Monday, February 20, 2017

“The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.”

Donald Trump

Between 1965 and 2011, the official poverty rate was essentially flat, while the government spending per person on poverty programs rose by more than 900% after inflation.

Peter Cove

Amnesty International Boss Endorses “Jihad in self-defence”

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

We are a nation of assimilated immigrants.

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

If you wonder about the relevance of the aphorisms I use, contemplate that Amnesty International, with UN bureaucrats, provides much of the vetting of refugees. You may judge their rate of success by those admitted to Europe; we don’t collect statistics on crimes of refugees in the US other than terrorist acts, and the media seldom reports it lest you draw improper and politically incorrect inferences. The Swedes seem to have learned to live with it, but you can never be sure when Vikings have plain had enough. One might say that of Germans, or Poles, or for that matter the French, at least as late as 1789.

We do know that crime rates have risen in neighborhoods where some immigrant refugee communities have been established, but with few exceptions we don’t have reliable statistics on their origin or for matter the crimes themselves unless they are pretty spectacular.

Acts of terrorism are reported, but the previous administration tended to label those acts workplace violence, not terrorism, no matter the slogans chanted by the perpetrators. This is called in many J schools “responsible journalism.”

Note than poverty is apparently not terminatable, despite exponential spending on poverty program. Note also that one of the major costs of poverty programs is administrative personnel, and if they actually succeeded in ending poverty (or even substantially reducing it, as we saw way back in the work for welfare days) they would be pitting themselves out of their jobs; they may have mixed emotions about that.

And I doubt I need remind you that education costs have increased exponentially without much improvement (if any) since Nobel Prize winner Glenn T. Seaborg concluded that the school system was indistinguishable from an act of war against the American people; particularly the impoverished and unskilled; in my experience they learn little in school that anyone would pay them to do. Many do learn good civic and work habits but that is generally an extracurricular activity.

I weary of Firefox but I have yet to bite the bullet and eliminate it. If anyone from Mozilla is listening, please add one feature: a prominently displayed easy way to save a session, so that when the inevitable crash comes – not always caused by Firefox – it restores a configuration you recently saved instead of some arbitrary session weeks – perhaps months! – old. Rebuilding my system of windows monthly I can take. Weekly even. But daily is too often to find windows I closed months ago back, often talking to me. Assume your automatic configuration saves don’t work properly and at least give us a chance to do it manually. And yes, it has done it to me three days straight now: I will open some link that overwhelms Firefox. It endlessly tries to open that stubborn link. It responds to no commands, or takes minutes to respond. The only remedy is to use Session Manager to close Firefox and reopen it. That works but it offers me restoration sessions of weeks to months ago, not yesterday’s, or even last good session. Is this considered a good joke on your users? Or is it that you actually have a way to save a session configuration and you are proud of how well you hide instructions on how to do it? I’d really like to know.

While I am at it, Microsoft, please tell me how to get back to the spell and grammar check system used fairly recently, in which grammar suggestions are marked with a blue line, spelling with red. Yes, I meant “actually have” in the previous paragraph, and for that matter I intended to say “fairly recently” earlier in this sentence, thank you. I understand that in both cases I might be using a needless word. I even appreciate being reminded to think about this. But neither is a spelling error and neither deserves a red line for instant correction. I have enough problems having to look at the keyboard when I type, then looking up at the screen to see a sea of red marking errors I made by striking two or more keys at once; I don’t need MORE red because you prefer a different syntax from what I customarily use. Incidentally, I wrote ‘different syntax than’ in the last sentence, but your program didn’t flag that; and that really is a grammatical error. Hire a better grammarian, and no, I don’t want a job.

The Flynn Affair

This is complicated. General Flynn is probably the best qualified advisor on various intelligence organizations and affairs that the President could have chosen, and he has some experience with all foreign threats, but little experience in military operations. He is said to have fallen out of favor with the Obama administration (which appointed him to be Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency) for holding that the United States was more vulnerable to Islamic terrorism now than it was in 2001 before the World Trade Center attack. He was caused to retire from DIA Director (and the Army) a year before his term as Director of DIA would have ended.

His domestic threat credentials and experience are pretty thin, and I have no data on his ability to come up with national security strategies, which, by their very nature, tend to be both foreign and domestic. The National Security Advisor post with its ready access to the President (or at least to the Chief of Staff) and few personnel management responsibilities is not a Constitutional office (does not require Senate approval, unlike his promotion to flag rank, which did), and we don’t have a lot of experience with it. We have Cabinet positions for Homeland Security, Foreign Policy, and of course the Military; all vitally important to national security, but all also involved with creation and management of bureaucracies and supervision of many operations.. There are also the 21 Intelligence agencies and shadows, which are both sources of intel and bureaucratic rivals, both to each other and to the other relevant Departments.

And then there’s the FBI, which is nominally part of the Justice Department, but retained control of counterintelligence in the US and Caribbean when the CIA was formed – if it still has that jurisdiction I don’t know; at one time the bureaucratic internecine warfare was open and brutal. The FBI always insists on domestic jurisdiction in counterintelligence. I do not here argue that it should not, but the conflict with both the spies and the Department of Homeland Security is obvious (and I haven’t even touched on Military counterintel.)

The National Security Advisor has to be privy to all this and more before he can even begin his task of helping the President make decisions about all of those – sometimes brutal – internecine conflicts – and we have not yet got to foreign open and clandestine operations ranging from open invasion to smuggled atom bombs to assassinations of friendly allied officials.

What is known is that General Flynn was, after consultation with many others, chosen as National Security Advisor, formally a position as Executive Assistant to the President. Probably his best known predecessor was Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s National Security Advisor, who also became Secretary of State, and was instrumental in engineering the rapprochement with China. Kissinger also once compared himself with Metternich; but that’s another story. Here is what is known:

https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/02/flynn-resigns-timeline/516594/

November 8, 2016: Donald Trump is elected the 45^th president of the United States. Flynn, a former Army general who was an early and ardent supporter of the Republican nominee, is expected to get a senior position in the Trump White House.

November 18: Trump names Flynn as his national-security adviser.

December 29: President Obama announced measures, including sanctions, on Russia for its interference in the U.S. election. The sanctions are in addition to those imposed on Moscow following its invasion in 2014 of Ukraine’s Crimea region. Flynn and Kislyak speak that day, The Washington Post reports, citing a Trump transition official. The official says sanctions weren’t discussed. Additionally, CNN reports the Russian ambassador texted Flynn on December 28.

December 30: Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow will not retaliate. The Post says that prompted U.S. intelligence analysts to look for reasons why Putin declined to impose his own measures against the U.S. They found, the newspaper reported, Kislyak’s communications, including the phone call, with Flynn. Sally Yates, then the deputy attorney general, found Flynn’s comments in the call “highly significant,” the Post reported.

January 12: David Ignatius, the Post columnist, wrote that Flynn and Kislyak spoke several times on December 29, the day the sanctions were announced. “What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions?” Ignatius wrote. He added a Trump transition official told him the calls, which occurred before the U.S. sanctions were announced, did not cover that topic. Ignatius added:

This official later added that Flynn’s initial call was to express condolences to Kislyak after the terrorist killing of the Russian ambassador to Ankara Dec. 19, and that Flynn made a second call Dec. 28 to express condolences for the shoot-down of a Russian plane carrying a choir to Syria. In that second call, Flynn also discussed plans for a Trump-Putin conversation sometime after the inauguration. In addition, a second Trump official said the Dec. 28 call included an invitation from Kislyak for a Trump administration official to visit Kazakhstan for a conference in late January.

January 13: Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, told reporters in a conference call that Flynn and Kislyak only discussed a post-inauguration call between Trump and Putin. “That was it, plain and simple,” he said.

