Trump, Putin and NATO

 Allahpundit at Hot Air has a post about Trump's weird grudge against NATO, in the context of a Fox News interview.  First:

The U.S. doesn’t pay 90 percent of Europe’s defense costs, contra what Trump says. It pays 22 percent of NATO’s budget, which is still more than it should but the true figure undermines the resentment at NATO that he’s trying to nurture by implying that nearly all costs are borne by U.S. taxpayers. The Europeans are total free-riders! They aren’t. They ride at a deep discount, and he’s right to want to change that, but collectively they provide the bulk of NATO funding.

And the interview brought up the matter of new NATO member Montenegro (brought in under Trump's presidency even), and Carlson and Trump worry that this might be a bad thing. As Allahpundit writes:

The strangest part, though, is Trump’s aside about Montenegrins being “very aggressive.” He tries to frame that as a positive thing, explaining it as a matter of strength — they’re a strong people, therefore “aggressive.” (It’s interesting that he’d conflate those two concepts.) But the point he’s trying to make is negative, that because Montenegro is allegedly so aggressive, you never know whether they might make a move on one of their neighbors, thereby embroiling the U.S. in the conflict under the NATO treaty. Again: This is a country of less than a million people that sought NATO membership for one reason, to protect itself from invasion by the nuclear superpower Russia. (Russia’s already tried more subtle ways of interfering there.) The idea of Montenegro getting “aggressive” with Moscow is farcical, the sort of thing you can imagine Putin mentioning in his meeting with Trump just to see if Trump would bite on it and repeat it. That’s not to say that’s what happened, but it is to say that the only place you’d see the idea of Montenegrin aggression treated semi-seriously is on Russian state TV.  

And what's with all of the self-contradiction anyway (a hallmark of the Trump presidency in all respects, not just NATO):

Which leaves you to wonder: What’s the point of him complaining publicly about it all the time without doing anything meaningful to withdraw from it? If he wants to complain privately about costs but defend the alliance publicly, that’s understandable. (Commendable, I’d say.) If he wants to withdraw altogether, that’d be disastrous for Europe and longer-term for the U.S. but at least there’d be clarity about his policy. And it’d give Europe some time to make alternate plans about mutual defense, whether via “NATO without the U.S.” or some new alliance. Hinting constantly, though, that he’s not really committed to NATO while remaining formally involved and supportive is provocative insofar as it invites Putin to test his resolve. What would happen if Russia made a move on Montenegro? Would Trump refuse to honor America’s Article 5 obligations? I doubt Merkel and Macron and May feel confident that they know the answer. How do you plan for defense under those circumstances? Or is that the point — that Trump’s trying to make NATO untenable in its current form due to uncertainty and hoping that other members will exit before he does? That seems to be his approach with problematic personnel like Jeff Sessions, hoping he can make life miserable enough for them that they’ll quit before he fires them. Maybe it’s his foreign policy approach too.

I think that is pretty good commentary, for a conservative!

Over at Vox, meanwhile, Alex Ward writes Trump Somehow Still Doesn't Understand NATO:

Trump said that if Montenegro got aggressive with another country, presumably Russia, then World War III would break out because the US would be obligated to defend it, thus dragging the US into a major war with Russia. 

What Trump misses is that the US doesn’t have to defend Montenegro if that country starts a fight, only if it’s attacked. NATO is a defensive treaty. If you start an unprovoked war, that’s your decision, and no one in NATO has to help you at all.

So even if Montenegrins were, as Trump said, “very aggressive people” — whatever the hell that means — the US wouldn’t have to lift a finger to help them.

The fact that Trump doesn’t seem to understand that is beyond disturbing. If this were his first day in office, maybe it would be understandable. But it’s not. Trump has been in office for a year and a half. He’s met with NATO allies as a group not once but twice — including spending two days straight talking to them just a week ago. 

There is no reason why he shouldn’t have that down pat at this point.

