Unsightly Mental Blemishes

And, if this missive happened into your mail slot, did you buy the message and come to a slow boil, just as the author wants?

Clint Eastwood’s new movie, “The 15:17 to Paris,” is based on true events, where three American heroes stopped a terrorist on a Paris train in 2015, and it is causing the Hollywood crowd to go nuts. They just tried to put the kibosh on certain scenes that didn’t fit their liberal agenda, and boy, that made Eastwood mad. So, the famous actor and director who voted for President Donald Trump just slapped the leftists hard with a brutal surprise. You’re going to love it.

Yep, they hate him. They keep giving him Academy Award nominations, they hate him so much. For example,

… [Eastwood directed but did not act in] the mystery drama Mystic River (2003) and the war film Letters from Iwo Jima (2006), for which he received Academy Award nominations … [Wikipedia]

No black list for Clint, they hate him too much for that.

Clint Eastwood is an American icon and is probably the most famous conservative actor and director in Hollywood. Eastwood’s legendary work affords him the ability to pick and chose what type of movies he’ll make, and he loves making patriotic American movies.

His current film, “The 15:17 to Paris,” is in the final edits, but the Hollywood crowd hates it, and they tried to stop certain people from seeing it. The reason is the pro-American message it sends, described in this synopsis on Google: “In the early evening of August 21, 2015, the world watched in stunned silence as the media reported a thwarted terrorist attack on Thalys train #9364 bound for Paris—an attempt prevented by three courageous young Americans traveling through Europe.”
The summary adds, “Throughout the harrowing ordeal, their friendship never wavers, making it their greatest weapon and allowing them to save the lives of the more than 500 passengers on board. The heroic trio is comprised of Anthony Sadler, Oregon National Guardsman Alek Skarlatos, and U.S. Air Force Airman First Class Spencer Stone, who play themselves in the film.”

The movie stirs real patriotic emotion and honors the three American heroes who have military backgrounds. It shows an Islamic terrorist, who gains entry into France as a migrant, attempting to slaughter 500 people, with three Americans stopping him. This just isn’t the type of movie the Hollywood crowd makes, and they tried to screw Eastwood by giving it an “R” rating.

And how would this boob know? It’s not been released yet. But it’s important to the hate story this guy is trying to perpetuate (or perpetrate, if you like) to setup the tone of the movie before he throws strawmen into the candle flame, so of course the movie – which he hasn’t seen – stirs up patriotic emotion.

The reason they gave for the “R” rating was it showed “violence,” and this pissed off Clint Eastwood, who is making this film so teens could also see a movie with real American values. It was a cheap shot by the liberal Hollywood idiots, and Eastwood decided that wasn’t going to happen. The legendary star shocked the Hollywood crowd by taking on the rating board himself, something that never happens. And, not only did he take them on, he blew them away.

Which is all rather funny, because the Film board is NOT a liberal institution! It was, in fact, imposed on the film industry by conservatives who were terrified – perhaps deservedly so – over what might appear on a screen without an adult to intervene and screen a child’s viewing. So this

“Clint Eastwood has won an appeal to overturn the R rating originally assigned to his upcoming film, The 15:17 to Paris. Instead, it will be rated PG-13. According to a source, the R rating was given for the train attack scene at the center of the film, which the Classification and Rating Administration described as ‘a sequence of violence and bloody images,’” reported Hollywood Reporter.

They added, “The Classification and Rating Appeals Board says it reviews 800 to 900 films each year, with fewer than 12 ratings a year appealed. Eastwood represented his own film on behalf of Warner Bros., which opens the film in theaters on Feb. 9.”

can, along with being a contradiction of what this boob said before (“something that never happens”), be seen as a legacy of the conservative movement. It’s quite possible that concerns about violence are a historical liberal contribution to the Ratings board, but the fact remains: Ratings are a conservative institution, not a liberal institution.

And all this then is a lurid fantasy from our anonymous author, rightly disregarded by those who are willing to think about it:

Clint doesn’t just play a “tough guy” in his movies, he showed those Hollywood snakes that he really is a tough guy who won’t be pushed around. He’ll make any darn movie he wants to make, and they won’t stop him from making sure as many Americans as possible can see it.

In case you’re wondering how much the Hollywood crowd detests this movie for its pro-American military theme along with its anti-Islam, anti-migrant message, here’s how one Hollywood critic describes it: “But in the hands of someone like Eastwood, this [movie] reads like a recruitment ad for the military. Nothing diminishes the heroism of these three men, but in Eastwood’s hands, it looks like he’s coasting on their achievements to tell a story that will make some people think that they too can be heroes if they just head down to their local recruitment office.” [Source: Collider]

Because, as we all know, one critic is representative of an entire industry. Of snakes. Right? If you’re nodding, you have a problem.

In reality, it’s just someone critiquing a movie. I do that all the time. Some I trash, some I love. Heck, let’s turn this around: Director Clint is a conservative. Therefore, all Hollywood directors are conservatives, too. Right?

Well, we know better, so when we get to the next paragraph of this divisive little bit of trash, we know we’re getting the real message of this missive:

Well, let the haters hate. They loathe patriotism and they despise middle-class working Americans who love this country. They can’t stand Clint Eastwood who said that former President Barack Obama is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

Perhaps. They keep nominating him for Academy Awards, too. Cognitive dissonance? While I’m tempted to say, Yes, on the part of the author, I don’t really think he’s mentally ill. I just think there’s hatred of America going on – and he’s the one perpetrating it via this email. How did Benjamin Franklin put it?

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

And that remains true. There’s hatred going on here – but I think our Founding Father had a more clear vision of it than does this anonymous author.