January 15: Pence, on CBS’s Face the Nation, said Flynn “did not discuss anything having to do with the United States’ decision to expel diplomats or impose censure against Russia.”

January 19: Yates, the deputy attorney general, and senior intelligence officials debated what to do with the information they had on Flynn. The Post reported that FBI Director James Comey argued against notifying Trump administration officials of the communications.  

January 20: Trump was inaugurated; Flynn officially became national-security adviser.

January 23: Spicer told reporters he spoke with Flynn about the issue the previous night (January 22). He said Flynn and the Russian envoy spoke once. They discussed, he said, the Russian plane crash, the Syrian civil war, Christmas, and a call between their two leaders. Yates raised the issue again with Comey, who the Post said dropped his initial opposition to briefing the administration.

After that, things got hot. Most of it is public.

Washington Post Accidentally Reveals Who Leaked Flynn Call: Nine Obama Administration Officials

http://americanlookout.com/washington-post-accidentally-reveals-who-leaked-flynn-call-nine-obama-administration-officials/

It’s becoming obvious that General Flynn had a target on his back from the moment he joined Trump’s team.

Obama loyalists working in Washington set the wheels in motion to take Flynn down before Obama was even out of office.

The Washington Post may have accidentally spilled the beans on this in a recent article.

Take a look:

“National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say

National security adviser Michael Flynn privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Trump officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were interpreted by some senior U.S. officials as an inappropriate and potentially illegal signal to the Kremlin that it could expect a reprieve from sanctions that were being imposed by the Obama administration in late December to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election.”

Here’s the key passage:

“Neither of those assertions is consistent with the fuller account of Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak provided by officials who had access to reports from U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies that routinely monitor the communications of Russian diplomats. Nine current and former officials, who were in senior positions at multiple agencies at the time of the calls, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.”

“At the time of the calls” means these officials were in office during the Obama Administration.

That means it was nine Obama officials who leaked the calls.

Of course, they only “spoke on the condition of anonymity.”

That leak is the first, and I think the only, criminal act in the Flynn affair. It was from unnamed intelligence officials, and made classified information available to journalists and other unauthorized persons. It not only confirmed what I am sure the Russians knew anyway, that their Ambassador’s telephone was tapped, but also identified who talked with Ambassador Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak several times on December 29; one day before Mr. Putin announced that Russia would not retaliate for Mr. Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats and their families.

Obama expels 35 Russian diplomats in retaliation for US election hacking

• Trump wants to ‘move on’ but says he will meet intelligence officials
• FBI and Homeland Security detail Russian hacking in new report

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/29/barack-obama-sanctions-russia-election-hack

The Obama administration on Thursday announced its retaliation for Russian efforts to interfere with the US presidential election, ordering sweeping new sanctions that included the expulsion of 35 Russians.

US intelligence services believe Russia ordered cyber-attacks on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other political organizations, in an attempt to influence the election in favor of the Republican candidate, Donald Trump.

Given that Mr. Trump was on record – had campaigned on – seeking better relations with Russia, it would be astounding if someone in Trump’s circle did not call the Russian Ambassador; and given that 35 Russian diplomats and their families were about to be displaced and sent packing, I cannot believe anyone would be surprised to discover these sanctions were discussed. Was Trump likely to rescind the order, or should Mr. Kislyak’s friends start packing? It was inevitable that the question would be asked, and the White House knows it.

Priebus: ‘Nothing wrong’ with Flynn talking about sanctions with Russian ambassador

By Rebecca Morin

02/18/17 08:40 PM EST

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus said there was “nothing wrong” with former national security adviser Mike Flynn talking about sanctions against Russia with the country’s ambassador.

“No, there’s nothing wrong with having a conversation about sanctions,” Priebus said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to be broadcast Sunday. “And there’s nothing wrong about having a conversation about the fact that the Obama administration put further sanctions in place and expelled some folks out of the United States. There’s nothing wrong with that topic coming up in a conversation.”

If General Flynn answered that question – and who can believe it was not asked – there is no intimation that any quid pro quo was sought or obtained. There is something strange about the selective leak of the contents of that telephone call: it does not include the transcript, which remains classified. However, the “intelligence community” will answer specific questions, and the “quid pro quo” question was asked; the answer was that there was none discussed.

We don’t know the content of the conversation, although the fact that we know it took place and how we know that remains highly classified – and was leaked by Mr. Obama’s anonymous officials. The Washington establishment is probably used to this sort of thing, but I expect that Mr. Trump is not, and that he will do what he can to find out just who those criminals are; and indeed they are criminals. Of course the Intelligence Establishment will resist this discovery with all its heart and mind.

So: General Flynn unsurprisingly called the Russian Ambassador, and did in fact discuss the sanctions – although we are not about to hear what was said – and later told public officials that the sanctions were not discussed. After much storm and stress, General Flynn resigned his post as NSA, although everyone is quick to reassure us that he committed no criminal act, and indeed did nothing wrong – at least in that conversation. I suspect he was asked to get Mr. Putin to stand down on what everyone expected would be routine retaliation – 35 US diplomats expelled – and generally smooth things over. When the Intelligence Community leaked that conversation, and some journalists seemed to know more about it than they ought to, for some reason General Flynn denied the talk had taken place. Any speculation on why remains speculation. I find it inconceivable that the NSA designate acted to call the Russian Ambassador without the knowledge and consent – possibly the urging – of someone in the Trump inner circle, which makes it all even more mysterious.

General Flynn isn’t saying; I doubt he ever will. But something strange happened to cause his resignation.

Meanwhile, the narrative that the Russians influenced the American election through hacking continues to make its rounds. The USSR with its rockets and thermonuclear weapons, and thousands of agents in the US along with countless sympathizers in government and academia could not fix an American election, but Mr. Putin’s rump of the USSR can? The assertion is absurd. Some people even assert that the Flynn incident proves the ‘Russia hacked the election’ narrative, but that’s even more absurd. Can anyone believe that General Flynn, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was unaware that the Russian Ambassador’s phone was tapped? To ask the question is to answer it.

Flynn knew. He knew he talked to the ambassador about the upcoming of the expulsion of 35 high level Russian diplomats and their families. He got fired for saying he had not. That makes no sense. One thing that will come of this: there will be an investigation, and some of the previous administration’s intelligence officials will be seen to have leaked classified information. Others, particularly in Justice, may be involved. Beyond that we cannot know, at least as yet.

The EM drive again.  How much money have the Chinese invested in this?

 

EmDrive: Chinese space agency to put controversial microwave thruster onto satellites ‘as soon as possible’

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/emdrive-chinese-space-agency-put-controversial-tech-onto-satellites-soon-possible-1596328

 

If they are trying to get us to invest in further tests, they win: I think we should.  The upside is enormous if it works; the cost of an experimentum crucis is low. We probably spend more on bunny inspectors and other jobs not worth doing.

 

It’s dinner time. I may get more in later, but surely this in enough.  Thanks for the subscriptions.

 

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Saturday, February 18, 2017

“The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.”

Donald Trump

Between 1965 and 2011, the official poverty rate was essentially flat, while the government spending per person on poverty programs rose by more than 900% after inflation.

Peter Cove

Amnesty International Boss Endorses “Jihad in self-defence”

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Illegitimi non carborundum

Feb. 17, 2017, 10:57 p.m.

Sinkhole swallows two cars in Studio City

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-live-powerful-storms-moving-l-area-sinkhole-swallows-two-cars-in-studio-1487395695-htmlstory.html

 

 

Two cars dropped into a 20-foot sinkhole off Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Studio City on Friday night, authorities said.

According to an account on the LAFD website , firefighters arrived at the sinkhole and found one car upside down in rushing water. The occupant, a 48-year-old woman, was standing on the car about 10 feet below street level.

