Trump says we should leave Syria to ‛the other poeple’ to deal with. I'm assuming he means Iran and Russia and Turkey, who seem to be working more or less in coincidence with one another in Syria.
TrumpTweets: For reasons I don't quite get, Trump has decided to renew his rambling about DACA (called off all efforts to get a solution) and has gone off on his Great Wall of Trump again. Doesn't make a lot of sense for an Easter message, but there it is.
China has announced retaliatory new tariffs of 15% and 25% on American goods in 128 different categories, especially targeting foodstuffs. CNBC
It turned out that Trump's tariffs, when finally imposed a week or so after they were announced, were so riddled with exceptions as to be almost meaningless. This led to a rapid stock market recovery after the initial crash. It remains to be reported whether or not the Chinese tariffs are similarly mere sound and fury, but I suppose we should expect an initial stock market dip to begin today.
NewYorkMagazine picks up on an argument recently laid out in the NewYorkTimes about white folks being genetically ‘smarter’ than black folks (by a fairly miniscule amount―less than 1% overall). Ezra Klein has delivered a counter-argument in Vox
I've been following along on this for about a week now. The one thing none of these guys seem to want to get near is an admission that these IQ tests which show white people as smarter than black people were designed by white people. No doubt most of those folks designing tests were proceeding in good faith.
But…. How do we know that black people wouldn't, completely in good faith, tend to come up with IQ tests that tended to show black people as just barely smarter on average than white people?
... I suppose we should expect an initial stock market dip to begin today.
It looks like you supposed right. Although I'm not sure if it's the possibility of the economy tanking because of a trade war with China or because of the usual twitter crap seeping out of our dear leader's fingertips with regard to Amazon.
Am I the only one who is getting really, really tired of his continually shooting our country in the collective foot?
Dexter Filkins in TheNewYorker does a profile on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a/k/a M.B.S. Also included are tales of his interactions so far with Team Trump.
Warning, it's kinda long, but I found it interesting enough to finish.
I doubt there are very many things I would agree with Andrew Sullivan about. But that piece in the New Yorker about genetics and race is probably one I could go along with. One thing that occurs to me about the race/IQ controversy is the following. Suppose we accept that there are heritable traits that affect IQ. Suppose likewise that there are collections of traits that we distinguish as "race". (I'm not sold on either of these ideas, especially the latter, but prepared to accept them for the sake of argument).
Has anyone demonstrated that these heritable traits are connected in anything other that a statistical way? In other words, if they occur on independent genes then Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment says they will be randomly selected during meiosis.
Take a different (and less controversial) example. Suppose I said that redheads get cystic fibrosis. I happen to be from the place with the highest incidence of both in the world. One in ten Irish people have red hair, and a third of the population carries the gene for it. The prevalence of cystic fibrosis is 0.07% of the population, higher than anywhere else. What's the connection? There isn't any, that I know of. Red hair is due to a mutation in the M1CR gene on chromosome 16. Cystic fibrosis is due to the CFTR gene on chromosome 7.
The prevalence of any combination of genes, in the absence of gene linkage, is due to reproductive isolation. M1CR and CFTR have no connection other than they just happen to have both arrived in the local gene pool. As people of Irish descent interbreed with others far afield, these genes -- being independently assorted -- will go their separate ways. This idea of the independent destinies of different genes is the main theme of Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene. According to this thesis, each gene vies for survival in its own right, but is forced to hitch a ride with others in an individual human.
So what about race and intelligence? Even if there is a statistical linkage, I've seen nobody claiming that the two are associated with the same genes, or a set of linked genes. Like redheadedness and cystic fibrosis in Ireland, they may have ended up being prevalent in a particular locale but with no other affinity apart from this. The modern day diminution in reproductive isolation can be relied upon to change all that quite rapidly. Diverse parentage could deal all of us a whack of the stupid stick (or its opposite), entirely independent of race.
We just had our third, and hopefully final belt of snow. Each one has been less dramatic than the last. Number two was still enough to shut the country down for a day or two, and locally we got several inches of the white stuff. Being less malign than number one, it was dubbed "the mini beast from the east". I guess number three was therefore "the baby beast". It was really just passing through, a brief collision between warm air from the south and the chilly influence that still dominates the continent to the east. Right behind the latest front, the air temperature is a balmy 15 Celsius. Felt quite summery all of a sudden. That's not surprising given our traditional start of summer is less than four weeks away, but the run up to it has been decidedly out of the ordinary.
I wonder what we'll discover about what's been going on in the Arctic. It has leaked enough cold air to put Siberia and much of Europe in the deep freeze for more than a month now. Logic suggests we might expect more Arctic oddities throughout the year, given we've seen temperatures up to 50 Celsius higher than normal up there.
I've started the piece on M.B.S, but will have to finish it tomorrow. It is long, but interesting. I find his having an affinity for Jared Kushner a little disturbing. But I suppose I could write that off to the Trump administration's focus on putting KSA front and center, rather than Obama's trying to keep a balance between KSA and Iran.
I have to say that so far Iran and Russia do seem to be coming out ahead in the Middle East, and we seem to be throwing in the towel when it comes to maintaining any influence in that region.
I still think there is something to be said about environment playing a role in intellectual levels. That is, good nutrition in the formative years does play a role in brain development. Anyone put into a position of poor developmental opportunities will get the short end of the stick, so to speak.
We just had our third, and hopefully final belt of snow.
Just when I was telling my Aunt it might be safe to come back to Minnesota after having wintered down south we have gotten dumped on. I had to snow blow on Sunday morning, shovel this morning and snow blow again when I got home from work this evening. I measured 7.75 inches on my deck, which didn't melt off like the driveway did. Now we are getting the cold temps at night, which means refreezing all of the stuff that melted the prior day, giving us icy roads. Sunday they are saying we will get some more snow. Everything is all white again and it looks like January. But things are looking up for next week with temps back into the 40F's.
As my neighbor said this morning, this is getting old. :(
"I still think there is something to be said about environment playing a role in intellectual levels."
That is undoubtedly true. Environment is responsible for about half the difference between individuals. And of the genetic part, only a minority can be associated with race. My point was that even that correlation does not imply causation.
