JustOneMinute

Game Day Saturday

It's the day for college football, so we can talk about who is playing, not who is kneeling/standing/hiding. 

The Price Was Wrong

HHS Secretary Tom Price resigns with the furor over his charter flights as the proximate cause. The ObamaCare repeal debacles probably didn't help.

Away We Go

Let's have the traditional Friday afternoon "WTF is it now and why is the icemaker on the fritz?" open thread.

OK, I get that the icemaker crash doesn't hit hard with the beer and wine crowd but please take a moment (or a drink) to empathize with the rest of us.

Make Mine A Black Russian

A CNN exclusive, so yeah, this might be more Russo-phobic fake news:

Exclusive: Fake black activist accounts linked to Russian government

A social media campaign calling itself "Blacktivist" and linked to the Russian government used both Facebook and Twitter in an apparent attempt to amplify racial tensions during the U.S. presidential election, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN. The Twitter account has been handed over to Congress; the Facebook account is expected to be handed over in the coming days.

Both Blacktivist accounts, each of which used the handle Blacktivists, regularly shared content intended to stoke outrage. "Black people should wake up as soon as possible," one post on the Twitter account read. "Black families are divided and destroyed by mass incarceration and death of black men," another read. The accounts also posted videos of police violence against African Americans.

Who knew Putin was so woke? Well, wasn't it Putin who said "Chaos is a ladder"? Some evil-doer, anyway. The Russians backed disruption in 2016, with great success.

This Is How We Keep Trump, Library Edition

A school librarian in tony Cambridge, Massachusetts rejects a White House gift of Dr.Seuss books, explaining that they were written by and for racist haters. Also, sooo yesterday.

We all know she would never have written such a letter to Michelle Obama. By non-coincidence, both Michelle and Barack routinely praised Dr. Seuss during "Read Across America" day, March 2. Of course, that date was selected because it is the birthday of Dr. Seuss.

However, 'woke' scholars finally felt it was safe to emerge from the shadows in 2017 and tell us the grim news about everyone's favorite childhood author (Pipe down, you Winnie-the-Pooh holdouts).

This will not go well. Maybe in a grand Unifying Protest of Everything we can see NFL players kneeling during the national anthem and burning Dr. Seuss books in order to spark a dialog about the urgency of change and reconciliation.

Or at the Super Bowl halftime. That could work.

ASPIRATIONAL: Someone who has kept their sense of humor during this descent into the maelstrom is skewering this librarian in Dr. Seuss verse. They are a better person than I. 

Are You Ready For Some Flag Football?

It's Thursday Night Football so here we go again, this time with audience involvement:

Aaron Rodgers and the Packers urge fans to lock arms for the national anthem at Lambeau Field

It's a message of unity and love, don'cha know?

If Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers have their way, fans at Lambeau Field on Thursday night will make a statement during the national anthem, taking the show of unity into the stands and continuing on-the-field demonstrations that took place at games across the country into the NFL’s fourth week of games.

Rodgers, who stood for the anthem and linked arms with his teammates Sunday before the Packers’ game against the Bengals at Lambeau Field, hopes fans will emulate him and the team in what he says is a show of unity, “starting a conversation around something that may be a little bit uncomfortable for people” Thursday night at the stadium, which seats 81,441.

“This is about equality,” Rodgers said Tuesday (via ESPN.com’s Rob Demovsky). “This is about unity and love and growing together as a society and starting a conversation around something that may be a little bit uncomfortable for people.

I'll ask - unity to what end? Some troglodytes and deadenders actually still think the national anthem is a moment during which one looks at the flag, removes one's cap (if male) and places a hand over the heart. Evidently the Packers are united behind introducing a new celebration with a new meaning: 

Later Tuesday night, the Packers furthered Rodgers’s comments, saying in the statement that coaches and staff would join them.

“Those of us joining arms on Thursday will be different in so many ways, but one thing that binds us together is that we are all individuals who want to help make our society, our country and our world a better place,” the players said in part in the statement. “We believe that in diversity there can be UNI-versity. Intertwined, we represent the many people who helped build this country, and we are joining together to show that we are ready to continue to build.

“Let’s work together to build a society that is more fair and just.”

That's just fine, but... if they were linking arms and re-imagining the national anthem as an opportunity to show support for hungry puppies and apple pie it might be an admirable goal but that does not mean it is an appropriate time.

Oh, well. Big Sports wrapped themselves in the flag during the 1918 World Series to spark the audience. The anthem became a regular feature at baseball games during World War Two and was picked up by other sports.

However, we don't sing the anthem before a movie or a Broadway play. Playing the anthem is just sports marketing run amok and now it is turning into a marketing fail.

Quick hits on this:

John Hawkins of NRO, replying to David French: This is a culture war and Trump is at least fighting the left:

The other is that unfortunately, a large number of conservative Americans have given up on people like me, on people like David French, and on magazines like National Review. Do I think that’s right? Fair? Smart? Nope, but I do get it.

They hear us talk all day about our principles as if we’re going to solve the problems we have via some kind of discussion among gentlemen. Meanwhile, the liberal response is “You’re a Nazi, and you shouldn’t be allowed to have a job unless you agree with us.” We’re trying to win theoretical victories for our principles, but the Left is fighting to win in the real world — and they are coming out on top in the cultural wars with ease. The very fact that we’re even having this debate about the NFL (remember when sports was where you went to get away from politics?) tells you who’s winning.

David French battling back - commanded respect is no respect at all so hey, whatever on the protests:

Standing for the National Anthem is meaningless if it’s mandated, and such a mandate undermines the essential liberty of free speech.

Let me begin with a simple declaration. I believe that the United States is a better country when not only the government protects the right of free speech but also the culture values that right. I believe that free speech is the essential liberty — the liberty that helps preserve all others — because without the ability to call out unconstitutional actions you cannot possibly maintain a free nation. Because I believe those things, I believe Americans should be tolerant of dissent, even when they believe dissenters are offensive and wrong, and that the best cure for bad speech isn’t censorship but rather better speech.

In other words, if I believe a person is wrong, I seek to persuade them to change course — not mandate that they conform their speech or behavior to my demands.

I imagine booing is an acceptable response in a stretched 'meeting speech with speech' way.

Finally Ben Shapiro notes that controversy drives ratings gold, not to mention fund-raising gold:

Today, it’s not the military-industrial complex we have to fear threatening our republic. It’s the culture-war political-entertainment complex. The culture-war political-entertainment complex marries the power of those who gain from the culture war in political terms with those who gain from it in the ratings; both the politicians who engage in cultural battles and the media who pump those battles for increased revenue have a stake in the continued fracturing of the republic.

As I have said before, neither Rush Limbaugh nor Paul Krugman get paid for leading their stalwarts towards a calm, reasoned discussion culminating in a compromise with the other side. And now the politicize everything and scream louder crowd have descended on pro football.

Play on!

Meanwhile, Down In Puerto Rico

Trump lifts the Jones Act, which normally restricts shipping between US ports to US run ships. More eligible ships means more humanitarian relief? Well, maybe - per Laura Blewitt of Bloomberg, the main harbor has become a choke point:

Mountains of Aid Are Languishing on the Docks in Puerto Rico

Thousands of cargo containers bearing millions of emergency meals and other relief supplies have been piling up on San Juan’s docks since Saturday. The mountains of materiel may not reach storm survivors for days. 

Distributors for big-box companies and smaller retailers are unloading 4,000 20-foot containers full of necessities like food, water and soap this week at a dock in Puerto Rico’s capital operated by Crowley Maritime Corp. In the past few days, Tote Maritime’s terminal has taken the equivalent of almost 3,000. Even with moves to ease shipping to the island, like the Trump administration’s waiver of the Jones Act on Thursday, the facilities have become choke points in the effort to aid survivors of Hurricane Maria.

“There are plenty of ships and plenty of cargo to come into the island,” said Mark Miller, a spokesman for Crowley, based in Jacksonville, Florida. “From there, that’s where the supply chain breaks down -- getting the goods from the port to the people on the island who need them.”

Big skip and...

Trucks are ready to be loaded with the goods and precious diesel for backup generators, but workers aren’t around to drive. Instead, they’re caring for families and cleaning up flood damage -- and contending with the curfew.

The buildings that would receive supplies are destroyed and without electricity, Miller said. The transport companies that have staff available and diesel on hand encounter downed poles and power lines while navigating 80,000-pound tractor-trailers on delicate washed-out roads.

“It’s one thing to move a little car through there,” Miller said. “It’s another to move a semi truck.”