Firefighters lowered a 20-foot ladder to her, allowing her to climb out, and took her to a hospital in fair condition. En route, she said that while she was driving, she felt the car pitch to the left, then it tumbled into the sinkhole. The airbags deployed, water started coming in, and she tried to raise the windows. She was able to open the door and climb on top of the car, where she screamed for help. [snip]

The storm is over, and all’s well. Some water built up faster than the drains could handle on one of the balconies, so we thought we had a roof leak, but there don’t seem to be any. Chaos Manor, which is just about my age, seems to be holding up well. The dramatic sink hole was in the part of Studio City on the other side of the well-concreted “river” from where we live. The rivers are flowing again, and dangerous, but they are well fenced and concreted – the 1938 flood plus the need for jobs caused the Corps of Engineers to uglify the entire LA river system in preparation for a thousand year flood; maybe a million. The Freeways got flooded, many of the locally built streets were impassible, but there’s no real problem for those who don’t go out into the storm. This is California, after all.

So all’s reasonably well at Chaos Manor and with the neighbors. About twenty years ago a tall Lodgepole Pine decided to fall across Laurel Terrace, but it was three feet short of doing any damage to the house across the street from it. I don’t think there are any trees in danger of falling and doing us any damage. A very long time ago when the kids were young I was persuaded to buy live Christmas trees and plant them after Christmas; but after a few years it became obvious that I was planting a rather dangerous forest that grew at an astounding rate, and twenty years ago I cleared the whole mess out while I could still afford to do it. This storm makes me glad I did that. Actually the winds did nothing in Studio City. Even the big outdoor umbrellas (furled of course) stayed in place; in a really high wind at least one ends up in the street if no one went out to lay it on the ground.

Thanks for your concern.

One of the problems of stroke recovery is difficulties typing. I used to be a fast touch typist, but now I am confined to two finger, and as the lettering wears off the keys – it does, as hard as I pound them, and fairly fast – I get even sloppier. Also it is extremely easy to hit two keys at once; particularly the space bar and something else. If the something else is a c or a v – those are common – I get a string of words with extra letters at the beginning or the end, but if it’s the alt key I hit with the space bar, then the next key I hit is critical: alt-space sets up for an amazing variety of functions, none of which I ever want; they include close window, which loses all your work since last saved, and various other window changes. Instant; or at least I never see any warning because of course I am staring at the keyboard.

A partial remedy to this is the ASUS Zen portables, which have a good keyboard: big keys, well separated. It doesn’t hurt that the screen is sort of visible while two finger typing, too. Alas I am not set up to use an ASUS portable as the main machine, although I do use one upstairs in the Monk’s Cell where I write fiction. I also have a big screen for editing.  It works well.

For down here I use a Logitech 360 wireless keyboard, which sometimes does things that surprise me; and almost always I have to correct about half the words in each sentence I type because I have hit multiple keys without noticing. I have a big ASUS screen which I can see well, but of course I am not looking at it when I type. Recently I activated a feature in my video software: it’s called screen split, and I wasn’t aware that it existed. It does the most infuriating things to any program you run at anything other than Full Screen. How it got activated I do not know. The icon for it is not obvious; in my case it is hidden in the ^ thing in the tray or whatever they call that icon bar at the bottom of the screen. Eric finally figured out what must be happening when my screen started changing the shapes of any windows I tried to move around. Clicking on the nondescript icon for “Screen Split” showed me a menu of incomprehensible tiny icons (I needed a magnifying glass) and even tinier labels, but one, I could see, was “OFF”. There was no indication of which configuration was “ON”; anyway I clicked the “OFF” icon in the menu I got when I pressed the icon that gave me the label “screen split” when I hovered over it; I found that by clicking the ^ icon in the tray and hovering over the dozen or so tiny and unlabeled icons that click produced. The OFF solved the problem; I have no idea what was “ON” or how I turned it on.

I find that sort of thing a lot lately: new features I didn’t ask for, didn’t decide to install, and probably don’t want; only now I’ve got them and they do things I definitely don’t want when I’m doing something else. Maybe I do want them but it sure would be nice to have some warning, and make it easier to turn them off.

I use Word’s spell checking – with my typing I really need it – but recently Microsoft “improved” the spell checker, and there’s no way to turn the “improvement” off. It used to be that the spell checker put a wavy red line under words it didn’t like, and right clicking the underlined word produced a simple list of words that it might be, plus the option of ignoring it or adding to the dictionary. Not any more.  Now there are two menus, and it thinks it knows grammar better than I do. It also tries to present a sort of dictionary or maybe it’s a thesaurus.  Mostly it gets in the way and is useless.

For example, Word helpfully wavy redlines “definitely don’t” in the sentence above, suggesting “consider using concise language”; that sort of advice I definitely don’t want. I expect we’d better start getting used to robot helpers giving us advice we don’t need.

It’s lunch time, and I have enough mail concerned about how I’m doing in the storm that I’ll get this up now.  Back later.  Thanks

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Thursday, February 16, 2017

“The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed across the entire world.”

Donald Trump

Between 1965 and 2011, the official poverty rate was essentially flat, while the government spending per person on poverty programs rose by more than 900% after inflation.

Peter Cove

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

Illegitimi non carborundum

I know it’s not real Latin, but if it was good enough for Vinegar Joe it’s good enough for me.

2330: bedtime after  LASFS; I have added much, some important.

President Trump may have been wounded more badly than he expected by the Flynn affair. Mr. Trump is, after, a rather decent man. He has no military experience, and as far as I know not much familiarity with military history. His instinctual reaction when an enemy is wounded is to stand back and end the fight. This is the civilized way of doing things, and in civil life it is much to be preferred.

The military know better. Battles may be won by valor; wars are won in the pursuit. When the enemy is down is the time to put the boot in. Relentless pursuit, slaughter of the retreating enemy, kill them all, take no prisoners because prisoners need guarding and care and reduce your strength; wars are won or lost in the pursuit. Yes: peace may be won by chivalry, and the West prized chivalry, mercy to the defeated enemy, for centuries. The Church urged it. Usually. Novels like The Talisman make good and inspired reading; but mercy and chivalry are dangerous. The spared enemy may be able to reform, reassemble, and win another battle. A dead one cannot.

All right. Those who’ve read my books know I don’t really believe all that, and my characters do not act this way; and while Mr. Trump does not conform to the ideal of chivalry, is hardly la belle cavalier sans reproache et sans peur, he is closer to that than the merciless enemies he faces. Flynn was removed – allowed to resign, possibly asked to – as a concession to the image of propriety. This was taken as a wound; there was blood in the water; and Trump’s enemies are merciless. And after Flynn:

Another Trump Casualty

Immigration foes and unions take down Labor nominee Andy Puzder.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-trump-casualty-1487204215

Feb. 15, 2017 7:16 p.m. ET

274 COMMENTS

Andy Puzder withdrew his nomination for Labor Secretary Wednesday after a ferocious union and media assault, and is President Trump paying attention? This is what happens, sir, when a White House starts losing, losing, losing.

Mr. Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, was a rare business executive willing publicly to support Mr. Trump during the campaign. As an expert in labor management, he was ideal to reform a Labor Department that was run for eight years as a wholly owned subsidiary of the AFL-CIO. He would also have been a much-needed advocate for free markets in Mr. Trump’s senior economic councils. [snip]

Andy Puzder, Donald Trump’s Labor Pick, Withdraws

Restaurant executive exits after several Republican senators express reservations

https://www.wsj.com/articles/andy-puzder-donald-trump-s-labor-pick-withdraws-1487192009

 

By

Eric Morath and

Kristina Peterson

February 15, 2017

892 COMMENTS

Andy Puzder withdrew himself from consideration to become Labor secretary in a new personnel blow to the White House, after Republican support in the Senate disintegrated over personal issues that dogged the fast-food executive leading up to a planned confirmation hearing.