TrumpTweets In an apparent extension of the ‘alternate facts’ oft indulged on FoxNews, the Trump administration has decreed that we will not become embroiled in trade war with China (or anybody else for that matter, but China's the focus for today). Nothin’ to worry ‘bout here, folks. Trump has declared this to be so.
Just to be clear starting out, I was against sending American troops into Syria in the first place. But, Trump listened to his generals and did it anyway. Now he's decided that he wants them back out, and he's instructed the Pentagon to prepare plans for the United States to withdraw from Syria and leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks and the Russians. Hasn't ordered the troops out yet, but it sure looks like that's where he's goin'.
My point was that even that correlation does not imply causation.
Yes, I understand. Personally I tend to believe that race is not a factor in intelligence levels. But I will let those who are more scientifically inclined argue the point.
Now he's decided that he wants them back out, and he's instructed the Pentagon to prepare plans for the United States to withdraw from Syria and leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks and the Russians.
I have yet to hear what his reasoning for changing his mind is supposed to be?
Don't know that he's explained his reasoning in coherent terms.
On another subject…. I've been looking into something I'd read earlier that struck me as having been written by somebody who knows…. Claim was that Mueller could get the grand jury to return an indictment, and then hand that off to the Justice Department (Rod Rosenstein) and then let them decide whether to sign it and file it in court, or dump it in the trash. I looked that up. It's true. The return of an indictment isn't a criminal charge, isn't even a valid indictment, unless signed by an "attorney for the government", and who counts as an "attorney for the government" is defined in the federal criminal rules. Definition doesn't seem to include "special counsel", but does include the AG and all Assistant AGs, meaning it includes Rod Rosenstein.
Some Qataris speculate that Kushner endorsed the blockade partly out of frustration over a failed deal with his family’s real-estate firm. In April, a month before the summit, Qatar’s finance minister, Ali Sharif al-Emadi, flew to New York to examine new investment opportunities. He and his entourage rented a suite at the St. Regis Hotel, cleared away most of the furniture, and received a long line of American businessmen who were looking for funding. According to a financial analyst with knowledge of the meeting, among the hopefuls were Kushner’s father, Charles, and his sister Nicole. They came seeking money to rescue the family’s signature property, 666 Fifth Avenue—a forty-one-story tower in midtown Manhattan, which generates gallingly low returns and carries a mortgage, due next February, of $1.2 billion.
Charles Kushner has maintained that the Qataris requested the meeting, and that he attended out of politeness but was too wary of conflicts of interest to accept funding. The financial analyst, however, said that Kushner pitched a huge renovation of the property, which included bringing in retail stores and converting offices to residences, and hosted a follow-up meeting the next day at 666 Fifth Avenue. “He asked for just under a billion dollars,” he told me. The Qataris declined, citing dubious business logic. “They could have bought the building—believe me, they have the money,” the analyst said. “They just didn’t think it would ever pay off.” The analyst worried that refusing the deal had a political cost. “Here’s a question for you: If they had given Kushner the money, would there have been a blockade? I don’t think so.”
Just another reason to distrust the influence of Jared Kushner. There is a huge conflict of interest in his private sector and public sector roles.
I expect Jared and Ivanka to both receive blanket (any and all offenses against the United States, both known and unknown) Presidential Pardons before Trump relinquishes the Presidency.
I wouldn't have thought this was important to Putin, but apparently Russia has gone on an info-war attack on social media on the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. So, I guess it is important to Putin.
Putin seems to act with impunity, or at least has in the past. Perhaps with so many countries raising objections he is thinking this time may be different. Or perhaps he senses that some of his "friends" may be losing stature even as we speak, so they are running damage control.
As someone once said, we live in interesting times.
Perhaps I've been looking at this looming trade war with China from a too narrow prospective. That is, only from the American side. I ran across a book which I will place here to remind me of it later, that talks a little about the financial situation in China.
While a trade war hurts everyone, I have always assumed it will hurt us more. But what if that isn't really the case? What if this actually destabilizes China? Everyone looks at China as if it is some kind of impervious monolith. But what if it isn't? What if it is more fragile than we think?
I finally got around to watching the "real" Let There Be Light, a documentary movie about efforts toward breakeven nuclear fusion. They covered the ITER international consortium, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc's Focus Fusion, the Max Planck Institute's WX-7 Stellarator, and General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion system. There was no sign of UK-based Tokamak Energy, EMC2's Polywell, Lockheed Martin's skunkworks fusion project, the various Z-pinch fusion efforts, etc.
It was a quirky film, but ultimately it was pretty superficial. I certainly didn't learn anything new from it, other than ITER is an even bigger white elephant than I thought. It will probably still work and probably still be a failure -- too big, complicated and expensive to be replicable on sufficient scale. I think we're going to need a more compact fusion solution, which may just be achieved using high temperature superconducting magnets. That's what Tokamak Energy are using in their spherical tokamak. We might get some idea of their prospects in just three to five years.
Several other efforts have a fighting chance. General Fusion's idea would be great to see working if for no other reason than it is so wacky -- a bunch of heavy pistons banging on a rotating liquid metal drum to make a compression wave powerful enough to induce fusion. It has been described as the "steam punk" approach to fusion. But I guess any workable approach would be great and it's encouraging to see that incremental progress is still being made. Unfortunately in its entire 100 minutes Let Their Be Light tells you almost nothing about it, to the extent I fell asleep toward the end.
"…we are going back to the grand old age of coal…"
Not so much. A few guys who got coal ready to pull are taking advantage of the presently lowered environmental regulations. But, nobody's putting money into developing coal these days. Trump won't last; Pruitt won't outlast Trump.
Seems we have been in secret talks with North Korea before the much heralded meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un. Interesting. Someone else does the heavy lifting and Trump gets to take the credit in the end?
"Someone else does the heavy lifting and Trump gets to take the credit in the end?"
Uh, that's the way it's supposed to work. When the news about a Trump-RocketMan meeting broke he was criticised for not doing it that way, i.e. allowing all the low-level interactions to happen before blessing them with a Preznitential meeting. I guess opinions vary on whether a meeting with Trump is a blessing ;-)
"since we are going back to the grand old age of coal for an energy source..."
