The obvious concern

Now, one has to admit that if Hillary were president, she would have authorised a similar attack on Syria (she said so herself.)  And several Democrats have said they think the attack was proportionate and OK.

So why should people who would have preferred her be criticising Trump?  Well, obviously:

1.  the massive, massive hypocrisy.   And the suspicion, which Republicans would have been pushing hard if the shoe had been on the other foot, that Assad may have been encouraged to use chemical weapons due the signalling from Tillerson and Trump only a day or two prior that they no longer had removing him as any part of their goal.

But, better late to do the right thing late than not to do it at all?   That's one argument, but it doesn't get around:

2.  the almost instantaneous change that some televised images, and some extremely rapid assessment of responsibility, brought in Trump.  Let's face it, despite the same (or stronger) support  Democrats may have given Hillary if it had been her attack, the history of US intelligence used to justify Middle East attacks does indicate grounds for caution, to put it mildly.  (Although, admittedly, thorough, quick and independent investigation of anything in that hell hole of a country is probably extremely difficult.)   In other words, if it had been Clinton's authorisation, in the same time frame, people should have had the same concern as well.

But by far, the worst and most dangerous concern in this is:

3.  Trump is getting swooning media praise for the attack, and we have never seen a President so obsessed  with media "reviews" of his performance. There is every reason to expect this will make Trump trigger happy in future, and it is somewhat dismaying that even mainstream American media does not recognize that before editorialising on the issue.

Of course, Fox News (and Mark Steyn) were busy giving him a tongue bath about it the morning after - that should be warning enough.  But there was praise on CNN and other outlets - who can doubt that he would be lapping it up?

Some commentary on American sites is expressing concern:

In Slate: Elites Are Giddy Over Trump’s Airstrike in Syria, and That’s Terrifying

Ezra Klein writes, with obvious truth:  Trump’s foreign policy is dangerously impulsive

This, above all else, is what is worrying about Trump on foreign policy: He is unpredictable and driven by whims. He is unmoored from any coherent philosophy of America’s role in the world, and no one — perhaps not even him — truly knows what he’ll do in the event of a crisis.

Obama’s policy on Syria was perpetually paralyzed by fear of escalation. Trump’s policy on Syria is volatile precisely because he doesn’t seem to have thought through questions of escalation. This is a foreign policy based on intuition and emotion, and there is danger in that.

(As for what constant and confusing contrarian Nassim Taleb thinks about it - I think he is indicating semi approval, as a "sending a message" to Assad, but also China and Russia!  I think that is nonsense, myself.  Russia did get a message: "Vlad, you'd better get your planes and pilots off that airfield, some cruise missiles will be there in an hour.  And don't tell Assad, promise?")

Finally, I warned before that it was silly to think that defence manufacturers were doing anything other than seeing their long term financial benefit on the rise when they were buttering up Trump by saying "yes, he's forced us to reconsider the cost of program X, and we'll do it cheaper for him."   They know that this gullible and easily manipulated President is like manna from heaven for them...

Alt Rights in turmoil

Vox notes:

Some of Trump’s biggest supporters are furious about his strikes in Syria

A brief history of instant coffee

An entertaining and educational article at NPR about instant coffee, and how important it was in World War 1 (and 2).

Included is this detail, about coffee in the American Civil War.  (I have posted before on that topic, so I knew it was an important provision then, but this additional detail is pretty amusing.):

"Some Union soldiers got rifles with a mechanical grinder with a hand crank built into the buttstock," he told NPR. "They'd fill a hallowed space within the carbine's stock with coffee beans, grind it up, dump it out and cook coffee that way."

Fast forward, and the article even explains the (likely) reason it got the name "Joe":

In 1943, just before his death, Washington sold the company. (In 1961, the George Washington coffee brand was discontinued.) By then, World War II was raging, and American GIs were calling their coffee by a different name: Joe.

One legend behind the origins of the new moniker is that it referred to Josephus Daniels, secretary of the Navy from 1913 to 1921 under Woodrow Wilson, who banned alcohol onboard ships, making coffee the strongest drink in the mess. Snopes, though, fact-checked that claim and called it false.