His swift withdrawal came just a day after Mike Flynn, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, resigned over conflicting statements he made about contacts with Russian officials last year.

Edward Hugler, a career bureaucrat employed by the department since 1978, will likely remain acting secretary until a new nominee can be confirmed. That could put on hold any major policy shifts. [snip]

Mr. Trump may have won the Republican nomination, but it is not his party. Unlike 1964 when the country club Republicans cut the party ticket and assured the election of Lyndon Johnson, Mr. Obama’s smug triumphalism and Mrs. Clinton’s even more smug sense of entitlement were a bit much even for them; they didn’t do much for Mr. Trump, but that was partly because they didn’t think they had to; the notion of Donald Trump becoming President seemed just too absurd.

Came the election day surprise, many in the Republican elite had a change of heart: maybe miracles do happen. Maybe it is possible to drain the swamp and restore the Old Republic as described by Tocqueville and others. Maybe, just maybe we can make America great again.

But not all. Meanwhile, the left redoubled its efforts to unseat the clown prince and restore the old order in which opponents grew in office in order to win the approval of the media and get past the pain of the relentless attacks on them, their families, their friends, even their pets.

And meanwhile:

Spies Keep Intelligence From Donald Trump on Leak Concerns

Decision to withhold information underscores deep mistrust between intelligence community and president

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spies-keep-intelligence-from-donald-trump-1487209351

Sensitive information is being withheld from President Trump by intelligence officials and spies, a sign of mistrust between intel authorities and the White House. WSJ’s Shane Harris has exclusive details on Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero. Photo: Olivier Doulier/Press Pool

By

Shane Harris and

Carol E. Lee

Updated Feb. 16, 2017 12:33 a.m. ET

4271 COMMENTS

U.S. intelligence officials have withheld sensitive intelligence from President Donald Trump because they are concerned it could be leaked or compromised, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.

The officials’ decision to keep information from Mr. Trump underscores the deep mistrust that has developed between the intelligence community and the president over his team’s contacts with the Russian government, as well as the enmity he has shown toward U.S. spy agencies. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump accused the agencies of leaking information to undermine him. [snip ]

And the Constitutional Crisis heats up more.

It used to be that if you held the Congress you pretty well directed the policies of the government. Then came the New Deal, and the executive powers multiplied exponentially. At first that was under the control of the President, although Eisenhower discovered that he was no longer Commander in Chief of the government; he had enough residual authority within the military, but even there he detected opposition, a buildup of power outside the authority of both the legislative and executive branches. The Supreme Court discovered fresh new rights every day; while these were said to increase individual rights, it didn’t always seem that way: what they did was to decrease the power of the responsible arms of government, and increase the power of the unelected officials responsible to no one. This was seen as a good thing. The result has been something else.

Education is no longer responsible to local school boards and those who pay school taxes. In theory it is responsible to experts, but those experts control credentials and thus “expertise”. Mrs. DeVos has no credentials, thus no expertise no matter how many successful schools she has founded, and must be destroyed. That fight Trump won, although it is hardly over: “protesters” physically prevented her from attending a meeting with the experts, and paid no penalty for this act of rebellion: there was victory, but no pursuit. It costs nothing to go out and burn buildings, disrupt public meetings, delay the general public’s access to publicly paid for buildings, squares, even the roads themselves. There is no pursuit.

Valor wins battles; wars are won in the pursuit. Mr. Trump’s enemies know that and believe it. Perhaps Mr. Trump is learning it.

Yes, there is a case for Chivalry. There is also a case for courts of chivalry for those who do not follow the rules. That is a matter for other essays.

In The Talisman, Sir Walter Scott examines this in a whacking good novel about the Third Crusade. If you have spare time, you might like it.

The career intelligence regime is concerned that there are leaks in the Trump headquarters; and of course have a genuine concern to protect sources, particularly clandestine sources. And of course almost any intelligence contains clues as to what the source was.

Example: During the Cold War we developed electronic means for spying on certain telephone calls made from the Russian headquarters in East Berlin. These became important; very important. It was even more important that the Russians never learn we could do that. It made for a delicate balancing act: would acting in the information reveal its source? Came an ambitious scheme: what if there were an alternate source to the same information, one that could be revealed; we could have our cake and eat it too.

Painstakingly and very secretly a tunnel was dug under the Wall to the basement of the East Berlin building. All traces of the age of the tunnel were removed. Eventually it would be discovered, and it was; in fact that was itself a rather dramatic story, with the last man out getting a minor wound in the butt; the taps were removed, sealed off; but in fact the electronic surveillance continued for some time after, since the technology to do it was still unknown. Eventually that, too, was leaked; almost everything we did was.

This not the first time time intelligence has been kept from the President. Both Roosevelt and Truman were denied all knowledge of Venona, the Army’s “black chamber” decoding of Soviet KGB and GRU codes used by agents to report to Stalin.

Venona
Decoding Soviet Espionage in America

---

By JOHN EARL HAYNES and HARVEY KLEHR

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/haynes-venona.html

VENONA AND THE COLD WAR

The Venona Project began because Carter Clarke did not trust Joseph Stalin. Colonel Clarke was chief of the U.S. Army’s Special Branch, part of the War Department’s Military Intelligence Division, and in 1943 its officers heard vague rumors of secret German-Soviet peace negotiations. With the vivid example of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact in mind, Clarke feared that a separate peace between Moscow and Berlin would allow Nazi Germany to concentrate its formidable war machine against the United States and Great Britain. Clarke thought he had a way to find out whether such negotiations were under way.

    Clarke’s Special Branch supervised the Signal Intelligence Service, the Army’s elite group of code-breakers and the predecessor of the National Security Agency. In February 1943 Clarke ordered the service to establish a small program to examine ciphered Soviet diplomatic cablegrams. Since the beginning of World War II in 1939, the federal government had collected copies of international cables leaving and entering the United States. If the cipher used in the Soviet cables could be broken, Clarke believed, the private exchanges between Soviet diplomats in the United States and their superiors in Moscow would show whether Stalin was seriously pursuing a separate peace.

    The coded Soviet cables, however, proved to be far more difficult to read than Clarke had expected. American code-breakers discovered that the Soviet Union was using a complex two-part ciphering system involving a “one-time pad” code that in theory was unbreakable. The Venona code-breakers, however, combined acute intellectual analysis with painstaking examination of thousands of coded telegraphic cables to spot a Soviet procedural error that opened the cipher to attack. But by the time they had rendered the first messages into readable text in 1946, the war was over and Clarke’s initial goal was moot. Nor did the messages show evidence of a Soviet quest for a separate peace. What they did demonstrate, however, stunned American officials. Messages thought to be between Soviet diplomats at the Soviet consulate in New York and the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs in Moscow turned out to be cables between professional intelligence field officers and Gen. Pavel Fitin, head of the foreign intelligence directorate of the KGB in Moscow. Espionage, not diplomacy, was the subject of these cables. One of the first cables rendered into coherent text was a 1944 message from KGB officers in New York showing that the Soviet Union had infiltrated America’s most secret enterprise, the atomic bomb project. [snip]

There’s a great deal more, some technical. Most of it was unknown to mainstream media. Even after the super-secrecy ended and knowledge of Venona came out, most J schools ignored it. The Communist Party line was that Venona was propaganda – fake news – and while no one believes that now, they did in J schools; of course by now it is old hat.