Now, just for the sake of being a completist, let’s finish reading the letter:

Lastly, what in the hell is wrong with sending the message to teens that they too can be heroes? What is wrong with giving some kids the idea that joining the military is a heroic thing to do? This is exactly the kind of movie our young people need to see in today’s world that is filled with idiot celebrities pushing anti-American messages. If this movie inspires just one young American to join the military and make their life worthwhile, then Clint Eastwood’s film will be a resounding success.

At best, this should be addressed to the movie critic, and, at least to my eye, he was bringing an adult’s eye to the message of the movie. Still, it is foolish on my part to evaluate a critic’s review when I haven’t seen the movie, so at best, since no one reading this before Feb 9, 2018 will have seen it, it’s best to simply ignore it as tripe.

Just like the rest of this email.

When you’re outclassed, all you can do is sit down and take notes. And maybe get new equipment.

There’s more dancing than meets the eye in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994). It’s the story of two drag queens and a transsexual, traveling from Sydney to Alice Springs, Australia, in order to take a gig doing what they do best – lip-syncing and dancing to disco hits for audiences. They have a bus, which they name Priscilla, and it serves as transport, stage, and setting for their trip and their lives.

But the real dance here is their desperate tap to maintain their identities and sanity on the edge of a society that they need to survive, but has, at best, mixed feelings about them. Each has a story to tell.

Transsexual Bernadette’s search for a place and a husband (she begins the movie mourning her young husband’s death) takes her into a step mother role for the two drag queens, counseling, sometimes against her better judgment, them on the tricks of survival, both physical and emotional. She once had a long career as a ‘lay girl,’ and this is the resumption of this older woman’s career – and perhaps a return to her glory years.

Tick is called to Alice Springs on an ulterior motive, which he fears to reveal because it will lay bare a sordid past – at least in this company. A wife and child speak to the influence of traditional society, even on those despised by it, and a call for help and promise of a gig motivates him to leave home – and the support of the local community of what has come to be known as the LGBTQ – in order to pay fealty to that influence, even if unappreciated by most of society.

Adam is the young firebrand, embittered by society’s rejection and consequently embracing his lifestyle full on. One moment kicking society in the shins, the next retreating into the age-old tradition of alcohol and drugs to survive another night, Adam’s rejection by society is mirrored in his own rejection, spotty as it may be, of even his own companions. This is a drag queen with testosterone, and all the confusion that plagues young males of almost any species.

The trip isn’t just about covering geography, although that’s an important part of a trip across rugged, dangerous Australia. This trip is more about traveling the spectrum of society’s response to them as they are and wish to be – and how that threatens society. On one end of the dial, they experience a brutal rejection in a town where they invade – and win over – a local bar, only to find Priscilla terribly defaced with hate-filled words in the morning.

But, stranded by an engine failure in the midst of the Australian desert, they find the other end of the dial as they experience the simple acceptance of a local Aboriginal band who are throwing a party under the stars. This is an interesting scene, as the Aborigines are portrayed with eyes that are steady, accepting, and, in some nameless way, wise, while Adam, Tick, and Bernadette have eyes that are restless and, well, modern, darting about in ways signaling their concern about this society. But they volunteer to take part in the party by performing, and soon the disco beat of “I Will Survive” is echoing throughout the ancient hills as they gyrate in costumes to rival the Milky Way above, much to the amusement of the Aborigines.

And then the story-tellers add in a magical element: an Australian didgeridoo blends with the disco beat and Aboriginal chant to bring into the fold, into at least this society, our heroes and their way of life. The ancient, in the form of the Aborigines, has always had a whiff of ancient wisdom for Western ears, for good and bad, and the simplicity and deep bass pitch of the didgeridoo reinforces that impression, even if the actual tradition isn’t the ancient Western world. The blending of one of the newest of musical art forms with one of the oldest and, one would think, most incompatible of instruments, brings a lift to our protagonists, as they face the next day of an immobile bus. The scene is below, although extracted as it is from the full movie, the effect is diminished.

The Aborigines are not the only folks accepting of their lifestyle and choices, though, and Bob, the mechanic they find in a small town and who nursemaids their bus, symbolizes those parts of modern Western society who are transitioning from easy hatred to justifiable acceptance and, perhaps, understanding. Bob’s wife, though, indicates that there are still potholes on the way – and quite potent for our performers, who find that Bob’s wife’s performance is more popular than all three of them put together.

Eventually, they reach Alice Springs, do the gig, take care of the kid (a minor miracle in himself), and Bernadette decides a new challenge is in order for herself.

It’s an off-beat movie. There are no individual antagonists, only the resistance brought on by bigotry and xenophobia, and how it messes with the lives of the protagonists – and how they mess with it right back. In the process, we see how persistence, spirit, and creativity are the yeast in our lives – and how not all things come out as expected. And, fortunately, it also has fine technical aspects, and the acting is strong across the board.

Strongly Recommended. Even if you don’t like disco.

But North Korea? Yep, it’s available. From 38 North:

In late December, Will Scott, an American computer scientist who once taught at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), launched an ambitious effort to create an open library of North Korean software.

The site is called the “Korea Computer Center,” somewhat cheekily borrowing the name of Pyongyang’s main computer programming center. It features items from Scott’s collection of North Korean software, providing a rare opportunity for users to examine it first hand and learn more about the country’s IT infrastructure. It will also act as a depository for other users who might have North Korean software and devices to share information and deepen the open source understanding of the hardware and software ecosystem inside the country. …

However, much can be learned about North Korea’s domestic IT landscape from further examination of its software. For instance, the way that devices have been programmed to access the national intranet can tell us something about its structure and the security settings will provide detail on how much network-level surveillance takes place. For organizations interested in infiltrating North Korea with information, such data can be very valuable.

