"You're Fired!"

Acting Attorney General Sally Yates refused to defend President Trump's executive order that imposed a 90 day entry ban from several countries.

"You're fired!"

Until Jeff Sessions gets confirmed, Dana Boente is the new acting A.G.

Yates will be a liberal hero for the rest of her life and I suspect this will be equated with the Saturday Night Massacre before long.  However, the president is the chief executive.  He's the decider, as George W Bush put it.  If you don't like his decisions, resign.

 

As a political move, this only serves to escalate the current outcry.  Of course, with Trump's everything at once approach, this may be forgotten history tomorrow night when the Supreme Court nomination battle begins.  Trump is generating so much outrage in such a short period of time that the outraged will become exhausted.  Of note, this is a strategy from the Obama playbook.  Before the Republicans could move against Obama's latest outrage, he rolled out a new outrage.  Fast and Furious, IRS targeting scandal, Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap, Iran ransom payment, 'flexibility' for Vladimir after the election, ISIL is the JV team, undeclared war in Libya, etc.  There was always new bad news to make everyone forget the old bad news.  However, Obama usually waited a week or two before rolling out the latest disaster.  Trump is rolling them out daily.  Hourly!

 

Trump should call a dozen or so bureaucrats to the White House every week, sit them around a big table, and fire one or more of them.  On camera!  It would be a ratings monster!  I never watched The Apprentice but I would watch that.

 

"Assistant Undersecretary of Fiji Trade Relations Smith, you're fired!"

 

"Executive Assistant Secretary of Fiji Trade Relations Johnson, you're fired!"

 

"Superfluous Supreme Fiji Trade Representative Harris, you're fired!"

 

Might Trump deliver on the eternal Republican promise of shrinking government?  That would be unexpected and marvelous.

The Founder

The movie opens with Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) trying to sell a milkshake machine to a restaurant.  After a string of such failures, he checks in with the office to learn that someone has ordered 6 milkshake machines.  Thinking it is a mistake - who could possibly need to make 30 shakes at the same time? - he calls the customer.  Richard McDonald confirms the order but is much too busy to talk.  Intrigued, Ray drives from St. Louis, Missouri to San Bernardino, California.  He finds the McDonald's hamburger stand serves food in an instant!  Fascinated by their business model, he asks the brothers, Richard (Nick Offerman) and Mac (John Carroll Lynch), to dinner where he learns about their history and the Speedee Service System.  Inspired, he partners with the brothers to start franchises.

Though the movie almost exclusively follows Ray, it does not paint a flattering picture of him.  He appears to be a failed salesman who has had a number of failed get-rich schemes in his past.  His original franchising contract with the McDonalds proves to be too constraining and he repeatedly finds his efforts to economize vetoed by them.  However, he finds loopholes that eventually allow him to outmaneuver the brothers and takeover.  The movie recognizes his persistence and his vision but often focuses more on his flaws.  The building of the most successful restaurant chain in the world is just a case of intellectual property theft.  Ray Kroc made the McDonald brothers rich but he's the bad guy.  Then again, even with all the negatives about Ray, I came out of the film admiring his moxie and achievement.  When he signed the contract in 1955, there was 1 McDonalds.  When he died in 1984, there were 7,500!  That's a new McDonalds ever 34 hours for 29 years.

 

A great biopic of an extraordinary visionary.

Muslim Ban = Fake News

As someone who favors a Muslim ban because Islam is an evil ideology that happens to have religious aspects, there is no Muslim ban.  What we have is a ban on people from Libya, Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Iran.  Yes, these are all majority Muslim countries.  So are Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, none of which are covered by the 'Muslim' ban.  QED, we are not banning Muslims, we are banning certain nationalities.  Ergo, a Muslim ban is a misnomer.  Imagine if, during World War II, a ban on Germans and Italians traveling to the US was described as a Caucasian ban.  Idiotic!

There is a subset of Muslims from countries that have been infiltrated with ISIS operatives.  ISIS has openly stated its desire to sneak terrorists into Western countries as part of the refugee flood.  Stopping the flow of people from these regions is common sense.  Until we can weed out the terrorists, it is more important for the government to protect American lives than to harbor refugees.  If the choice is between the safety of Ma and Pa Kettle of Syracuse or the well being of Muhammad from Syria, the Kettles should be chosen every time.

 

Calling it a Muslim ban gives an impression that is demonstrably false.  Fake news.

Too Many Laws

A quick online search reveals that an exact count of Federal Crimes is unknown.  There is the distinction between laws and the various regulations that inevitably sprout from those laws.  One estimate from 2015 stated that there were "at least 5,000 federal criminal laws, with 10,000-300,000 regulations."  It is the responsibility of the executive branch to enforce all these laws  However, as we have seen, there is a lot of wiggle room.  Obama opted to overlook immigration laws even while he enacted new laws like the Affordable Car Act and Dodd-Frank Act.  Even with the vast resources of the US government, only so much can be accomplished.  Thanks to this vast sea of laws, executive discretion has more impact than Congressional legislation.  Immigration law appears to flipped on a dime in the wake of Trump's inauguration but it is just that he has chosen to enforce laws that Obama put on the back burner.  Moreover, Trump has already put Obama's emphasis on Climate Change on the back burner.  One country, one set of laws, two dramatically different outcomes based on who occupies the White House.  To prevent these swings, we need to rollback the scope of the Federal Government.

