JustOneMinute

Saturday Morning

We kick off another Football Saturday with all the Big Games a week away. Yankee Stadium is the center of the college football universe today as it hosts Syracuse-Notre Dame.

THE BUTLER DID IT: Celtic and Raptor fans can relax - they won't need to watch their team lose to the Warriors in the NBA Finals.

Acosta Back, For Now

The judge has granted CNN's Jim Acosta a temporary restraining order restoring his hard pass to White House press conferences. Hard passes for the hard asses!

Apparently the judge was concerned that the unwritten rules of appropriate press conference behavior were, well, unwritten. Team Trump will now write up some rules and the whole exercise may be a Phyrric victory for the media:

“This could backfire,” said William L. Youmans, a professor of media law at George Washington University. Mr. Acosta “gets his credential now, but it empowers the Trump administration to come up with conduct-based criteria.”

“A ‘rudeness’ or ‘aggressive behavior’ policy would have a huge chilling effect, and would be much more damaging to the whole system,” Dr. Youmans added. “If it lowers the bar for pulling credentials, it’s a recipe for a more tepid press.”

Twitter has already lit up with leaked video of Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Jim Acosta discussing the rules for a press conference.

Keep Hate Alive!

I guess this is good news for the 'Keep Hate Alive' crowd exemplified by Paul Krugman - a growing number of us think the other party is evil and stupid. Also corrupt, racist, sexist, and terrible at ballroom dancing. As I have said before, there is no money in moderation; its the angry and energized that write checks and buy books.

Often a country can unite against a common foe. However, that is more successful when the foe is external. Right now the Democrats view the legacy white patriarchy as the root of all evil in this country. it's going to be hard for them to get all of us on board with that.

WORD QUIZ: One of these words is quite unlike the others:

How Democrats view Republicans:

• Of the 22% who provided open-ended descriptions of Republicans, responses included: selfish, greedy, corrupt, spineless, fearful and bad.

How Republicans view Democrats:

• Of the 26% who provided open-ended descriptions of Democrats, responses included: socialist, angry, hypocritical, uniformed, power-hungry and violent.

Oh, FFFFFFFFudge!

How great would it be to see Pelosi dumped for anybody, but especially a politico named Fudge? The hackneyed 'dad jokes' write themselves.

When The Elephants Scuffle...

The NY Times takes a long look at Facebook and won't be getting many likes from that quarter. Oliver Roeder of Vox has a nice summary:

Facebook seems to materialize in this column an awful lot. But when a service has “connected” more than 2.2 billion people, I suppose that makes sense. The New York Times published a deep dive into the company, based on interviews with “more than 50 people,” many of whom are anonymous. We learn, for example, that the company hired a Republican opposition-research group to discredit protesters by linking them to George Soros, and that it lobbied a Jewish civil rights group to label criticism of Facebook as anti-Semitic. Just normal, cool, I-started-a-company-in-my-Harvard-dorm-room stuff.

One of the mice that got trampled as the elephants battled is the Republican oppo-research firm Definers Public Affairs, which lost Facebook as a client amidst the hue and cry. Facebok's position: senior execs knew nothing and anyway, the media knew full well that DPA had Facebook as a client:

Late Wednesday, Facebook decided to terminate its relationship with Definers after the publication of the Times article prompted an outcry, said a person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Top Facebook executives including Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg were not aware of the specific work being done by Definers, the person said.

In a statement, Facebook said it had not hidden its ties to Definers and disputed that it had asked the firm to spread false information.

“It is wrong to suggest that we have ever asked Definers to pay for or write articles on Facebook’s behalf, or communicate anything untrue,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in the statement.

“The relationship with Facebook was well known by the media — not least because they have on several occasions sent out invitations to hundreds of journalists about important press calls on our behalf,” the spokeswoman added.

Well. We wouldn't expect Facebook to stand up to a left-wing mob. With a different alignment of politics and players the Times follow-up headline would be "Republicans Kvetch About Business As Usual".

Just for example, the Times also included this detail in their original expose (with a picture of the offending poster):

By then, some of the harshest criticism of Facebook was coming from the political left, where activists and policy experts had begun calling for the company to be broken up.

In July, organizers with a coalition called Freedom from Facebook crashed a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, where a company executive was testifying about its policies. As the executive spoke, the organizers held aloft signs depicting Ms. Sandberg and Mr. Zuckerberg, who are both Jewish, as two heads of an octopus stretching around the globe.