Not gonna happen. Coal didn't fall out of favour because Saint Obama and the Greenies banished the evil black stuff. It fell out of favour because Saint Obama presided over the greatest fossil fuel extraction programme in US history. They were just different kinds of fossils. Coal had a better chance of a comeback if Hillary had got in and made a virtue of blocking oil and gas pipelines. ;-)
"Okay, so I was being a little snarky, I admit it."
President Donald Trump on Sunday warned of a "big price" after reports of a chemical weapons attack in Syria almost a year to the day since the US struck a Syrian air field.
"Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria," Trump tweeted. "Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price..." He continued, "....to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!"
A fire in Trump Tower kills one resident and injures six firefighters.
On the news they had pictures of fire shooting out of the windows in multiple units. So, what happened to the sprinkler system in those units? Aren't they code in high rises now?
Well, I got around to reading Trump's rhetorical flourishes regarding Assad's chem weapons attack on his rebels. Near as I can tell, we're still pulling out and leaving Assad in charge of wide swaths of what used to be Syria, within the next six months or so.
Near as I can tell, we're still pulling out and leaving Assad in charge of wide swaths of what used to be Syria, within the next six months or so.
Not surprised. I should expect that Trump's statement of someone paying a price for this latest attack will end up being all smoke and mirrors, just like last time. He is, however, again using this latest event as an opportunity to blame President Obama because he didn't enforce his "red line" statement.
"Snowing here again. This time I'm thinking I will let it melt."
Won't it turn to ice? I thought your temperatures stayed sub-zero till mid-August :)
Proper Spring here now ... I've cut the grass for the first time and I've seen insects. Those critters are too canny to come out before Spring has properly sprung. Not a whole lot of leaves yet though, courtesy of the extended cold. Temps due to hit 15 C next couple of days, like a proper Irish summer ;-)
Won't it turn to ice? I thought your temperatures stayed sub-zero till mid-August :)
lol!
Our temps this year have been a roller coaster of highs and lows, but we too are getting into Spring. The sun is higher in the sky and we're getting more direct rays. However, I can say with a good amount of certainty that I won't be cutting any grass anytime soon. :)
New York Times is reporting that the FBI has ‘raided’ the offices of Trump's long-time lawyer, Michael Cohn.
I understand that Trump was supposed to be kept busy this coming week and away from his Twitter account and somewhat insulated from his morning ‛executive time’ watching Fox and Friends in the mornings. That plan may have just got shot to hell.
Trump's trip to South America, scheduled for later this week and which was supposed to help keep him away from FoxNews' morning shows and thus less of a threat of a twitterburst, has been canceled.
So far Trump's been fairly muted on Twitter this morning, but it's just the first day.
One thing I will say about Mueller, is he is good at throwing out surprises. I am continually saying, "I didn't see that coming". Sneaky, very sneaky.
Comey will be doing an interview the end of this week, I believe, right before his book comes out. I will have to make sure I make a note of that so I can watch. Needless to say I will be looking out for his book too.
Mueller has ‘referred’ the criminal case against Cohen (and maybe against Trump later) to the U.S. Attorney for Southern District of New York. And that office has taken the referral and run with it. (In spite of the fact that the named, interim U.S. Attorney for that District has not yet been confirmed as permanent.) That's where the raid on Trump's personal lawyer came from.
This means that even if Trump decides to fire Mueller tonight, it's still not over. Mueller has managed to hand it off; it will survive him.
I was just reading about that and came here with a link to the article, but you beat me to it.
These guys(Mueller & Co.) are smart, they know what they are doing. It would not come as a surprise that there has been criminal activity among Trump's closest allies or friends. He promised to drain the swamp in Washington, but I have always been of the opinion that he just brought it with him. This goes beyond disliking policy. No one is above the law.
There remains a very important exception to the attorney-client privilege called the "crime-fraud" exception. If the attorney and the client are conspiring to commit a crime and use the attorney-client privilege to cover up the conspiracy, under law the privilege is automatically waived.
New York federal prosecutors will be carefully sifting through Cohen's records in search of any evidence that he conspired with his primary client, the President of the United States, to commit a crime. And the one thing we know for sure, a federal judge has reviewed the warrant application and has determined that there is "probable cause" to believe that Cohen's law office records contain evidence of some kind of a serious crime: a crime so serious that this judge permitted a raid on the office of the President's personal lawyer.
Something is up and President Trump's latest musings about firing Mueller won't make it go away. The new cop on this beat is Trump's own appointee, US Attorney Berman, who like all federal prosecutors is ethically required to follow the evidence of a crime wherever it leads even if not in the direction of Russia...but instead into Trump Tower.
Paul Ryan will not seek re-election. Could have knocked me over with a feather.
I never liked Paul Ryan's views on policy. The headline on CNN touts this as a win for Trump in the fight for the "soul" of the Republican Party. Yet, there was a poll out recently showing that while there is more support for hard line authoritarian types of leaders in other countries, that sentiment has waned over the last year in the US. One has to wonder if there are more anti-Trump Republicans than some polls would suggest.
I was not surprised. Ryan skipped a ‛town hall’ meeting scheduled in his district last week(Janesville, Wisconsin) by the ‛Enough is Enough’ gun control movement. All his competitors appeared as did candidates for other offices up for renewal in 2018, but Ryan skipped the forum. I figured then he was gonna retire. (It appears that most political wonks expected him to run, but then resign after the new Congress went for the Democrats. This on the theory that he could raise more money for the party if he didn't resign until after the 2018 elections.)
Ryan actually wanted to become President one day. Speaker of the House was never his goal. It may well be that Trump, and his cover for Trump, has undone his hopes of ever being President. However, getting away from it now allows him some time to try to reboot his political career in some manner independent of Trump. He's still young enough to try to reboot.
Yes, you're right. I said Democrats because it seems that there are few Republicans who see through Trump, or care to see through him. Those that do seem to be dropping like flies before the more hard line components of the party.
But it is up to the voters in the mid-terms to try to make a statement about the way our government is being handled under the Trump administration.
General: "Mr President, we are victorious in Goutha and in Douma we're on the verge of victory, the main rebel force has just agreed to withdraw to Idlib."
