Category Archives: Uncategorized

Or maybe I’m mixing my metaphors with a razor blade. My wife sent me a collection of Amazon advertisements for wooden watches, which I can only hope is a little different from wooden nickels. Here’s my favorite (based entirely on looks) of the bunch.

But, as I mentioned to her, they look a little fragile. Given the condition of my current watch, made of metal and glass, I can’t help but wonder how many pieces this sort of watch would be in after a year.

After using digital watches for years, I find I favor the old analog dial faces more – they have a certain grace that digitals often lack. (Oh, and I always hated those watches with calculators built in. Hate hate hate.) I suppose you could make an argument that this is a responsible use of renewable materials, if in a tiny way. But then you’d risk being shouted down by those who would like to return to the old ways. The real old ways.

Go to bed at dusk, get up with the sun. When the sun’s directly overhead, eat lunch.

Not my style, though.

I happen to be wearing a Fossil watch myself. I wonder if they’ve put together a model that features a T-Rex as the hands? Or would that be jumping the shark?

(Functioning on maybe 4 hours sleep. If you can call this functioning…. but the visual of jumping a shark was in appalling bad taste and in no way will I be sharing it at this time.)

Menna A. Farouk of Al Monitor reports on two women drummers in Egypt who are working on creating an all-women drum band in Cairo, Egypt – and in the process nudging society along:

Donia Sami and Rania Omar started the first female drumming band in Egypt to challenge Egyptian society’s stereotypes and encourage more Egyptian women to take up their art.

“Art is for everyone,” Donia, 21, told Al-Monitor. “Playing any instrument is a right of every woman on earth, especially if she is passionate about it,” added the young drummer, who began to play at the age of 16 and is also studying acting and directing.

In Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, banging on drums has usually been associated with men rather than women, and performances by female drummers are seen by conservative societies as abnormal and shameful. Some people also believe that women cannot be drummers because the art requires physical strength, stamina and endurance.

“We want to change this social stereotype and let society know that women can be and do whatever they want to be and do,” Donia said.

As I enjoy a good drumming, I looked them up. Here is their Facebook page where a couple of drumming videos are to be found.

But around some stars it gets odder. Nevermind the common stories about the planets with liquid iron – that’s just heat. NewScientist (8 October 2016) reports on malformed stars and their attendant planets’ behavior:

Earth’s tilt gives our planet its seasons. But hot, massive “early-type” stars can spin almost 100 times faster than the sun, creating a midriff bulge. The gas around the star’s equator is then further from its centre, so it cools more than other parts of the star’s surface, while the poles remain hot and dense.

John Ahlers at the University of Idaho in Moscow wondered how this might change the seasons on an orbiting planet. If its orbit is angled, it would be directly over the star’s chilled equator twice in each orbit, and would have two summers and two winters a year.

Ahlers found that difference could mean the planet’s surface would oscillate rapidly between a boiling hellscape and a frozen tundra (arxiv.org/abs/1609.07106).

Altair, as seen from Mt. Wilson Observatory
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/Steve Golden

To some extent, it’s simply the thought that being closer to star’s surface actually results in a cooler disposition for the planet. And I wonder how the bulge impacts the orbital dynamics of the hypothetical planet.

In 2001, NASA/JPL provided a description of the star Altair, giving us an idea of the conditions of a midriff bulge:

Altair is a perfect example — it rotates at least once every 10.4 hours, and the new Palomar observations reveal the diameter at its equator is at least 14 percent greater than at its poles. For a star that spins slowly, this effect is miniscule. For example, our Sun rotates once every 30 days and has an equator only .001 percent greater in diameter than its poles.

By measuring Altair’s size at separate positions along its edge, van Belle and his colleagues determined that Altair rotates at a speed of at least 210 kilometers per second (470,000 miles per hour) at the equator. Future studies may pin down the speed more precisely.

For those who are interested, the speed of light (c) is 6.706×10⁸.MPH, so Altair’s equatorial velocity at its surface is nowhere near c.

And I’ll tell you, searching on stars midriff bulge returns some mighty odd images.

And, in fact, they look almost as robust as they did a month ago.

However, the Chief Tomato Picker says it’s just about time to yank them out of the ground.

And then repair the holes where the hooks were actually torn OUT of the garage by the voracious beasties.

J. Henry Fair‘s photography focuses on social justice issues. Here’s just one pic.

This outlet pipe is at the bottom of a giant waste impoundment in Florida, and forms a stream that joins the water table.

Here’s some more.

An East Coast favorite; living in Minnesota, I’d never heard of it ’til today.