For the adventurous. If I was twenty years younger I’d probably delve…

When a partisan is hired as a journalist, it can upset an organization. Or so says Eric Wemple of the eponoymous blog on WaPo, as he discusses the performance of John Solomon, a recent hire at The Hill:

Solomon is among the best-traveled journalists around the Beltway. He has worked at the Associated Press, The Washington Post, the Washington Times, the Center for Public Integrity, Newsweek/The Daily Beast, the Washington Guardian, Circa and The Hill. As he moves around, he leaves an interesting trail for media reporters to follow. Last summer, for instance, Solomon announced that he was jumping from Circa, a general news site owned by the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group, to The Hill. “The Hill’s spectacular rise as the leading outlet for political news coverage speaks to a far-reaching vision for digitally-powered growth,” Solomon said in a statement. “Joining The Hill team at this time, when the outlet is seeing just the first fruits of that vision, is an incredibly exciting opportunity. I’m looking forward to working with some of today’s most talented journalists to create a new political genre for the mobile generation, providing unmatched, non-partisan political news and bipartisan shows in the digital formats they love.”

Employees at The Hill would take issue with the “non-partisan” promise. According to sources consulted by this blog, there’s frustration that Solomon appears so tight with Hannity, the prime-time Trump apologist who has admitted straight-up that he’s no journalist. Over the past three months, Solomon has turned in a dozen or so appearances on “Hannity.” The TV hits may be good for traffic at TheHill.com, though the implications for up-and-coming journalists at the publication are less salutary: Their employer comes off as a propaganda mill.

I’m not sure what to make of it – but, according to Eric, some of Solomon’s worst stories have electrified the conservative media world to no good effect. I’ll be interested in hearing how this all comes out in the wash – if it ever comes out at all.

Are you wondering why North Korea has suddenly warmed up diplomatic ties with South Korea? Stephen Blank of 38 North has an answer for you:

Trump administration officials insist that the “military option” is needed to make North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons because, according to National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, it is unacceptable for North Korea to possess a single nuclear weapon that could strike the United States. Under these circumstances, and since the DPRK’s government has never been suicidal, it should have been predictable that once the regime proclaimed itself satisfied with its nuclear deterrent that it would seek outside political opportunities to defuse the tension. This is exactly what occurred when Kim Jong Un, in his 2018 New Year’s speech, launched a diplomatic initiative towards South Korea. Equally unsurprisingly, the two sides after only one day of negotiations agreed for North Korea to participate in the Olympics, reinstated the hotline at the 38^th parallel, and agreed to further military-to-military talks.

This is the North Koreans cooling off a situation in which they’ve taken advantage of an inexperienced American leadership, obtained their goal, and are now in the end game. Stephen goes further:

… we are repeatedly told that North Korea and its leader cannot be deterred, that the regime will collapse if pushed hard enough, and that Kim Jong Un is crazy and irrational. Yet there is no evidence for any of these arguments—or at least none that has been offered to Congress or the public. On the contrary, claiming that deterrence won’t work is belied by 65 years of prudential North Korean statecraft that demonstrates the regime’s understandings of the limits it cannot cross. And despite the perfervid moralism of those who still believe that we can simply crush evil in the world by dint of our superior virtue (another argument used in favor of invading Iraq), preventive war against North Korea lacks both strategic and moral justification given the number of ROK, US, North Korean, and possibly Japanese casualties likely to occur during an armed conflict and probable Chinese intervention. Moreover, the signs that we are about to launch a preventive war would be so numerous, visible, and time consuming that they would forfeit surprise and could provoke Pyongyang to attack first.

Right. This is the conservative strategy of frightening the base. The GOP thinks it still has military cred, and perhaps the conservative base still believes it – despite the blunders of the Bush Administration in Iraq, where they never should have gone, and Afghanistan, where it’s increasingly clear that we probably should have left as soon as possible, evacuating any Afghanis who wished to leave with us.

But this also caught my attention:

Finally, we have for too long chased the illusion that we could induce Russia or China to pull our chestnuts out of the fire when over a decade of their policies shows that they blame Washington more than Pyongyang for this crisis and regard North Korea as an asset to their policy of reducing US power and presence in Asia. They may oppose a North Korea’s nuclear program because it allows Pyongyang to escape their control and conduct an independent policy that could trigger a war. But they have covertly and sometimes overtly abetted its proliferation for years and continue doing so even while supporting sanctions to curb North Korea’s independence.

Stephen then explores fairly conventional explanations for Chinese behavior. I’d like to move a little bit outside of those conventions, informed by recent Chinese ambitions in artificial intelligence and other areas, as well as the historical context of China.

We may not generally recognize it, but we remain in a contest of governmental systems. The collapse of the Soviet Union, widely heralded as total victory for the West, more or less ignored the sleeping monster that was Communist China. Well, the monster is awakening – they have a bustling consumer sector, their rural poor are moving into the cities where they can be better utilized by the government, and basically the war is on.

A cardinal tenet of Western thought on Communism is that it cannot provide for its citizens – thus the empty shelves which became emblematic of the Soviet regime. Yet, in China, that’s increasingly a false observation. But China doesn’t want to fight an actual war with the United States, it just wants to move it out of the way as it snaps up its traditional objects of desire, such as islands in the South China Sea. How to do it?

Harass the United States through client states, especially in this period of critically inferior American leadership. There should not be one iota of doubt that Trump and his team simply do not have what it takes to run an effective foreign policy that can block China and Russia. It doesn’t matter whether the President is an amateur or if he’s actually been compromised by the Russians – he’s just not got what it takes.