Assad: "Then let's gas some of the remaining civilians!"
General: "Mr President.... why? As I said we are winning..."
Assad: "Why? For the lulz!"
General: "But Mr President, have you thought this through? The only real threat to us at this stage is intervention from Nato forces."
There are some hints escaping from the New York Federal Courts which suggest that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, wasn't actually working as a lawyer for anybody, including Trump. (As in, he wasn't actually engaged in giving legal advice to anybody, hadn't been doing any of that for several years.)
[Marcus]: "But Mr President, have you thought this through? The only real threat to us at this stage is intervention from Nato forces."
I've seen this touted elsewhere and it certainly gives pause for thought. On the other hand, what's NATO gonna do? (Well we know what, as US tomahawks have just targeted Asad's alleged chemical weapons infrastructure in the last hour). But consider, it takes a lot of manpower and probable regime casualties to smoke out the last rebel holdouts in Douma, some of whom don't want to leave even with a deal. A nice cloud of heavier-than-air chlorine could work wonders down in those basements and tunnels, and the press coverage is probably not much more negative than when the Russkis lent Assad some bunker busters for smoking rebels out in Aleppo.
And so what if the Yanks lob a few tomahawks? Everyone knows it's completely tokenistic. Trump has already said it's a one-time effort. Basically he couldn't do anything but he couldn't do nothing either. It'll be back to business as usual tomorrow, with Assad firmly in place. Syrian state TV is claiming they shot down a dozen tomahawks -- true or not it's kudos for the regime forces from Assad supporters for protecting them.
P.S. There was a Trump supporter on one of our radio channels yesterday talking about how the west has to do something about Assad. "I mean look at the Christians in Syria and the Middle East, their number have gone to almost nothing". I guess he didn't realise most of the local Christians on are Assad's side because the Alewite regime is quite tolerant and their greater fear is of an Islamist rebel takeover.
Assad used chemicals for the usual reason, to prove that he can and that he will. He wanted to get those points established before the rebels were crushed and he was denied the opportunity to get those points established. He wanted the survivors to remember, lest they rebel again too quickly.
Assad has survived only because of Putin's support. Who is really to blame?
General: "But Mr President, have you thought this through? The only real threat to us at this stage is intervention from Nato forces."
Assad: "Lol! Just do it!"
Syria is the new Afghanistan under the Soviets. We all know what happened there. We may take out some of Assad's chemical weapons capability, but we are not the only possible consequence of his actions.
I guess he didn't realise most of the local Christians on are Assad's side because the Alewite regime is quite tolerant and their greater fear is of an Islamist rebel takeover.
Probably justified.
But the use of chemical weapons will get noticed even by those who don't want to get deeply involved in Syria's civil war. Airstrikes won't change anything, but it couldn't be ignored.
There are some hints escaping from the New York Federal Courts which suggest that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, wasn't actually working as a lawyer for anybody, including Trump.
Yup, it sounds like something rather nasty going on with that. It looks like he is under criminal investigation. Something that won't be good for Trump.
And Trump is responding as expected. This is the guy who is supposed to have the moral authority to launch missile strikes on Syria and he is calling his former FBI director "a weak and untruthful slime ball" on social media. What an asshole.
Snowing to beat the band here. First rain, which froze overnight, now heavier snow has moved in. They are talking two day snowstorm. I rushed around all day yesterday doing errands so I don't have to go anywhere this weekend, unless it's an emergency. Judging by the lack of traffic on my street other people had the same idea.
*sigh*
And just as the glacier in my yard had started to melt...
"And just as the glacier in my yard had started to melt..."
Tried to warn you. Mid-August. ;-)
Summer has definitely arrived here. Leaves are a bit late (make that very late) but they are finally appearing. It's sunny and 20 degrees. You gotta take it while it's going here, as the official summer season could be colder and wetter. (Hmm, possibly much, much colder).
Leaves? Leaves? What are those? It's all WHITE again here! And it's still snowing. I may actually have to drag out the snow blower again if it keeps up, just so that I can get out of the driveway on Monday!
83 comments:
Happy Easter, everyone!
Trump says we should leave Syria to ‛the other poeple’ to deal with. I'm assuming he means Iran and Russia and Turkey, who seem to be working more or less in coincidence with one another in Syria.
TrumpTweets: For reasons I don't quite get, Trump has decided to renew his rambling about DACA (called off all efforts to get a solution) and has gone off on his Great Wall of Trump again. Doesn't make a lot of sense for an Easter message, but there it is.
Doesn't make a lot of sense for an Easter message, but there it is.
No reason he should change his MO because it's Easter.
China has announced retaliatory new tariffs of 15% and 25% on American goods in 128 different categories, especially targeting foodstuffs. CNBC
It turned out that Trump's tariffs, when finally imposed a week or so after they were announced, were so riddled with exceptions as to be almost meaningless. This led to a rapid stock market recovery after the initial crash.
It remains to be reported whether or not the Chinese tariffs are similarly mere sound and fury, but I suppose we should expect an initial stock market dip to begin today.
NewYorkMagazine picks up on an argument recently laid out in the NewYorkTimes about white folks being genetically ‘smarter’ than black folks (by a fairly miniscule amount―less than 1% overall).
Ezra Klein has delivered a counter-argument in Vox
I've been following along on this for about a week now.
The one thing none of these guys seem to want to get near is an admission that these IQ tests which show white people as smarter than black people were designed by white people. No doubt most of those folks designing tests were proceeding in good faith.
But…. How do we know that black people wouldn't, completely in good faith, tend to come up with IQ tests that tended to show black people as just barely smarter on average than white people?
... I suppose we should expect an initial stock market dip to begin today.
It looks like you supposed right. Although I'm not sure if it's the possibility of the economy tanking because of a trade war with China or because of the usual twitter crap seeping out of our dear leader's fingertips with regard to Amazon.
Am I the only one who is getting really, really tired of his continually shooting our country in the collective foot?
"Am I the only one who is getting really, really tired of…"
No, but I, for one, have come to expect it.
Or, perhaps I simply started out expecting it and have not been often surprised by it.
Dexter Filkins in TheNewYorker does a profile on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman a/k/a M.B.S.