The very stable genius song

This is probably the funniest Randy Rainbow parody song I've ever seen:



(The Trump "very stable genius" quip sort of got swamped for attention by all of the other appalling things he's been doing and saying lately.)

In search of ancient bread

A short article at Nature tells me that the oldest bread ever found is this old:

The flatbreads’ ingredients include wild wheat, barley and other grains, as well as a type of wild tuber. At more than 14,000 years old, the bread is the oldest known. It pre-dates agriculture, which emerged in roughly the same region, by about 4,000 years. For Shubayqa’s residents, bread — which required laborious milling and grinding — was probably a delicacy rather than a staple.

Speaking of bread, I've become quite the fan of good quality sourdough from small bakeries - especially when used for toast the day after it is bought.   

First class boring

Gee, Sinclair Davidson is up to three five (!) tedious posts now complaining about an RMIT fact check of claims made by him and Berg in their book calling for the ABC to be literally given away.   (A nutty suggestion I would love to see the Liberals adopt as an election platform.)

He's still complaining about the ABC (and RMIT) pointing out Berg's IPA connection, when he's actually paid by RMIT now.

Yess - I mean it's not as if the IPA is helping promote the book at all.  Last time I looked, it was thoroughly ignoring the idea, like this: 

Anyway, bore away, Sinclair.   It keeps you away from other problematic ideas, like the Keynesian response to the GFC causing stagflation.   (Incidentally, maybe ABC cuts have something to do with it, because the link in my 2013 post about it no longer works.  Lucky I cut and pasted it, hey!)

The misspoke President

No one sensible believes him, and within a few years, possibly sooner, some staffer will leak or write a memoir about the discussions in the White House about how to come up with some excuse and this was the one they settled on.  

Pathetic how the GOP will seize on it as an excuse to just keep putting up with him.  

The gullible, gullible playthings of Putin

So, all Putin has to do is make a claim that US intelligence helped get dirty money ($400 million worth!) to Hillary Clinton's campaign, and the dumbest gay man on the planet, Jim Hoft, repeats it and it's being believed by hundreds of thousands of conspiracy loving Trumpkins around the world.

Never mind that there appears to be no basis at all for believing that Putin's claim is true.

Their openness to any and all conspiracy claims (except any about Trump - the one whose secrecy about tax makes him the most likely politician caught up in dubious finances) is just the hallmark of gullible Trump cult worship.

Has Trump lost Newt? (Probably only for 24 hours)

Ha!   The execrable Newt Gingrich has tweeted a demand that Trump "clarify his statements" on US intelligence services and Putin, and correct them, immediately, and he has 16,000 comments following.   Quite a few are just saying "it's simple - it's treason", but I am more amused about those  wingnuts accusing him of going over to the "Deep State".  

Maybe they'll have to be a civil war, but amongst the Right, hey Tim?

The disingenuous (or just dumb?) Tim Blair

Tim Blair has become the Nelson Muntz of Right wing punditry: never, ever tiring of going "ha ha" at any Lefty (or, especially - obsessively - Jonathan Green), and then getting on with his cheery outlook on the world in which motor sports is more important that just about anything else.

But really, sometimes I just can't work out if it is disingenousness or increasing stupidity which is more at work in some of his commentary.   Take today's column, wherein he notes that on his recent American trip, people were just getting on with life, without obsessing about Trump every day.   In particular, this:

Anyone who has not visited the US since Trump’s hilarious 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton might be surprised by the utter absence there of Trump in daily life. Everyday Americans are mostly just getting on with things, as normal, non-obsessive people tend to do. The apparent civil war we keep hearing about just isn’t happening.

The problem here is that those links to "civil war" are to articles in what Blair would call unreliable Left wing magazines - Newsweek and the New Yorker.   So he's suggesting that it's the Left that's been beating up the matter of America at risk of a new civil war??