So how can China take advantage of it? By letting North Korea run wild, basically. North Korean defiance in combination with the doomsday jargon of the Trump Administration leaves the liberal democracy of the United States looking less than dewy-fresh, and other countries will take notice. The Philippines has already elected an autocrat who openly boasts of his crimes. How much more will the world tilt against the liberal democracy approach in favor of autocratic regimes such as those in Russia and, yes, China, just because we elected an inferior President?

We’ll have to wait to find out.

A reader remarks on the character of Senator Flake and his cohort:

The problem might be many or most members of the body he was addressing (including himself?) might not really give a damn about democracy, as long as they “have theirs.” When you’re wealthy and powerful, who needs democracy?

I suppose it’s possible, but, if so, we’re probably doomed. Nor have I seen any formal moves to extinguish democracy, only the gutter full of informal moves to suppress those who might vote “the wrong way”.

I suspect it has more to do with funding, oddly enough. While many members are wealthy, the requirements of a successful run for Senate are overwhelming for a relatively small millionaire^[1]. But the Mercers and the Kochs have enough billions to finance these second-raters several times over – and so they dance to their tune. Add in those conservatives horrified at the advances of the past years – I suspect Flake falls into that category – and we see the result today. The donors set a deadline for ACA replacement and changes to the tax structure, and off the bunnies went, eager to satisfy their masters.

I wonder how they feel about public financing of elections. Leave the donors out in the cold. I suppose SCOTUS would frown on it, though.

¹The days of Senator Proxmire (D-WI), who served 1957 to 1989, and his fabled $250 budget for re-election are long gone. Hmmmm, don’t see a reference for that anywhere. I remember reading about it during his career.

Katherine Martinko on Treehugger.com reports on a new retail model for clothing:

The fast fashion industry is notoriously bad for the environment. It is a top consumer of resources and energy, and a main source of landfill waste. Many eco-minded shoppers have sworn off fast fashion because they do not feel comfortable supporting an industry that treats clothing as disposable.

For the shoppers who make this decision, the only real alternatives are thrift stores and independent, eco-friendly labels, both of which are great, but have some downsides — namely, the limited selection at thrift stores and the high price tags on sustainable brands.

Now, however, some innovative entrepreneurs have come up with alternative ways to support the fashion industry. The following three companies specialize in sharing and borrowing high-quality fashion items through subscription services, which is exactly what the recent report on fashion by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation said needs to happen. Learn how they do it.

As the population swells and those who are on top continue to swill down the most in resources, those of us who are not must find ways to cope – and this seems to be one of them. Rental clothing reduces the number of clothes society must produce to clothe us while increasing our closet space.

And then they make it feel cool, as they must. And should.

Steve Benen chronicles the history of threats of government shutdown due to funding, as we’re facing today. I was unaware that it was that extensive. WaPo has a comment from the governing party:

“We have one real responsibility here, and that’s to keep the government funded,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee. “There’s a lot of stuff we want to do or we’d like to do, but there’s one thing we must do and that’s to pass a budget and keep the government funded. And it is very frustrating that simple, basic task has become such a herculean effort.”

There’s a clue in Representative Dent’s lament. Then, from the opposition:

Added Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.): “I think it makes us all look terrible and it calls into question whether a democratic republic like the one we live in can actually govern itself in a predictable way.”

As a software engineer, sometimes it really pays to go back to basics when working on a problem, and I think perhaps it’s worth doing this hear. Keep in mind that a significant problem in the House has been the intransigence of the Freedom Caucus, a band of Tea Party right-wing extremists who were instrumental in the oustering of Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) from his post as Speaker, which led to the resignation of his seat. There general philosophy is to cut government spending.

Senator Bennet’s woes concern the lack of predictability of Congress. Predictability relates to the inputs to some process and how the process produces the outputs. What are the inputs on Capitol Hill? Well, for Bennet, it’s Democrats and Republicans and their respective agendas.

But I don’t think so.

For me, it’s implicit in the previous paragraphs, and close observers of Congress should be aware of this. It’s Democrats, Republicans, and the Tea Party. They may be cruising under the flag of the Republicans, but their agenda, particularly financial, is at divergence with the GOP. They are the fiercely extremist-conservative. Like any group of people, they do share certain views with the Republicans. No doubt they share views with the Democrats.

But in the end, if you want to be able to predict the results of Congress, you need to understand that the reality is that we’re currently in a three-party system, and the minority Tea Party holds a lot of power. This is not only because the Republicans and Democrats are far apart in their set of goals, leaving the Tea Party with leverage when the Republicans are a little short, but also because the Tea Party is currently under false colors. People don’t understand that the Tea Party is arguably its own Party and not just a faction of the GOP. Currently they have the resources of the GOP at their disposal, if only they can get their candidates on the ballot under the flag of the GOP – and, so far, they have been very good at that. They’ve toppled Boehner, Representative Eric Cantor (R-VA), who was House Majority Leader when he was ousted in a primary by Tea Party member Dave Brat, and many others.

It would probably be a lot healthier for everyone – but the Tea Party – if the GOP just kicked them out and made them run under their own name.

And their own results.

A reader is discouraged at the blame game in Washington in connection with the possible government shutdown:

The GOP got its message out first and more loudly, and its adherents are more likely to believe that message. So it doesn’t matter that the truth is the GOP is screwing the children worse than the Democrats; the GOP has again won the propaganda war in the minds of the largely illiterate populace of this country.

Later:

Yup, and MPR reported this morning that if the government shuts down, it will be the minority Dems who caused it. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

So the reader appears, inadvertently, to be in the same camp as MPR.