Also included are tales of his interactions so far with Team Trump.
Warning, it's kinda long, but I found it interesting enough to finish.
I'll have to look at it tonight.
Just a quick recap of today's headlines:
1. Troops to guard the border until wall built
2. More tariffs on China
3. Possible cut to foreign aid for Honduras because of caravan of possible asylum seekers headed for the US border
4. Trump can't understand those who don't want warm relations with Russia and says he believes he has been tough on them
lol!
Ain't Trumpland just grand?
(Not)
I doubt there are very many things I would agree with Andrew Sullivan about. But that piece in the New Yorker about genetics and race is probably one I could go along with. One thing that occurs to me about the race/IQ controversy is the following. Suppose we accept that there are heritable traits that affect IQ. Suppose likewise that there are collections of traits that we distinguish as "race". (I'm not sold on either of these ideas, especially the latter, but prepared to accept them for the sake of argument).
Has anyone demonstrated that these heritable traits are connected in anything other that a statistical way? In other words, if they occur on independent genes then Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment says they will be randomly selected during meiosis.
Take a different (and less controversial) example. Suppose I said that redheads get cystic fibrosis. I happen to be from the place with the highest incidence of both in the world. One in ten Irish people have red hair, and a third of the population carries the gene for it. The prevalence of cystic fibrosis is 0.07% of the population, higher than anywhere else. What's the connection? There isn't any, that I know of. Red hair is due to a mutation in the M1CR gene on chromosome 16. Cystic fibrosis is due to the CFTR gene on chromosome 7.
The prevalence of any combination of genes, in the absence of gene linkage, is due to reproductive isolation. M1CR and CFTR have no connection other than they just happen to have both arrived in the local gene pool. As people of Irish descent interbreed with others far afield, these genes -- being independently assorted -- will go their separate ways. This idea of the independent destinies of different genes is the main theme of Richard Dawkins' book, The Selfish Gene. According to this thesis, each gene vies for survival in its own right, but is forced to hitch a ride with others in an individual human.
So what about race and intelligence? Even if there is a statistical linkage, I've seen nobody claiming that the two are associated with the same genes, or a set of linked genes. Like redheadedness and cystic fibrosis in Ireland, they may have ended up being prevalent in a particular locale but with no other affinity apart from this. The modern day diminution in reproductive isolation can be relied upon to change all that quite rapidly. Diverse parentage could deal all of us a whack of the stupid stick (or its opposite), entirely independent of race.
Oops sorry, New York mag ≠ the New Yorker.
We just had our third, and hopefully final belt of snow. Each one has been less dramatic than the last. Number two was still enough to shut the country down for a day or two, and locally we got several inches of the white stuff. Being less malign than number one, it was dubbed "the mini beast from the east". I guess number three was therefore "the baby beast". It was really just passing through, a brief collision between warm air from the south and the chilly influence that still dominates the continent to the east. Right behind the latest front, the air temperature is a balmy 15 Celsius. Felt quite summery all of a sudden. That's not surprising given our traditional start of summer is less than four weeks away, but the run up to it has been decidedly out of the ordinary.
I wonder what we'll discover about what's been going on in the Arctic. It has leaked enough cold air to put Siberia and much of Europe in the deep freeze for more than a month now. Logic suggests we might expect more Arctic oddities throughout the year, given we've seen temperatures up to 50 Celsius higher than normal up there.
"…but prepared to accept them for the sake of argument…"
Trust Petes to get sucked in by the hint of an opportunity to try to count dancing angels on the head of a pin.
I've started the piece on M.B.S, but will have to finish it tomorrow. It is long, but interesting. I find his having an affinity for Jared Kushner a little disturbing. But I suppose I could write that off to the Trump administration's focus on putting KSA front and center, rather than Obama's trying to keep a balance between KSA and Iran.
P.S.
I have to say that so far Iran and Russia do seem to be coming out ahead in the Middle East, and we seem to be throwing in the towel when it comes to maintaining any influence in that region.
So what about race and intelligence?
I still think there is something to be said about environment playing a role in intellectual levels. That is, good nutrition in the formative years does play a role in brain development. Anyone put into a position of poor developmental opportunities will get the short end of the stick, so to speak.
We just had our third, and hopefully final belt of snow.
Just when I was telling my Aunt it might be safe to come back to Minnesota after having wintered down south we have gotten dumped on. I had to snow blow on Sunday morning, shovel this morning and snow blow again when I got home from work this evening. I measured 7.75 inches on my deck, which didn't melt off like the driveway did. Now we are getting the cold temps at night, which means refreezing all of the stuff that melted the prior day, giving us icy roads. Sunday they are saying we will get some more snow. Everything is all white again and it looks like January. But things are looking up for next week with temps back into the 40F's.
As my neighbor said this morning, this is getting old. :(
"I still think there is something to be said about environment playing a role in intellectual levels."
That is undoubtedly true. Environment is responsible for about half the difference between individuals. And of the genetic part, only a minority can be associated with race. My point was that even that correlation does not imply causation.
TrumpTweets
In an apparent extension of the ‘alternate facts’ oft indulged on FoxNews, the Trump administration has decreed that we will not become embroiled in trade war with China (or anybody else for that matter, but China's the focus for today). Nothin’ to worry ‘bout here, folks.
Trump has declared this to be so.
Just to be clear starting out, I was against sending American troops into Syria in the first place. But, Trump listened to his generals and did it anyway.
Now he's decided that he wants them back out, and he's instructed the Pentagon to prepare plans for the United States to withdraw from Syria and leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks and the Russians. Hasn't ordered the troops out yet, but it sure looks like that's where he's goin'.
My point was that even that correlation does not imply causation.
Yes, I understand. Personally I tend to believe that race is not a factor in intelligence levels. But I will let those who are more scientifically inclined argue the point.
Now he's decided that he wants them back out, and he's instructed the Pentagon to prepare plans for the United States to withdraw from Syria and leave the Kurds to the tender mercies of the Turks and the Russians.
I have yet to hear what his reasoning for changing his mind is supposed to be?
Don't know that he's explained his reasoning in coherent terms.