Cruller:

A traditional cruller (or twister) is a fried pastry often made from a rectangle of dough, with a cut made in the middle that allows it to be pulled over and through itself producing twists in the sides of the pastry. Crullers have been described as resembling “a small, braided torpedo”^[1] and having been “a staple of the New England diet since the Pilgrims’ day”. [Wikipedia]

From “Why You Can’t Resist the Office Doughnuts,” by Tamar Haspel (Discover Magazine, November 2016):

I’ve been there. I remember afternoon meetings when there was no earthly reason I should be hungry, staring down the damn cruller. The meetings were long. I stood no chance. I am Pavlov’s dog. We’re all Pavlov’s dogs.

I’d look awful with big, floppy ears. Can I be Pavlov’s cat, instead?

… didn’t affect me personally. Certainly this blog is so minute that hardly anyone reads it. I didn’t notice any impact on any of the sites I used yesterday.

… that is, personally, not yet.

CNN/Money has a report this morning on the instrumentality of the attack:

Security firm Flashpoint said it believes that digital video recorders and webcams in people’s homes were taken over by malware and then, without owners’ knowledge, used to help execute the massive cyberattack.

Hundreds of thousands of devices appear to have have been infected with the malware.

It was a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack. Using the malware, hackers were able to flood a website with so much traffic that it impaired normal service.

We don’t have a webcam, but we do own and use a TIVO. so I now wonder if I was part of that instrumentality.

But you know what? It seems to me that, in the future, I will be part of the instrumentality. Involuntarily, but still will be stained with some of the guilt, because I will have provided the equipment, however unwillingly for an attack that compromises, at best, the livelihood of some people; at worst, people might die if an attack on a critical piece of physical infrastructure is successful.

Prototype of the Internet of Things. Image collected by the author in Faith, South Dakota, ca. 2012. Last seen headed east.

Do you know why I think this is nearly inevitable?

The predicted Internet of Things.

As we build this network creature, as it were, built of computers and refrigerators and DVRs and cars, we’re building a creature which is already cancerous, a servant that may knife us in the back at some point – or disappear without warning, without permission, at critical moments.

I face the future with a certain prickling along the base of the neck –

For all the promises in the world, my Arts Editor and I agree that some promises simply cannot be fulfilled. The United States may be the most influential country in the world, but some forces are larger than it, from population densities to wage differentials. When I hear someone like Trump telling us he’s going to fix everything, I just shake my head and wonder just how the hell he thinks he’ll get it. Nor can I have much faith in even more believable promises from either side.

As this blog post from Cracked makes clear, many small towns are in despair as sources of jobs are moving to other locations. I am conflicted concerning these problems, having reactions of varying worthiness:

• They assumed little or no change and never prepared for it in a world that is changing unceasingly;
• Preparing for change is a difficult challenge, and if you’re raising a family, damn near impossible for most folks;
• Shouldn’t we be protecting families?
• To a libertarian this is creative destruction, which they celebrate as the path to improvement and wealth;
• Yet I see no wealth for these victims;
• Who do not base their life on capitalism, the home of creative destruction, but on the community and the family.

But I am reminded there is some help out there. Minnesota billionaire Glen Taylor provides an example, as reported by MPR:

Taylor and a group of investors are spending millions of dollars to convert a former beef plant into a hog processing facility, Prime Pork. They plan to open by January.

Nearly all the equipment is brand new, said plant manager Wayne Kies. Robots will do some of the butchering, including a robotic arm designed to remove ribs.

The plant will process more than 6,000 hogs a day, which makes it a medium-sized operation.

“We want to produce a quality, consistent product,” Kies said.

Taylor said his involvement with the Windom [Minnesota] facility grew out of his earlier research into opportunities in the meat business. When tough times in the beef processing industry forced a plant in Windom to close last year, Taylor was interested.

While I do not subscribe to the old acorn that the government doesn’t create jobs, I do doubt that it can save the small towns of America. Nor can billionaires – but several solutions together may do the trick. Such as UBI – would it help preserve small town America, or simply lengthen their agony?

chyron:

In the television industry, a lower third is a graphic overlay placed in the title-safe lower area of the screen, though not necessarily the entire lower third of it, as the name suggests. …

Lower thirds are also often known as “CG” or captions, and sometimes chyrons in North America, due to the popularity of Chyron Corporation‘s Chiron Icharacter generator, an early digital solution developed in the 1970s for rendering lower thirds. [Wikipedia]

Learn something new everyday. I suspect there’s a word for words like chyron, not to mention g**g1e, but I don’t recall what that might be offhand.

Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com covers some wildly divergent parenting styles world-over:

One thing that sets American parents apart from the rest of the world is their widespread belief that parenting has no script. Every parent forges their own path while raising kids, prioritizing current child-rearing strategies gathered from friends, websites, and books, rather than asking their own mothers for advice. Modern ideas are viewed as the optimal way to position children for achievement in the future.

This contrasts greatly with other countries, who have highly scripted versions of parenthood. Parents understand that there is an accepted way of raising kids and they do it without questioning. While it may sound restrictive, some experts say it’s helpful and makes parents feel less out of control, confused, and overwhelmed.