What’s to be done? Direct outcry, I think. Has the reader called up MPR and complained vociferously? Perhaps made it onto one of the several talk-shows to strongly suggest that the MPR reporters should get both sides of the story? Share posts such as mine on Facebook?

Sometimes the truth must be shouted from the rooftops.

I am not familiar with McClatchy, but they have an interesting report on a new FBI investigation:

The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy.

FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said.

It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections.

It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the news comes as Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s sweeping investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, including whether the Kremlin colluded with Trump’s campaign, has been heating up.

Interesting, did I say? More like fascinating. This has the potential, at least at its extremes, to explain some of the most ridiculous behavior to have recently graced the American landscape. After all, sowing the fertile American fields with, well frankly, batshit crazy nutcase opinions that cause disruptions in an otherwise strong American society would certainly work to the Russian oligarchs’ advantage, now wouldn’t it? Is the leadership of the NRA just a bunch of sock-puppets for the Russians? That would be an extreme example of the subversion of the NRA, but it’s not completely outside of the realm of possibility.

Reticulate:

1. in the form of a network or having a network of parts
   a reticulate leaf
2. resembling, covered with, or having the form of a net
   verb (rɪˈtɪkjʊˌleɪt)
3. to form or be formed into a net [Collins English Dictionary]

Noted in “The Merits of Supporting 702 Reauthorization (Despite Worries About Trump and the Rule of Law),” Jack Goldsmith and Susan Hennessey, Lawfare:

They know that 702 is deeply embedded in a reticulate legal system run mostly by career public servants and supervised by all three branches of government, including numerous agencies in the executive branch, the congressional intelligence committees and the life-tenured members of the FISA court. In short, the answer to Greenwald’s puzzle about Trump critics voting for 702 reauthorization is that the NSA and FBI are remarkably immune from inappropriate presidential meddling.

An interesting, enlightening usage.

From martin hislop of designboom:

toyota’s ‘GR super sports’ concept is based on the world endurance championship (WEC) ‘TS050’ hybrid race car, and the presentation signals that the 986-hp twin-turbo, direct injection, 2.4-liter V6 hybrid road car will soon become a reality, ensuring that the mclaren ‘senna’, aston martin ‘valkyrie’ and mercedes-AMG ‘project one’ hypercar, will each have some serious competition. the japanese-automaker has released minimal details at this point, but has specified the power of the hybrid drivetrain has as 986 hp (735 kW).

Really? 986 HP and it’s a hybrid? Still, I wouldn’t mind taking one for a spin in the summer:

Via designboom

Jack Goldsmith and Susan Hennessey on Lawfare have a response to the concerns some privacy and civil rights advocates have about the update to FISA‘s section 702:

No member of Congress has been more critical of President Trump’s rule-of-law difficulties than [Rep. Adam Schiff]. He is the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee and one of the most knowledgeable and informed members of Congress on intelligence matters. Schiff has not hesitated to be critical of intelligence community practices when he sees fit. He has watched the 702 program up close over many years in classified settings in his oversight role. He knows well its virtues and its warts. We suppose it is possible that Schiff would vote to give the president, whose integrity he so obviously worries about, vast powers to spy on Americans in an abusive way. Given everything Schiff has publicly said and done over the last year, however, a much more plausible inference is that he knows not only how valuable the 702 program is but also how law-constrained and carefully controlled and monitored it is. He and the other Democrats who support reauthorization, and the many Republicans who worry a lot about President Trump yet support reauthorization, have a high degree of confidence that the National Security Agency and the U.S. intelligence community more broadly cannot and will not abuse the 702 tool even if they harbor concerns that Trump might desire to do so. They know that 702 is deeply embedded in a reticulate legal system run mostly by career public servants and supervised by all three branches of government, including numerous agencies in the executive branch, the congressional intelligence committees and the life-tenured members of the FISA court. In short, the answer to Greenwald’s puzzle about Trump critics voting for 702 reauthorization is that the NSA and FBI are remarkably immune from inappropriate presidential meddling.

Which is interesting, if not organic, by which I mean they’re relying on another authority to prove their point, rather than proving it from the substance of section 702. Given that it would undoubtedly be in unintelligible (for me) legalese, I’m not precisely dismissive of Jack and Susan, simply a trifle uncomfortable – which is the inevitable role of the interested, but uninitiated, audience. They go on:

When Sen. Elizabeth Warren points to the surveillance abuses directed at Martin Luther King Jr. to argue against 702, she actually highlights the opposite point: the massive transparency, both voluntary and involuntary, over the past few years about how Section 702 operates shows that it has not been abused for domestic political spying and implies that the 40 years of post-Hoover legal reforms are largely a success (though not without hiccups). The fact that President Trump has not focused his abusive energies on intelligence collection is a testament to the efficacy of the legal and cultural constraints on electronic surveillance. Instead, Trump has, as our colleague Benjamin Wittes predicted long ago, focused those energies on trying to manipulate Justice Department law enforcement practices, where the fabric of regulation guaranteeing independence from political manipulation is much less dense.

It’s always fun to use someone’s words against them. The following paragraph, though, sort of highlights one of the more uncomfortably extreme possibilities of Trump’s occupancy of the Oval Office:

Another testament to the value and integrity of Section 702 is that the democratic process worked well despite irresponsible interference from the top of the executive branch. Ordinarily, the president is a crucial champion of surveillance authorities. President Trump, however, offered gift after gift to Section 702 opponents. In promulgating falsehoods about how the program worked and about how his predecessors used surveillance tools more generally, and in continually insulting and undermining the intelligence community, Trump harmed his national security team’s reauthorization efforts. His unpresidential behavior culminated in a rogue tweet last week the morning the House was set to take up the bill, setting his aides and members of Congress scrambling to do damage control and to explain to the commander in chief that he was tweeting against his own administration’s position. In the past, passing major surveillance legislation has required an all-executive push. The fact that it managed to succeed this time, despite the president effectively pushing in the other direction, says something about the intensity and unity of the belief across the executive branch about the program’s value and legitimacy.