Keeping Venona secret had its consequences. These are discussed at length in the linked text. Example:

[snip] During the early Cold War, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, every few months newspaper headlines trumpeted the exposure of yet another network of Communists who had infiltrated an American laboratory, labor union, or government agency. Americans worried that a Communist fifth column, more loyal to the Soviet Union than to the United States, had moved into their institutions. By the mid-1950s, following the trials and convictions for espionage-related crimes of Alger Hiss, a senior diplomat, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for atomic spying, there was a widespread public consensus on three points: that Soviet espionage was serious, that American Communists assisted the Soviets, and that several senior government officials had betrayed the United States. The deciphered Venona messages provide a solid factual basis for this consensus. But the government did not release the Venona decryptions to the public, and it successfully disguised the source of its information about Soviet espionage. This decision denied the public the incontestable evidence afforded by the messages of the Soviet Union’s own spies. Since the information about Soviet espionage and American Communist participation derived largely from the testimony of defectors and a mass of circumstantial evidence, the public’s belief in those reports rested on faith in the integrity of government security officials. These sources are inherently more ambiguous than the hard evidence of the Venona messages, and this ambiguity had unfortunate consequences for American politics and Americans’ understanding of their own history.

    The decision to keep Venona secret from the public, and to restrict knowledge of it even within the government, was made essentially by senior Army officers in consultation with the FBI and the CIA. Aside from the Venona code-breakers, only a limited number of military intelligence officers, FBI agents, and CIA officials knew of the project. The CIA in fact was not made an active partner in Venona until 1952 and did not receive copies of the deciphered messages until 1953. The evidence is not entirely clear, but it appears that Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley, mindful of the White House’s tendency to leak politically sensitive information, decided to deny President Truman direct knowledge of the Venona Project. The president was informed about the substance of the Venona messages as it came to him through FBI and Justice Department memorandums on espionage investigations and CIA reports on intelligence matters. He was not told that much of this information derived from reading Soviet cable traffic.

This omission is important because Truman was mistrustful of J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, and suspected that the reports of Soviet espionage were exaggerated for political purposes. Had he been aware of Venona, and known that Soviet cables confirmed the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers, it is unlikely that his aides would have considered undertaking a campaign to discredit Bentley and indict Chambers for perjury, or would have allowed themselves to be taken in by the disinformation being spread by the American Communist party and Alger Hiss’s partisans that Chambers had at one time been committed to an insane asylum.

    There were sensible reasons (discussed in chapter 2) for the decision to keep Venona a highly compartmentalized secret within the government. In retrospect, however, the negative consequences of this policy are glaring. Had Venona been made public, it is unlikely there would have been a forty-year campaign to prove that the Rosenbergs were innocent. The Venona messages clearly display Julius Rosenberg’s role as the leader of a productive ring of Soviet spies. Nor would there have been any basis for doubting his involvement in atomic espionage, because the deciphered messages document his recruitment of his brother-in-law, David Greenglass, as a spy. It is also unlikely, had the messages been made public or even circulated more widely within the government than they did, that Ethel Rosenberg would have been executed. The Venona messages do not throw her guilt in doubt; indeed, they confirm that she was a participant in her husband’s espionage and in the recruitment of her brother for atomic espionage. But they suggest that she was essentially an accessory to her husband’s activity, having knowledge of it and assisting him but not acting as a principal. Had they been introduced at the Rosenberg trial, the Venona messages would have confirmed Ethel’s guilt but also reduced the importance of her role. [snip] [emphasis added]

It is all worth reading, but it makes clear that there are both advantages and disadvantages to keeping the President out of the loop. I expect this will be a new object of debate: does the President actually command?

For all that, much has been accomplished in a few days. Yes, the President has been wounded; but Mr. Trump’s career shows that he has learned to endure wounds, rally and carry on. This is hardly the time for his supporters to despair. It should be no news that the country club Republicans and the responsible-to-no-one elite permanent government. Renewed the Old Alliance; the good news is that there are so few.

Draining the swamp was never going to be easy. First the populists needed the House. That did turned out to be insufficient. Then they needed the whole Congress. Both went Republican, but in 8 years Mr. Obama doubled the National Debt and the size of the Federal Registry as the Republican Congress looked on helplessly. “We need the White House,” they said.

They have the White House, both houses of Congress, most state governors, and in fact most local offices outside the big cities in New York and California. Of course they tremble in fear even so: the media says they should.

But in fact they need only a few more seats in the Senate (since some of the ones they thought they had are not really theirs); think how much has been accomplished in the past few years. How much has been accomplished in the last few days.

Illegitimi non carborundum

This article should cheer you up.

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/01/31/delingpole-trumps-climate-plans-made-medias-heads-explode/

BTW, I watched Pres Trump’s presser today. He ate the MSM for lunch.

My favorite part was when Pres Trump told the media, “I’m not a politician.” then he paused and said “Well, I guess I am now.”. Leader of the free world qualifies I would think.

—

Phil 

 

Now he has to talk Putin out of Iran; very difficult, particularly with Flynn to arrange actions against Iran short of war.  Trump lost a lot with Flynn.  And Flynn did nothing wrong: he covered up an action that was not in any way a crime, I think no one has ever been convicted under the Logan Act, and I think no one has even been indicted in the 20 or 21 Centuries. They need him.

‘There is absolutely no precedent for courts looking to a politician’s statements from before he or she took office, let alone campaign promises, to establish any kind of impermissible motive.’

<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/02/09/the-9th-circuits-dangerous-and-unprecedented-use-of-campaign-statements-to-block-presidential-policy/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

There is now.

Limits of executive orders. Particularly “reviewability”.

Jerry,

“Black letter law gives the President authority to suspend or delay admitting any class of immigrant he sees fit if he declares it a matter of national security. That law has been in effect for a long time. Mr. Obama used it in reverse to admit migrants and refugees; he did not see them as a threat to national security. That was his prerogative as President, whether we agree or not.”

I think you are nearly alone in that opinion.

Actually, what the President has is broad latitude and deference, but not unlimited authority. The Trump administration has—quite incredibly—asserted that the President’s action is “unreviewable”. 4 Judges have now disagreed, two were Republican appointees, two were Democratic.

“Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the Government has taken the position that we must not review the decision at all. We disagree.”

And it isn’t like this is big news, as Obama found out.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/17/politics/texas-obama-immigration-injunction/

If you object so vehemently to the stay of Trump’s order, then did the stay of Obama’s generate the same ire? If you truly mean this as a matter of law, then I’d like to know if you consider the two cases in the same way, and why or why not?

Personally, I think there is a CLEAR case against Trump’s executive order, both on establishment clause and equal protection grounds. There is, of course, an issue of “standing”. I think Green card holders have obvious standing, while some others are less clear. The courts also took into account Trump’s (many times over) stated intentions to create a “Muslim ban”, and he’s also on record as wanting to favor Christians. These things are deeply disturbing.

It’s very interesting to see the commentators on this matter, now that we are pretty deep into legal technicalities. What’s interesting is the discussion is very rational, rather calm, with opinions on both sides that are carefully buttressed by facts and precedents. It reminds me of how political discussions should be, and once were.

Pretty sure Trump is going to lose this one.

Chuck

Are you actually contending that the power to deny any class of immigrants, which by black letter law is given to the President, is the power to admit any even those contravening black letter law?  I suppose so; that seems to be current legal thinking. But they have an ability to believe contradictory things without discomfort.  I find that odd, and it is almost certainly irrational. This is a place of rational discussion.

I do not see why campaign statements are relevant to actual executive orders, but I suppose any stick will do when you are looking for a weapon.

Stay well.

 

This explaineth much.

Re: Toxic Psychiatry

Toxic Psychiatry – good name for it!
At 11:39 AM 2/9/2017, xxxx wrote:

Rappaport agrees with you…
https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/the-number-one-mind-control-program-at-us-colleges/

MSM refuses to accept that they have lied themselves into irrelevancy.