On another subject…. I've been looking into something I'd read earlier that struck me as having been written by somebody who knows…. Claim was that Mueller could get the grand jury to return an indictment, and then hand that off to the Justice Department (Rod Rosenstein) and then let them decide whether to sign it and file it in court, or dump it in the trash.
I looked that up. It's true. The return of an indictment isn't a criminal charge, isn't even a valid indictment, unless signed by an "attorney for the government", and who counts as an "attorney for the government" is defined in the federal criminal rules. Definition doesn't seem to include "special counsel", but does include the AG and all Assistant AGs, meaning it includes Rod Rosenstein.
Some Qataris speculate that Kushner endorsed the blockade partly out of frustration over a failed deal with his family’s real-estate firm. In April, a month before the summit, Qatar’s finance minister, Ali Sharif al-Emadi, flew to New York to examine new investment opportunities. He and his entourage rented a suite at the St. Regis Hotel, cleared away most of the furniture, and received a long line of American businessmen who were looking for funding. According to a financial analyst with knowledge of the meeting, among the hopefuls were Kushner’s father, Charles, and his sister Nicole. They came seeking money to rescue the family’s signature property, 666 Fifth Avenue—a forty-one-story tower in midtown Manhattan, which generates gallingly low returns and carries a mortgage, due next February, of $1.2 billion.
Charles Kushner has maintained that the Qataris requested the meeting, and that he attended out of politeness but was too wary of conflicts of interest to accept funding. The financial analyst, however, said that Kushner pitched a huge renovation of the property, which included bringing in retail stores and converting offices to residences, and hosted a follow-up meeting the next day at 666 Fifth Avenue. “He asked for just under a billion dollars,” he told me. The Qataris declined, citing dubious business logic. “They could have bought the building—believe me, they have the money,” the analyst said. “They just didn’t think it would ever pay off.” The analyst worried that refusing the deal had a political cost. “Here’s a question for you: If they had given Kushner the money, would there have been a blockade? I don’t think so.”
Just another reason to distrust the influence of Jared Kushner. There is a huge conflict of interest in his private sector and public sector roles.
...meaning it includes Rod Rosenstein.
Meaning it makes him a rather important person. Or a rather important target for Trump and his twitter attacks.
I expect Jared and Ivanka to both receive blanket (any and all offenses against the United States, both known and unknown) Presidential Pardons before Trump relinquishes the Presidency.
I wouldn't have thought this was important to Putin, but apparently Russia has gone on an info-war attack on social media on the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. So, I guess it is important to Putin.
Putin seems to act with impunity, or at least has in the past. Perhaps with so many countries raising objections he is thinking this time may be different. Or perhaps he senses that some of his "friends" may be losing stature even as we speak, so they are running damage control.
As someone once said, we live in interesting times.
Perhaps I've been looking at this looming trade war with China from a too narrow prospective. That is, only from the American side. I ran across a book which I will place here to remind me of it later, that talks a little about the financial situation in China.
While a trade war hurts everyone, I have always assumed it will hurt us more. But what if that isn't really the case? What if this actually destabilizes China? Everyone looks at China as if it is some kind of impervious monolith. But what if it isn't? What if it is more fragile than we think?
Something to sleep on...
I finally got around to watching the "real" Let There Be Light, a documentary movie about efforts toward breakeven nuclear fusion. They covered the ITER international consortium, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc's Focus Fusion, the Max Planck Institute's WX-7 Stellarator, and General Fusion’s Magnetized Target Fusion system. There was no sign of UK-based Tokamak Energy, EMC2's Polywell, Lockheed Martin's skunkworks fusion project, the various Z-pinch fusion efforts, etc.
It was a quirky film, but ultimately it was pretty superficial. I certainly didn't learn anything new from it, other than ITER is an even bigger white elephant than I thought. It will probably still work and probably still be a failure -- too big, complicated and expensive to be replicable on sufficient scale. I think we're going to need a more compact fusion solution, which may just be achieved using high temperature superconducting magnets. That's what Tokamak Energy are using in their spherical tokamak. We might get some idea of their prospects in just three to five years.
Several other efforts have a fighting chance. General Fusion's idea would be great to see working if for no other reason than it is so wacky -- a bunch of heavy pistons banging on a rotating liquid metal drum to make a compression wave powerful enough to induce fusion. It has been described as the "steam punk" approach to fusion. But I guess any workable approach would be great and it's encouraging to see that incremental progress is still being made. Unfortunately in its entire 100 minutes Let Their Be Light tells you almost nothing about it, to the extent I fell asleep toward the end.
...to the extent I fell asleep toward the end.
lol!
So the long and short of it is that the documentary isn't worth the time, except as a sleep aid.
But it is probably only of interest in passing, since we are going back to the grand old age of coal for an energy source...
"…we are going back to the grand old age of coal…"
Not so much. A few guys who got coal ready to pull are taking advantage of the presently lowered environmental regulations. But, nobody's putting money into developing coal these days. Trump won't last; Pruitt won't outlast Trump.
Seems we have been in secret talks with North Korea before the much heralded meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un. Interesting. Someone else does the heavy lifting and Trump gets to take the credit in the end?
Not so much.
Okay, so I was being a little snarky, I admit it. I find the urge coming on more frequently lately, I don't know why...
The sharks are circling Pruitt, that's for sure. They smell blood in the water.
"So the long and short of it is that the documentary isn't worth the
time, except as a sleep aid."
I believe its major value was that it afforded Petes an opportunity to engage in jargon-babble.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
"The sharks are circling Pruitt, that's for sure."
I think Kelly's probably at higher risk than Pruitt.
"Someone else does the heavy lifting and Trump gets to take the credit in the end?"
Uh, that's the way it's supposed to work. When the news about a Trump-RocketMan meeting broke he was criticised for not doing it that way, i.e. allowing all the low-level interactions to happen before blessing them with a Preznitential meeting. I guess opinions vary on whether a meeting with Trump is a blessing ;-)
"since we are going back to the grand old age of coal for an energy source..."
Not gonna happen. Coal didn't fall out of favour because Saint Obama and the Greenies banished the evil black stuff. It fell out of favour because Saint Obama presided over the greatest fossil fuel extraction programme in US history. They were just different kinds of fossils. Coal had a better chance of a comeback if Hillary had got in and made a virtue of blocking oil and gas pipelines. ;-)
"Okay, so I was being a little snarky, I admit it."