I know what you're thinking - there's one group that routinely supplies remote and devastated areas:

Russel L. Honore, a retired Army lieutenant general who took over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said the efforts in Puerto Rico require what he called "expeditionary logistics" -- ships, aircraft and trucks that can move goods onto and around the island.

"The only people with that are the U.S. military," Honore said in a phone interview Wednesday. "We need a military commander to run it."

And some military is there:

Federal aid is beginning to flow, with Marines and Seabee engineers assessing damage and clearing roads. In addition to activation of 1,460 members of the National Guard, the governors of New York and New Jersey are sending emergency teams. 

Doesn't sound like enough.

Trumpian Tax Reform

Trump begins the push for tax reform. The plan outline is here. One of the many talking/sputtering/choking points is this:

ITEMIZED DEDUCTIONS

In order to simplify the tax code, the framework eliminates most itemized deductions, but retains tax incentives for home mortgage interest and charitable contributions. These tax benefits help accomplish important goals that strengthen civil society, as opposed to dependence on government: homeownership and charitable giving.

Th non-deductibility of state and local taxes is a slap in the face to Blue states.

Score For Moore

The good people from the right side of the aisle of the great state of Alabama have spoken and there were more for Moore. Jim Geraghty conceals his enthusiasm.

 

Launch On Warning

Obamacare is sticking around. It looks like today is Tax Cut Wednesday, with Trump's big speech set for 3 PM in Indianapolis.

Eventually I want to get around to bashing the notion of job creation by way of a corporate repatriation tax holiday. History and common sense say there is little connection between the two for modern corporations. Money is fungible, and we aren't talking about drug cartels that smuggle $20s and $100s from A to B and pay cash for everything. Apple and Microsoft are entirely capable of borrowing in the US to fund any sensible, profitable expansion plans here even if their "cash" is stuck in an overseas bank. Conversely, if expanding and hiring here does not current make sense it won't start making sense just because they can bring their "cash" home somewhat more cheaply.

That said, a lower overall corporate tax rate could definitely tip the balance on some investments that appear roughly breakeven in the current tax regime.

It's Getting Moore Strange In Alabama

Trump and Bannon back their men:

Trump tweets support for Strange, as Bannon makes best pitch for Moore in Alabama

Trump for Strange, Bannon for Moore. I could enjoy this all night.

 

This Is Easily Taken Out of Context, So I Will.

I can resist anything except temptation and this headline is too much:

Zinke: One-third of Interior employees not loyal to Trump

Ahh! I don't want or expect a bunch of career civil servants to be loyal to Trump. I expect them to be loyal to our Constitution and to respect the electoral process, but by way of comparison, I would hope that under Obama a few troglodytes and knuckle-draggers hung around to slow the pace of change we didn't all believe in. Oh, well - let's see what he really said:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Monday that nearly one-third of employees at his department are not loyal to him and President Donald Trump, adding that he is working to change the department’s regulatory culture to be more business friendly.

Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, said he knew when he took over the 70,000-employee department in March that, “I got 30 percent of the crew that’s not loyal to the flag.”

In a speech to an oil industry group, Zinke compared Interior to a pirate ship that captures “a prized ship at sea and only the captain and the first mate row over” to finish the mission.

“We do have good people” at Interior, he said, “but the direction has to be clear and you’ve got to hold people accountable.”

Zinke’s comments echo complaints by some White House allies that a permanent, “deep state” in Washington has sabotaged Trump’s efforts to remake the government.

Zinke did not go that far, but he lamented a government culture that prizes analysis over action, saying: “There’s too many ways in the present process for someone who doesn’t want to get (a regulatory action) done to put it a holding pattern.”

What does it mean? If two-thirds of the careerists at Interior are loyal to Trump I am stunned, since that exceeds his national approval margin by a wide margin. On the other hand, if only two-thirds of the newly appointed regime are loyal, well, who is vetting these appointments?

Baffling.

Kicking The Football, Again

Football, especially the pre-game theatrics, can't get off the front page.

From the HQ of the Never-Trump right, David French of the NRO blasts Trump for trampling free speech:

I Understand Why They Knelt

President Trump’s call for NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem to be fired was a troubling assault on free speech — and it put the league in an impossible position.

Our flag is a symbol of our freedoms, including free expression.

Now, with that as a backdrop, which is the greater danger to the ideals embodied by the American flag, a few football players’ taking a knee at the national anthem or the most powerful man in the world’s demanding that they be fired and their livelihoods destroyed for engaging in speech he doesn’t like?

As my colleague Jim Geraghty notes this morning, too many in our polarized nation have lately developed a disturbing habit of zealously defending the free speech of people they like while working overtime to find reasons to justify censoring their ideological enemies. How many leftists who were yelling “free speech” yesterday are only too happy to sic the government on the tiny few bakers or florists who don’t want to use their artistic talents to celebrate events they find offensive? How many progressives who celebrated the First Amendment on Sunday sympathize with college students who chant “speech is violence” and seek to block conservatives from college campuses?

OTOH Dennis Prager of the NRO returns to his theme that Trump is battling for the right in a culture war:

Who’s Divisive — the President or the Players?

The Left ignores that the athletes started this public feud.

...

Likewise, in the eyes of the Left — the media, academia, and the Democratic party — it is not professional athletes who have refused to stand for the national anthem who are divisive; it is the president and all others who condemn the players for doing so.

Was the president’s rhetoric over the top? I believe some of it was — specifically, when he said, at a recent rally: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of those NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, say, ‘Get that son of a b**** off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!’” No politician, let alone the president of the United States, should use expletives publicly.

But if the president had used soaring rhetoric to sharply rebuke the players and the NFL, the Left would have similarly accused him of being divisive.

...

So, then, if you agree with the players, say so. But have the honesty to acknowledge that it is they — the first players in American sports history to refuse to stand during the national anthem — who are the divisive ones. Honesty feels almost as good as fighting conservatives. Try it.

David Brooks of the NY Times also runs with a culture war theme:

The Abbie Hoffman of the Right: Donald Trump

It has to be admitted that Donald Trump is doing exactly what he was elected to do.

He was not elected to be a legislative president. He never showed any real interest in policy during the campaign. He was elected to be a cultural president. He was elected to shred the dominant American culture and to give voice to those who felt voiceless in that culture. He’s doing that every day.

What’s troubling to me is that those who are the targets of his assaults seem to have no clue about what is going on. When they feel the most righteous, like this past weekend, they are actually losing and in the most peril.

Mr. Brooks gives a necessarily brief history of the Protestant culture overturned by 60's radicals such as Abbie Hoffman, describes the current educated elite establishment ethos, and then moves to Trump:

So in 2016, members of the outraged working class elected their own Abbie Hoffman as president. Trump is not good at much, but he is wickedly good at sticking his thumb in the eye of the educated elites. He doesn’t have to build a new culture, or even attract a majority. He just has to tear down the old one.

That’s exactly what he’s doing. Donald Trump came into a segmenting culture and he is further tearing apart every fissure. He has a nose for every wound in the body politic and day after day he sticks a red-hot poker in one wound or another and rips it open.

Day by day Trump is turning us into a nation of different planets. Each planet feels more righteous about itself and is more isolated from and offended by the other planets.

The members of the educated class saw this past weekend’s N.F.L. fracas as a fight over racism. They felt mobilized and unified in that fight and full of righteous energy. Members of the working class saw the fracas as a fight about American identity. They saw Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin try to dissuade Alejandro Villanueva, a three-time combat veteran, from celebrating the flag he risked his life for. Members of this class also felt mobilized, unified and full of righteous energy.

I don’t know which planet is bigger, or which would win an election, but that frankly doesn’t matter. All that matters is that Trump is shredding the culture and ending the dominance of the meritocratic establishment.

Fomenting division rather than seeking common ground and promoting faux unity? Interesting. As an example of faux unity, check out the Dallas Cowboy Shuffle in the pre-game moment of truth. Taking a knee before the anthem, then standing during it. Something for everyone.

 

Those Russkie Facebook Ads

The WaPo tells us the Russians were buying all sort of Facebook ads just to stir the pot:

Russian operatives used Facebook ads to exploit divisions over Black Lives Matter and Muslims

The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African American rights groups including Black Lives Matter and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign.

The Russian campaign — taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics — also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women.

Writing at The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal has interesting speculation as to Russian motives. After all, $100,000 in ads doesn't sound like much.