Eddie Vale, a Democratic public relations strategist who led the protest, later said the image was meant to evoke old cartoons of Standard Oil, the Gilded Age monopoly. But a Facebook official quickly called the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish civil rights organization, to flag the sign. Facebook and other tech companies had partnered with the civil rights group since late 2017 on an initiative to combat anti-Semitism and hate speech online.

That afternoon, the A.D.L. issued a warning from its Twitter account.

“Depicting Jews as an octopus encircling the globe is a classic anti-Semitic trope,” the organization wrote. “Protest Facebook — or anyone — all you want, but pick a different image.” The criticism was soon echoed in conservative outlets including The Washington Free Beacon, which has sought to tie Freedom from Facebook to what the publication calls “extreme anti-Israel groups.”

Hey, maybe the posters were meant to be anti-Semitic. Or maybe not! But it was lefties, so no biggie.

Let's Fly Under The Bridge!

It seems like the Typepad registration problem has been solved, so let me flip the switch and set the comments to registered mode.

I'll be keeping an eye out for problems. If you can't find a way in, contact me or someone else who can get the word out. Cumbersome, and we all feel vexed by it. But as we have seen, one undermedicated screaming boor can drown out a room full of conversation.

The Science Was Unsettled

A new study showing the world's oceans were taking in more heat than previously modeled got worldwide attention. It also got the attention of a math/science jockey who didn't like the way the numbers were coming together.

And now the original authors are admitting that there are problems. So the good news is, unlike a modern media outlet, errors are addressed. The bad news? Here is the critic's headline and lead in the blog post that began the unraveling:

A major problem with the Resplandy et al. ocean heat uptake paper

Posted on November 6, 2018 by niclewis | 231 Comments

 

by Nic Lewis

 

Obviously doubtful claims about new research regarding ocean content reveal how unquestioning Nature, climate scientists and the MSM are.

 

If the conclusion fits the favored narrative it slides more easily through the peer review process.

Saving Bob Mueller

While we await the spinning of the Wheel of Indictment the Senate contemplates the "No Special Counsel Left Behind" Act of 2018.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday he supported a bill that would protect Special Counsel Robert Mueller from any politically motivated firings and would urge Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to allow a vote on it.

“I would certainly vote for it,” Graham told reporters of the bill, which he supported when it passed the Senate Judiciary in April.

“I don’t see any movement to get rid of Mueller. But it probably would be good to have this legislation in place just for the future,” he said. 

McConnell told reporters in Kentucky last week he did not think legislation was necessary because he did not think Mueller was in danger.

 

A Great American

I guess when you are a Navy SEAL with an eye-patch from an IED in Afghanistan there is no need to bluster about you manhood with a youngster from SNL. David French describes a bit of hope for a better tomorrow in our political sphere.

Do let me add: the SEAL turned Congressman-elect is only 34. When he beats Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in the Presidential showdown of 2032, Saturday Night Live can remember who launched his rocket.

A WWII Diversion

The question of what, if anything the US military might have done about the German death camps during WWII came up last night. A very interesting article presents the thoughts of a number of American politicians, including Bush 43 and George McGovern, the 1972 Dem Presidential candidate. People remember he lost 49 states to Nixon but forget he was an Army Air Force volunteer who flew 35 missions over Europe.

Bush:

While visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, in Jerusalem, on Jan. 11, 2008, President Bush “viewed aerial photos of the Auschwitz death camp and called [Secretary of State Condoleeza] Rice over to discuss why the American government had decided against bombing the site, [Yad Vashem director Avner] Shalev said. ‘We should have bombed it,’ Bush said, according to Shalev.” (Associated Press, Jan. 11)

A bit of background will tee up McGovern (semi-spoiler alert):

Dr. Medoff, who is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, pointed out: 

“The photographs that President Bush viewed were taken because U.S. planes flew right over Auschwitz in 1944, taking surveillance photos in preparation for bombing--not for bombing the gas chambers or crematoria, but for bombing German oil factories less than five miles away. 

“The Roosevelt administration knew about the mass murder going on in Auschwitz but rejected proposals to bomb it on the grounds that bombing would have required a diversion of military resources. In fact, U.S. planes were already in the skies over Auschwitz. In one of the raids on the oil factories, stray U.S. bombs accidentally struck an SS barracks and part of the railway line leading into the death camp. But the gas chambers and crematoria were never targeted.