“You don’t see the handwringing in other places around the world,” says Christine Gross-Loh, author of Parenting Without Borders: Surprising Lessons Parents Around the World Can Teach Us. “People understand that there is a way to do things.” (via Ideas.TED)

Katherine then gives a sampling of parenting traditions. One of the more subtly different is this:

… young children in Denmark are often left outside in their strollers, wide awake, while parents shop or dine indoors — an act that would strike horror into American hearts, either for fear of kidnapping, arrest for negligence, or the child being traumatized by abandonment.

How people handle the most common of tasks can vary so wildly, and it’s fascinating.

A friend sent me pictures of the Kopp-Etchells Effect. From Wikipedia:

Abrasion strips on helicopter rotor blades are made of metal, often titanium or nickel, which are very hard, but less hard than sand. When a helicopter flies low to the ground in desert environments, sand striking the rotor blade can cause erosion. At night, sand hitting the metal abrasion strip causes a visible corona or halo around the rotor blades. The effect is caused by the pyrophoric oxidation of eroded particles and is known as the Kopp-Etchells Effect.

The combat photographer and journalist Michael Yon observed the effect while accompanying U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. When he discovered the effect had no name he coined the name “Kopp-Etchells Effect” after two soldiers who had died in the war, one American and one British.

---

The pictures are uncredited, so I will just send a thank you out in the ether for sharing these beautiful pictures of events in an awful time.

One final picture.

(h/t Jeff Norman)

This’ll be a conundrum for everyone if the effect is large enough to matter. NewScientist (8 October 2016) reports on an unexpected result of imprisoning criminals for sex crimes:

In areas where men outnumber women, there were lower rates of murders and assaults as well as fewer sex-related crimes, including rapes, sex offences and prostitution. Conversely, higher rates of these crimes occurred in areas where there were more women than men.

Ryan Schacht at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and his colleagues analysed sex-ratio data from 3082 US counties, provided by the US Census Bureau in 2010. They compared this with crime data for the same year, issued by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. They only included information about women and men of reproductive age.

For all five types of offence analysed, rising proportions of men in a county correlated with fewer crimes – even when accounting for other potential contributing factors such as poverty. The results suggest that current policies aimed at defusing violence and crime by reducing the amount of men in male-dominated areas may backfire (Human Nature, doi.org/brbb).

When women are in short supply, men perceive them as being a more valuable resource, says Schacht. Consequently, men must be more dutiful to win and retain a female partner. In an abundance of women, men are spoilt for choice and adopt promiscuous behaviour that brings them into conflict with other men, and makes them more likely to commit sex-related offences.

This has unsettling implications for the motivations for men to be non-violent, turning it from a principled, or lack, stand, to a cold-blooded market-based assessment of the risks of crime. Even divorce rates rise as men disappear into prison. The original study adds this conclusion:

In addition, although public concern over male-biased sex ratios elevating the risk for female trafficking and prostitution has risen, supporting data are lacking. In China, areas with male excess are not associated with elevated numbers of sex workers (Hesketh et al. 2005). Moreover, sexually transmitted disease rates are lowest in male-biased populations (South and Trent 2010). These trends corroborate our finding that rates of prostitution/commercial vice, which serve as a proxy for uncommitted sexual behavior, are lowest in counties where men are most abundant.

I think what bothers me the most is that, once the core principles of a person have been ascertained, predicting their behavior becomes plausible. But evaluating a market for the number of potential mates? Even if such numbers are available, neither sex is likely to track them down and use them to modulate their behavior; this makes predicting the behavior of your fellows much more difficult.

I’ve long wondered how practices in which babies of one sex are favored over that of another affect the society that encourages them, so I was interested to see that in the midst of a larger rant, Heather Hurlburt on Lawfare discusses some relevant information:

We are just at the beginning of understanding how the scarcity of young women in societies that prize male babies more highly than females affects social stability, but the first indicators are extremely worrying. We have anecdotal evidence, in the form of the interrogation of the sole Mumbai attacker to be captured alive, that the compelling argument for joining an extremist group was the opportunity to earn money and status that would allow him and his brothers to afford bride prices. Young men, in other words, face a particular gender dilemma in societies where their path to adulthood—and women’s value to their families—is still expressed through a bride price.

Societal constructs of masculinity may have important impacts on whether and how much sexual crimes feature in warfare. And researchers find as well that young women are more likely to participate in violent movements in societies where women’s roles are severely restricted.

In the absence of statistical studies of this sort, which must be quite difficult to conduct, the best argument I have come up with against those who, in our society, would relegate women to the kitchen, is fairly simple-minded. Fill in with a picture of noted American traditionalist Phil Robertson in the following:

PR: Women should remain in the kitchen.