Trump And 'Little Rocket Man'

The NY Times tells us that Trump's rhetoric on Kim Jong Un is viewed by his top aides as unhelpful but inevitable:

WASHINGTON — When President Trump gave a fiery campaign speech in Huntsville, Ala., on Friday evening, he drew a rapturous roar by ridiculing Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, as “Little Rocket Man.”

Among diplomats and national security specialists, the reaction was decidedly different. After Mr. Trump repeated his taunt in a tweet late Saturday and threatened that Mr. Kim and his foreign minister “won’t be around much longer” if they continue their invective against the United States, reactions ranged from nervous disbelief to sheer terror.

Mr. Trump’s willingness to casually threaten to annihilate a nuclear-armed foe was yet another reminder of the steep risks inherent in his brute-force approach to diplomacy. His strengths as a politician — the ability to appeal in a visceral way to the impulses of ordinary citizens — are a difficult fit for the meticulous calculations that his own advisers concede are crucial in dealing with Pyongyang.

Yeah, this is not normal diplomacy:

The disconnect has led to a deep uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump is all talk or actually intends to act. The ambiguity could be strategic, part of an effort to intimidate Mr. Kim and keep him guessing. Or it could reflect a rash impulse by a leader with little foreign policy experience to vent his anger and stoke his supporters’ enthusiasm.

His new chief of staff and his national security team have drawn a line at trying to rein in his more incendiary provocations, fearing that their efforts could backfire with a president who bridles at any effort to control him. What remains unclear — and the source of much of the anxiety in and out of the government and on both sides of the Pacific — is whether they would step in to prevent the president from taking the kind of drastic action that matches his words, if they believed it was imminent.

Oh for heaven's sake - they won't be going full speed ahead on a random order to attack North Korea. That said, if the Fat Boy decides he needs to emphasize some point by attacking, e.g, Guam, then we will be put in a corner.

Veterans of diplomacy and national security and specialists on North Korea fear that, whatever their intended result, Mr. Trump’s increasingly bellicose threats and public insults of the famously thin-skinned Mr. Kim could cause the United States to careen into a nuclear confrontation driven by personal animosity and bravado.

“It does matter, because you don’t want to get to a situation where North Korea fundamentally miscalculates that an attack is coming,” said Sue Mi Terry, a former intelligence and National Security Council specialist who is now a senior adviser for Korea at Bower Group Asia. “It could lead us to stumble into a war that nobody wants.”

As an aside, please tell me that "Sue Me" Terry trained as a lawyer. Darn it! Evidently her name was not her destiny.

As to how this game seems to be playing out, Trump's rhetoric (and the escalating verbal war it has provoked) has created risks and opportunities for the many players staring at this corner of the global board.

For the US, it may convince the Chinese that the situation is so dire that they need to bring North Korea to heel, perhaps by way of regime change. That could be a win for the US.

On the other hand, China can go in a couple of directions. They want a stable North Korea on their border unaligned with the West, so regime change might look like an attractive way to get there. They also would like to ease the US out of their part of the world, so the Chinese might imagine themselves encouraging Japan and South Korea to cooperate with China on other issues in exchange for a Chinese-led effort to de-fang or de-throne Kim Jong Un. If China can rebrand themselves as the force for calm and the US as the force for disruption they may achieve both stability and a reduced US influence in the Pacific; call that a win-win for them. I should add that in such a scenario Trump will claim credit for succeeding in the role of 'bad cop' so (after everybody's blood pressure has dropped back into the high normal range) he ought to be able to turn this into a US win as well.

And the Fat Boy? He benefits from the escalating rhetoric since he has an obvious opportunity to put (or keep) his country on a wartime footing and quash any internal opposition angling for outreach and accommodation with the West. Unity through fear of nuclear annihilation. In the longer run he presumably is looking for security guarantees rather than an opportunity to invade and occupy a demoralized South Korea. However, that has its own risk - if his security is assured, why is his country on a war footing and the people starving to maintain the military, hmm? In a sane world his actual martial ardor would be roughly zero, but this performance art lets him rally his generals and keep his captives on his side. The Fat Boy needs an enemy.

Lock 'Em Up!

Jared Kushner and other White House staffers have been using private email accounts as well as their official '.gov' accounts. Now, a private email account could include 'gmail' or 'hotmail', which means the server and related security are handled by heavy hitting tech firms. However, Politico [seems to] mention in passing that Kushner is on a private server [But he's not; see UPDATE]:

Presidential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner has corresponded with other administration officials about White House matters through a private email account set up during the transition last December, part of a larger pattern of Trump administration aides using personal email accounts for government business.

Kushner uses his private account alongside his official White House email account, sometimes trading emails with senior White House officials, outside advisers and others about media coverage, event planning and other subjects, according to four people familiar with the correspondence. POLITICO has seen and verified about two dozen emails.

“Mr. Kushner uses his White House email address to conduct White House business,” Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner, said in a statement Sunday. “Fewer than 100 emails from January through August were either sent to or returned by Mr. Kushner to colleagues in the White House from his personal email account. These usually forwarded news articles or political commentary and most often occurred when someone initiated the exchange by sending an email to his personal rather than his White House address.”

The original set-up doesn't sound too dastardly:

There is no indication that Kushner has shared any sensitive or classified material on his private account, or that he relies on his private email account more than his official White House account to conduct government business. Aides say he prefers to call or text over using email.

...

Still, Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, set up their private family domain late last year before moving to Washington from New York, according to people with knowledge of events as well as publicly available internet registration records. At the time, Kushner — who served as a senior campaign adviser — was expected to be named to a White House role, while Ivanka Trump was publicly saying she didn’t plan to work in her father’s administration.

Kushner's representatives declined to detail the server or security measures on it.

People familiar with the account say it was primarily set up for Kushner’s personal communications, but he has used it to communicate with acquaintances outside the White House about matters relating to Trump and the administration, according to people who have received messages, as well as with his White House colleagues.

Well, Hillary made the same argument - she wanted to keep her personal emails off the government system. Of course, her solution - keeping all her emails off the government system - was problematic. It doesn't seem that Kushner has gone that route.

[Kushner attorney] Lowell said Kushner has adhered to government record-keeping requirements by forwarding all the emails to his account, though POLITICO could not verify that.

What does it mean? Who knows?

UPDATE: Politico sort of danced around the private server question, or else I misunderstood "Kushner's representatives declined to detail the server". In any case the NY Times has this:

A government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about Mr. Kushner’s email habits, said that unlike in the Clinton case, Mr. Kushner had not set up a private server to house the personal email account. While Mrs. Clinton used her personal account exclusively, the official said that Mr. Kushner does use his government account.

 

 

That Went Well

Let's enjoy a Sunday afternoon of football and protests. And how about them Texans, scuffling with the Patriots who lead 28-27 in the third quarter.

The First Fan Chimes In

For heaven's sake - now Trump gets in the mix with the NFL anthem protests (now moving to baseball and the young man, Bruce Maxwell, is very impressive in his post-game comments, although less so on Twitter. FWIW he was born in Wiesbaden, Germany and his dad is a veteran. Do note the white teammate behind him on the field with a hand on his shoulder. If he can play he'll stay.)

As to Trump, Sen. Ben Sasse tweets some interesting points:

NFL players: You have the right to protest Trump tmrw. But aren’t there better ways than kneeling before the flag soldiers died to defend?

Followed by:

btw, Trump wants you to kneel--because it divides the nation, with him and the flag on the same side. Don't give him the attention he wants.

People who don't like Trump won't like this. people who do like Trump surely overlap strongly with those who don't like the anthem protests, so this will end up as one more divisive base-rouser for Trump.

And I guess is it was a slow news day because the NBA got into the mix. NBA superstar Steph Curry of the champion Golden State Warriors expressed reservations about taking the champion's customary trip to the White House (he'd already met Obama there) so Trump un-invited him. Given their "Strength in numbers" motto there was no doubt the rest of the team would then decline the visit. LeBron got involved, calling Trump a "bum", and we are not talking about whether the big Melo trade can put my Thunder in the top rank. 

What, no hockey?

About Face At Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook announced they would turn over all the Russian-sponsored ads from the 2016 campaign. I like this:

The announcement that Facebook would share the ads with the Senate and House intelligence committees came after the social network spent two weeks on the defensive. The company faced calls for greater transparency about 470 Russia-linked accounts — in which fictional people posed as American activists — which were taken down after they had promoted inflammatory messages on divisive issues. Facebook had previously angered congressional staff by showing only a sample of the ads, some of which attacked Hillary Clinton or praised Donald J. Trump.