 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

10th Amendment of Constitution

 

The Constitution grants no authority over education: Abolish Department of Education.

 

The Constitution grants no authority over healthcare: Abolish Department of Health and Human Services.

 

The Constitution grants no authority over farming: Abolish Department of Agriculture.

 

The Constitution grants no authority over labor: Abolish Department of Labor.

 

The Constitution grants no authority over housing: Abolish Department of Housing and Urban Development.

 

The Constitution grants no authority over energy: Abolish the Department of Energy.

 

All of these departments were power grabs by the central government.  Homeland Security is the latest new department but at least there is authority granted in the Constitution for national defense.  Even so, we should abolish this one too.  Return it all to the states or the people and, if there is an actual need, they are more than capable of resolving it on the more local level.

 

Paring back the scope of government would dramatically limit the discretion of the executive.  Thus, a change in the head of state would have far less impact than it does today.

 

Based on 2009 numbers, the abolition of the above departments would result in $1.3 trillion in in savings and a reduction in the federal workforce of 560,000 people.  Let's see, divide 1.3 trillion by 330 million and you get $3,940 per person in the US.  Of course, the budget has gone way up since then so the dividend would be even bigger.

Unopposed?

Throughout the campaign season, there was a steady and growing fear that Donald Trump was the American Hitler, a dictator who would be elected and then impose some form of fascist rule in which he was President for Life (kind of like the much mourned Fidel Castro).  Such fears came from those on the left and those on the right.  At each new claim, I rolled my eyes and sighed because Trump was going to have more opposition than any president in living memory.  The majority of the media were cheerleading for Hillary and hammering Trump.  The Democrats, who have always played hardball with Republicans, would ally with their friends in the media to pummel a President Trump.  Furthermore, elite conservative pundits were so opposed to Trump as to call for Hillary's election.  Even the Republican Party only offered support begrudgingly, often with codicils.  Fresh off a real Electoral Landslide, Obama had the media and both houses of Congress on his side and yet didn't get much done.  How would Trump get more done with considerably less support?  The growing panic, which continues today, perplexed me.  But now I see a potential flaw in my reasoning.

 

The media has spent a considerable amount of time since the election beclowning itself.  It's anti-Trump bias has overwhelmed their sense of solid reporting.  The Trump Dossier with the ludicrous golden shower story is only the most egregious.  The anti-Trump attitude is so strong that they jump at stupid stuff.  Trump yells squirrel and they run off like mindless dogs, giving him peace and quiet to consider the latest executive order.  Do they really think Trump cares about the crowd size at the inauguration?  Whether he does or doesn't, it provides an empty story that harms the prestige of the press more than it does Trump.  The media cannot currently influence Trump supporters and their ranting only makes Trump foes make fools of themselves (e.g. Madonna, Ashley Judd, Shia Lebouf).  Tired of the lapdog media that had nothing but praise for Obama, I was looking forward to the return of an attack dog media.  Instead, there is the stupid media that keeps chasing the squirrel.  Sigh.

 

Then there are the Democrats.  Thanks to strong support from the media, the Democrats have always been able to fight tooth and nail without a constant barrage of demands for bipartisanship.  Bipartisan has long meant Republicans agreeing to Democrat policies (e.g. John McCain) while partisanship is when Republicans actually try to implement their agenda.  With trust in the media at an all time low, the Democrats find themselves on a somewhat more even field.  Years of being trounced in midterm elections has convinced them to stick with the same stable of leaders who led them to this cul-de-sac.  Worse, they erased the power of the Senate minority party to resist the majority.  With the filibuster declawed, the Republicans can mostly pass their agenda with a simple majority vote, just like in the House.  Still worse, the Democrats face a difficult election map for the Senate in 2018, meaning they are in big trouble.  They are down to rhetoric as a means of opposition and they have only themselves to blame.  Well, Harry Reid can shoulder most of it.

 

The Republicans are still spineless.  While Democrats practice party loyalty and rarely have a 'maverick' who trashes fellow Democrats, the Republicans eagerly eat their own.  John McCain was a media star who appeared regularly on Hard Ball where he attacked the policies of his party.  Oh, the media loved him until he was the nominee vs. a Democrat.  Then he was the latest coming of Hitler.  With this history of attacking and opposing allies, Trump was an ideal target for such opposition from the beginning.  But the Republicans are still spineless.  It Trump can get enough voters (5 or so) to call Congress, the Republican will fold.  The history of the Republican party is to fold unless they have a strong leader (Reagan, Gingrich, etc.).  Trump may be an irresistible force to the backbone-impaired.

 

That leaves the Never Trump crowd who supported the embarrassing candidacy of Egg McMuffin or allied with Hillary.  They have hamstrung themselves with regard to anyone who voted for Trump.  One can admire the principles for which they stood while also recognizing that it was a political blunder.  If the guy you hate wins, you want to still be in the tent so your voice will be heard.  By leaving the tent, they abandoned much of the base that remained in the tent and lost much of the influence they had.