Yet "Joe" very likely does originate in the military. "The American soldier became so closely identified with his coffee that G.I. Joe gave his name to the brew," according to Pendergrast.

Oddly, it had never occurred to me before to look up how the "Joe" moniker had arisen...

A joke suited to Twitter

Gee, the NYT is getting very disrepectful in the way it talks about the President:

The Mucus-Shooting Worm-Snail That Turned Up in the Florida Keys

Oh, that's encouraging...

One of favourite climate blogs talks about a new paper with some startling implications:

Future climate forcing potentially without precedent in the last 420 million years

Other summaries of the paper are to be found here:

We are heading for the warmest climate in half a billion years, says new study

and

The Climate Could Hit a State Unseen in 50 Million Years  

How's Taleb feeling?

From Axios this morning:

On what Trump will consider:

Defense Secretary James Mattis will present President Trump with plans prepared by U.S. Central Command for a "saturation strike" on Syrian military targets tonight at Mar-a-Lago, per The Intercept.

• What that means: The U.S. would launch dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Syrian military targets to overwhelm their Russian-bolstered defense systems and cripple Syrian air capability against rebel forces, military sources told the Intercept.
• The big risk: The saturation strike would almost certainly result in Russian deaths, which is the "sticking point" for Mattis. The risk of Russian casualties — plus the location of Syrian air defenses in densely populated areas — were big reasons why the Obama administration never went forward with such a plan.

On what Hillary Clinton said yesterday:

 On striking Assad: "We should take out his air fields, and prevent his ability to bomb innocent people and drop sarin gas on them."

The Trump version sounds bigger than the Clinton version, but I guess it's hard to tell.

So - big difference, hey?   And with Trump, you get the added "advantage" of attempts to destroy Obamacare with nothing to replace it; a crippling of anti pollution measures; tax and infrastructure plans designed to blow out the budget; increased defence spending for a force which Taleb thought might be used less; and talk of "going it alone" against North Korea when everyone knows that's impossible.  

Yeah, great political judgement there, Taleb...

Wrong image

Heh:

A picture depicting Vladimir Putin in full makeup has been banned in Russia.

The picture is cited on the Russian justice ministry’s list of banned “extremist” materials – a list that is 4,074 entries long. No 4,071 states that the poster, depicting Putin with painted eyes and lips, implies “the supposed nonstandard sexual orientation of the president of the Russian Federation”.
It’s unclear exactly which image the ministry is talking about – but it is believed to be similar to one used on signs during protests against Russia’s anti-gay laws. It turns out there are quite a lot of photoshopped images in circulation that depict Putin in drag.

The headline is a bit deceptive though, as it seems the make up photo was caught up amongst many banned from one poster, and lots of makeup images still circulate:

Photoshopping makeup on to images of Putin has been common since Russia passed a law banning gay “propaganda” in 2013.

According to the Moscow Times, the ban came as a result of a verdict by a regional court in May 2016. A man named AV Tsvetkov uploaded the image alongside others that portrayed Putin and the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, in Nazi uniforms. Court documents say he also shared racist images. The court banned about a dozen of the pictures he uploaded between June 2013 and October 2014. As well as this, his Vkontakte profile was deleted.

American paranoia in practice

Last night I stumbled across a Channel 4 documentary from 2014 called America's Fugitive Family, and if you want to learn about a bizarre situation in the middle of Texas, it's on ABC's iView.

Basically, it's the story of a nutty, god fearing, gun loving family that (14 years ago) locked itself up in a country compound after the patriarch feared an assault charge would result in an order that he hand in his guns.   They wrote to the police warning them not to try to take him in or they would be shot up; the police said "yeah, OK", and have left them there.  (Waco had just happened - they weren't inclined to see a repeat on a smaller scale.)

So, this hillbilly like family have lived with no electricity and never venture off the compound.  It seems some sympathisers sometimes visit, and maybe they get some provisions that way (it wasn't clear) but they live mainly on beans, rice and chicken and sheep they raise themselves.  