How absolutely ridiculous, or just plain dumb, of him to ignore that the tsunami of paranoia about the Deep State plotting against Trump and the need of patriot Americans to be armed and ready to take out the wannabe usurpers of the last great hope for America (Trump) has been a ground swell building during the Obama presidency (he was about to stealthily disarm them, remember, and was a secret foreign Muslim not even entitled to the office)  that has gone mainstream at Fox News under a genuine conspiracy believing, dumbass President and a huge chunk of GOP congress persons.   


The civil war fantasies have arisen entirely from the paranoid streak on the wingnut Right of American politics, and just because some Left wing journalists note it does not mean they are responsible for promoting it.

In reality, like a lot of Australian Right wingers, Blair probably doesn't really care for Trump as a person, but their culture war attitude means that they will either defend him against all evidence, or (as in Blair's case) do another  Nelson Muntz and go "ha ha, look at how he drives Lefties nuts".   

It is a deeply irresponsible attitude, just as his is on (yes, but it's true) climate change.   "Ha ha, I can ignore science because it drives Lefties nuts.   Ha ha."

Waiting for the Fox News spin

I'm curious as to what Rupert Murdoch wants done re the disastrous* reception of the Trump "well, I think I can trust Putin more than my own advisers and intelligence agencies" Helsinki press conference.  [It also means he doesn't trust other allies intelligence either:

Damian Collins, a Conservative member of parliament in the U.K. who is leading a parliamentary inquiry into Russia’s use of social media and tech companies to influence the Brexit vote, was blunt: “To deny the existence of evidence linking Russia to disinformation and interference is to say to countries that are the victim of this that they are on their own,” he said. Collins added that the world had seen “odd messages” from Trump over the last week. “On the one hand, Trump has said, ‘spend more on security,’ and ‘the influence of Russia on your country is too great.’” (Trump slammed Germany during last week’s NATO summit in Brussels, accusing them of relying too much on Russia for oil and gas.) “On the other hand, he says Russia is not interfering,” Collins continued. “So he’s saying, essentially, ‘if you defend yourself against Russia, you do it without my support.”]

So, I think all eyes should be on Fox News as to how much excuse making they will engage in with Hannity and Fox and Friends. 

I see that Breitbart has gone with "Oh my God, the Deep State secret coup plans will be gearing up now, using Helsinki as an excuse":

I think it very likely that Hannity will take the same line, because paranoia trumps the tiny brains of the average Trump acolyte.  


Update:     I had missed that Trump suppository Steve Kates was already out with his summary of how the Helsinki meeting went.  Trump is, apparently: 

The Winston Churchill of our times

LOL.  What a nutter.


*  except to members of the Trump Cult, who remain obsessed as ever that nothing their glorious, inane, dumb, wildly inconsistent, jerk of a leader is ever really all that bad, and 100% better than what Hilary would have done.     Fear of strong women amongst wingnut men lingers long after they have gone.

Yah for the ABC

Typical that it was the ABC and 4 Corners that gave us a timely, calm and fascinating account of the Thai cave rescue.   It was well worth watching the interviews with the actual divers explaining why it was so difficult and dangerous, and a bit of a minor miracle that no boy was accidentally drowned.

Journalism of this quality is just not done by the major networks anymore.

Ethan Hunt is going after Putin?

What's this?:

The initial release is in Russia?   Surely that's unusual for any picture.

Actually, IMDB shows it being released in the UK on 25 July, so I'm not sure who got Russia up there on the Google search.

Over the weekend, the reviews were already released, and they are very positive.   (86% on Metacritic, higher on Rottentomatoes.)  

Unfortunately, for some reason (Tom Cruise used to like us!) it's not being released here until 2 August.   A whole extra week to wait.

But I'll be there early.   Now that I think  of it - this might be close to the last film my whole family will go see together. :(   [My daughter enjoys the MI films - she was impressed with the deadly neck breaking thigh technique of the heroine in the last one.]

In other weekend reading...