 

As time passes, all of these groups will - one hopes - adapt and prove to be effective bulwarks against authoritarian impulses from Trump.  Right now, they are all almost useless.  If Trump wants to prove his detractors right, now is the time.  The steamroller will never have a better opportunity.

Nullification Crisis II

After a series of tariff bills passed through Congress in the 1820s and 1830s, South Carolina had had enough.  Declaring the tariffs unconstitutional, the state refused to enforce them.  Other states were also not keen on the tariffs and watched carefully to see if they should adopt the nullification position.  President Jackson was not amused and made preparations to enforce federal law by calling up the military and stationing ships in South Carolina harbors to collect tariffs.  South Carolina threatened secession and assembled an army.  A civil war was brewing.  Thankfully, Congress passed a compromise tariff that saved face for both parties and the crisis was averted.

 

Today, throughout the country, there are polities that refuse to obey immigration law.  The sanctuary cities have shielded people who are illegally in the country.  Immigration and border control is a federal responsibility.  The Supreme Court struck down Arizona's attempt to enforce immigration law because such would usurp federal authority.  The ruling made it abundantly clear that the federal government has primacy in immigration enforcement, even when it chooses not to enforce laws to the detriment of the states.  Thanks to the lax enforcement of existing law by previous administrations, the nullification practiced by sanctuary cities has resulted in no pushback.  That has changed.

 

President Trump requires no legislation from Congress to dramatically change the landscape.  Sanctuary cities have been illegal all along.  ICE needs no additional laws to start making arrests.  They are called illegal immigrants for cause.  Likewise, the law for Trump's border wall was passed in 2006.  Senators Biden, Clinton, and Obama all voted in favor of the Secure Fence Act that George W. Bush signed.  The infrastructure to enforce the borders has been in place for years but the executive will to do so only arrived last Friday.

The Border Wall Tariff

President Trump has floated the idea of a 20% tariff on Mexican imports, the proceeds would then reimburse the cost of the wall.  Sound policy?  No.  Tariffs typically harm the consumers in the country imposing the tariff.  Why?  Let us suppose that Pittsburg Manufacturing Group (PMG) in Pennsylvania makes widgets for $10 each.  The primary competitor to PMG is Frabrica Baratija de Coahuila (FBC) in Saltillo, Mexico.  They also produce widgets for $10.  Now impose a 20% tax on the FBC widgets.  Obviously, the price of an FBC widget in the US will rise to $12 and PMG will start to dominate the market.  However, PMG will also be able to raise the price of their widgets without fear of being undercut by FBC.  Thanks to the tariff, Americans will pay more for their widgets.  Wait, who is paying for the wall again?

Tariffs are a protectionist tax policy that imposes a barrier to trade.  It can improve the profits of those businesses protected but at the expense of the consumer.

 

Of course, this might just be Trump doing the equivalent of saber-rattling on trade.  Such a tariff could devastate the Mexican economy.  Let's suppose the wall will cost a gazillion dollars but Mexico earns $10 gazillion in trade with the US.  Just paying for the wall would be cheaper than the proposed tariff.  But even in this rosy scenario, American consumers are paying for the wall via the purchases made from Mexican manufacturers.  Mexico paying for the wall will be a case of accounting legerdemain, much like how your employer 'matches' your contribution to Social Security and Hollywood mega blockbusters barely breakeven.

Biased Introduction

I listened to a short debate between Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and a woman from Politico.  When Julian Marshall of the BBC introduced his two guests, he labeled Glenn as 'right-leaning' but offered no such label for Heather from Politico.  Before either person has said a word, it has already been established that Glenn is biased and Heather is not.  This is not accidental.  Though Politico is viewed as relatively unbiased in the Republican vs. Democrat axis, it is immensely biased in the establishment vs. outsider axis.  Politico is all about the insiders, the palace intrigue, the parliamentary plots.  How might the audience have reacted if Marshall had instead labeled Instapundit as outsider-leaning and the Politico as insider-leaning?  Now the biases of each are revealed.  That he didn't do so reveals his bias.

Too Much at Stake in Modern Elections

Here is an excellent article by Glenn Reynolds:

Elections matter too much

Yes, precisely.  Too much of how the country is going to be rides on elections.  Everything has become political.  Mussolini wanted everything to be within the state, nothing outside the state.  The continued expansion and centralization of government is leading in that direction and both sides panic at the ascendance of the other.  That the panic is not irrational should demonstrate to all that the government has too much power, too much reach.

Last year, Texas Governor Abbot proposed a Constitutional Convention to consider some new amendments.  Many of his amendments reiterated the existing limits already in the Constitution and failing to limit.  I remain skeptical of the plan but it is a little used Constitutional provision that the States can use.  Perhaps an amendment that said, "We were serious about the 10th Amendment" would get the President, Congress, and Supreme Court to limit themselves to the powers actually enumerated in the Constitution.  Maybe we should just have a reboot of the operating system; it works surprising well for computers, maybe it can work for government.