The image of a thoughtful, serious President.

And leaves me wondering if that rogue tweet really was a rogue tweet, or a subtle attempt to disassemble the national security apparatus which is just one part of the national defense strategy assembled by conventional Republicans and Democrats over the last few decades. I’d prefer to think it was simply a paranoid, amateur President shooting his damn-fool mouth off once again.

Still, not being conversant with legalese nor the entire FISA landscape – that’s why we have Congresscritters, but need them to be responsible compromisers, not ideological assholes – I have no real opinion on the matter. Jack and Susan’s point concerning the sunset clause (not quoted), however, strikes me as being exceedingly wise and sensitive to the illegal surveillance debacles undertaken by the state security apparatus controlled by Hoover. If the rest of the bill – or at least section 702 – is as carefully considered as is the sunset clause, then we may be on the right track.

The United States has a long tradition of current Presidents not criticizing their predecessor(s). This is an important tradition both within and without the country, as it promotes harmony between otherwise antagonistic political parties and intra-party factions, as well as presenting a seemingly coherent and smooth transition from one Administration to the next.

But when we return to sanity, how will the next President handle the inferior position in which Trump will leave the United States? I stumbled across this article in the Los Angeles Times:

China has now assumed the mantle of fighting climate change, a global crusade that the United States once led. Russia has taken over Syrian peace talks, also once the purview of the American administration, whose officials Moscow recently deigned to invite to negotiations only as observers.

France and Germany are often now the countries that fellow members of NATO look to, after President Trump wavered on how supportive his administration would be toward the North Atlantic alliance.

And in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the U.S., once the only mediator all sides would accept, has found itself isolated after Trump’s decision to declare that the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

In his wide-ranging speech on national security last week, Trump highlighted what he called the broadening of U.S. influence throughout the world.

But one year into his presidency, many international leaders, diplomats and foreign policy experts argue that he has reduced U.S. influence or altered it in ways that are less constructive. On a range of policy issues, Trump has taken positions that disqualified the United States from the debate or rendered it irrelevant, these critics say.

Many of the maneuvers and stumbles of the Trump Administration will need to be repudiated, inside and outside the country. I hope the Democratic Party is having a quiet discussion of the topic, because it’ll be important to present a united front as well as  a coherent explanation of the strategy, whatever it might be.

The GOP, on the other hand, is too much in the grip of Trump to actually consider having such a discussion on a formal basis, although possibly more moderate members talk about it over dinner. The rest of the Party, however, is still convinced they’ll be holding on to power over the long term with the Party in its current extremist form.

I think the proper strategy is simply to admit the error of electing Trump by blaming him. Within the United States, it sends a firm message that these many stumbles are directly connected to Trump, and it’ll be important to attribute many of those mistakes to his deceit and even self-delusion, as well as his lack of curiosity. Trying to attribute his mistakes to being an amateur or someone from the private sector would send a message incompatible with the basic mythos of the United States, that being any kid can grow up to President of the United States. One cannot rule anyone out, but it’s acceptable to say You’d better be ready to study your fanny off! to anyone thinking of running for the position – making ludicrous promises and lying like it’s an art form are not acceptable approaches to campaigning and governing, and that message needs to be emphasized.

Outside the United States, it’ll be an implicit acknowledgment of the mistake our Democracy has made with the election of Trump to the Presidency, an apology to friends – and a warning to those countries’ leaders who considered Trump a role model.

Steve Benen’s annoyed with GOP cynicism about children:

With time running out before a government shutdown, House GOP leaders added a six-year extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program to their stopgap spending bill, along with a series of tax breaks intended to undermine the Affordable Care Act. The House Republican leadership published this stunning tweet yesterday:

“Children’s lives are at stake. It’s time for our friends across the aisle to stop playing games with CHIP funding.”

It followed House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) telling reporters that it’s “unconscionable” for Democrats to oppose CHIP funding. Several GOP lawmakers held a press conference accusing congressional Dems of failing to support “American children.”

I’ve been following politics for quite a while. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen political tactics this cynical.

The appropriate response? Here’s my take on turning my opponent’s Check! into my Checkmate! of them.

Mr. Speaker, your attempt to destroy the Affordable Care Act, replacing it with nothing, would harm far more children than a short delay in continued funding of the CHIP program. We will not condemn the poor children of America to inferior health care simply to satisfy your ideological posturing.

And then mail that response to every single household in the Speaker’s district. If he protests, invite him to return the favor – while noting that the Democrat’s are proud of their policies and tactics. Why isn’t he?

Today we happened to notice the word ‘catfishing‘ in a TV listing description, and, being unaware of the term, I looked it up. Cool definition, so I figure I’ll make it Word of the Day.

Except I’m suspicious.

Yep, turns out I’ve already used it as a Word Of The Day entry.

TWICE.

Sheesh.

V&A dundee , designed by kengo kuma, will be opening in September 2018, and designboom has the pics:

via designboom

For the next pic:

the façade comprises 2,500 cast stone panels

via designboom

Nice facade. Follow the link above for more, mostly exterior shots.