Let's see all the ads and find out whether Russia was winding up both sides. Back in the day it was believed Russia backed anti-fracking groups in Europe. Why not also in the US?

Johnny (Danger) McCain

Here we go again.

McCain Announces Opposition to Republican Health Bill, Likely Dooming It

 

Pressing On To New Diplomatic Frontiers

The Battlin' to Make Him Stop Rattlin' between Trump and Rocket Man is lifting off nicely:

Kim on Thursday reacted angrily to Trump's remarks and actions this week, calling the president a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” and Trump's earlier speech at the U.N. “unprecedented rude nonsense.” Kim said he was now thinking hard about how to respond.

“I will make the man holding the prerogative of the supreme command in the U.S. pay dearly for his speech,” Kim said in a statement released by the official Korean Central News Agency, which also published a photo of the North Korean leader sitting at his desk holding a piece of paper.

“I am now thinking hard about what response he could have expected when he allowed such eccentric words to trip off his tongue. Whatever Trump might have expected, he will face results beyond his expectation,” Kim said, adding that he would “tame” Trump “with fire.”

In his latest tweeted barb Friday, Trump called Kim a “madman” who brings famine and death on North Koreans.

“Kim Jong Un of North Korea, who is obviously a madman who doesn't mind starving or killing his people, will be tested like never before!” Trump wrote.

Clearly this is a prelude to an epic battle rap showdown. Gotta bet Trump on that.

Manafort Surveillance Re-Started AFTER He Left Trump Campaign

From the WSJ (firewall breach here):

U.S. Monitored Manafort After He Left Trump Campaign

The surveillance came as part of a counterintelligence probe into Russian interference with presidential election

U.S. authorities placed Paul Manafort under surveillance after he was ousted as Donald Trump’s campaign manager in the summer of 2016, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter.

The surveillance, which was part of a counterintelligence investigation into Russian interference with the presidential election, didn’t involve listening to Mr. Manafort’s phone communications in real-time, the officials said.

Let's note that "not listening in real-time" doesn't mean they weren't recording and replaying his phone calls.

But armed with a warrant, investigators still could have conducted clandestine surveillance of Mr. Manafort, possibly by obtaining copies of his emails and other electronically stored communications, or by having agents follow him or conduct physical searches of his property.

The surveillance began after Mr. Manafort left the Trump campaign in August, but it is not clear when it was suspended. Mr. Manafort resigned after a spate of publicity about his consulting work in Ukraine on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s allies.

None of which resolves whether there were serious concerns about Manafort or he was simply the closest person to Trump for whom the FBI could plausibly argue for a warrant.

On The Upbeat Side...

Michael Phelps is helping others, including some superstars, deal with fame, anxiety and depression.

Valerie Plame Tweeted WHAT?

Like her hubby, Valerie Plame is no fan of the neo-cons. She tweeted a link to this article headlined "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars" and then exhorted people to read it with an open mind. 

Ooops! A few hours later she re-read it with an open mind and back-pedaled, saying:

Apologies all. There is so much there that’s problematic AF and I should have recognized it sooner. Thank you for pushing me to look again.

Yeah, because not even a trained intelligence agent could be expected to pick up the subtle anti-Semitic clues in the headline and lead paragraph:

America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars

Shouldn't they recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?

 

I spoke recently at a conference on America’s war party where afterwards an elderly gentleman came up to me and asked, “Why doesn’t anyone ever speak honestly about the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room? Nobody has mentioned Israel in this conference and we all know it’s American Jews with all their money and power who are supporting every war in the Middle East for Netanyahu? Shouldn’t we start calling them out and not letting them get away with it?”

 

One can be opposed to current Israeli policy without being an anti-Semite (or even anti-Israel) but somewhere there is a line and railing about rich American Jews supporting every war in the Middle East is past it. Also not accurate.

 

MORE: For a first class beat-down with complimentary drinks check out Ace. Even if the drinks are gone you won't be disappointed.

So Jealous And Unbecoming

Crooked Hillary is whining that Trump gave the Fat Boy a cooler nickname. 

Hmm. These people think Trump is telling us the Fat Boy is really the Big Boy. Over at CNBC, genius!

Who knew international diplomacy was this complicated?

Melinda Gates: A Shrewd Observer of the Human Condition

Ms. Gates discusses sexism in tech and notes an intriguing inflection point:

Gates said the industry's gender problem is clear just by looking at the numbers.

When she was in college, 37% of computer science graduates were female. Now it's 18%, she said.

Things got worse when games started to become more "genderized," with a focus on sports and killing, she said.

"[A]ll the sudden, when games started to become very genderized, you started to see the downtick. This huge falling off of women wanted to go into computer science," she said.

Sounds plausible but... this hypothesis is begging for a Nate Silver wanna-be to research best-selling games by year and try to map that to credible measure of women in tech, or STEM.

That said, I have made a related observation: think of the growth of fantasy football and baseball leagues. Generally a male audience, yes? And to be a playa one must be comfortable with crunching all sorts of statistics.

Does this spill over into a general familiarity with computers, stats and numbers? And does this give fantasy league players (mostly guys) a boost in math and computer related classes? Does number crunching as a hobby just boost the "males in science" outcomes so troubling to some? One might think so, but again, how could that be measured?

Graham-Cassidy Health Care Bill

I know a lot more about Butch Cassidy than i do about Graham-Cassidy. I had assumed it was a risen-from-the-ashes yet DOA poll driven attempt to salvage the reputations of the feckless Republican "leadership" that had promised for seven years to repeal Obamacare.

But maybe it's not DOA and maybe there's something to it. Thoughts?

Strong Words From The WSJ Editors

The WSJ editors have strong words regarding the Manafort wiretaps:

All Mr. Comey’s Wiretaps

Congress needs to learn how the FBI meddled in the 2016 campaign.

When Donald Trump claimed in March that he’d had his “wires tapped” prior to the election, the press and Obama officials dismissed the accusation as a fantasy. We were among the skeptics, but with former director James Comey’s politicized FBI the story is getting more complicated.

CNN reported Monday that the FBI obtained a warrant last year to eavesdrop on Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign manager from May to August in 2016. The story claims the FBI first wiretapped Mr. Manafort in 2014 while investigating his work as a lobbyist for Ukraine’s ruling party. That warrant lapsed, but the FBI convinced the court that administers the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to issue a second order as part of its probe into Russian meddling in the election.

Guess who has lived in a condo in Trump Tower since 2006? Paul Manafort.

Mr. Comey told Congress in late March that he “had no information that supports those [Trump] tweets.” Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was even more specific that “there was no such wiretap activity mounted against—the President-elect at the time, or as a candidate, or against his campaign.” He denied that any such FISA order existed. Were they lying?

The warrant’s timing may also shed light on the FBI’s relationship to the infamous “ Steele dossier.” That widely discredited dossier claiming ties between Russians and the Trump campaign was commissioned by left-leaning research firm Fusion GPS and developed by former British spy Christopher Steele—who relied on Russian sources. But the Washington Post and others have reported that Mr. Steele was familiar to the FBI, had reached out to the agency about his work, and had even arranged a deal in 2016 to get paid by the FBI to continue his research.

The FISA court sets a high bar for warrants on U.S. citizens, and presumably even higher for wiretapping a presidential campaign. Did Mr. Comey’s FBI marshal the Steele dossier to persuade the court?

They emphasize a certain irony:

All of this is reason for House and Senate investigators to keep exploring how Mr. Comey’s FBI was investigating both presidential campaigns. Russian meddling is a threat to democracy but so was the FBI if it relied on Russian disinformation to eavesdrop on a presidential campaign. The Justice Department and FBI have stonewalled Congressional requests for documents and interviews, citing the “integrity” of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

...

Mr. Comey investigated both leading presidential campaigns in an election year, playing the role of supposedly impartial legal authority. But his maneuvering to get Mr. Mueller appointed, and his leaks to the press, have shown that Mr. Comey is as political and self-serving as anyone in Washington. No investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 campaign will be credible or complete without the facts about all Mr. Comey’s wiretaps.

There was a time when the intelligence community believed that Putin's goal was to de-legitimize the eventual winner, not to pick one. Contrary though that may be to the Hillary/DNC whinging and blame-shifting, maybe they were right the first time.

Hurricane Watch

UPDATE: Maria makes landfall as a Category 4, 2 MPH shy of Cat 5. 