Political Orientation

Here is a link to an interesting and, in my case, accurate political orientation test:

The Definitive Political Orientation Test

Though it offers to post the results on Facebook (which is where I found it), I generally try to avoid politics on Facebook.  Here is where I landed on the graph:

One might take issue with the design of the graph.  Why is 'Liberalism' in the center?  That certainly gives the impression that the most balanced person is a liberal and everyone else is an extremist in one way or another.  I rather doubt that is by accident.  In any case, this was the description for the Right Libertarian:

That describes my positions quite nicely.  A recent comment observed a similarity in my positions to those of Ayn Rand.  I do like Rand though she goes overboard with the self-interest angle; charity is a good thing.

 

Take the test and then you will know why my blog irritates the heck out of you or is just a place to go for confirmation bias.

Split

Casey (Anya Taylor-Joy) is at a birthday celebration for one of her classmates, Claire.  She is very solitary and was only invited because it would have been rude for her to be the only one excluded.  After the party at the mall, Claire's father insists on giving Casey a ride home.  She reluctantly accepts.  No sooner are they in the car than they are kidnapped by Dennis (James McAvoy), who uses an aerosol drug to subdue them.  The three girls awaken in a windowless room.  Soon thereafter, Patricia (James McAvoy) assures them that Dennis is not to touch them.  Later, Hedwig (James McAvoy) tells them that the Beast is on the move.  Kevin (James McAvoy) has split into 24 personalities and has regular appointments with Dr. Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley), usually in the persona of Barry (James McAvoy) the aspiring fashion designer.

 

Casey is clearly damaged from the start and the reasons for that unfold in flashbacks about a hunting trip she had with her father and uncle.  She is the one best able to communicate with the various personalities.  Where Claire and Marcia want to leap at the first opportunity to escape, Casey wants to bide her time.  Anya Taylor-Joy played Thomasin in The Witch, though she was blonde in that role.  It nagged me though the movie as I tried to figure out where I had seen her before.

 

Though it is a movie about a crazy man kidnapping three teen-aged girls, it is often funny.  Hedwig fancies himself as a dancer and demonstrates his mad skills to a Kanye West tune.  He is also the most easily duped, which proves useful and strange.  Dennis is a neat freak, upset when anything is dirty or out of place.  It is funny to see that the various personalities are in extreme conflict.  McAvoy's performance is the movie and he did surprisingly well.

 

This is M. Night Shyamalan's latest effort to resuscitate his career after a string of turkeys (i.e. The Village, Lady in the Water, The Happening, The Last Airbender) and it's good.  The Visit was both scarier and funnier but this is certainly entertaining.  Thumbs up.

 

Almost President

Here is a startling fact: Hillary won the popular vote in the 2008 Democratic Primary vs. Barack Obama.  She had 17,857,501 votes to Obama's 17,584,692 votes, a margin of over a quarter of a million votes.  She had 48% of the popular vote to Obama's 47.3%.  Not only that, she won in 7 of the 10 largest states: California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.  Obama only won Illinois (his home state), Georgia, and North Carolina.  In an electoral college contest, she wins 311 to 227 but Obama won the nomination with 2,272 delegates to Hillary's 1,978.  Of note, Hillary was in Bernie's position on Superdelegates, accumulating only 34% of them to Obama's 66%.  If that had reversed, she would have won the nomination.  So close.

 

It is an interesting coincidence that in the recent election, she again had 48% of the popular vote but she only won 3 of the 10 largest states: California, New York, and Illinois.  Those three states accounted for 45% of her electoral votes (104) and 25% of her popular votes.  By contrast, Trump's three big states - Texas, Florida, and Pennsylvania - only accounted for 28% of his electoral votes (87) and 19% of his popular vote total.  Hillary won those 3 states by a margin of 6.9 million votes.  Trump won his three largest states by a margin of 964,382.

 

Hillary Clinton is likely to be the William Jennings Bryan of our time with a dash of Victoria Woodhull.  Bryan ran for president on 3 separate occasions (1896, 1900, and 1908), losing each time.  He was Secretary of State for Woodrow Wilson and served in Congress.  Victoria Woodhull was the first woman to run for president.  She ran as the candidate of the Equal Rights Party with Frederick Douglass named as her VP candidate (a nomination he did not acknowledge).  She may even be compared to Al Smith, the Democratic nominee of 1928.  He was the first Catholic to receive the nomination but it wasn't until JFK that a Catholic was elected.  As first woman to be nominated, she will be referenced each time a woman is nominated and when one eventually wins the presidency.

 

While Bill's reputation will sink as the years progress (Only he and Andrew Johnson were impeached; can you name something else for which Johnson is remembered?), Hillary's reputation will rise.  The details of her campaign will fade and the fact that she was the first woman nominee for a major party will be what is most remembered.  Only the dedicated historians who focus on our era will have the mixed opinions of today.  For instance, Truman was very unpopular in his day but has risen in esteem as the years have passed.  By contrast, Grant was very popular but has dropped nearly to the bottom of presidential rankings since he left office in 1877.  History will be kinder to Hillary than the present has been.