J

Federal Judge in Washington State 

I believe that the grounds the Federal Judge in the State of Washington (apparently also cited independently in a brief filed in Minnesota) are based on questions about both the establishment clause in the First Amendment and on the Equal Protection Clause of the constitution.   The attorney generals in Washington and Minnesota brought the case.

I was told the 9th circuit has agreed to  hear the case.  A good friend who taught constitutional law (and does not wish to be named) thinks that the 9^th may rule, but it will likely go to the supreme court.

I’m also told that there is an amicus brief underway as well from multiple states suggesting that the ban brings harm to the states.    

Mark

The courts have not and should not be been invited to determine if it harms the states.  Assume it does.  Many federal policies harm one or another state.  It is black letter law that the President has discretion over excluding any class of aliens he chooses, for any period of time he chooses.  The judge has no authority to countermand the president, no more than you or I have.

The circuit court of appeals has not that power.  Nor does the supreme court.  Debates over whether it induces young Muslims to go jihadist are in order, but no judge’s decision has any more power than any other citizen’s.  A judge may decide that the income tax harms his state, could he simply forbid its collection?

 

One more point.  He agrees that the President has the right and responsibility to issue the ban(s).

However, he feels that wording of the ban was very poorly done and raises constitutional issues.

He said that a  simple rewrite and resubmission could have been done quietly and all of this avoided.

He finds it all very peculiar.

 

I could certainly have written it better. My pre-law students could have written it better.  The career lawyers in the Justice Department should have written it better.  Donald Trump is the elected President of the United States. It is the duty of the courts to enforce lawful orders, not to issue injunctions against bad grammar. The decision made was political. Do not be surprised if those who claim immunity from politics then blatantly practice politics are treated politically.

 

What I learned from Velikovsky

Dear Jerry:

When you mentioned the Velikovsky affair on 2/2/17, I was reminded that I owed a great deal to the man as the result of just one encounter.

I first heard of Velikovsky in the mid-1950’s when a high school friend became obsessed with him. Not being interested in Velikovsky’s claims, I forgot about him until 1965 during my first year as a physics Ph. D. student at Brown University. The university sponsored a forum with Velikovsky as the key speaker. Four distinguished scientists formed a panel to respond to and criticize whatever Velikovsky was going to say. As I recall, at least two Nobel prize winners were on the panel, one from Brown’s physics department and one who had driven the 55 miles from Harvard. It was a major university event that my wife and I attended along with a large crowd of students and faculty.

Velikovsky was a powerful and persuasive speaker. I waited eagerly for the panel’s response and rebuttals.

To their shame, these distinguished experts were quite unprepared and seemed less than familiar with Velikovsky’s writings. They were an embarrassment to behold in the face of Velikovsky’s masterful preparation. Velikovsky ran rings around them, though cuneiformist Abraham Sachs is said to have put him in his place. If so, Sach’s presentation went right over my head.

I concluded then that faculty often fail to do their homework and are content to fall back on glibness when they think they are facing their intellectual inferiors.

It was that Velikovsky lecture that taught me always to test elite experts and not depend on their statements. Of course that’s an old, even Biblical, lesson, as the Bereans knew and Luke described.

During my next 43 years at several public and private universities, I continued to learn that faculty often do not do their homework. They seem not to know that in debate we should be able to present our opponent’s arguments better than our opponent can. The problem of unprepared faculty has worsened in the past 50 years. Now the professors turn to lawsuits and the politics of personal destruction when frustrated by well-prepared opponents, even in the sciences.

Best regards,

–Harry M.

That deserves a longer comment. Apologies.  Dr. Possony became interested in the Velikovsky Affair, not because he thought the Earth once changed its direction of rotation or that Jupiter emitted Venus as a comet. but because Big Science so feared Velikovsky that they pronounced anathema on him; he had not to be refuted, but silenced. What were they afraid of? His interest sparked mine.  I discovered two sets of “consensus” both attuned to silencing the old man. It remains a most curious incident. more understandable now in view of Global Warming, oops, Climate Change which may well be real, but pretending to understand what you do not understand is an odd way of dealing with it.

 

Educating Racket 

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

From recent personal experience, here are two examples of our tax dollars at work supporting higher education- Student at a community college in Orange County, CA under the age of 21 is required to take a course in Physical Education. The student in this case took a course, with a teacher, and all the associated costs of administration and so on, paid for by taxes, in “walking”. Note, this was NOT some form of |Speed Walking”, a recognized sport. No, I mean ordinary perambulation, such as you enjoy ambling about your neighborhood.

The same community college offers a course in “Theatrical Lighting”, training students in the art and skill of lighting stage productions for live theatre. Somewhat to my surprise, there is a textbook for this course. Okay, a technician can always use such a source for reference, but I would think most of such a course would be hands on work actually lighting a stage, rather than studying any theories of lighting.

Okay. Want to know what the textbook costs?

A student I know of purchased a used copy. A wise choice, of course.

Same book, but you pay less. In this case “less” was-

Put down your beverage

$173.00

Thus answering the question, “Just how many professors does it take to teach someone how to change a light bulb?” Only one, if you pay $173.00 for the instruction manual first!

Mr. Heinlein was right again, re: |The Crazy Years”.

Petronius

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017 

 

With a reprint of the part of yesterdays entry that was misformatted.

 

The howling continues; now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of Labor candidate is being hounded by Senator Warren among others, largely because he opposes raising the Federal Minimum Wage.

Andy Puzder’s Grilling

Will the White House let bogus charges beat its Labor nominee?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/andy-puzders-grilling-1487031994

President Trump’s early troubles are starting to affect his ability to govern—to wit, Democrats think they have a shot at defeating his nominee for Labor Secretary, Andy Puzder. The White House had better get all hands on deck lest it lose a nominee who knows the damage that the Obama labor agenda did to workers. [snip]

Some of the Republican elites are getting nervous. The media hates us! We had better grow, compromise, reach across the aisles – as if the Democrats did anything like that for the past eight years. Yes, Mr. Trump is a populist, a pragmatist, inexperienced in the ways of the Washington elite, choosing people who he believes can get the job done.and willing to replace them if he thinks they can’t; while the old country club establishment Republicans are concerned because that is not popular with the Washington elites. It is not the way things are done. Doesn’t Trump know that?

There will be war to the knife, obstruction opposition, on anything Mr. Trump does now, and some of the judiciary will seize this opportunity to grab as much political power as possible. Mr. Trump has made the concession of writing his executive orders again; the judicial power group smells blood in the water; the Constitutional Crisis continues. Next phase will be the White House Siege Mentality. The media drum beat continues.

FREE TRADE

 

Currency Manipulation Is a Real Problem

What’s the point of free-trade deals if governments can wipe out the benefits with monetary maneuvers?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/currency-manipulation-is-a-real-problem-1487031

By

Judy Shelton

Feb. 13, 2017 7:16 p.m. ET

142 COMMENTS

Passionate defenders of the “global rules-based trading system” should be wary of thinking their views are more informed than President Trump’s. He has been branded a protectionist and thus many conclude he is incapable of exercising world leadership. Meanwhile, those who embrace the virtues of global free trade disregard the fact that the “rules” are not working for many American workers and companies.

Certainly the rules regarding international exchange-rate arrangements are not working. Monetary integrity was the key to making Bretton Woods institutions work when they were created after World War II to prevent future breakdowns in world order due to trade. The international monetary system, devised in 1944, was based on fixed exchange rates linked to a gold-convertible dollar.