LOL. Not nearly so much as others round here ;-)
Uh, that's the way it's supposed to work.
Then hopefully we have someone intelligent doing the negotiating and Trump doesn't screw things up in the end.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I see the snarkiness...I'm going to have to go read and take my mind off the real world for a bit. :)
I think Kelly's probably at higher risk than Pruitt.
Pity.
Wait a day and things change
President Donald Trump on Sunday warned of a "big price" after reports of a chemical weapons attack in Syria almost a year to the day since the US struck a Syrian air field.
"Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria," Trump tweeted. "Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price..."
He continued, "....to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!"
Hmmm...we'll see...
A fire in Trump Tower kills one resident and injures six firefighters.
On the news they had pictures of fire shooting out of the windows in multiple units. So, what happened to the sprinkler system in those units? Aren't they code in high rises now?
Sprinklers, Trump doesn't like sprinklers. CBSNews
Well, I got around to reading Trump's rhetorical flourishes regarding Assad's chem weapons attack on his rebels. Near as I can tell, we're still pulling out and leaving Assad in charge of wide swaths of what used to be Syria, within the next six months or so.
Sprinklers, Trump doesn't like sprinklers. CBSNews
Personally, I wouldn't live in one of those buildings without them.
Near as I can tell, we're still pulling out and leaving Assad in charge of wide swaths of what used to be Syria, within the next six months or so.
Not surprised. I should expect that Trump's statement of someone paying a price for this latest attack will end up being all smoke and mirrors, just like last time. He is, however, again using this latest event as an opportunity to blame President Obama because he didn't enforce his "red line" statement.
Snowing here again. This time I'm thinking I will let it melt.
"Snowing here again. This time I'm thinking I will let it melt."
Won't it turn to ice? I thought your temperatures stayed sub-zero till mid-August :)
Proper Spring here now ... I've cut the grass for the first time and I've seen insects. Those critters are too canny to come out before Spring has properly sprung. Not a whole lot of leaves yet though, courtesy of the extended cold. Temps due to hit 15 C next couple of days, like a proper Irish summer ;-)
Won't it turn to ice? I thought your temperatures stayed sub-zero till mid-August :)
lol!
Our temps this year have been a roller coaster of highs and lows, but we too are getting into Spring. The sun is higher in the sky and we're getting more direct rays. However, I can say with a good amount of certainty that I won't be cutting any grass anytime soon. :)
New York Times is reporting that the FBI has ‘raided’ the offices of Trump's long-time lawyer, Michael Cohn.
I understand that Trump was supposed to be kept busy this coming week and away from his Twitter account and somewhat insulated from his morning ‛executive time’ watching Fox and Friends in the mornings. That plan may have just got shot to hell.
Trump's trip to South America, scheduled for later this week and which was supposed to help keep him away from FoxNews' morning shows and thus less of a threat of a twitterburst, has been canceled.
So far Trump's been fairly muted on Twitter this morning, but it's just the first day.
One thing I will say about Mueller, is he is good at throwing out surprises. I am continually saying, "I didn't see that coming". Sneaky, very sneaky.
Comey will be doing an interview the end of this week, I believe, right before his book comes out. I will have to make sure I make a note of that so I can watch. Needless to say I will be looking out for his book too.
Mueller has ‘referred’ the criminal case against Cohen (and maybe against Trump later) to the U.S. Attorney for Southern District of New York. And that office has taken the referral and run with it. (In spite of the fact that the named, interim U.S. Attorney for that District has not yet been confirmed as permanent.) That's where the raid on Trump's personal lawyer came from.
This means that even if Trump decides to fire Mueller tonight, it's still not over. Mueller has managed to hand it off; it will survive him.
I was just reading about that and came here with a link to the article, but you beat me to it.
These guys(Mueller & Co.) are smart, they know what they are doing. It would not come as a surprise that there has been criminal activity among Trump's closest allies or friends. He promised to drain the swamp in Washington, but I have always been of the opinion that he just brought it with him. This goes beyond disliking policy. No one is above the law.
There remains a very important exception to the attorney-client privilege called the "crime-fraud" exception. If the attorney and the client are conspiring to commit a crime and use the attorney-client privilege to cover up the conspiracy, under law the privilege is automatically waived.
New York federal prosecutors will be carefully sifting through Cohen's records in search of any evidence that he conspired with his primary client, the President of the United States, to commit a crime. And the one thing we know for sure, a federal judge has reviewed the warrant application and has determined that there is "probable cause" to believe that Cohen's law office records contain evidence of some kind of a serious crime: a crime so serious that this judge permitted a raid on the office of the President's personal lawyer.
Something is up and President Trump's latest musings about firing Mueller won't make it go away. The new cop on this beat is Trump's own appointee, US Attorney Berman, who like all federal prosecutors is ethically required to follow the evidence of a crime wherever it leads even if not in the direction of Russia...but instead into Trump Tower.
Paul Ryan will not seek re-election. Could have knocked me over with a feather.
I never liked Paul Ryan's views on policy. The headline on CNN touts this as a win for Trump in the fight for the "soul" of the Republican Party. Yet, there was a poll out recently showing that while there is more support for hard line authoritarian types of leaders in other countries, that sentiment has waned over the last year in the US. One has to wonder if there are more anti-Trump Republicans than some polls would suggest.
"One has to wonder if there are more anti-Trump Republicans than
some polls would suggest."
Maybe, but ain't enough of ‛em to win in a contested Republican primary.
So, it's up to the Democrats then.
I would think instead that it's up to us. That may mean electing enough Democrats in the 2018 mid-terms, probably means exactly that.
"Could have knocked me over with a feather."
I was not surprised. Ryan skipped a ‛town hall’ meeting scheduled in his district last week(Janesville, Wisconsin) by the ‛Enough is Enough’ gun control movement. All his competitors appeared as did candidates for other offices up for renewal in 2018, but Ryan skipped the forum. I figured then he was gonna retire. (It appears that most political wonks expected him to run, but then resign after the new Congress went for the Democrats. This on the theory that he could raise more money for the party if he didn't resign until after the 2018 elections.)