President Trump

At noon today (Eastern Time), Donald John Trump took the oath of office as President of the United States.  He then delivered a brief speech.

 

It was a simple speech, the sort of speech a high school student might write.  It was very like an outline, a skeleton of a speech that lacked the muscle and flesh.  There were no oratorical flourishes, no poetry to it beyond the 'Make America [insert word] Again,' whether that be safe, strong, wealthy, proud, or great.  When one considers how fond Trump is of gold-plating everything he builds, this was a log cabin of a speech.  It was oddly both inclusive - Trump used 'we' 50 times in one of the shortest Inaugural Addresses - and exclusive - Trump hammered the 'establishment' from which 'we' had wrested power.  It was a speech that continued the campaign themes of attacking the government and offered no reconciliation.  He reasserted that "Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families."  The calculus is not as simple as that line proposes but it is a good line for public consumption.  The pacing of the speech was not good.  About 3 quarters of the way through the speech, he said 'Finally' and I thought he was about done.  Nope.  It is not a bad speech but it is not uplifting.  It has some optimism to it but it is also combative.  It was in the style of Hemingway, not Shakespeare.  As such, it fits the man who gave it.

2016: Hottest Year Ever!

I am not a climate scientist.  I studied history, economics, and Latin in college.  I dabbled a bit with political science and creative writing but never took a class even remotely related to climate science.  Despite all that, I hold that the "climate crisis" is a hoax.  Here are some interesting points:

1. When I was 10, the earth was heading toward an Ice Age.  As a family, we would watch 'In Search of' hosted by Spock.  I liked it because it had Spock.  This episode provided a dark glimpse of what the world might be like in a single lifetime.  If the scientists were wrong here, why are they right now?

 

2. 1816: The Year Without a Summer.  In the wake of the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, so much debris was thrown into the atmosphere that the following year saw mass starvation from failing crops.  New England had severe frosts every month of summer.  Despite decades of pollution, humanity has been unable to duplicate the Year Without a Summer.

 

3. The Medieval Warm Period (950 to 1250) saw temperatures roughly equivalent to today.  The Vikings found Greenland to be habitable and transplanted their agricultural and pastoral lifestyle there for several centuries.  By 1400, the Greenland settlements were nearly gone and vanished soon thereafter because of the increasing cold.  Clearly, this warming was not anthropogenic.  Why is the current warming trend different from the Medieval Warm Period?

 

4. The Earth is currently in an ice age that began 2.6 million years ago.  An ice age is geologically defined as the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres.  Because the ice sheets/glaciers have retreated for several millennia, the earth is experiencing an interglacial period.  This 10,000 year warming is not anthropogenic.  Why is the current - comparatively insignificant - warming different from that trend?

 

5. During the Mesozoic Era (252 million to 66 million years ago), the earth was 10 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today.  There were no ice caps at the poles.  This was not anthropogenic.  Was 2016 hotter than an average year in the Mesozoic?  If not, is it really the Hottest Year Ever?

 

The earth has been much warmer and much colder than today.  The climate experienced these huge swings with no input from humans.  These variations have developed over millions of years.  Though these points may provide the layman some reason to doubt the ongoing panic about climate change, that isn't a reason to call it a hoax!

 

Like all living things, government wants to grow and prosper.  Studies that 'prove' that climate change is anthropogenic provide cover for government to expand its power and reach.  Taxes on pollution, regulations to make sure cars get more miles to the gallon, laws to make washing machines more energy efficient, and so on and so forth.  There is so much that government can do, provided there is a basis for it.  Thus, scientists who find that humanity is to blame and the problem could be solved by government intervention are handsomely funded.  Scientists who conclude that it is the sun - which governments have no legislative authority to control - are not funded.  Anthropogenic warming = funding.  Natural climate cycles = no funding.  Scientists are smart people and see the pattern.

Party Before Country?

In the recent campaign, information hacked from Democratic campaign operatives was provided to WikiLeaks.  WikiLeaks published the private communications, damaging the Democratic campaign, even costing her the campaign.  The source that leaked the information to WikiLeaks - generally agreed to be Russia or Russian-aligned hackers - has been attacked by President Obama.  He expelled Russian diplomats and has ordered an ongoing investigation into the hacking.  This is serious business.

In 2010, secret communiques and files were stolen from the US Military.  The documents included State Department profiles of Icelandic politicians, airstrike videos, detailed logs of the Iraq and Afghan Wars, diplomatic cables, files related to Guantanamo Bay, and much more.  The documents were provided to WikiLeaks, who published the vast trove.  It was an intelligence disaster, revealing secrets and harming US standing.  The culprit was quickly nabbed.  Bradley - now Chelsea - Manning was convicted on 21 charges and sentenced to 35 years in prison.  President Obama commuted the majority of Manning's sentence so that he will only serve 7 years, 20% of the original sentence.

What explains the difference in how Obama treats the hackers?  Manning's theft and release of information hurt America but Russia's theft and release hurt the Democrats.  One is more serious than the other, but not the one you would think.

