disagreements and disputes in a separate place.”

“I think about the kids,” DeVos said Thursday, according to the Dallas Morning News. She had been touring a middle school and meeting with leaders of an anti-violence initiative in Dallas. “I think we need to stay focused on what’s right for kids. And I hope that adults would keep adult disagreements and disputes in a separate place, and serve the students that are there to be served.”

One of the most potent weapons in a unions’ armament is to stop working. Secretary DeVos, by implying that, somehow, children may be terribly injured by a strike, is trying to stack guilt upon teachers who, quite frankly, are hardly making poverty-line wages for a job where they are both teaching and helping raise children.

But it’s not going to do that much damage to kids; in fact, it’s a civic lesson in action. If it takes a couple of weeks of no teaching by the teachers in order to get better wages and more support for the educational sector from a government that is far too fixated on low taxes, then fine – have them, and the students, make it up at the end of the school year. Let the kids learn that Americans can be flexible, that education is important, and that they, too, can be important parts of societal improvements.

DeVos, as Secretary of Education, should know all this and not engage in fallaciously guilt-inducing remarks that are designed to defang the teachers.

Geophagy:

In fact, geophagy, or intentionally consuming dirt, has been documented in multiple historical and present-day cultures, many of which ingest specific soils medicinally to prevent diarrhea or increase iron intake.

“People certainly engage in geophagy all over the world, especially while pregnant,” Zipkin says. “But I think it’s very, very hard to demonstrate in any meaningful way consumption in the archaeological record.” [“Pigment of Our Imagination,” Gemma Tarlach, Discover (April 2018)]

Andrew Sullivan is outraged at the thought that Gina Haspel, chief of staff to Jose Rodriguez, who was in charge of “enhanced interrogation” of prisoners gathered up in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, and chief advocate for destruction of the tapes of the actual torture sessions, has been nominated for the post of CIA Director, assuming current Director Pompeo is confirmed for the Secretary of State position. After covering her heinous alleged acts and how their there is no defense for them, Andrew concludes:

In a fateful decision, President Obama decided to give complete legal immunity for war crimes committed by agents of the CIA. Haspel then cannot be prosecuted, as she should be under domestic and international law. She was not fired; no one, in fact, was disciplined for these atrocities. But to actually reward someone who has committed war crimes with promotion, and then to elevate her to the highest position in Western intelligence, is a whole new level of depravity. It sends a very clear message: that anyone committing war crimes in the future will be celebrated, not disciplined, rewarded, not punished, that torture is justifiable, even worth reviving, as our future secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, opined only last year. It would amount to a full-on endorsement of torture by the United States, and a signal to the entire world that it can be justified. This is a profound threat to human rights globally and to the long tradition of American warfare, initiated by George Washington no less, in which the use of torture has always been regarded as exactly the kind of barbarism America was founded to overcome. It would be the final nail in the coffin that used to be the West.

Maybe in the era of Trump, that coffin is already covered in dirt. But if senators want to retain any semblance of the notion of American decency, if they are to honor the countless men and women in the CIA and military who for decades have resisted the impulse to torture, if they are to respect those who fought the torture-states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, and if they also want to remember those Americans, like John McCain, who were once subject to exactly the kind of torture Haspel authorized, they will vote down the nomination. If this line of defense falls, we are truly lost in a vortex of self-perpetuating evil. We will have abolished something deep and essential in the soul of America.

We will be a dungeon on a hill.

It’s difficult to argue with Andrew’s position, and I have no intention of doing so. I’ll simply add this is a blot on the honor of every Trump supporter of every stripe. As we can see, that group is actually growing, according to Gallup, which now has him over 40% approval. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I’m appalled, and can only attribute these disgracefully high numbers to ignorance. In a sea of information, it can be difficult to find the critical information.

The inability to bring these war criminals to justice is one of the most galling decisions of President Obama.

Steve Benen notes that Trump’s EPA Administrator is not only pursuing corrupt practices, but he’s also not effective at destroying environment regulations:

The hype surrounding the EPA chief is starting to unravel. The New Republic’s Emily Atkin explainedthe other day that Pruitt has been prolific in attacking environmental protections, “but so far, Pruitt’s biggest achievement is that he appears successful.”

The piece went on to note that “at least ten of Pruitt’s intended regulatory rollbacks, in fact, are on hold due to lawsuits,” and given the EPA’s recent track record in the courts, those lawsuits against Pruitt’s moves stand a decent chance of success.