Maria bears down on Puerto Rico. From CNN:

(CNN) There is still time for Puerto Ricans to get to a government-run shelter before powerful Hurricane Maria clobbers the island, Gov. Ricardo Rosselló told CNN late Tuesday.

But the window of opportunity is closing.

"There's still time ... but people need to move fast," Ricardo Rosselló told CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360˚," calling the storm the "worst hurricane in modern history in Puerto Rico."

...

 

Maria is a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 175 mph (281 kph). By late Tuesday, the eye of hurricane was expected to move near or over St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and make landfall in Puerto Rico Wednesday morning.

 

Trump At The UN

The National Review, Ground Zero for the Never Trump movement (I'm short-shrifting Erick Erickson there) has praise for Trump's UN speech from Rich Lowry and Elliot Abrams.

From Lowry:

‘Holy Sh**’: Trump at the U.N

A Jacksonian speech in Turtle Bay

As someone said on Twitter, never before has been there so much murmuring of “holy sh**” in so many different languages. Donald Trump’s speech at the United Nations was a sometimes awkward marriage of conventional Republican foreign policy and a very basic version of Trump’s nationalism.

...

All things considered and given the alternatives, it was a fine speech. It wasn’t really an “America First” speech — it defended the world order and even had warm words for the Marshall Plan — but in its signature lines about North Korea, it was thematically a very Jacksonian speech. What exactly this means in terms of policy remains to be seen. But everyone is paying attention, if they weren’t before.

And Abrams:

Trump’s Successful U.N. Speech 

In his speech to the United Nations, President Trump very successfully met the political and intellectual challenge he faced. He reminded the delegates that the United Nations was never meant to be a gigantic bureaucracy that would steadily become a world government. Rather, he said, it is an association of sovereign states whose strength depends “on the independent strength of its members.” Its success, he argued, depends on their success at governing well as “strong, sovereign, and independent nations.”

Trump cleverly turned patriotism — love of one’s own country, and what he called the necessary basis for sacrifice and “all that is best in the human spirit” — into the basis for international cooperation to solve problems that nations must face together. “The true question,” he said, is “are we still patriots?” If we are, we can work together for “a future of dignity and peace for the people of this wonderful Earth.” This was a useful, principled, and accurate reminder that the nation-state (a term he used) remains the key to world politics, and that successful nation-states will be the key to addressing the world’s challenges.

...

Fair judges will call this speech a real success. Trump rose to the occasion and offered a speech that had both striking rhetoric and a sound argument that the success of individual states, each looking out for its own interests, is the basic building block of a successful U.N. and international system. This was a rare speech in that chamber, which has been filled with decades of lies, hypocrisy, and globaloney. Trump paid the organization and the delegates the courtesy of telling them squarely how his administration sees the world.

I should add that Abrams notes with hope the absence of some Israeli-Palestine rhetoric:

What did Trump not talk about? The Israeli–Palestinian conflict. At times that problem was the central item in President Obama’s speeches to the U.N., so its absence in Trump’s first address to the General Assembly was very striking. He wants to get a deal done, as he reiterated when meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but he realizes that the conflict is not central to world politics or even to stability and peace in the Middle East. So it had no place in this text.

Interesting.

I should add: Trump called Kim Jong Un "Rocketman" in his speech. "Fat Boy" might have been nice since it picks up a "We have used nukes before and might again" theme.

But to really sting him Trump should have gone with "Froot Loops". Bazinga!

Riding The Tiger

I love watching young Dreamers chewing on Nancy Pelosi. Will the Dem Old Guard be able to direct and exploit the "What do we want? Complete Surrender! When do we want it? Now!" entitlement mentality of their youthful enthusiasts?

Stay tuned!

ERRATA: James Woods tweets:

That astonishing moment when you realize what conservatives must feel like in a swamp of liberal controlled media...

Lawfare On The Manafort Taps And More

Lawfare evaluates the big CNN and NYTimes stories about what they are lamely billing "L'Affaire Russe". Props for the absence of a "-gate" but really, where is the French connection? If we are doing movie themes, please call this debacle "From Russia With Trump".

As to substance, I do quibble with this:

So was Trump right to say that he was “wire tapped”?

No.

Nothing in this report vindicates Trump’s claims that he or Trump Tower were wiretapped.

...

This story reports that Manafort was a target of collection and that Trump was talking with him at the time Manafort was under surveillance. It does not report that Trump Tower, where Manafort did have an apartment, was the location of that targeting.

Press reports have indicated for months that at least one, and potentially multiple, close associates of Donald Trump were subject to FISA warrants. It is possible now—as has been noted many times since Trump tweeted his accusation in March—that if the U.S. president was in communication with these individuals, his communications might have been incidentally collected. That isn’t the same as being wiretapped—and being subject to incidental collection as part of lawful collection against a third party really is not the same thing as being wiretapped by President Obama. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has already attempted to spin incidental collection into presidential vindication in a bizarre series of press conferences unveiling intelligence revelations—which later turned out to have been fed to him by the White House itself.

CNN reported that it is “unclear whether Trump himself was picked up on the surveillance.” But there isn’t anything untoward about incidental collection, even if it did happen. It happens routinely in both criminal and intelligence contexts, when non-targeted individuals communicate with the target. 

Just to parse this, if "vindicates" means "proves", then sure, this story proves nothing.

But try to imagine a world in which Team Obama wants to wiretap Trump. Told there is no credible legal basis for doing so, they dust off the old Manafort allegations and tap him, hoping to get lucky and strike gold with Trump.

Did that happen? Who knows? Could it have happened? Does the latest CNN story make it seem a bit more likely that it did happen? 

Make the call.

And since I ask, longtime Clinton loyalist John Podesta managed Hillary's 2016 campaign (and was famously fat-fingered when clicking on phishing email links). His brother ran a major lobbying firm (shocker, amirite?) that was cashing unreported checks while lobbying for the same Ukrainians as Manafort. Was that facet of the investigation re-opened in 2016? Why ask why? The administration was already busy squashing the 'investigation' into Hillary's emails and didn't need the extra work.

Shock And Awe But No Sense Of Irony

The NY Times licks its lips and reports on the Mueller investigation into Trump associate Paul Manafort:

With a Picked Lock and a Threatened Indictment, Mueller’s Inquiry Sets a Tone

WASHINGTON — Paul J. Manafort was in bed early one morning in July when federal agents bearing a search warrant picked the lock on his front door and raided his Virginia home. They took binders stuffed with documents and copied his computer files, looking for evidence that Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, set up secret offshore bank accounts. They even photographed the expensive suits in his closet.

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, then followed the house search with a warning: His prosecutors told Mr. Manafort they planned to indict him, said two people close to the investigation.

Whether a pre-dawn raid was necessary is not clear but it certainly was aggressive. Intentionally:

“They are setting a tone. It’s important early on to strike terror in the hearts of people in Washington, or else you will be rolled,” said Solomon L. Wisenberg, who was deputy independent counsel in the investigation that led to the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999. “You want people saying to themselves, ‘Man, I had better tell these guys the truth.’”

Ahh, terrific. Resist! With the full power of the government and arguably excessive use of force, but resist!

But the Times fails to note the extreme differences between the tone taken by Mueller and the tone presented by Comey in his desultory and deferential investigation of Hillary and her emails. Just for example, did Comey engage in shock and awe with a flurry of subpoenas? Quite the contrary - only recently did we learn that he had used subpoenas at all:

FBI reveals broader use of grand jury subpoenas in Clinton email probe

A court filing discloses the bureau employed a legal tool to seek emails from accounts of some she corresponded with.

The FBI revealed Wednesday that it used grand jury subpoenas more broadly than previously known in the course of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email account and server.

A top FBI official disclosed in a court filing that grand jury subpoenas were used to try to obtain records not only from Clinton’s account but also from accounts belonging to people she was in contact with.

Any shock and awe effect had to have been pretty subtle, since few even knew about it:

After Comey announced the end of the investigation without charges in July 2016, Republican lawmakers repeatedly complained that he failed to use any mandatory legal process in the inquiry. Some said he should have used grand jury subpoenas to force Clinton’s lawyers to testify or to turn over laptops they used to handle and sort her messages.

Comey declined to address the allegations at the time, noting that grand jury actions are required to be secret by law.

However, subsequent Freedom of Information Act releases hinted at the use of grand jury subpoenas in the investigation. And in April, Priestap confirmed their use, but in a public court filing referred only to the subpoenas’ being used in an attempt to track down messages that service providers might have stored from Clinton’s account that she accessed via her BlackBerry in January through March 2009.