Moon Walkers

Eugene Cernan, Commander of Apollo 17 and last man to walk on the moon, has died.  Of the 12 men who have walked on the moon, only 6 remain.  All of them are in there 80s.  Interestingly, both Cernan and Neil Armstrong - first man to walk on the moon - were graduates of Purdue University.  Cernan's space flights included Gemini 9, Apollo 10 - in which he flew the lunar module within 8 miles of the moon's surface, and Apollo 17.  Apollo 17 was the longest stay on the moon of any of the lunar landings.  For three days, Cernan and Harrison Schmidt vacationed on the moon, off-roading in a lunar rover and hiking the Taurus-Littrow valley in search of rocks.

 

With private companies now involved in a new space race, perhaps the remaining moon walkers will get to see mankind return to the moon and maybe places beyond.

 

RIP

Consequences of a Bad Bet

Here is an article bemoaning that Republican foreign policy experts who have served in previous Republican administrations are being overlooked for positions because they signed Never Trump letters during the primary and/or the campaign.  This was a predictable downside.  Of course, every signatory fully expected Trump to lose and they never really thought there would be jobs available in a Republican administration.  By signing the letter(s), they set themselves up as the reasonable people, members of the sane wing of the Republican Party as they saw it.  However, there was a small chance that Trump would win.  By openly opposing the nominee of their party, they assured that their 'experience' would not be able to keep a steady hand on US foreign policy with the very person that - from their view - would most need it.  Talk of a 'black list' is rich; you can't really expect to be hired by someone you so openly sought to undermine.

Those who signed the first letter issued during the primaries can potentially find their way into the fold.  During the primaries, the party is still deciding what will best appeal to the electorate and the conflicts are known to be among allies who happen to have somewhat different views.  Those who signed during the campaign - and presumably voted for Hillary - will need to eat a lot of crow to have any hope of a position.  Denouncing the Orange Overlord* has a cost.

 

* Credit to Andrew Klavan.  Awesome descriptor and I'm stealing it.

Silence

Silence opens in Japan in the 1630s.  Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson), a Portuguese Jesuit, watches as many of his Japanese converts to Catholicism are tortured at a hot springs.  Word of Ferreira committing apostasy arrives in Portugal.  Two of Ferreira's disciples, Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garrpe (Adam Driver) do not believe so holy a man as Ferreira could have committed apostasy; it is more likely a slanderous lie.  The two set out to determine the truth.

The pair arrive in China where they meet Kichijiro, a Japanese fisherman who speaks Portuguese and is nominally Christian.  With Kichijiro's help, the two Jesuits arrive in Japan and come in contact with two secretly Christian communities.  The two minister to them while discovering the tremendous level of oppression.  Eventually, a couple of Samurai and a dozen soldiers arrive to weed out Christians.  The Christian Japanese protect the Jesuits unto death.  Garrpe sees the futility of their efforts in Japan but Rodrigues provides a voice of optimism.

 

Rodrigues is not an admirable character.  Though he shows outwardly that he is a true believer, his thoughts become an endless stream of doubts when he faces real adversity.  He soon becomes an emotional wreck.  When placed among serene Japanese Christians prisoners who are heartened to see a priest, he is panicking and essentially says, "Why are you so calm? We're all gonna die!"  Yeah, lead by example, buddy.  His repeated outbursts and constant doubts give the impression that his faith was little more than a façade.  Had he actually read about the various martyrs of his faith?  If so, he didn't emulate them.  No, he too becomes an apostate and helps the Japanese root out Christian symbols that European traders try to smuggle to the underground communities.

 

The Japanese characters are far more interesting than the Europeans.  Kichijiro is a stand out character.  Repeatedly given the opportunity to die for his Christian faith, he instead commits apostasy.  After each instance, he soon returns to Father Rodrigues to confess and be absolved.  The pattern eventually becomes funny.  As such, he serves as some much needed comic relief in this dreary film.  Inquisitor Inoue (Issei Ogata) comes across as kindly and a touch goofy but will go to whatever lengths are required to achieve his objective.  His inoffensive voice and amiable smile contrasted sharply with his harsh policies.  Mokichi, one of the first Christians the Jesuits meet, is a generous and likeable man who accepts his terrible fate with a calm that Rodrigues admires but cannot later duplicate.

Not discussed in the movie is the Shimabara Rebellion.  In 1637, the largely Catholic population in southwestern Japan rebelled.  It started with the assassination of a tax collector and escalated.  When the rebels were crushed a few months later, 30,000 Japanese were dead.  The Shogunate blamed European Catholics, especially the Portuguese missionaries.  Christianity was outlawed and only persisted as the underground communities the movie portrays.  Shimabara was the last large-scale armed conflict in Japan until the end of the Shogunate in the 1860s.  Therefore, relative domestic tranquility ensued for 230 years after the foreign religion was uprooted.  Sound government policy?  Today, only 2.3% of Japanese are Christian.