ME: Ah, so you’re for treason against America?

PR: What?! No, I’m for traditional American values! It’s what make us great!

ME: And cripples us.

PR: What are you talking about?

ME: It’s not about being tough, it’s not about being traditional. It’s about being smart.

PR: Huh?

ME: Restrict half the American population from contributing their intellectual firepower to America, and we’re crippled.

PR: Oh, bullshit!

ME: Ever wonder why we didn’t really start dominating the world until the 1920s? There are other factors, but key was the freedom of our woman to explore new options, write, invent – do all those things that are important to our development. When everyone contributes in the way that best suits them, we fly. When we tell everyone what they’re going to do, based on their gender, we’re going to droop because efficiency is impaired, morale is shot, and we start to fall behind. The ‘traditionalist’, in pursuit of the mythical happiness of yesteryear, is really a detriment to the survival of his country –

At this point I get punched out in this particular fantasy. The point is that most arguments about gender-neutral freedom (such a hoity-toity phrase I just made up) balance on concepts of justice, and while those are important to make, they can be difficult to win when others are waving around tradition and religious books. But once you point out the tangible benefits of making everyone truly equal, then eyes start to open. Compare to other societies such as, say, Afghanistan, where women struggle just to get an education – and it seems like the country spends half its time killing each other, don’t appear to invent anything of interest, etc.

Personally, I figure in those sorts of countries the men are just afraid of the competition from the women.

Mainly ‘cuz I’m not sure if they’re transformers…

In The Gorgon (1964) my Arts Editor and I found a good, but not great, murder mystery, involving both terror and horror. A well-staged traditional approach to a mid-19th century European village in a nameless country, people are dying after being attacked – and presenting odd symptoms to the local medical authorities. But when one of the victims is an out of town young artist, his family becomes involved. His father and brother are sturdy, determined men, much to the dismay of the locals, and when their ally, Professor Meister (Christopher Lee), becomes involved, hell begins to break loose.

The acting is more than acceptable (I particularly liked the fight scene, sword against candle holder – quite exciting!), the makeup erratic. The problem lies in the story. In the main, it’s OK, as we see the back and forth of the mystery of the murders and the mysterious reticence of the locals and the constabulary. However, this reticence is never explained; it feels more like the director wanted a mysterious atmosphere, and this was how he was going to get it, logic be hanged. Similarly, too often the characters exist to fulfill the plot – if any of them have interests outside of the story, those will be secrets never hinted at hear. The result is a certain lack of … empathy with the characters. And this despite a good cast, although Lee is simply too young to pull his part off.

We enjoyed it, but in the end I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to see it.

Georgy Toloraya covers the recent developments in North Korea on 38 North:

The North Korean nuclear dilemma has evolved far beyond the issue that sanctions originally sought to counter. While Pyongyang has achieved unprecedented nuclear and missile advances during US President Barack Obama’s administration, the basis for that leap forward was established during Kim Jong Il’s rule. The former leader was far more moderate and inclined toward compromise than his son; he preferred not to provoke his opponents with excessive nuclear and missile demonstrations and only presided over two nuclear tests and a handful of missile tests—quantities inadequate for the deployment of operational weapons. Kim Jong Il appeared to restrain the North’s nuclear development in hopes that diplomacy would finally work, and reasonable members of the US establishment would overrule US and South Korean conservatives with a strategic decision to recognize and coexist with North Korea.

That decision never came during Kim Jong Il’s lifetime, and the less patient Kim Jong Un seems to have adopted none of his father’s limits on pressuring the United States and South Korea. Still, the Obama administration did not initially anticipate the level of progress Pyongyang has achieved under its guiding principle of “strategic patience,” which relies on the false assumption that the regime is nearing collapse. In line with this thinking, Washington has answered North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests by trying to increase the North’s economic and political isolation.

But despite a decade of sanctions and related international steps, North Korea has succeeded in acquiring a significant new nuclear potential while still achieving modest economic growth. Rather than prompting calls for a new method to deal with the North’s nuclear program, experts are now rationalizing that the restrictions were never tough enough.

It’s difficult to envision a first-strike nuclear attack on North Korea, even with great provocation – but that’s just my view; I have to wonder what a President Trump might do. Or, more to the point, what his “experts” might recommend in order to solve the North Korean problem.

I claim no expertise in the realm of North Korea or war, really. My sense is that North Korea, once it has sufficient nuclear arms, could actually contemplate completing a cessation of war treaty with South Korea and its allies (including the United States), although if that would result in a loss of face for the leadership of either Korea, then it wouldn’t be possible. Even so, North Korea could consider reducing its conventional armies, and that would help its civilian economy a little more. Georgy notes the apparent goal of the civilian sector:

Through my conversations in Pyongyang, I got the impression that the economic planners are seeking a new paradigm of development. This approach does not appear to be based on restoring its outdated heavy industrial potential,[9] but rather on “jumping over” the re-industrialization phase to a more knowledge-based economy. This concept demands educational capabilities that North Korean engineers have already demonstrated with the country’s indigenous nuclear and missile achievements. “Construction of a powerful civilized state” with an emphasis on science and technology now seems to be the focus of all government policies.