Former Federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy notes many other facets of the Comey "investigation" that may have been less "Shock and awe" and more "Aw, shucks":

Neither will the IG be reviewing the multiple irregular immunity agreements granted by the Justice Department in a case in which no criminal charges were filed, including agreements that reportedly called for the destruction of evidence (laptop computers of top Clinton aides) after a strangely limited examination of their potentially incriminating contents.

There will similarly be no inquiry into why the Justice Department allowed subjects of the investigation (who had been granted immunity from prosecution) to appear as lawyers for the main subject of the investigation – despite ethical and statutory prohibitions on such conduct. Nor, evidently, will the IG be probing why the attorney general furtively met with the spouse of the main subject of the investigation – the spouse who just happens to be the president who launched the attorney general to national prominence by appointing her as a district U.S. attorney in the Nineties – on an airport tarmac just days before Mrs. Clinton submitted to a perfunctory FBI interview, after which came Comey’s announcement that charges would not be filed.

If Mueller is delivering what a real investigation looks like, how would the Times characterize the Comey show?

I Deplore This Insensitivity!

Send in the Grievance Brigade:

Jerry Brown compares Trump supporters to cave dwellers

If you think you're having a senior moment, yes, this is the same Jerry Brown, Governor of California, who first danced on the national stage as a Presidential contender in 1976.

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday called President Donald Trump’s approach to climate change and North Korea “stupid and dangerous and silly,” sharpening his criticism of the president and comparing his supporters to cave dwellers.

“They’re both kind of very similar,” Brown said at a climate change event in New York. “You should check out the derivation of ‘Trump-ite’ and ‘troglodyte,’ because they both refer to people who dwell in deep, dark caves.”

I deplore his insensitivity to cave-dwellers.

 

The Gateway To The West

Ross Douthat has a bold suggestion for Amazon's next headquarters.

I Give This Two Thumbs, Well, Down

Normally this bit of baseball goofiness would emerge from the dog days of August rather than in a pennant race, but if it's working don't stop.

Sunday Morning Kick-Off

Away we go.

We'll Always Have Paris. Unless We Don't.

We began the week with or without a deal on DACA and we end it with confusion about whether Trump will or will not pull out of the Paris climate change accord.

This seems to be the key quote from the WSJ article that sparked this:

The statement came in response to published reports by the Wall Street Journal and AFP that a top European climate official said the U.S. would “not re-negotiate the Paris Accord, but will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement."

And in reply:

The White House swiftly denied any change in its stance on the landmark deal. 

"There has been no change in the United States' position on the Paris agreement,” the White House said in a statement. “As the president has made abundantly clear, the United States is withdrawing unless we can re-enter on terms that are more favorable to our country."

I claim mastery of neither Diplo-speak nor Trump-speak, but...

What does the top European official mean when he says the US won't renegotiate but will review the terms of engagement? Couldn't that encompass pointing out problematic requirements and having them modified or re-interpreted more favorably to the US? Wouldn't that be a re-negotiation, even if the diplomats agree that no one wants to call it that?

I'm mystified. Evergreen.

Football Saturday

Big games today!

Mr. Sanders Wild Pony Ride

Bernie Sanders made a splash by promising free stuff to kids and now with his "Medicare for All" proposal he is promising free stuff to everyone. OK, "free-ish" in the sense that no one knows who is paying for it but Democrats assume it will be Somebody Else, presumably Mitt Romney and his kids. Or other sinister rich people. Whomever.

Rebuttals and objections from the right will inevitably fall on deaf progressive ears but Margot Sanger-Katz of the NY Times Upshot provides a splash of reality:

The Sanders plan envisions changing Medicare in two important ways. First, it would make it more generous than it has ever been, expanding it to cover new types of benefits and to erase most direct health care costs for consumers. Those changes would tend to make it more expensive.

But it also would put the Medicare program on the sort of diet it has never attempted. Those changes, still in sketch form in the legislation, are in many ways the heart of its long-term overhaul plan. The changes are intended to make the health care system more affordable, but the details could have big effects on what sorts of care might be developed and made available.

Let me just pause there for emphasis. Dems hate it when Greedy Insurers deny treatment for cost or other reasons, but they will be fine when the government does just that? How do they think this will work - that the government will just say yes to everything?

 

Whether it can achieve that third goal [of saving the country money] depends a great deal on how the new Medicare-for-all system would be managed, and the Sanders plan leaves a lot of those details unclear for now. Covering everyone would not, by itself, make the health care system in the United States as inexpensive as those of other nations with universal health care systems. That sort of cost control would require its own set of policies and difficult choices.

Difficult choices. However those choices are elided by Sanders, who prefers a fantasy world inhabited by many of his fans:

In his news conference introducing the bill on Wednesday, Mr. Sanders focused his ire on insurance and drug companies, two profitable sectors of the health care system. But insurance and drug company profits don’t make up the bulk of America’s health care spending. Single-payer advocates argue that the simplicity of a single, government payer would reduce paperwork and office staff, and that is almost certainly true. But most spending in the health care system is on medical care from doctors and hospitals — and squeezing savings there may be harder.

To get savings from those areas might require reducing doctors’ pay or hospitals’ numbers of medical professionals. It could require eliminating some medical treatments that are currently offered. Even cutting spending on pharmaceuticals would have ripple effects, potentially limiting access to new or expensive treatments, or reducing investment in new technologies.

New treatments and technologies? You mean the stuff provided by Greedy Big Pharma? Who needs it? I want Alzheimers drugs and I want someone else to pay for it, dammit.

The bill specifies that Medicare would be run with an annual budget, leaving government officials to decide how to make the country’s medical spending conform to such totals every year. It also says that the government should evaluate the effectiveness of different medical treatments. Such a system has precedent: Several countries, including Canada and Britain, establish health care budgets that must be met and assess the value of medical services to determine what should be covered.

But such budgets and limits have been politically toxic in the United States, where politicians have been reluctant to say that the government should restrict care. The Affordable Care Act established a theoretical limit on spending per Medicare beneficiary, establishing a board that would reduce costs if a cap were met. But that board, assailed as a “death panel,” has never been called upon to make such choices, for no members have ever been nominated to it.

Democrats are not interested in budgets or managing care. Their goal, as with Social Security, is to be the party of More, casting the Republicans as the green-eye shaded accountants mumbling about the expense and saying no. Who do people want to vote for, Santa Claus or the Grinch? 

I should say, even Paul Krugman has reservations. After a lot of de rigeur bonding with his base about deplorable Republicans and deceitful Trump (and vice versa) he puts his toe in the water on "Medicare for All (with a pony!):

Unlike just about everything Trump and company are proposing, Medicare for all is a substantively good idea. Yet actually making it happen would probably mean facing down a serious political backlash. For one thing, it would require a substantial increase in taxes. For another, it would mean telling scores of millions of Americans who get health coverage though their employers, and are generally satisfied with their coverage, that they need to give it up and accept something different. You can say that the new system would be better — but will they believe it?

Such concerns may not seem very salient right now: Given Republican control of the White House, single-payer is going to be at best an aspiration for the next three-plus years. But what if rigid support for single-payer — as opposed to somewhat flexible support for universal coverage, however achieved — becomes a litmus test? In that case, Democrats could eventually find themselves facing a Trumpcare-type debacle, unable either to implement their unrealistic vision or to let it go.

The point is that while unrealistic promises may not hurt you in elections, they can become a big problem when you try to govern. Having a vision for the future is good, but being real about the difficulties is also good. Democrats, take heed.

Hmm, that reminds me - I want to set up a Next To Die pool for the major characters on Game of Thrones. And now I want to keep a list of "Sell By" predictions for how long it will take for Krugman to endorse whatever hazy Medicare-for-All scheme Dems offer when they might have enough clout to pass something. I am confident Krugman will not be heard from again expressing objections of reservations about this ongoing progressive fantasy.

ERRATA: Way back in 2009 (and 2003, with dead links) I mentioned a switching to a prize or contract model for Big Pharma, rather than our current approach of granting them temporary patent-protected monopolies and then griping about price gouging.

Back in the day when my internet connection was working I would include some links, but - way back when, the British Navy was desperately interested in developing a method of accurately determining longitude (latitude, i.e. North/South, is pretty easy using the stars or the sun; the rotation of the earth makes East/West tricky).  The Royal Society spurred innovation by offering a prize for a workable technique, rather than providing patent or copyright protection and allowing the inventor a monopoly.