Scorsese is a self-identified lapsed Catholic and the material he chooses demonstrates that.  This is the second religious movie of his that I have seen.  In The Last Temptation of Christ, he provided a look at Jesus had he dodged the Crucifixion and married Mary Magdalene.  Now he tells the story of apostate Jesuits in Japan.  In each case, the feeling toward Christianity is ambivalent at best.  When compared to his glorification of mobsters like Henry Hill in Goodfellas, one wonders if he admires the mafia more than the Roman Catholic Church.

 

At 2 hours and 41 minutes, this monotonous slog of a movie is best avoided.

Outraged by the Predictable

Of late, I have seen several stories about how Trump has 'lashed out' or 'attacked' or otherwise spoken ill of this person or that person.  However, it is always in response to those very people speaking ill of him.  Meryl Streep took the opportunity of her lifetime achievement award to criticize the president-elect and he responded by calling her overrated.  Obviously, that is a juvenile attack as Streep is clearly the most talented actress of her generation.  Then there was CNN being called fake news after joining the BuzzFeed Trump Dossier story.  Now it is John Lewis who called Trump an illegitimate president-elect and Trump responded in kind.  This is all entirely predictable.  We have seen the pattern for almost 2 years now.  Trump is like a 10 year-old on the playground.  Call him a "doo doo face" and you can expect to be called a "big dummy" in return.

 

Of course, all these outraged people must know that Trump is going to reply with his customary insults and belittling comments.  They also know that the majority of the media (e.g. CNN) will report the story to make Trump look like the instigator.  It all seems very childish on both sides to me.  However, Romney did not reply to attacks and lost.  Trump replies to EVERY attack and won.  Is there a lesson to learn there?

Benefits of Being Messy

EconTalk had Tim Harford on to discuss his book about the benefits of being messy.  Though we have an inclination to be neat and orderly, messy and disorderly provides a better foundation for creativity.  Being uncomfortable while trying to solve a problem often results in better solutions.  For example, a group of friends who decided to start an investing club were less successful than a group that included a stranger.  The stranger has no qualms about hurting feelings and must be more actively sold on a stock than would a friend.  His best example was jazz musician Keith Jarrett.  Jarrett had agreed to perform in Germany but arrived to find a substandard piano that needed tuning and maintenance.  Altering his style to make the best of what the piano offered, he produced his best selling album before or since.  People who have a neat desk will often have filing cabinets full of papers that should have gone in the trash.  His suggestion was to have a pile of papers on the desk but always put the last one touched on top.  After a while, flip through the ones on the bottom and you will discover they can be filed in the trash.  Wow, who knew my creative bent comes from my sloppy habits.  Nice to have my messy desk validated.

Listen to the podcast.

To the Edge of Space and Back

Just watched part of today's launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Spaceport in California.  The rocket launched, dumped the 2nd stage and the package into low earth orbit, then turned around and landed on a ship in the ocean with amazing accuracy.  Watching the first stage descend and land was impressive.  With reusable rockets, the cost of getting into space is dropping.  With Russia and China both proposing ambitious space projects, a new space age is beginning.

Check out the video on YouTube.  The rocket launches just before the 20 minute mark and stage 1 sticks the landing around the 26 minute mark.

Crazy Days Ahead

I saw the following headline and just gaped:

 

How Would Disney Princesses Fare In Trump's America?

 

The first picture is Jasmine and Aladdin suffering tragedy.  Various other princesses are also shown to be doomed for hardship.  This is in Forbes!  Here is an article about the hypothetical lives of fictional characters in an as yet unrealized America.  How will Scooby Doo fare?  It may be that this is nothing more than click bait, a story so ludicrous that people will be lured to Forbes.com and perhaps check out other articles while there.

 

When Obama was inaugurated, Newsweek had a cover proclaiming that We Are All Socialists Now.  Socialism - a system with a track record of shortages, corporatism, and mass murder - was presented as a good thing.  Meanwhile, Trump, who was the most leftist candidate of the Republican field except for his immigrations stance, is going to deport half of the Disney Princesses.  When Rush Limbaugh hoped Obama failed to implement his agenda, he was excoriated by Democrats, Republicans, the media, comedians, entertainers, and assorted others.  With Trump, it is the highest form of patriotism to hope he fails.  Sure looks like party-affiliation makes all the difference in how one is viewed and portrayed.

Election Hacking Hoax

When someone claims that an election was hacked, what does that mean?  The most reasonable interpretation would be that someone either changed the votes or altered the counting of the votes via a computer.  Did the Russians access computers in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania?  No.  Did they somehow hack into the machines that tally the vote counts and transfer some Hillary votes to Trump?  No.  So, the most reasonable interpretation of "The Russians hacked the election" is completely wrong.  What did the Russians do?

The Russians managed to hack DNC servers and also access John Podesta's email.  They released this data to WikiLeaks (WikiLeaks denies that Russians were the source, but they would be required to deny anyone to protect their sources).  WikiLeaks then started posting it and it had an impact on the election.  The Clinton Campaign did not respond to the veracity of the leaked emails but rather attacked the source of them.  So, it's all true but you shouldn't have them.