No measurement of the percentage of the civilians who have received training adequate for participation in a knowledge-based economy is given, and probably none is available even from sources such as the NSA – North Korea is a notoriously difficult society to evaluate. This makes it difficult to evaluate the likelihood of North Korean success in transitioning to such an economy. It may also imply more openings to the outside world as a knowledge based economy is implicitly about open communications – and that, I should think, would have implications within North Korea as well. How much does the North Korea leadership depend on the careful segmentation and isolation of the subject populace in order to survive? A knowledge-based economy’s prospects of success may be in proportion to the inverse of that estimated value.

Georgy’s recommendations for continued handling of North Korea:

What does this mean for a new US administration? Washington is free to recognize the failure of former policies, but it cannot look to war as a viable alternative. It must instead devise a strategy aimed at finding a new balance of interests and reconciling desirable outcomes with what is possible. A restart of the diplomatic process—ideally in a multilateral format that would enable all interested actors to benefit—could at least bring about a freeze on further North Korean nuclear and missile development. Little hope is left for North Korean capitulation, and a new search for compromise should start—the sooner, the better.

Stephanie Leutert engages in a detailed takedown of an op-ed by Mario Berlanga, in which Mario argued that lowering the demand for drugs in the United States would lower the level of violence in Mexico. Stephanie notes:

Mexico’s organized criminal groups are no longer mere drug traffickers, whose singular revenue streams would disappear if Americans kicked their drug habits. Instead, over the past decade, Mexico’s criminal groups have moved rapidly into a wide range of illicit activities, such as extortion, stealing oil, kidnapping, and taxing migrant smugglers. They’ve even gained a foothold in what used to be informal or even legal markets: pirated CDs, limes and avocados, and used cars, for example.

But I think Stephanie’s nuance missed the big old rock sitting in the meadow. If we make the assumption that the gangs get most of their revenue from the American drug trade, which Stephanie clearly doesn’t agree with, then what happens if demand lessens?

The market shrinks.

Cash flow shrinks.

And, if you’re a violent gang, do you just peacefully give up and walk away? Back to poverty as a way of life?

Of course not. The competition is cutting into your potential cash flow – so it’s time to snuff them. Violence will increase until the supply of victims becomes small enough that it can’t continue at that rate.

This is an ideal situation, with many assumptions. If Stephanie’s description is congruent with reality, and I have no reason to think otherwise, constricting the American demand for drugs may not have much of an effect. Even in a legitimate market with companies, there are struggles both legal and illegal. Change is violence folks, and sometimes it’t not metaphorical.

This is a random shot of our local reservoir.  It’s especially pretty in the fall.

I commented just a few days ago that the beginning of the end for Speaker Ryan had commenced – but my head’s spinning at this report on how quickly Trump supporters (distinguished from the more general GOP voter) have turned on the far right wing Speaker. From YouGov.com:

House Speaker Paul Ryan distanced himself from Trump after the “Access Hollywood” video was broadcast.  Trump voters don’t approve.  They think it was wrong for GOP leaders to withdraw their support.  And they definitely don’t like Ryan (or his Senate counterpart, Mitch McConnell).  Trump supporters are more than twice as likely to view Ryan unfavorably as favorably, and are even more negative e towards McConnell.

So what happens post-election? If the GOP majority is overturned then we return, I suppose, to Representative Pelosi as the Speaker. But if the GOP retains control of the House, it’ll be a diminished majority. The primary question will be the composition, even survival of the Freedom Caucus. Will they still hold the balance of power? If so, I would think they’d be in the thrall of the Trump supporters, disappointed or not – and they’ll call for Ryan’s ouster. (I am assuming Ryan will win re-election, as I hear he’s popular in his district.) Then we’ll see a battle for the speakership featuring anyone with a lust for power and a GOP membership – and I have no idea who’ll win. But most likely they won’t have the gene for compromise with the other side – or even with those in their own party, possibly.

So we may once again see a frozen House.

And I give a small chance that the GOP will retain a majority, but some portion of that GOP majority will caucus with the Democrats as they try to drag the GOP out of its hellhole of insanity. It’s barely possible we’ll see Pelosi as a Speaker of a GOP-majority House.

(h/t Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog)

On Lawfare, Ashley Deeks and Michael A. Livermore try to use the contretemps of Trump to push for better vetting of Presidential candidates in the future:

Recent disclosures about Donald Trump’s remarks to Billy Bush have raised speculation that unaired footage from The Apprentice might contain similarly troubling content, which would cause obvious problems for Trump’s campaign if it were released. But the real threat would arise if embarrassing content remains concealed for now, but is used after a Trump victory to manipulate the future president. This risk highlights that it is time to rethink how we vet presidential candidates.