No such system exists today. And no real leader can aspire to champion both the logic and the morality of free trade without confronting the practice that undermines both: currency manipulation. [snip]

The problem with free trade is that most free trade agreements aren’t really free trade agreements. Ricardo’s analysis was done in an era of sound money. It makes assumptions about the stability of trade agreements that are simply untrue when the value of money can be changed by fiat; a point once made long ago, but seems to have been forgotten by most economists now. There is no monetary integrity now; US dollars can be printed and loaned at zero or even negative interest (provided you have the proper connections). Mr. Obama’s Treasury Secretary placed Japan on a monitoring list; smaller countries manipulate the value of their currency to ameliorate their debt; and so on. It is all very complex, and few understand it all. Bretton Woods is gone. There is no sound money. Without it, can there be free trade? There can certainly be trade deals; Mr. Trump ran on among other things the notion that the ones we have been making have not been very good.

For those interested, there is also

Free Trade and How the Soybean Helped Make America Great

Farmers like me see promise in the new president but peril in his protectionism.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/free-trade-and-how-the-soybean-helped-make-america-great-1487030858

By

Blake Hurst

Feb. 13, 2017 7:07 p.m. ET

34 COMMENTS

Tarkio, Mo.

The soybean is an American success story, a remarkable crop with a proud history. But the vibrant international market for soybeans may become a victim of President Trump’s approach to trade. This would be a shame, given how strongly American farmers have supported Mr. Trump.

Rich in protein, the soybean has improved millions of people’s diets all around the globe. There were 1.8 million acres of the crop in the U.S. in 1924, and soybean farming has grown massively over the years, with nearly 84 million acres planted across the country in 2016. Our farm had no soybeans in the early 1960s, but today the crop makes up half our acreage.

In my rural county in northwest Missouri, home to plenty of soybean farmers, Mr. Trump received about 75% of the vote. We were drawn to policies like his “two for one” executive order, which requires the removal of two regulations every time a new one is written. The vocal and at times vulgar protests against him have only solidified his support here.

But unease is growing in the more fertile parts of the hinterlands. As his trade policy comes into focus, it’s starting to scare the heck out of farmers. [snip]

The trade dilemma continues.

Rare earths are just the tip of the iceberg

It’s really a much bigger problem.

US military systems have a significant Chinese or Taiwan content. Even some of the “American made” parts are actually counterfeit Chinese manufactured parts inserted into US side supply chains.

It is simply not possible for the US to prosecute a war of any length without Chinese support.

For what it’s worth, the military is aware of this problem. For example, see

https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/congress/item/17358-obama-pentagon-waived-ban-on-chinese-parts-in-u-s-weapons

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-18155293

and note that these are not new stories.

The problem has been getting Congress interested in the problem.

++PLS

When we wrote the space plan for Reagan’s transition team (log ago, in 1980), one problem with the strategic defense advocates was that they were separated into warring groups; Teller’s people, Max Hunter’s Gang of Four, General Meyer and the Marshall group’s Homing Overlay, others; one of the accomplishments of those meetings in Larry Niven’s home (then in Tarzana) was the “Treaty of Tarzana” which got all the groups to agree that without space access none of the Strategic Defense systems would work very well. Mr. Reagan adopted SDI, and later made his speech to Congress that Senator Ted Kennedy immediately labeled as Star Wars. And over time the Cold War ended.

A primary concern here is that it takes massive amounts of energy to reclaim many of the rare components…

http://en.nagoya-u.ac.jp/research/activities/news/2017/02/what-happened-to-the-sun-over-7000-years-ago.html

For some reason this doesn’t preview properly, so here’s the header and brief blurb:

“February 7, 2017 PRESS RELEASE

“What Happened to the Sun over 7,000 Years Ago? Analysis of tree rings reveals highly abnormal solar activity in the mid-Holocene

“An international team led by researchers at Nagoya University, along with US and Swiss colleagues, has identified a new type of solar event and dated it to the year 5480 BC…”

Here’s the original paper, but I don’t have a membership. Jim, perchance do you?

http://www.pnas.org/content/114/5/881

Large 14C excursion in 5480 BC indicates an abnormal sun … http://www.pnas.org National Academy of Sciences … Special collections highlighting noteworthy articles. Colloquium Papers; Commentaries; Core Concepts; Cozzarelli Prize

And here is a Wikipedia article about the climate of the Holocene:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum

Holocene climatic optimum – Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org The Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) was a warm period during roughly the interval 9,000 to 5,000 years BP. This event has also been known by many other names …

~Stephanie Osborn, “The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

Award-winning author of the Division One, Gentleman Aegis, and Displaced Detective series

---

 

Finally looking at this.

1. I can’t access the paper without paying the fee.

2.  Note that this is more or less in the middle of the Holocene Climate Optimum. Reading the Wikipedia article made me wonder a bit about prehistoric SUVs…

3. Given the location in the midst of the Holocene Climate Optimum, the easy assumption is that the sun was more active and the suggested hypothesis of a series of what might be called Super Carringtons caused the 14C anomaly.  The inverse situation of a much weaker solar cycle resulting in a magnetic anomaly which permitted a significant increase in cosmic radiation on the earth seems less likely. Not cited is the possibility of an intense extra-solar event, but that possibility cannot be discounted, though such an event should have left a properly dated fossil remnant (e.g something like the Crab nebula) which one would expect to have been observed, unless it was a very intense event at 10s of thousands of light years.  If I had to compare the three hypothesis, I would expect a Super-Carrington first, a extra-solar event second, and an anomalous weakening of the solar magnetic field as least likely.

J

 

That’s kind of my point. The most probable explanation IS a Carrington-level superflare. Now, mind, the recent data is starting to indicate that such superflares tend to occur in the ‘walls’ of extended minima, either during the descent down to, or the rise up from. And they are able to specifically date this event via tree rings to 5480BC, or about 7500BP as it’s sometimes called.

And that smacks it into the graph in the Wikipedia article at the point where it rises up to the maximum positive excursion.

I would love to get my hands on other solar data for that time frame and later. I know it exists, I just have to dig it up.

~Stephanie Osborn, “The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

http://www.Stephanie-Osborn.com

 

I wonder what a good student of legends would make of this: that’s a time when writing was just being invented, 7500 years before present; did anything survive in legendary accounts?

Dear Jerry:

Thanks for posting my e-mail about Henry Bauer’s blog post about scientific consensus.

About 3/4 of the way down the page at

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/rebellion-and-growth/

I notice my signature and the link I provided to Amazon for Henry’s book got dropped. Do you prefer not having links to Amazon? I provided it as a convenience, especially because Amazon always has reviews from other readers. I’m not trying to push Henry’s book. In fact I think it is currently greatly over-priced by his publisher. It was only $21 when I bought it a few years ago. At $35 the cost is prohibitive for the casual amateur that I am.

Best regards,

–Harry M.

Last night the formatting got out of control, and some of the material got printed funny and some was just left out. I tried redoing it several times, but my attempts just made it worse. Rather than fool with it, I am reprinting the last part of last night’s exposition here. Apologies. Most of you have seen most all this before.

 

I give up. The formatting is always bad.  I will paste in the missing lines. Here they are:

For a sweeping survey of the failures of science policy in our age of dogmatism, I recommend Professor Bauer’s book “Dogmatism in Science and Medicine”

 

I have no idea what the formatting problem was, and I don’t particularly want to know; I just hope it never happens again, cutting lines from quoted material and putting half the post up as if it were a block quote.  It seems all right now.

 

Scientific consensus wrong about most great advances.