And McGovern:

U.S. Senator and 1972 Democratic Presidential Nominee George McGovern was one of the pilots who attacked German oil factories near Auschwitz in 1944. In an interview with Israel Television and the Wyman Institute on December 20, 2004, McGovern said “There is no question we should have attempted ... to go after Auschwitz. There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to those death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens...Franklin Roosevelt was a great man and he was my political hero. But I think he made two great mistakes in World War Two.” One was the internment of Japanese-Americans; the other was the decision “not to go after Auschwitz ... God forgive us for that tragic miscalculation.”

This seems to be the presentation at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Tries to balance both sides:

During the spring of 1944, the Allies received more explicit information about the process of mass murder by gassing carried out at Auschwitz-Birkenau. On some days as many as 10,000 people were murdered in its gas chambers. In desperation, Jewish organizations made various proposals to halt the extermination process and rescue Europe's remaining Jews. A few Jewish leaders called for the bombing of the Auschwitz gas chambers; others opposed it. Like some Allied officials, both sides feared the death toll or the German propaganda that might exploit any bombing of the camp's prisoners. No one was certain of the results.

...

Allied bombardment of Auschwitz-Birkenau in mid-July 1944 would not have saved the approximately 310,000 Hungarian Jews whom the Germans had killed upon arrival at the killing center between May 15 and July 11, 1944. Moreover, barracks located not far from the gas chambers at Birkenau housed 51,117 prisoners (31,406 of them women and children).

In the summer and fall of 1944, the World Jewish Congress and the War Refugee Board (WRB) forwarded requests to bomb Auschwitz to the US War Department. These requests were denied....

...

In subsequent decades, the Allied decision not to bomb the gas chambers in or the rail lines leading to Auschwitz-Birkenau has been a source of sometimes bitter debate. Proponents of bombing continue to argue that such an action, while it might have killed some prisoners, could have slowed the killing operations and perhaps ultimately saved lives.

 Lots more background here.

Shared Chaos

Lest we forget, the Brits had their Brexit stunner several months before we had our Trump stunner. Their confusion continues. If it's reassuring to be reminded that the US is not alone in having a dysfunctional political system, then be reassured.

We'll Always Have Paris

French President Macron spoke at the Arc de Triomphe, which apparently commemorates the triumph of sophistry:

PARIS, Nov 11 (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron led tributes to the millions of soldiers killed in World War One on Sunday, using an emotional ceremony in Paris attended by scores of world leaders to warn against nationalism a century on from the conflict.

...

In a 20-minute address delivered beside the tomb of the unknown soldier, Macron described the "unimaginable hell" of those who fought in the trenches, denouncing the nationalism that fanned the flames of war and now shows signs of resurgence.

Macron spoke bluntly of the threat from nationalism, calling it a betrayal of moral values. Trump, who has described himself as a nationalist and has promoted what he calls an "America First" policy, sat a few feet (meters) away, stony-faced.

"Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism," Macron said. "When we say 'our interests come first, those of others don't matter', we erase the very thing that a nation holds most precious, that which gives it life and makes it great: its moral values.

"Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism." Exact opposite? Similarly, Macron might have gone on to say, love is exactly the same as hate, since both are powerful emotions with a specific focus.

Obviously, "nationalism" has a bit of a tendency to mean what the user wants it to mean. Those speaking of a globalist/nationalist dichotomy will wonder what Macron is going on about, and will especially deride his use of this strawman definition of nationalism: "'our interests come first, those of others don't matter'". "Don't matter"? How about ""Matter but at a lower priority than American interests"?

An American nationalist could find plenty of solid, self-interested reasons to support the Marshall Plan or NATO, which also overlap with humanitarian concerns. America can justify our boots on the ground in Syria in order to oust ISIS and (maybe one day) stabilize the Middle East. But our self-interest notwithstanding, an American nationalist might wonder of the French patriots are doing their share in attempting to stabilize Syria to help stave off a European refugee crisis.

David Brooks provides an example of a relatively thoughtful, nuanced chap who does not seem to envision nationalism as the opposite of patriotism:

Yes, I’m an American Nationalist

How love of country nourishes a life.

 

California Burning

This is getting crazy out west.

Happy Veterans Day!

As we salute our veterans let us also remember the 100th anniversary of the Allied victory over Kaiser Soze and the Germans. That victory was made possible in part by the courage of the brave men and women flying Spitfires over England.