Even today examples of science competitions and prizes abound.  A similar model could be applied to drug development - the US could agree to pay some suitable amount (Half a billion?  Yikes!) for an Alzheimer's drug that met certain measures of efficacy.  Specifying performance is a lot trickier, but, as I belabored in this old post, we already employ a similar business model with the defense industry (and we know libs who hate Big Pharma love Big Defense!).

Possible Spoilers

I love J Law but based on this review I won't be in a hurry to see her latest, "Mother". Apparently it's a "worst movie" but in a bad way, not a campy, WTF was that way. Well, I guess I'll never know.

Trouble In Paradise

There was a time when we could rely on progressives to look to Europe as an aspiration and an inspiration for better days in the US. But what has overcome the NY Times?

In Angela Merkel, German Women Find Symbol, but Not Savior

OSNABRÜCK, Germany — Just 9 years old when Chancellor Angela Merkelwas first elected in 2005, Kristin Auf der Masch cannot really remember a time when Germany was led by a man.

But if Ms. Auf der Masch, now 21 and an apprentice at a wind energy company in this northwestern city, finds it hard to imagine a male chancellor, she also finds it impossible to imagine a female boss.

“There are lots of women at my level, and then there is Angela Merkel,” she said during a recent classroom debate about the election on Sept. 24, when Ms. Merkel is expected to win a fourth term. “There aren’t many women in between.”

Germany, which has been led by the most powerful woman in the world for 12 years, has a woman problem.

Trouble in Their Blue Heaven? What's next, reporting on immigrant problems in Sweden?

I take this personally:

Alice Schwarzer, the country’s best-known feminist, put it this way: “Since 2005, little girls can decide: Do I become a hairdresser — or chancellor?”

But ask Ms. Auf der Masch and the 14 other apprentices in her class how many of the local companies that train them — midsize businesses that make everything from margarine to mobility scooters — are run by women. Not a single hand goes up.

There are a few female department heads, most of them childless. But collectively the apprentices can think of more managers called “Thomas” than managers who are women.

As in "Thomas the Tank Engine"? Naah, that's the Brits. But lest you or I doubt, they have more:

There are, in fact, more C.E.O.s named “Thomas” (seven) than C.E.O.s who are women (three) in Germany’s 160 publicly traded companies, notes the AllBright foundation, which tracks women in corporate leadership. 

I had no idea of the scope of the German problem.

Is London Burning? How About Berkeley?

Terror in London, Shapiro in Berkeley, and no doubt more.

How 'Bout That Tribe?

Obviously we deplore their insensitive name but go, Cleveland! On to 22!

I suppose that since I am a Yankee loyalist a brief explanation is in order. The last few baseball regular seasons have not ended with my guys in the payoffs so I made it a habit to jump on the bandwagon of some other American League team. This ploy carried the Royals to victory over the Mets in 2015 but only after their near-miss in 2014. Last year's adoptees were the Indians, mainly because a fellow Yankee fan is originally from Cleveland and he, too, needed a team to get behind.

Our combined power got Cleveland into extra innings in Game 7 last year, so this year? Sky's the limit! Unless the Yankees emerge from the wild-card to face them, in which case Cleveland will need to get it done without me. Which, I fear, they will, because they are that good, if not better. in which case I will resume rooting for them.

SINCE YOU ASK: The Yankees are putting a beating on the Orioles, currently leading 9-1. Judge has two homers, but he began thundering away after the Yanks were up 6-1 and the pressure was less. Still, if he heats up again like this spring, stand back.

Share The Yawn

Brace yourself: Harvard seems to have both an Affirmative Action push and faculty politics. The Times hints at both in this 'libs chewing on libs and blaming cons' story:

From Prison to Ph.D.: The Redemption and Rejection of Michelle Jones

Michelle Jones was released last month after serving more than two decades in an Indiana prison for the murder of her 4-year-old son. The very next day, she arrived at New York University, a promising Ph.D. student in American studies.

In a breathtaking feat of rehabilitation, Ms. Jones, now 45, became a published scholar of American history while behind bars, and presented her work by videoconference to historians’ conclaves and the Indiana General Assembly. With no internet access and a prison library that hewed toward romance novels, she led a team of inmates that pored through reams of photocopied documents from the Indiana State Archives to produce the Indiana Historical Society’s best research project last year. As prisoner No. 970554, Ms. Jones also wrote several dance compositions and historical plays, one of which is slated to open at an Indianapolis theater in December.

N.Y.U. was one of several top schools that recruited her for their doctoral programs. She was also among 18 selected from more than 300 applicants to Harvard University’s history program. 

Well that is very cool and good for her. But plot twist!

But in a rare override of a department’s authority to choose its graduate students, Harvard’s top brass overturned Ms. Jones’s admission after some professors raised concerns that she played down her crime in the application process.

Oh my, why?

While top Harvard officials typically rubber-stamp departmental admissions decisions, in this case the university’s leadership — including the president, provost, and deans of the graduate school — reversed one, according to the emails and interviews, out of concern that her background would cause a backlash among rejected applicants, conservative news outlets or parents of students.

A more colorful version ran later:

“We didn’t have some preconceived idea about crucifying Michelle,” said John Stauffer, one of the two American studies professors. “But frankly, we knew that anyone could just punch her crime into Google, and Fox News would probably say that P.C. liberal Harvard gave 200 grand of funding to a child murderer, who also happened to be a minority. I mean, c’mon.”

So they were worried about rejected applicants screaming "What do I have to do to get into Harvard, kill someone?" A worthy concern, since grad school applicants are given a solicitous treatment everywhere. Except Planet Earth. What, grad students will stop vying to get into Harvard?

Fears that Rush Limbaugh and Fox News would mock them caused trembling in Cambridge, since we know the Massachusetts public is sensitive to that sort of thing. No, they're not. Resist! Love trumps hate! 

Finally, the administration had a fear of troglodyte parents worrying that their darlings had a ex-con killer as a graduate assistant. Really? I had no idea the Harvard money machine was so worried about speed bumps.

My guess is that this is faculty politics and an AA backlash. John Stauffer and Daniel Carpenter, the two professors cited as leading the opposition are privileged white guys who seem to be straight and fifty. In other words, guys with no PC cred at all who should stand aside and make way for the future. Prof. Stauffer even let himself be quoted saying something ghastly:

“One of our considerations,” Professor Stauffer said in an interview, “was if this candidate is admitted to Harvard, where everyone is an elite among elites, that adjustment could be too much.”

Ouch. OK, twenty years of collaborating with fellow inmates is not exactly the same as spending twenty years in the Harvard faculty lounge and attending graduate student seminars, but surely some skills overlap.

We also learn that Harvard has been active in diversity outreach (as fans of Pocahantas remember):

Instead, the spokeswoman offered a general statement saying the graduate school “is committed to recruiting and enrolling students from all backgrounds” and “strives to create an inclusive and supportive environment where all students can thrive.”

Harvard has, indeed, made room for a wider range of voices on its campus in recent years, including the formerly incarcerated. Drew Faust, a historian who is departing as Harvard’s president in June after a decade, has expanded global outreach and financial aid, and hired a host of minority faculty who have broadened perspectives about prison reform and black culture.

So maybe this is a rear-guard action by the privileged pale males. Who knows? Yale also turned her down for reasons they have (so far!) been able to keep secret. Other top schools recruited her, and NYU is surely not chopped liver.

As to what Harvard 'should' have done, why ask me? I have no idea as to the merits of the other applicants. It's their school, their money and their reputation so they should have done whatever they wanted.

My guess is that they are spinning like weather vanes because of the environment they have embraced. When PC, identity politics and faux diversity (no welcome mat for conservatives!) are the more important than some hazy notion of scholarly merit it is hard to set a clear course.

ERRATA: It's not like libs have a big problem with murderous females.

They Made A Deal, They Made A Deal Not...

We're back on the DACA deal that may exist only in the imaginations and machinations of Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi.

Matt Drudge linked to a "confusion" story in The Guardian which noted Trump's tweets from this morning - their gist is that the outline of a deal is in sight but details remain. 

The Charity Case NY Times knew all that but also picked up on some quick Trump comments to journalists this morning, leading to this reporting gem (my emphasis):

Trump Confirms Support for Law to Protect ‘Dreamers’

WASHINGTON — President Trump said on Thursday morning that he supports legislation that would protect young undocumented immigrants from deportation and would deliver a “massive” increase in border security — but not with a wall on the southern border.

That appeared to confirm the broad parameters of an agreement that Democratic leaders announced had been reached Wednesday over dinner at the White House.