Politico’s Michael Grunwald added over the weekend that despite the Trump administration’s regressive efforts, Pruitt “has not yet killed or rolled back any significant regulations that were in place when President Donald Trump took office. While Pruitt is often hailed (or attacked) as Trump’s most effective (or destructive) deregulatory warrior, the recent spotlight on his ethics … has arguably overshadowed his lack of regulatory rollbacks during his first 15 months in Washington.”

It’s true that the damage he’s done to the agency is real and substantial. But given his rampant abuse of power as well as his amazing ineffectuality, one has to wonder:

Is Pruitt a mole, a Democrat under deep cover?

If we’re lucky, he’ll poop in my hand!

It’s a visual treat, but at its heart it’s a little empty. Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) has a constant kaleidoscope of vistas, sometimes as background to the action, other times as the focus of the scene. Colorful and imaginative, they easily outclass the story.

The referenced City is a former Earth space station, grown so huge that the Earth chose to push it out into intergalactic space. Along with its original human inhabitants, many other species have colonies, some numbering in the millions. But a mysterious zone of radiation has appeared in its midst, and probes to discover the nature of the problem never return to report. As the zone expands, the commander of the City calls in Major Valerian and his teammate, Sgt Laureline. The Major and Sergeant have recently retrieved a converter, a living creature capable of reproducing whatever it is fed, and a pearl of immense power.

The Major is romantically interested in the Sgt, who spends half her time fending him off, but when a high level Security Council meeting is crashed by mysterious beings who kidnap the Commander of the City. Valerian pursues, with Laureline monitoring, but when Valerian enters the radiation zone and disappears from the monitors, Laureline disobeys orders and goes in to find him. After a successful rescue, though, she is caught and kidnapped by one of the more barbaric species of the City, who plan to make a meal of her brain. Valerian and a quickly recruited sidekick arrive just in time to rescue Laureline, but the sidekick dies during the operation.

This little spaceboat must have had a helluva kick to ti. See that planet below? It’s soon going to be nachos.

Valerian and Laureline discover that at the center of the radiation zone, of which there appears to be no radiation, is a force field through which they penetrate and find another species, this one totally unknown. They are the survivors of the collateral damage of a space war, the original owners of the converter and the pearl, and now attempting to build their own spaceship. The converter and the pearl are the last keys they needed.

And they are the kidnappers of the Commander of the City.

While the team negotiates with this new species, the temporary commander of the City has dispensed a battalion of troops to the force field, preparing to blow it up. With the battalion is a robotic force of soldiers as well, provided by the Commander of the City. When the temporary commander aborts the sequence to blow up the force field, the robotic force abruptly mutinies, cutting up the battalion as well as the City’s command area.

Valerian destroys the mutinous robotics force, of course, and soon we discover the Commander of the City was also responsible for destroying the planet of the survivors – with full knowledge of what he was doing. In the end the survivors of the war get their converter and pearl, the Commander gets his arrest, and Valerian gets his girl.

As I said, the visuals are imaginative and breath-taking. The story, sadly, has its problems. It’s hard to imagine a soldier with the rank of Major acting in such a childish, self-centered manner. The thematic material is erratic and, so far I could see, nearly trivial – act like a grownup and you’ll be a chick magnet. For all the imagination and amusing details and well-thought out scenes, there’s a hole at the center of this story, a failure to identify a compelling problem which we can recognize and evaluate as to its solution, or lack thereof, in this movie. Perhaps emblematic of the problems in this story was the reaction of the Major and Sergeant to the complete loss of their support team during the retrieval of the converter and pearl – none whatsoever. The sacrifice of brave men to a veritable monster warrants nothing more than a wisecrack about the altitude at which the monster was shaken loose from their spaceship.

Is this how much empathy and loyalty we have for team members in the future?

See it for the visuals, but try not to pay much attention to the story.

Well, let’s — let’s be, again, clear-eyed about this. It’s one thing for the Chinese to admit publicly to a policy. It’s another thing for the Chinese to actually implement that policy. We had, a number of years ago with President Obama, agreements about not stealing our intellectual property through cyber theft. How’s that working out? Not very well. I mean for the American people, and I don’t think, Mr. Todd, there’s any disagreement between you and I about the fact that China is engaged in these egregious practices. The only debate is over how we go about solving them. But every American understands that, every day of the week China comes in to our homes, the businesses, our government agencies, and the damage is on the order of about $1 billion a day. – Dr. Peter Navarro, Director of the White House National Trade Council. [Meet The Press]

Hold on there, Dr. Navarro. I’d be amazed if 10% of Americans had any clue that the Chinese are engaged in IP theft or other unfair trade practices. I’d be surprised if the number exceeded 1%.

Or, for that matter, whether we do the same things to China.