 

However, if you are going to get all huffy about another country trying to fiddle with your elections, maybe you shouldn't be doing the same.  For instance, Obama helped fund the opposition to Netanyahu in Israel.  His administration was transparently hostile to Netanyahu.  This is how we were treating an ally but we should demand that a foe not do something similar to us?  Was the election hacked when the New York Times published Trump's 1995 tax return or was that just good reporting?  If something harming a Republican - say the Pentagon Papers - is released, the leaker is celebrated.  But if information harmful to Democrats is released, let's attack the source - WikiLeaks, Russia, Ed Snowden, etc.

 

As a geopolitical foe, we should expect Russia to attempt to influence our elections to best benefit them.  I trust that our intelligence agencies are doing their best to influence our foes' politics for the best interests of America.  It is the governments' job on both ends to prevent the other.  Who was on watch for us during this recent hacking?  Rather than blaming Trump and declaring his election illegitimate, should we not be looking squarely at our failed cyber security strategy?

DC Demographics

I was having a discussion the other day about how Washington DC is the most biased region in the country and yet it serves as the seat of government.  I referenced much of what I had written in a previous blog.  It was then pointed out that DC is predominantly black which probably explained the heavier than usual tilt.  Good point.  I hadn't considered that.  Let's run the numbers.

First, let's look at the Demographics of DC.  Though DC once had a black population as high as 70%, it has fallen since the 1970s and now stands at 46%.  Here are the numbers:

Race	Percentage
Black	46
White	39.2
Latino	10.4
Asian	3
Other	1.4

I don't know quite where that stands in relation to other regions and can't offer a similar state that had clearly different results.  In the election, 312,575 votes were cast in Washington DC.  Assuming that the races had equal turnout rates, we can determine approximately how many voters from each race voted.  That gets us the following:

Race	Percentage	Voters
Black	46	143,785
White	39.2	122,529
Latino	10.4	32,508
Asian	3	9,377
Other	1.4	4,376

Looking only at the overall vote by racial demographics, the candidates had the following breakdown:

Race	Hillary %	Trump %
Black	88	8
White	37	58
Latino	65	29
Asian	65	29
Other	56	37

The only racial demographic that Trump won was white.  He trailed badly in all other groups.  With whites being a minority group in DC, a loss is a foregone conclusion but how badly.  Again, assuming that each cohort voted per the above, what are the end results?

 

Race	Hillary %	Voters	% x Voters
Black	88	143,785	126,530
White	37	122,529	45,336
Latino	65	32,508	21,130
Asian	65	9,377	6,095
Other	56	4,376	2,451
		Total:	201,542

 

Race	Trump %	Voters	% x Voters
Black	8	143,785	11,503
White	58	122,529	71,067
Latino	29	32,508	9,427
Asian	29	9,377	2,719
Other	37	4,376	1,619
		Total:	96,336

Purely by the racial demographics, Hillary crushes Trump by a 64.5% to 30.8% margin.  However, in the actual votes, Hillary pulverized Trump, 90.5% to 4.1%.  So, though race may have been a factor, it does not explain the colossal drubbing.  Setting aside race, what demographic subgroup saw something close to the 91% to 4% that we see in DC?  Hillary won Democrats by 89% to 9% and Liberals by 84% to 10%.

Hillary didn't win DC because of the plurality of black voters but because of the overwhelming majority of Liberal and Democratic voters.  Though Republicans may be on top right now, the Deep State remains Democrat and changing these hostile bureaucracies will be a Herculean task.  Here is a reason to revive the spoils system and wash out this Augean Stable on a regular basis.

Media Suicide

During the campaign, an intelligence report that could not be corroborated was circulating.  No one published because nothing could be confirmed.  The report revealed that the Russians were in frequent contact with Trump to provide him dirt on his opponents.  If this was to be believed, Trump is a traitor.  The most spectacular bit in the report had Trump hiring Russian prostitutes to urinate on a bed in the Moscow Ritz Carlton because Barack and Michelle Obama had slept there.  Still unable to prove any of it, Buzzfeed ran with the story and CNN covered Buzzfeed.  Pranksters on 4Chan and Reddit reveled.

 

It turns out that a Trump supporter wrote the report and sent it out to see if anyone would report it.  Weeks went by and no one took the bait.  Responsible journalists desperately wanted to report something this juicy but none of it could be proved.  In fact, some of it was demonstrably false.  Even so, Buzzfeed finally decided to go with the story, even declaring that it was unproven hearsay from entirely anonymous sources.  Trump pounced!  A clearer case of fake news would be hard to find.  By offering a fake story that was this outlandish, the media has shattered an already fractured credibility.  If Trump now sells arms to Russia and China, he can just claim fake news again.  As I have said in a previous post, trust is fragile and the media has been exposed through the Podesta email hacks (the contents of which have not been refuted) and now this.  Why trust anything the media has to say about Trump?

Here is the opening of the BuzzFeed story:

A dossier, compiled by a person who has claimed to be a former British intelligence official, alleges Russia has compromising information on Trump. The allegations are unverified, and the report contains errors.

This is the kind of introduction that sees an editor kill the story, not print it.  Of course, the story has over 5 million views.  True or not, it has been a boon for the website.