When someone is nominated for a political or judicial appointment, that person faces a stringent vetting process that probes for past political, personal, or financial improprieties. Among other goals, vetting helps avoid the risk of scandal during the Senate confirmation process or once in office. Those who seek employment in jobs that implicate U.S. national security are also formally vetted, and they must answer specific questions on security clearance forms concerning past embarrassing or criminal behaviors. We ask these questions to avoid hiring those whose past conduct might make them an appealing target for foreign states or non-state actors who wish to use those behaviors against them. In essence, the clearance process tries to guard against giving foreign states targets to blackmail.

Yet our candidates for the highest office face neither of these processes.

And yet, I don’t actually see Trump being moved by such a lever. He seems incapable of embarrassment, and when pushed he simply denies everything, even in the face of the undeniable, and moves on to the next hand grenade topic. The fundamental lack of decency in this guy – which we see in some politicians, but rarely to this depth – makes me wonder just how one would go about blackmailing him. Take his bank account hostage? Ah, destroy his sexual libido and then claim to have a cure.

But all that evades the point that Ashley and Michael are making – and it’s legitimate. Although this vetting would differ from a normal national security vetting in that all that information would have to be made public. To do otherwise would be to invite blackmail by the vetters themselves. So if you have Presidential ambitions – don’t do anything that the average Joe would find embarrassing when you plan to run.

And have fun predicting what that might be in, say, twenty years.

A day of work, interrupted by a sad funeral, and now on to a Presidential debate – CNN has not yet reported Trump has decided not to attend, so I’ll be live-blogging it. Refresh this post for up dates.

8:05 – Keeping their physical distance.

8:10 – Good first question. A clear delineation of Clinton’s positions on hot topics. A canned speech, but very clear and clean answer. A shot at the Senate. Trump is disjointed about current composition. The maturity of her view is very clear, while he’s scattered. He gets his point across, but not like she does.

8:16 – Open discussion: Clinton takes a conventional rhetorical approach, showing she sees both sides on Amendment #2. Wallace admits Scalia said the amendment is limited. I wonder if such a specific topic – even a SCOTUS case – is a good idea, vs a more broad approach. Clinton remains coherent. Trump has been instructed to talk about Chicago and its strong gun laws – it’s a superficial argument, in long retrospect, then he rambles.

8:20 – Roe v Wade – Trump dodges answering the question, or doesn’t understand it. Clinton launches into a canned speech, I’m sure – nothing wrong with that. She defends it and brings in Planned Parenthood, so each base gets energized. Given the disaster in TX when PP was defunded, I have to side with her. PBA is brought up, Clinton doesn’t address it – Donald demagogues on it. Each is playing to their base, but Clinton’s is the humane base. And is Clinton appealing subtly to the anti-government part of the undecideds?

8:28 – Immigration: More demagoguery from Trump. So we have murderers coming in? We also have many more productive workers, paying taxes, serving in the military. Trump pleads for strong borders – OH GOD, HE’S TALKING ABOUT THE WALL. Even his treasured union endorsing him has said he’s bullshitting on this one. Clinton once again plays the humane card. This is the classic contrast: humane vs security. Clinton claims she’ll deport the violent – is that good enough. Now she finally takes a shot at Trump. So far this debate has been more palatable than earlier…. the host kow-tows to Trump, though. Interrupting. Clinton fires back, says she has also worked on border security – more than he’s done. Now a bit more mud about undocumented workers. Trump trumpets (sorry) an Obama success, bizarrely – deportation has been successful in the last 8 years.

8:35 – Wallace asks Clinton about a hemispheric open market. She clarifies it to be energy, then turns to talking about Wikileaks. She wants Trump to reject Russian meddling. Will he? Wallace gets desperate for quiet. Trump continues to frighten his base into following him – but why? Doesn’t he realize he has to identify and pursue other groups? Now he’s just repeating himself. The mud is thick and lumpy now. The problem? He’s said enough of to make her plausible, while his accusations have less basis. Now he denies his own intelligence briefings, it’s embarrassing. Big softball for Trump, so he can pivot to more general insults. Clinton and Trump jab at each other about incompetence. Trump has no accomplishments, while Clinton has both. More of the liar, liar crap from Trump. Trump is clearly nettled – we can measure it by the frequency of interrupts. He hates being caught lying.