The creepiest thing, of course, was seeing the teenage (and older) kids with Stockholm syndrome, claiming they knew they were safe there and so they never wanted to leave.  At least one of the kids (the young boy) seemed to have a intellectual disability - he smiled a lot but thought one times ten was "eleven".  (I wonder if it was a nutritional problem, actually.)

The aging matriarch was glad they did not go to public school, because they teach them sex education from kindergarten and "how to be a homo".  (Funnily enough, similar fears are routinely expressed at Catallaxy.)

It was a fascinating documentary, which all ended in an entirely to be expected outbreak of paranoia against the film maker. 

Recommended.

Many truths told

Richard Cooke is getting much Twitter love for an article in The Monthly noting the state of the Right in Australia.  Right wing magazines, and even Catallaxy(!)* get a mention:

A generation ago, the right side of the Australian intelligentsia could field Geoffrey Blainey, Les Murray, Simon Leys and John Hirst, among others. Now aged or deceased, such writers have no obvious rivals or replacements. Local conservatives write few serious books; when they do their themes are often crabbed, narrow and repetitive. To find evidence of this barrenness and philistinism you only have to open a local copy of the Spectator, unfortunately still trapped in the same covers as its British counterpart. It’s quite a juxtaposition.

Read an issue back to front, and British biographers, authors and wry columnists give way to a parochial collection of geriatric former lawyers and think-tank spooks, writing endless variations on the same article about section 18C. Tanveer Ahmed, a former televised bingo referee and serial plagiarist fired from his prior journalistic positions for repeated indiscretions, has reinvented himself as what Edward Said called “a witness for the Western prosecution”. Daisy Cousens, now best known for an unusually erotic obituary of Bill Leak, was a sometime tennis reporter and self-described feminist who changed her spots to join the pseudo-alt-right. Chancers and careerists have a natural home in the Australian right-wing media: it’s the only place that will take them.

But what are these people really joining in on? Sometimes it’s hard to know. Simple, indeed remedial, tests of ideological consistency are being flunked. Catallaxy Files, which bills itself as “Australia’s leading libertarian and centre-right blog”, is suddenly rammed with pro-Trump posters and commenters enthused about his trade tariffs and border wall. These should be anathema to any libertarian, but the prospect of unalloyed racism is so intoxicating that these foundation principles are abandoned under the flimsiest pretext.

And more:

Conservatives should share the same set of misgivings about nuclear energy that makes them oppose renewables. After all, it is vastly expensive (in fact, now significantly more costly than renewables), requires enormous subsidy and tends to cost overruns. Citizens who think wind turbines are making them sick are unlikely to be less agitated by the presence of neighbourhood waste dumps. Yet somehow nuclear power enjoys significant support both inside the Coalition and the right-wing commentariat, even among those who do not believe in climate change. The primary point of difference seems to be not merely ideological but talismanic: renewable energy is effeminate, while nuclear power is masculine and robust, and has the welcome by-product of making environmentalists and left-wingers upset.

That last consideration cannot be underestimated. George Orwell said that Jonathan Swift was “driven into a sort of perverse Toryism by the follies of the progressive party of the moment”. Really, the local right has become a kind of anti-left. Instead of anti-Trump, Australian conservatives are anti-anti-Trump, saving their bile for protesters and the emotional, and are so excited by the prospect of their opponents’ humiliation they don’t know quite what to do with themselves.

*  It's proof that I'm not the only person who reads Catallaxy only in order to be appalled.   I might note a hilarious thing that happened this morning - Sinclair Davidson chose to delete one, presumably defamatory, line out of regular angry sad sack Tom's comment about Nikki Savva (widely despised for being a Turnbull supporter).   I reckon that's a deletion rate of about one defamatory line per 10,000 in the comments threads, but whatever.  Subsequently, regular commenter struth, wondering what Tom said, notes

...considering Tom’s usual level headed commenting style compared to someone like the political violence endorsing Monty,

I don't think he was trying to be funny, with that bit about "usual level headed commenting style".   