From WaPo‘s The Fix:

Had [Senator McConnell] said only once that he needed the White House to provide more guidance, it could perhaps be dismissed as a helpful hint. But in back-to-back sentences, McConnell makes crystal-clear that he doesn’t think Trump has enunciated this very basic piece of information, even as we’re weeks into negotiations. And he seems to sympathize with the idea that lawmakers reached a compromise that they thought would meet with Trump’s approval, only to have Trump renege. Trump, after all, said the following last week: “I think my positions are going to be what the people in this room come up with” and, “I’m not going to say, ‘Oh, gee, I want this,’ or ‘I want that.’ I will be signing it.”

Senator McConnell, President Trump’s confusion and tendency to blow with the wind should be all you need to know that this is a man not competent for the office. If he was stubborn as a mountain, even in defense of a bad policy position, we could at least see him as just being wrong.

But this is bad for the United States.

Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) continues to be an enigma. The retiring Senator delivered a speech on the floor of the Senate which, I’m happy to say, echoes two of the themes of this blog, and in language eloquent to its purpose. From the CNN transcript:

Mr. President [I believe this is a traditional reference to the President of the Senate, not President Trump – Hue], near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” So, from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth. The founders were visionary in this regard, understanding well that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America.

… our freedom has been predicated on truth. A dive right to the heart of the matter, isn’t it, the recognition that the farther we permit ourselves to stray from truth in search of egotistical fantasies, the harder we’re going to crash to the ground – eventually. And if we crash hard enough, we may lose everything.

And he follows up with another pointed observation:

As the distinguished former member of this body, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, famously said: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” During the past year, I am alarmed to say that Senator Moynihan’s proposition has likely been tested more severely than at any time in our history.

It is for that reason that I rise today, to talk about the truth, and its relationship to democracy. For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last.

And so he connects the importance of an adherence – a slavish adherence, to borrow a phrase – to truth and reality, to sustaining the democracy so important to our lives.

Connected, but separate, he then connects the fake news epithet, vile and self-centered as it is, with danger to our democracy:

Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase “enemy of the people,” that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of “annihilating such individuals” who disagreed with the supreme leader.

This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president’s party. For they are shameful, repulsive statements. And, of course, the president has it precisely backward — despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot’s enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn’t suit him “fake news,” it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.

I dare say that anyone who has the privilege and awesome responsibility to serve in this chamber knows that these reflexive slurs of “fake news” are dubious, at best. Those of us who travel overseas, especially to war zones and other troubled areas around the globe, encounter members of US based media who risk their lives, and sometimes lose their lives, reporting on the truth. To dismiss their work as fake news is an affront to their commitment and their sacrifice.

And for those who would still mutter about the mainstream media, he makes a key observation:

Of course, a major difference between politicians and the free press is that the press usually corrects itself when it gets something wrong. Politicians don’t.

A phenomenon about which I blogged just today here.

So why is Senator Flake an enigma? His Trump score, supplied by FiveThirtyEight as of this writing, remains 90.7%. He has not, as far as I know, rejected a single judicial nominee sent to the Senate by the Trump Administration. So while I cannot help but applaud his words, his actions speak of a continued allegiance to the very Party which sent a man, whom he obviously despises, to the White House. He would not betray his conservative principles by voting against poorly written legislation such as the AHCA, which failed, or the Tax change bill, which passed, and certainly not by rejecting those judicial nominees who are obviously unqualified for the judiciary.

But he didn’t.

His may be a call to an important bulwark of our nation, currently under attack by a defective, self-interested Executive, but his failure to bolster his concerns with actions is deeply disappointing.

And go read his speech. It’s worth a read if you don’t understand why not everyone doesn’t condemn the mainstream media. And it’s not, as our ancestors might have called it, a stemwinder.

Pernicious:

Having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way.
‘the pernicious influences of the mass media’ [Oxford English Dictionaries]

Noted in GOP Senator Jeff Flake’s speech to the Senate today, of which a transcript may be found here. The relevant passage:

But many untruths are not at all trivial — such as the seminal untruth of the president’s political career – the oft-repeated conspiracy about the birthplace of President Obama. Also not trivial are the equally pernicious fantasies about rigged elections and massive voter fraud, which are as destructive as they are inaccurate — to the effort to undermine confidence in the federal courts, federal law enforcement, the intelligence community and the free press, to perhaps the most vexing untruth of all — the supposed “hoax” at the heart of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Boko Haram is a jihadist organization located in Nigeria, Chad, and nearby nations. One of the most violent terrorist organizations, it’s suppression has proven difficult. On Lawfare, Professor Alex Thurston has 5 myths concerning Boko Haram that he’d like to dispel, the most discouraging of which is this one:

Myth #5: Americans Know How to Defeat Boko Haram

Americans, especially the U.S. government, have been full of suggestions for how Nigeria can and should defeat Boko Haram: Increase socio-economic development programming in northeastern Nigeria. End human rights abuses by security forces. Conduct counterinsurgency, rather than counterterrorism. Involve neighboring militaries in the conflict. Deradicalize prisoners. Talk to Boko Haram. Don’t talk to Boko Haram. …

If Nigerian politicians and military officers, absorbing lectures from their American counterparts about counterinsurgency, socioeconomic development, and human rights, quietly raise an eyebrow, they could be forgiven their skepticism. Sixteen years into the war in Afghanistan, can the United States claim undisputed expertise in counterinsurgency? With the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights recently expressing shock at the conditions he saw in rural Alabama, can America claim perfection at socioeconomic development? With recurring allegations about U.S. military abuses of human rights from Somalia to Yemen to Afghanistan, can America claim that its hands are always clean? Nigerians are not stupid or ill-informed: They watch the news, too.