In remarks to reporters as he left the White House on Thursday, Mr. Trump said, “We’re working on a plan for DACA,” referring to protections for immigrants who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Mr. Trump’s comments contradicted his own Twitter posts early Thursday morning when he said, “no deal was made last night on DACA.”

So let me understand this: Trump's comment today that they are "working in a plan" contradicts his tweet that "no deal was made"? In what language?

This subsequent minor detail seems to contradict the Times notion of a contradiction:

Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader of New York, and Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader of California, issued a joint statement on Thursday saying there was no “final deal.”

“President Trump’s tweets are not inconsistent with the agreement reached last night,” Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi said. “As we said last night, there was no final deal, but there was agreement” that Mr. Trump would support a law for DACA protections.

“What remains to be negotiated are the details of border security, with a mutual goal of finalizing all details as soon as possible,” the Democratic leaders said. “While both sides agreed that the wall would not be any part of this agreement, the president made clear he intends to pursue it at a later time, and we made clear we would continue to oppose it.”

Is it ever so barely possible that for whatever reason, be it honest confusion or an attempt to invent momentum, that Chuck and Nancy over-stated the extent of the progress on DACA on Wednesday night? is it possible that either they or their stalwarts in the media have been wishcasting rather than communicating?

Why ask why? 

Is This A Deal Or An Attempted Stampede?

Pelosi and Schumer say they have a deal with Trump on DACA. The White House says not so fast. Are Pelosi and Schumer trying to roll Trump, hoping he will be unable to rseist the sounds of celebration if he completely caves in on DACA?

And this from the WaPo is cryptic:

Congressional aides familiar with the exchange said that Trump and the party leaders agreed to move quickly on legislation to protect dreamers, though aides did not disclose whether they agreed that the goal should be for dreamers to eventually be offered a path to citizenship.

Did these "aides familiar" not spill the beans because they want to preserve the suspense, or because that point was not nailed down?

Grist for the night shift.

Say What? Fair And Balanced At The NY Times?

OK, the charity case NY Times is trying to keep me off balance with off-speed pitches. Or something. NYTimes staff writer Bari Weiss delivers a calm, thoughtful assessment of Ben Shapiro's upcoming Brawl to Settle It All at Berkeley.

OK, she sometimes merely alludes to points that, in my well-thought through and strongly held opinion, merit table pounding and a bit of spittle. But hey, she is trying to reach her readership, not change my mind.

Some snippets:

A Political Conservative Goes to Berkeley

By Bari Weiss   Sept 12, 2017

Ben Shapiro is a 33-year-old who supports small government, religious liberty and free-market economics and opposes identity politics, abortion and Donald Trump. He is, in other words, that wildly exotic creature: a political conservative.

You’d think that the cosmopolitan denizens of the San Francisco Bay Area would have encountered a few, if not in the form of an uncle at Thanksgiving, then perhaps in, I don’t know, a field trip down to Orange County. But to judge from the pre-emptive reaction to Mr. Shapiro’s speech scheduled for this Thursday at the University of California, Berkeley, you’d be mistaken.

Last week Paul Alivisatos, the university’s executive vice chancellor and provost, sent out a grave letter to students and faculty members. “We are deeply concerned about the impact some speakers may have on individuals’ sense of safety and belonging,” he wrote, encouraging his readers to avail themselves of campus counseling services. “No one should be made to feel threatened or harassed simply because of who they are or for what they believe.”

Mr. Alivisatos wasn’t referring to the various threats against Mr. Shapiro that you might imagine would be his chief concern: When the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos visited campus in February, the resulting protests caused $100,000 in damage. This time around, the activist group Refuse Fascism, which has hailed the left-wing extremist antifa movement as “courageous,” has taken the lead in condemning Mr. Shapiro’s speech, calling him a “fascist” on campus fliers and declaring in a Facebook post that his goal was to “spread ugly fascist views dressed up in slick-talking ‘intellectual’ garb.”

Fascist? Says who? Good question:

Yet this sharp-tongued Never Trumper was also, according to the Anti-Defamation League, by far the most bullied Jewish journalist of 2016 — quite a distinction when you think about the kind of vitriol that gushed forth this past year on platforms like Twitter. Those attacks came from the alt-right, which called Mr. Shapiro a “Christ killer” and far worse. When his son was born, the trolls called the baby a “newborn cockroach” and suggested that the entire Shapiro family head to the gas chambers.

Let’s hope the protest against this “fascist” who has been the regular target of actual ones doesn’t result in any violence. But the brouhaha over Ben Shapiro is significant not because of what might go down Thursday at Berkeley, but because it is a perfect exhibition of a much broader phenomenon increasingly apparent in the wake of the Charlottesville, Va., demonstrations last month: the sloppy conflation between actual white supremacists and, well, run-of-the-mill conservatives, libertarians and classical liberals whose main beef is with some on the left who seem like they’d rather do without the First Amendment.

My goodness, antifa bashing and a defense of free speech even when committed by conservatives? What am I reading and where is my NY Times?

I still don't know, but bashing of antifa and the politicians who enable them it is. Ms. Weiss closes with a plea to meet speech with better speech. Her example is from 1965, which was also a volatile time and about to become much more so:

One of my favorite things on YouTube is the famous 1965 debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley at Cambridge University. Baldwin wiped the floor with Buckley before the all-white British audience — the yeas outpolled the nays 540 to 160 on the proposition “The American dream is at the expense of the American Negro.”

Can anyone doubt that if Buckley tried to argue the same point today he would have been pelted with a cream pie, or shouted down, or surrounded by a police escort or worse? Perhaps he would have just avoided the tiresome indignity by canceling the talk.

Watch it. You’ll be grateful he didn’t.

ERRATA: Baldwin's presentation is transcribed here.

The Russians Were Coming!

Scott Shane of the Charity Case NY Times covers the breaking news from Twin Falls Idaho, where Russian interference led to a four person rally in a state Trump won by 31%. Mr. Shane omits the "four person" detail, which admittedly is based on a Facebook guess, not crowd photographs or even a photo of a picnic bench with four bridge players.

However, Mr. Shane gets some interesting new details from a Facebook source (my emphasis):

The multifaceted Russian information operation targeting the presidential election had many elements, including the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails, regular attacks on Hillary Clinton by the RT television channel and the online news site Sputnik, and the creation of fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter. But the Twin Falls post is the first example to come to light of Russian agents actually trying to conjure a political rally on American soil.

Facebook officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said they had found a small number of additional events announced by the Russia-created pages and were looking for more. They declined to give examples.

The new revelations stepped up pressure on Facebook to make public more of what it knows about the Russian propaganda operations.

...

Facebook said last week that the 470 “inauthentic accounts and pages” it had linked to Russia and removed had bought about 3,000 ads between June 2015 and May this year. Though some ads mentioned the presidential candidates or the election, most “appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights,” wrote Alex Stamos, the company’s chief security officer.

Now, a rhetorical question - who on the right trusts Facebook to be forthcoming about duplicitous activity involving the left? Yeah, exactly. It seems strange that Facebook's list of divisive issues includes "LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights" but no environmental issues. After all, the NY Times and others reported in 2014 that Russia was widely believed to be behind anti-fracking protests in Europe.

And Hillary Clinton herself said (per Wikileaks) this about the Russians in a 2014 speech in oil-producing Alberta:

“We were even up against phony environmental groups, and I’m a big environmentalist, but these were funded by the Russians to stand against any effort, oh that pipeline, that fracking, that whatever will be a problem for you, and a lot of the money supporting that message was coming from Russia,”

As Salon notes it is not clear who "we" are and whether Hillary is referring to Russian meddling in the US (for example, the Keystone pipeline). Russian manipulation in Europe was widely alleged so Hillary backers can insist she meant that and of course she isn't releasing the speech so we just have to trust her.

Well. If you can't trust Hillary Clinton, Mark Zuckerberg and the failing NY Times then its time to go home. And start drinking.

Wha' Happened - Quotes From Beyond The Grave

Ace compiles some instant classics from the new Hillarity whinge, "What Happened".

I think this should be disqualifying, although of great interest to followers of The Omen:

Hillary claims to be a Christian yet can't distinguish between a vampire and the AntiChrist? Boy, that's a revelation.

But of course folks following the arc of Chelsea Clinton's improbable ascent see through Hillary's feigned ignorance and misdirection - Hillary knows exactly who the AntiChrist is.

SO MUCH HATE: How could Hillary ever overcome the attacks she experienced from Putin and Trump? Or wherever.