Dear Jerry:
Dr. Henry Bauer, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Dean Emeritus of the College of Arts & Sciences at Virginia Tech, writes about the failures of scientific consensus and the dangers that presents for public policy.
From
https://scimedskeptic.wordpress.com/2017/02/08/508/
Science: A Danger for Public Policy?!
Posted by Henry Bauer on 2017/02/08
…
The contemporary scientific consensus has in fact been wrong about many, perhaps even most of the greatest advances in science: Planck and quantums, Wegener and drifting continents, Mendel and quantitative genetic heredity; the scientific consensus and 1976 Nobel Prize for discovering the viral cause of mad-cow diseases was wrong; that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria had been pooh-poohed by the mainstream consensus for some two decades before adherents of the consensus were willing to examine the evidence and then award a Nobel Prize in 2005.
Historical instances of a mistaken scientific consensus being have seemingly not affected major public policies in catastrophic ways, although one possible precedent for such unhappy influence may be the consensus that supported the eugenics movement around the 1920s, resulting in enforced sterilization of tens of thousands of people in the USA as recently as the latter half of the 20^th century.
Nowadays, though, the influence of science is so pervasive that the danger has become quite tangible that major public policies might be based on a scientific consensus that is at best doubtfully valid and at worst demonstrably wrong.
…
The history of science is unequivocal: Contemporary scientific consensuses have been wrong on some of the most significant issues.
…
In absence of an impartial comparative analysis, public discourse and public actions are determined by ideology and not by evidence. “Liberals” assert that the mainstream consensus on global warming equals “science” and anyone who properly respects the environment is supposed to accept this scientific consensus. On the other side, many “conservatives” beg to differ, as when Senator Inhofe flourishes a snowball. One doubts that most proponents of either side could give an accurate summary of the pertinent evidence. That is not a very good way to discuss or to make public policy.

Scarce Resources and Money 

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

Sometimes I just cannot help myself. I occasionally read something from one of your correspondent’s put forth as “Deep Thought” and it is just so “Can’t see the forest for the trees” that I laugh out loud. I suspect you often are well aware of the unintentional irony, but let it stand without comment. Res ipsa loquitur.

The most recent example is Mr. Alan E Johnson statement that he just cannot accept the allocation of scarce resources, in this case health care, by how much money one has.

One of the few things I know about economics is that you don’t need an “economy” in the strictest sense if you have enough of everything for everyone that needs it. “Economics” is the art/science of allocating scarce resources, and let’s face the Ugly Truth: Nearly Everything On Earth IS A Scarce Resource, at least in the sense that there is not enough for everyone to have as much as they would like to have of almost anything. I think “air” is the only exception requiring that “almost”, and once we start living in pressurized habitats in outer space, we must perforce add it into the equation.

“Money”, aside from it’s great utility as a means of exchange, is a rational tool for allocating resources in all but the most strictly controlled economies. Once you throw out money, you open the door to Government Permits as a means of allocating those scarce resources (i.e.

“Everything”). The Left believes that government is Wise, Beneficial and Much Better at doing things for us than we as individuals can ever be at anything,, and most especially at allocating those scarce things. It is the basic concept of Socialism.

It is increasingly common, apparently thanks to our public schools indoctrination of their students, to hear/read of people acting as if “Common Sense Equals Socialist Thought”. It’s important to point this out from time to time, when someone goes on a bit too much about the Emperor’s Fine New Suit of Clothes!

Petronius

Yes, I sometimes do.  Discovered!  

Snowden on a Stick

It looks like Trump might get a gift from Putin; not a superbowl ring but Snowden:

<.>

U.S. intelligence has collected information that Russia is considering turning over Edward Snowden as a “gift” to President Donald Trump — who has called the NSA leaker a “spy” and a “traitor” who deserves to be executed.

That’s according to a senior U.S. official who has analyzed a series of highly sensitive intelligence reports detailing Russian deliberations and who says a Snowden handover is one of various ploys to “curry favor” with Trump. A second source in the intelligence community confirms the intelligence about the Russian conversations and notes it has been gathered since the inauguration.

</>

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/russia-eyes-sending-snowden-u-s-gift-trump-official-n718921

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

The Spy Revolt Against Trump Begins – Observer

http://observer.com/2017/02/donald-trump-administration-mike-flynn-russian-embassy/amp/

I find the above very troubling. And consistent with what I know about IC corporate culture.

Francis

I have of course seen mainstream press attacks on Flynn, whom I do not know. The problem is that the media and press attacks anything Trump does with little regard to importance and not much more to truth. I cannot see the wolf but I hear so many shouts of his coming… I have had little involvement with the company since the 80’s, and know few involved since General Graham died. I do know enough to know things are often not as they seem, and those who say they know are often sincere in their beliefs, but wrong.

 

[Tuesday: The papers say that General Flynn has resigned. I expect others.]

The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet. It’s the End of the Middle Class | WIRED

I think they underestimate the danger. I believe it could be the start of the end of the species. As a species we are not wired to survive a life with no goals, no accomplishments, etc.

We need to get to Mars, the Moon and the asteroid belts ASAP.

We need a survivor contingent of the species out there living the hard life and continuing our existence.

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/ai-threat-isnt-skynet-end-middle-class/?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

John Harlow

We need to learn to live in space. Moon Base First.

Teachers Unions 

Jerry,
If Franklin Delano Roosevelt could oppose public-service unions as “organizing against the People,” I don’t see why Republicans approving an education secretary favoring non-public-school choice is unacceptable to Democrats — other than Democrats being in thrall to their donor base controlled by SEIU, that is
By the way, I’ve been enjoying Chaos Manor. Am I becoming more conservative in my old age or are you becoming more anarchistic in yours?
I am a bad anarchist, though. I voted for Trump.
I’m still waiting to add your endorsement of Alongside Night — the Movie to your 1979 endorsement of Alongside Night — The Novel.
Be well,
Neil

Teachers Unions are a conspiracy to rob the taxpayers of benefits of school taxes and thus preserve real education to those who can afford private education.

That mean, stupid, ignorant, lying, fascist, racist, misogynist, traitorous, Nazi Trump

Hello Jerry,

You noted this:

“President Trump is now experiencing that: not only is everything he does mistaken and wrong, it is worse: foolish at best, and more likely just plain evil and mean.”

as an accurate description of the media wide characterization of Trump.

I think it would be instructive for someone to look up the network that sponsored Trump’s long run TV shows, see how he was described by his employers at the time he was on TV and the commercials they ran urging viewers to watch him, and contrast that with how that same network, its subsidiaries, and its employees have characterized him since he began his run for the presidency and subsequent to his election. 

You would think that after paying him for several years to host a popular program on their network they would have noticed, and commented on, his now so obvious (to them) faults, but no, his universally odious traits only manifested themselves when he became a leading Republican candidate for president, finally blooming into an existential threat to humanity at large AFTER his election.

It would seem that as a group they are EXTREMELY poor judges of character OR that they are willing to say or do anything to advance a particular political agenda and/or destroy political opponents.  Neither case provides a strong argument that their pronouncements about the character of a political opponent should be viewed as credible.

Bob Ludwick  

Turnabout is fair play?

Dear Jerry –
In the case of the suit against the Trump travel ban, an obvious question was, “What standing does Washington state have to allow it to bring suit? How can it claim injury?”
The answer given is that the state economy is damaged by the dislocations which the ban produce, and so the state has been injured and has standing to sue.
I find this a most entertaining argument, since it turns the “interstate commerce” argument right around and aims it at the Feds. Since the Federal government has argued, for instance, that growing pot in one’s back yard for personal use means that the grower does not buy in the (illegal) market, and thus affects the interstate economy in marijuana, it seems perfectly reasonable for the state of Washington to claim that its economy is being damaged by the effects on individuals within its borders. Sauce for the goose, etc.
Granted, I don’t think either argument should be allowed to stand, but if the principle is going to be established it certainly seems that it should do so fairly.
Regards,
Jim Martin

The one thing certain is that the law does not much deal in fair play or easy comprehension.  Perhaps it should. Perhaps we need a new Twelve Tables.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.