The practical problem

Time has a good article about why America (read:  Trump) just can't go it alone on North Korea.  This has all been known for a long time, but it is worth repeating:

Experts say an attack against North Korea could destroy much of its nuclear-enrichment and missile-testing facilities. However, the South Korean capital — just 30 miles from the DMZ, whose environs are home to half of the 50 million national population — would face a devastating retaliation. There are also 28,000 American troops stationed in South Korea and 50,000 in Japan. “North Korea’s heavy artillery and rocketry cannot be destroyed in time to save Seoul from a fire bath,” says Carlyle Thayer, emeritus professor at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Moreover, following the poisoning of Kim Jong Nam — half-brother of Kim Jong Un — with VX nerve at Kuala Lumpur Airport in February, one cannot rule out biological warfare being used by the North Koreans. Even with Japanese approval, which is still a very slight possibility, these very real risks are why the military option has always been a last resort — and why unilateral action could never be simply that.

“There’s literally no such thing as ‘going it alone’ on the Korean peninsular; you cannot do it,” says Cathcart. “It betrays an ignorance of the whole situation.”

 It also explains that the replacement for the last South Korean President is likely to be a liberal who wants to go back to attempts to engage with North Korea.

And, oddly, although China seemed to be taking steps to economically isolate the country,  Russia is ramping up economic support.  

Taleb and the "don't believe everything you read about Syria" line

I see via Jason Soon that Nassim Taleb is taking the "idiot journalists may well be being conned by anti-Assad propaganda" line regarding the apparent gas attack. 

Taleb, who strikes me as one of the strangest and unpredictable blowhards around, should be due for a turnaround of his own shrug-of-the-shoulders attitude to the Trump Presidency, then.  Here he was before the election:

Not only is a Donald Trump presidency very possible, it's also not all that much to worry about, scholar and author Nassim Taleb told CNBC's "Power Lunch."

Taleb said Trump is not as "scary" as people make him out to be.

"In the end, Trump is a real estate salesman," Taleb said. "When you elect real estate salespeople to the presidency, they're going to try deliver something."


Because of that, Trump probably won't do anything apocalyptic, Taleb said.

Um, people with common sense (something which Taleb seems to spend a lot of time complaining that other academics don't have) would have suspected long before Taleb may realise it that Trump's many years of idiotic promotion of conspiracy always meant that he was going to be an extremely gullible President when it comes to propaganda (and I say that without conceding anything about the Syrian gas attack.) 

How could Taleb not recognize that?

More anti-Trump

Jonah Goldberg in National Review:

...my National Review colleague (well, boss) Rich Lowry penned a widely discussed piece for Politico, “The Crisis of Trumpism,” in which he argued that Trump’s basic problem is that he has no idea what he wants to do or how to get it done. “No officeholder in Washington,” Lowry writes, “seems to understand President Donald Trump’s populism or have a cogent theory of how to effect it in practice, including the president himself.”...

Trump brings the same glandular, impulsive style to meetings and interviews as he does to social media. He blurts out ideas or claims that send staff scrambling to see them implemented or defended. His management style is Hobbesian. Rivalries are encouraged. Senior aides panic at the thought of not being part of his movable entourage. He cares more about saving face and “counterpunching” his critics than he does about getting policy victories.

 

In short, the problem is Trump’s personality. His presidency doesn’t suffer from a failure of ideas, but a failure of character. 

 

 For the last two years, when asked how I thought the Trump administration would go, I’ve replied, “Character is destiny.” This wasn’t necessarily a prediction of a divorce or sexual scandal, but rather an acknowledgment of the fact that, under normal circumstances, people don’t change. And septuagenarian billionaires who’ve won so many spins of the roulette wheel of life are even less likely to change.

How can anyone take Trump seriously?