8:44 – Economy: Clinton is behind the middle class, mfg, clean energy and its new businesses, etc. She communicates clearly her goals, not much on methods – but in two minutes, what to do? Since she was asked to criticize Trump, she does, legitimately. Trump claims huge tax increase, but now he’s back to NATO and how allies don’t pay much. NOW HE TAKES CREDIT FOR THEM PAYING. He’s such a grasping bully. “Free trade” is his theme, although he clumsily repeats points – NAFTA is a disaster 3 or 4 times, but he’s going to make every good. Clinton will translate, which gets under his skin. She refutes the tax claim. Now some repeats from earlier debates – snore, but necessary. “Tax cuts won’t work” – Kansas tried that and is going under.

8:52 – Clinton forced to defend Obama’s plan by the host. “Not a penny to the debt.” Trump now forced to defend his plan, so host is even handed. Job report is bad, according to him – but compare it to the last GOP admin and it’s actually very well. He wants to compare to China and India, which is ridiculous – smaller, different economies. Back to NAFTA, sigh. He feeds his base with no clue that it doesn’t play with everyone else. Clinton plays to his base by accusing him of doing what he’s against in his speeches. “Bad experience” – but when she was helping run things in the 90s, the economy went great guns. Will people think for themselves? Now she talks about accomplishments while he was being sued, etc. The mud gets dark and lumpy again.

8:55 – “A phenomenal company” – sigh. Careful of “real record”, Mr Trump, and Wallace just lets them wallow in the pit. Come on, Chris, get them back on track.

8:59 – Trump’s victims – “They’ve been debunked”. Now the lies are starting to come out of Trump, claims Obama and Clinton paid meddlers to start violence at Trump rallies. “It’s on tape.” Trump’s mad, we can tell because he interrupts.  Will she address this “on tape” thing? I hadn’t heard of it, but would guess it’s part of his fantasy world. Let’s see if the news and fact-checkers can come up with anything. Nope, didn’t address it. “America is great because America is good.” Donald wants to assert Clinton lies, and she ignores it. So a general is going to jail – so what? He’s not effective. Back to Clinton and more interrupts. It’s tiresome when you know it’s true.

9:08 – Clinton must defend the Clinton Foundation – didn’t we do this once already? Trump wants to claim it’s a criminal enterprise – whose own Foundation has been fined and shamed. Wallace collapses, let’s Trump run things. She avoids the details, but is that good or bad? The implication of pay to play lingers in the air – despite investigations that don’t find anything. Wallace beats up Trump’s Foundation, but Trump slides away. Whoa, it’s tax returns AGAIN. Tiresome, but effective. Trump tries to blame Clinton for the tax laws, which is silly. Trump’s voice rises as he gets more and more upset. He wants to slime her, but he knows she can’t change the law by herself. I’m so sick of that crap.

9:11 – Will Trump accept election results. He hedges. He talks about corruption with no proof. Waves his hand claiming she’s corrupt. Wallace tries to drag it back to transition of power. Trump refuses to be honorable. Clinton gets on his case about rigging – even about not getting 3 Emmys – line of the night, “It should have gotten it!” Clinton makes the easy case that you have to accept the election results or you’re not up for the job.

9:19 – ISIS: Clinton won’t put Americans into Iraq as an occupying forces once ISIS is gone. Hard question, Clinton answers it with no shots so far, links to Syrian and Russia cleanly. Trump blames Clinton for Mosul, on the other hand. Ah, we’re back to Trump the Military Genius – another tiresome repeat. He refuses to answer the question and instead now wants to talk about Iran nuclear deal. Confusing rant about Iran taking over Iraq. Repeat, interrupt, repeat, interrupt. Trump keeps lying, lying, lying – he JUST CAN’T STOP. In the face of copious documentation. She clearly has studied the problem and has an idea of what to do, Trump is not so clear. Interrupt interrupt interrupt.

9:24 – Trump is reduced to repeating previous debates. He’s out of gas. Now to Aleppo, Wallace accuses Trump of lying. Oh my. Trump keeps interrupting and Wallace is having trouble keeping it together. Trump has his talking points about the unfrozen Iran bank accounts and the money returned for the undelivered weapons system. Now he starts yelling, but reverts to scaring his base rather than reaching out to the undecided. He’s politically an amateur.

9:26 – No fly zones procedures – Clinton gives a reassuring answer. Then a pivot to the refugee problem, which she whacks Trump with. Once again, humane vs security.

9:32 – National Debt: Wallace smacks both of them with expert evaluations. Trump will “create tremendous jobs”. It’s unfair, but we almost got rid of the debt back in the 90s. Trump won’t defend his plan on a serious basis, he just accuses the government of incompetence and corruption – once again playing to the base. Clinton begins by critiquing Trump’s style, then pivots back to the question. She will raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

9:35 – Entitlements: Wallace says neither has a serious plan; will SS and Medicare be preserved: Trump waves his hand about the jobs he’ll create, then pivots to ACA. “Bad healthcare at a disastrous price” – ooops we don’t have good healthcare? Clinton responds to the question directly, gets interrupted (he’s such a jerk). Clinton points out that ACA has extended Medicare solvency.