Ryan actually wanted to become President one day. Speaker of the House was never his goal. It may well be that Trump, and his cover for Trump, has undone his hopes of ever being President. However, getting away from it now allows him some time to try to reboot his political career in some manner independent of Trump. He's still young enough to try to reboot.
I would think instead that it's up to us.
Yes, you're right. I said Democrats because it seems that there are few Republicans who see through Trump, or care to see through him. Those that do seem to be dropping like flies before the more hard line components of the party.
But it is up to the voters in the mid-terms to try to make a statement about the way our government is being handled under the Trump administration.
Lot of journalists seem to be working themselves up to a frenzy over the possibility that Trump's gonna fire either Rosenstein or Mueller.
General: "Mr President, we are victorious in Goutha and in Douma we're on the verge of victory, the main rebel force has just agreed to withdraw to Idlib."
Assad: "Then let's gas some of the remaining civilians!"
General: "Mr President.... why? As I said we are winning..."
Assad: "Why? For the lulz!"
General: "But Mr President, have you thought this through? The only real threat to us at this stage is intervention from Nato forces."
Assad: "Lol! Just do it!"
There are some hints escaping from the New York Federal Courts which suggest that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, wasn't actually working as a lawyer for anybody, including Trump. (As in, he wasn't actually engaged in giving legal advice to anybody, hadn't been doing any of that for several years.)
His business may have been entirely as a ‛fixer’.
We shall soon see if those hints pan out.
[Marcus]: "But Mr President, have you thought this through? The only real threat to us at this stage is intervention from Nato forces."
I've seen this touted elsewhere and it certainly gives pause for thought. On the other hand, what's NATO gonna do? (Well we know what, as US tomahawks have just targeted Asad's alleged chemical weapons infrastructure in the last hour). But consider, it takes a lot of manpower and probable regime casualties to smoke out the last rebel holdouts in Douma, some of whom don't want to leave even with a deal. A nice cloud of heavier-than-air chlorine could work wonders down in those basements and tunnels, and the press coverage is probably not much more negative than when the Russkis lent Assad some bunker busters for smoking rebels out in Aleppo.
And so what if the Yanks lob a few tomahawks? Everyone knows it's completely tokenistic. Trump has already said it's a one-time effort. Basically he couldn't do anything but he couldn't do nothing either. It'll be back to business as usual tomorrow, with Assad firmly in place. Syrian state TV is claiming they shot down a dozen tomahawks -- true or not it's kudos for the regime forces from Assad supporters for protecting them.
P.S. There was a Trump supporter on one of our radio channels yesterday talking about how the west has to do something about Assad. "I mean look at the Christians in Syria and the Middle East, their number have gone to almost nothing". I guess he didn't realise most of the local Christians on are Assad's side because the Alewite regime is quite tolerant and their greater fear is of an Islamist rebel takeover.
Assad used chemicals for the usual reason, to prove that he can and that he will. He wanted to get those points established before the rebels were crushed and he was denied the opportunity to get those points established. He wanted the survivors to remember, lest they rebel again too quickly.
Assad has survived only because of Putin's support. Who is really to blame?
General: "But Mr President, have you thought this through? The only real threat to us at this stage is intervention from Nato forces."
Assad: "Lol! Just do it!"
Syria is the new Afghanistan under the Soviets. We all know what happened there. We may take out some of Assad's chemical weapons capability, but we are not the only possible consequence of his actions.
I guess he didn't realise most of the local Christians on are Assad's side because the Alewite regime is quite tolerant and their greater fear is of an Islamist rebel takeover.
Probably justified.
But the use of chemical weapons will get noticed even by those who don't want to get deeply involved in Syria's civil war. Airstrikes won't change anything, but it couldn't be ignored.
There are some hints escaping from the New York Federal Courts which suggest that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, wasn't actually working as a lawyer for anybody, including Trump.
Yup, it sounds like something rather nasty going on with that. It looks like he is under criminal investigation. Something that won't be good for Trump.
Comey appears to be pulling no punches in his book. I get the impression that he's decided to go for the jugular with Trump. He's goading him.
And Trump is responding as expected. This is the guy who is supposed to have the moral authority to launch missile strikes on Syria and he is calling his former FBI director "a weak and untruthful slime ball" on social media. What an asshole.
Trumptweets: "Mission Accomplished".
I suppose the "mission" was of rather limited scope, PR on FoxNews.
And Trump is responding as expected.
lol!
Yes, indeedy.
What an asshole.
Yup. I doubt even his Syria distraction will help him, except with his staunch supporters.
Snowing to beat the band here. First rain, which froze overnight, now heavier snow has moved in. They are talking two day snowstorm. I rushed around all day yesterday doing errands so I don't have to go anywhere this weekend, unless it's an emergency. Judging by the lack of traffic on my street other people had the same idea.
*sigh*
And just as the glacier in my yard had started to melt...
Hmmm...seems there are tapes. At least in Cohen's office, well, now in the FBI's office.
You might keep in mind that Trump is now questioning whether it's even his voice on those "Access Hollywood" tapes. (Never mind his lips moving.)
"And just as the glacier in my yard had started to melt..."
Tried to warn you. Mid-August. ;-)
Summer has definitely arrived here. Leaves are a bit late (make that very late) but they are finally appearing. It's sunny and 20 degrees. You gotta take it while it's going here, as the official summer season could be colder and wetter. (Hmm, possibly much, much colder).
The "not my preznit" folks might like this ;-)
You might keep in mind that Trump is now questioning whether it's even his voice on those "Access Hollywood" tapes.
Except for those pesky witnesses who have said, yes Mr. President, it was youuuuuu......
The tapes, though, in Cohen's office I believe are taped conversations between Cohen and representatives of the women he payed off.
Leaves are a bit late...
Leaves? Leaves? What are those? It's all WHITE again here! And it's still snowing. I may actually have to drag out the snow blower again if it keeps up, just so that I can get out of the driveway on Monday!
The "not my preznit" folks might like this ;-)
lol! I did. Some people are so talented.
That's not treason. He warned them before so the Russians could get out to avoid causing WWIII. And yes, treason is still punishable by death.
Probably true.
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