I've said it before - Trump talking off the cuff doesn't even reach the eloquence of a smart primary school student:

TRUMP: It crossed a lot of lines for me when you kill innocent children, innocent babies, babies, little babies, with a chemical gas that is so lethal, people were shocked to hear what gas it was. That crosses many, many lines, beyond a red line, many, many lines. Thank you very much.

but more seriously, his ridiculous insistence that everything is always someone else's fault is at the forefront again, in hyper-hypocritical fashion:

Here's what Trump said:

Today’s chemical attack in Syria against innocent people, including women and children, is reprehensible and cannot be ignored by the civilized world. These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing. The United States stands with our allies across the globe to condemn this intolerable attack.

First off, the statement reads like something that you would put out in the heat of the campaign. Half of it is devoted to what the past administration did and didn't do. Certainly the Obama administration took heat — and most would say deservedly so — for not holding to its “red line” policy on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons. But two full sentences — out of four?

Second is the fact that Trump himself in 2013 urged Obama not to enforce that red line. To wit:

But even more conspicuous than that, the statement takes a harsh tone toward the Obama administration without saying what the Trump administration will do differently. The applicable Trump policy here, in fact, appears even less stringent than Obama's was: It's leaving Assad in power in the name of fighting the Islamic State (ISIS) first.

As recently as last week, both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley both signaled that Assad would be left alone.

“Are we going to sit there and focus on getting him out? No,” Haley said.
 

That's better

Tonight, after a visit to the dog salon:

Stargazing at the ABC

I caught most of the much hyped (on the ABC) show Stargazing Live last night, and found it all a bit odd.

I liked that it was Siding Spring observatory, which I had only re-visited a few years ago;  I don't mind that Julia Zamiro was the co-host (I just find her extremely likeable on anything she does); and I did learn a thing or two.  (One thing is something I am embarrassed to say I had not already worked out for myself.)

But, it was a bit, I don't know, trying too hard to drum up enthusiasm for an audience that probably wasn't there in the first place.   I could understand if it was an educational show that schools were forced to show in science class, but the sort of people who didn't know some of the very basic stuff were almost certainly not watching it anyway.   And Brian Cox seemed a bit oddly uncomfortable, although it seemed at one point the producers told him to throw away the script, which he did, and it was perhaps for the better.   The worst participant was Josh Thomas in a pre-recorded piece in which he giggled his way pretty inanely, and pointlessly, at historical items at the Sydney Observatory.  (His fans already have me marked as the enemy for writing about the mystery of his non-Brisbane accent, and not caring for his dramady show, so I may as well double down.)

What I did enjoy more was the casual, unscripted, half hour after the main show on ABC 2, where a relaxed panel of highly qualified people (and Julia Zamiro) drank "space beer" and answered questions about the universe and astronomy.   It was like sitting in a group someone like me would love to talk to in a pub.

I'll be watching at least that part again tonight.

So, so easily distracted

The American Right has become ridiculously easily distracted.   I mean, you see it in everything from obsession about a throwaway line like "hide the decline", to pointless pursuit of Hilary Clinton over Benghazi, and now all Trump has to do is say that its terrible that Rice asked to know who legally tapped Russians were talking to on his team (when there was already an investigation going on), and it's meant to be the biggest political spying scandal since Watergate. 

Here's some reality based writing on the topic.  Fred Kaplan at Slate:

I asked retired Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, whether it’s unlawful or even unusual for someone in Rice’s position to ask the NSA to unmask the names of Americans caught up in intercepts. He replied, in an email, “Absolutely lawful. Even somewhat routine.”

He added, “The request to unmask would not be automatically granted. NSA would adjudicate that, although I’m certain a request from the national security adviser would carry great weight.”

Hayden also said, “There are very plausible, legitimate reasons why she would request such information.” Though he didn’t elaborate on what those reasons might have been, the pertinent regulations specify that unmasking might be requested, and allowed, if the names in question are pertinent to foreign intelligence.

When Rice made her request, there were ongoing investigations of Russia’s involvement in the election, of the role Trump advisers might have played in this involvement, and of efforts by some of these advisers to undermine U.S. foreign policy, specifically on sanctions toward Russia.