9:38 – A minute apiece. Clinton appeals to all voters. touts accomplishments, her lifelong mission. All is good and well. Trump attacks her. “Depleted military” – what BULLSHIT. Trump mixes scaring and promising. He just doesn’t seem to understand that there’s more to this country thean people who have lost jobs and find their futures frightening. There is everyone else, who have jobs but worry about the future and see his antics as negative and wonder about his temperament, intelligence, and competency.

Clinton has, by reports, been running a campaign built on today’s technology and a team approach; Trump seems to make gut decisions based on his own knowledge-base, and when it’s wrong, he goes right off the rails. Clinton has a substantial history and has had some incidents that can be read the wrong way. What we tend to ignore is that she gets investigated for them and has never even been put on trial. The worst is a hand slap, which suggests she makes honest mistakes.

Tonight I saw them mix it up, but given how often Trump was interrupting and running over the host, it appears Clinton wins again – Trump may not look as agitated, but his desperation to make the story his betrays him – and if he’s lying the fact-checkers will nail him to the wall. His base may not care, they may even think he won (even again), but the undecideds and the Clinton waverers – the voters he has to win – will find little here to persuade them that he’s the one to elect, especially if they do the research that a responsible adult should be doing, given our online resources of today.

And so that’s it for tonight. More palatable than the previous two debates, but I’m glad this is the last one.

When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Dan Arbell at Brooking’s Markaz covers the various options President Obama could pursue, ending with this:

Nevertheless, Obama will not leave the White House without addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue, one final time, as president.  An “Obama parameters” speech stands to be a safe option, leaving a mark, yet not tying the hands of the next administration. He could reiterate assertions he has made during his presidency, perhaps adding new elements. In his eulogy at Shimon Peres’ funeral in Jerusalem on September 30, he already called on the parties to continue the “unfinished business of peace.” An “Obama parameters” speech would likely include U.S recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and homeland for the Jewish people, as well as a (future) State of Palestine as homeland of the Palestinian people. It would call upon the parties to negotiate a border based on “the 1967 line(s), with mutually agreed swaps.” “different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.” It would probably call upon Israel to halt new settlement activity, and at the same time state that the Palestinians must stop violence and incitement. In this context, the president would probably encourage the moderate Sunni regimes in the region to take on a larger role in the Israeli-Palestinian process, and would encourage Israel and Arab countries to enter normalization talks based on the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002.

For Netanyahu, it’s a high stakes game. If Obama or his successor is perceived as having pushed him around, he may be out of a job.

Lawfare‘s founder Benjamin Wittes begins a series examining the aftermath of the upcoming election – no matter who wins:

The fundamental division in the United States today is not between Left and Right but between, on the one hand, a populist mob enraged by elites and fundamentally seeking to blow up Washington and, on the other hand, all of those people who—whether liberal or conservative in orientation—aren’t willing to throw out our fundamental values, ally ourselves with dictators abroad, demonize whole ethnic or religious groupings, and indulge the notion that things like expertise don’t actually matter in government. The breakdown of basic democratic norms seems to be spreading; over the weekend, a local GOP office in North Carolina was firebombed and vandalized with anti-Republican messages. The essential question we face as a political society right now is not whether we are or should be a liberal or conservative nation. It is whether we believe in rule of law institutions or mob rule led by demagogues. It’s not a whole lot more complicated than that.

And then the point which I think will be controversial – especially to the left wing of the Democrats – and interesting:

This coalition most emphatically includes every conservative, however much she may loath Clinton, who did not seriously consider voting for Trump and never let political expediency or social pressure sway her. It has pride of place for current officer holders like Sens. Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse and Lindsay Graham, who have refused to try to thread the needle, the threading of which has so deprived men like Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz of their public honor. And it particularly includes the world of conservative intellectuals and former officials—and there are a lot of them—who have never blinked at the need to reject Trump and Trumpism, whether they have endorsed Clinton or insisted on a vote of conscience. It is Clinton’s peculiar duty to represent these people, whether they accept her representation or not.

The immediate task of this broad pre-political coalition will and should be different depending on the outcome on November 8. In the event of a Clinton win, the need to sustain this pre-political coalition while the Republican Party recovers should fundamentally change our expectations of a Clinton presidency. As I’ll argue in the next installment of this series, it should push Clinton to run something far more like a government of national unity than a conventional Democratic administration.

The strength of this requirement will be in direct correlation  of the percentage of the votes won by Trump, in my view – the fewer votes Trump wins, the less strong this requirement. But as she may find she needs to run a unity government, we need to keep in mind that there are two chambers of Congress that will have their own ideas as well. While the Executive remains deeply influential and important, it’s Congress that makes the laws.

And you just want to sing about it … until your eyes just can’t focus anymore…