As I wrote above, the Nigerian state has failed, so far, to defeat Boko Haram—but there are no guarantees that American experts, confidently offering prescriptions from afar (or near, from an increasing variety of coordination cells, special operations deployments, and NGOs), would do any better, even if their prescriptions were followed to the letter. Obviously it’s good for Americans, Europeans, Nigerians, and others to keep thinking about potential solutions. But the solutions are just that: potential. Nigeria is not an equation to be solved like some math problem in a workbook, where the answer is evident if you know how to find it—rather, Nigeria is one of the most complicated countries in the world. Any resolution to the Boko Haram conflict will require a good deal of experimentation, trial and error, and even luck. It may also take quite a long time.

I’ve been hearing about Boko Haram for years, between violent raids and the mass kidnapping of young women and girls. Their defeat is not likely to come from battlefield advice from Americans, but from within their own culture – understanding what and why those of Boko Haram are motivated to engage in these actions.

And to look into how resource scarcity may be playing into this situation.

Or they just are fairly dumb. Philip Bump of WaPo helpfully points out the errors of Fox & Friends of Fox News when evaluating some poll data from Survey Monkey:

Over the course of 2017, SurveyMonkey conducted 605,172 interviews of Americans. A quirk of statistical analysis is that the precision of poll results from a survey of 605,000 people vs. only 1,000 people is small; the former has essentially no margin of error, but the latter has a margin of error of only three points. This is why most pollsters don’t bother polling hundreds of thousands of people. Why spend the money when your estimate is good with far fewer people?

Those 605,172 interviews, though, were conducted over the course of the year …

On Tuesday morning’s “Fox and Friends,” the hosts were discussing a survey showing that most 2017 coverage of Trump’s presidency was negative. Kilmeade interjected with some good news.

“Believe it or not,” he said, “through all this negative coverage, they did a survey of 600,000 people about how black America views this president. His numbers have actually doubled in approval. It’s still low, it’s around 25 percent, but it’s doubled since the election.”

Okay. So. First of all, they didn’t do a survey of 600,000 black Americans. Second of all, Kilmeade clearly thinks that saying “600,000” adds heft to the results, which, as we noted above, it doesn’t. Third, Trump’s approval numbers haven’t doubled, for the reasons above — and then some.

Approval numbers necessarily start only when a president takes office; after all, how are you going to evaluate the job performance of someone who doesn’t yet hold a job? Gallup has asked Americans their views of Trump’s job as president since his first week in office, allowing us to compare approval ratings among black Americans from the earliest point to the most recently available ratings (through the end of 2017).

Trump’s approval among black Americans fell nine points from January to December. Rather than doubling, his approval rating among those Americans was actually more than cut in half, dropping from 15 percent to 6 percent.

Philip continues onward, disassembling Kilmeade as well as Neil Munro of Breitbart. And, you know, this isn’t opinion, or he says she says. This is statistics, cold hard math. Anyone can do it. But it appears Fox News and Breitbart think their readers are too lazy or ignorant to actually check up on the reasoning skills of these news outlets.

Which is right in line with their history.

Saccades:

When you move your head and eyes to scan a scene, your eyes are incapable of moving smoothly across it and seeing everything. Instead, you see in the image in a series of very quick jumps (called saccades) with very short pauses (called fixations) and it is only during the pauses that an image is processed.

Your brain fills in the gaps with a combination of peripheral vision and an assumption that what is in the gaps must be the same as what you see during the pauses. [“What an RAF pilot can teach us about being safe on the road,” LondonCyclist]

[h/t Chris Johnson]

Did you hear about the study that supposedly shows that almost all terrorists are foreign born? It appears that this might be a controversial conclusion. Simon Maloy noted a small-print caveat, but since he put his finding on Twitter, which is virtually unreadable, I’ll quote Steve Benen on Maddowblog instead:

Simon Maloy, for example, took note of the Trump administration’s methodology. From the second full page of the newly released report: “This information includes both individuals who committed offenses while located in the United States and those who committed offenses while located abroad, including defendants who were transported to the United States for prosecution. It does not include individuals convicted of offenses relating to domestic terrorism, nor does it include information related to terrorism-related convictions in state courts.”

Oh. So the point of the report appears to be bolster Trump World’s argument that those concerned about terrorism on American soil should necessarily be concerned with immigrants and foreigners. After all, as the document put it, approximately 73 percent of those convicted of international terrorism-related charges in U.S. federal courts “were foreign-born.”

But that includes convicted terrorists who weren’t in the United States until we brought them here for trial and it excludes instances of domestic terrorism – which, as we know, is often at least as dangerous to the American public as international terrorism.

From the Department of Justice:

“This report reveals an indisputable sobering reality—our immigration system has undermined our national security and public safety,” said Attorney General Sessions.

It’s hard to decide if Sessions is trying to bolster the xenophobic position which resonates with President Trump’s base, or if he’s attempting to gloss over any and all Christian terrorist actions on American soil – of which there’ve been a few, mostly resulting in the assassination of doctors who perform abortions.

But the motivation, as base as it is, and as poorly as it reflects on AG Sessions’ intellectual and moral qualities, is irrelevant to a consequence not mentioned by Benen or Maloy, and that’s this: If this report is not withdrawn and/or repudiated, in particular by the AG himself, then it’ll become part of the intellectual record of the United States, meaning that its apparent flaws will be ignored, and its conclusions to be congruent with the reality.

And then? Policies will be implemented on it. And the taint of the study will transfer to those policies, as is ever the case. Soon we’ll have a tanks all over the southern and northern borders and hordes of police checking every incoming plane and ship, while scant dollars will be dedicated to the problems of domestic terrorism. And then we’ll wonder why we don’t seem to be as safe as we should be, and no one will think to look at the critical flaws of the report that started it all.

Unless we protest this now.