It’s worth noting that we don’t know—or at least no news story about the incident has reported—whether the NSA granted Rice’s request and gave her the unmasked names. Even if she did, Hayden emphasized in his email, “the identities would be unmasked only for her”—and not for any other official who received the transcript.

“To summarize,” Hayden wrote in his email, “on its face, not even close to a smoking gun.”

And Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post:

The Trump obsession with “unmasking” names is a blatant attempt to distract and obviously irrelevant. It’s not even helpful to Trump’s case. There are many legitimate reasons for unmasking, and nothing suggests requesting information about the identities of those Russia was trying to assist was illegal or improper. Ironically, by focusing on unmasking, the Trump spinners just remind us that there was an extensive, serious investigation underway because of  a comprehensive Russian effort to manipulate American voters and because of unprecedented connections between one candidate’s team and Russia. McMullin exclaims: “If you are going to establish a secret channel with a hostile foreign power, you shouldn’t expect to have your name kept secret!”

It’s hardly out of the ordinary for a White House official like Rice, with high security clearances, to request unmasking. In Tuesday’s Washington Post, Glenn Kessler quotes Michael Doran, a former NSC aide under President George W. Bush, as saying, “I did it a couple of times.”

Another former NSC official, who asked not to be named, told me, “There is a well-established, well-used process for requesting that such information be revealed. You have to have a reason beyond simple curiosity that is tied to some legitimate national-security or law-enforcement purpose.” The intelligence agencies, the ex-official added by email, “take this requirement VERY seriously.” Though this ex-official knows nothing about the situation with Rice, he said that, since she was doing transition work with Trump’s team at the time, it would have been “highly relevant to know whether these people were talking with the Russian government as well.”

Listen, if you were the national security adviser and learned of this extensive Russian campaign of active measures, knew about all sorts of connections between Russia and one campaign, and found out associates of one candidate were picked up in monitored conversations with Russian agents, wouldn’t you demand to know the names of those involved? Any national security adviser who didn’t would be accused of burying his or her head in the sand. Nothing regarding alleged unmasking that we have heard or seen so far bolsters Trump’s “wiretapping” claim or suggests that anyone in the Obama administration did something illegal or wrong, nor does it tell us who revealed that Flynn was one of the people picked up in surveillance of Russians. What it does confirm is that there was so much evidence of a Russian disinformation scheme and of questionable connections between Trump associates and Russians that it warranted a substantial intelligence investigation.

The Trump spin squad appears so desperate to create confusion — Trump now reverts to airing old campaign canards about Hillary Clinton — that it has confused itself about what is helpful and what is not.

The thing is, though, the confusion is lapped up by dimwitted Trumpkins - I'm sorry, but there is no way of avoiding not calling them out as easily fooled.    They are already primed to believe in conspiracy nonsense - on everything from climate change, Obama is a Muslim from Kenya, Hillary being on her death bed, to massive fraudulent votes.   They are putty in the small, orange hands of their hero.

And the Republican Party  as a whole has to take the blame for this terrible situation.

Update:  The Vox explainer on this is very good, too.

Inelegant

At home, last night:

What an upsetting accident

Accidents that kill families happen every day, but the way some happen, they really make it terrible to imagine the heartbreak:  Police recover three bodies from Tweed River at Tumbulgum

Hi monty...

I see you've been trying to engage with Catallaxians re the Trump/Russia matter.

I know I've said it before, but I just like repeating myself:  you're dealing with a group that includes outright nuts, the emotionally fragile, those with obvious personality defects, the chronically immature, and those so gullible that they believe any Right wing spin on any topic.

To the extent that they fight within themselves, it is more a matter of stupid fighting stupid:  there is no prospect that out of that, a correct answer will be victorious.  

Sure, you can go on goading them, but it just seems so pointless to me....

Badgers get around

I assumed, when I read the headline:

A badger can bury a cow by itself: Study observes previously unknown caching behavior 

that the cow burying badger in question was in England.

But no - it was in Utah.

Just as I was surprised recently to learn that there are tropical water otters (in Singapore, in particular), I had no idea that badgers roamed North America.

I have clear inadequacies in my knowledge of mammal distribution...