...I enjoyed this long, often funny, feminist's essay on the Jordan Peterson phenomena.   There are many sections that made me laugh, and I think she is pretty perceptive.   A sample:

Here’s his explanation of why men are frightened of women. (It comes with diagrams in the original video. They don’t help much.)

“Out of chaos emerges this first form, it’s the feminine form, it’s partly the form that represents novelty as such, and on the one hand it’s promise and on the other hand it’s threat…. Well, here’s the decomposition of the fundamental archetype. The dragon of chaos differentiates on the one hand into the feminine, that’s the unknown, and the feminine differentiates further into the negative feminine and the positive feminine. The negative feminine is the reason for witch hunts.”

Believe me, you are not too dumb to understand this. I speak fluent theory-wonk, and I promise, there’s no great secret here. I had a university housemate who used to come out with this sort of stuff at 3 a.m. on the morning before his essay was due while contemplating the ineffable beauty of his own screensaver in a fug of weed-smoke. In fact, I suspect that in order to absorb the full shuddering impact of platitudes like these, one needs not merely to be mired in the throes of a male identity crisis but also catastrophically high, and that would be a waste of good drugs.

Peterson has worked out the secret to monetizing his own persecution complex: If your audience is angry and lonely and you tell them that’s justifiable, you can take that muddle of meaning, blend it, and serve it through a candy-colored straw to those who are prepared to swallow anything and call it a juice cleanse. You can go quite far in the gig economy of modern entrepreneurial proto-fascism by talking to young men as if their feelings matter.

The Revolution remembered

Over the weekend, I enjoyed reading this essay summary of the French Revolution that appeared in Jacobin magazine, found via Peter Whiteford's great twitter feed.

You know, what I do find a bit odd about French history is how it seems high schools care enough to teach a bit about the revolution, but then the Napoleonic period is left as a great, lengthy mystery.  (Perhaps I am just generalising from my own experience.)

Virgin on the ridiculous

Who could resist that pun title?

Here's the article:

The US Association of Consecrated Virgins has said it is “deeply disappointed” at new rules issued by the Vatican that appear to say consecrated virgins need not be virgins.

The group has taken issue with section 88 of the new document, which states: “Thus to have kept her body in perfect continence or to have practiced the virtue of chastity in an exemplary way, while of great importance with regard to the discernment, are not essential prerequisites in the absence of which admittance to consecration is not possible.”

The USACV said it was “shocking to hear from Mother Church that physical virginity may no longer be considered an essential prerequisite for consecration to a life of virginity.”

A few observations:

*  I have never even heard of Consecrated Virgins as a "thing" until now - certainly not in Australia. 

*  Here's what it is:

A consecrated virgin is a woman who has never married who pledges perpetual virginity and dedicates her life to God. Unlike a nun, she does not live in a community and leads a secular life, providing for her own needs.

I dunno - seems a little creepy to me, a bit like those American conservatives Dads who go to "purity balls" with their teenage daughters.    Why want to live a secular life but with some sort of special public purity badge which, after all, is actually just what the Church says it expects of everyone (living a chaste life outside of marriage.)    Talk about unnecessarily setting yourself up for failure, too.

*  The Church would surely be better served by saying that this is an idea that has gone past its use by date.   Not virginity per se - but "consecrating" it.

Reason for optimism

Due solely to my wife's influence, both of my kids are musically talented.  They both do it as a subject at their (State) high school, and my daughter also has long been in various levels of the Queensland Youth Orchestra, which practices weekly during school terms and has mini concerts at the Old Museum at the end of each term, as well as one big concert at the Performing Arts Centre at the end of the year.  My son has been less active in using his talent, but his school bands have been in various inter-school competitions, one year ending up in a final concert involving schools from all over Queensland.   (Much to my surprise, it would appear that tropical North Queensland has some great music teachers and the school orchestras up there are terrific.)

Some years ago, my daughter was also persuaded by her violin teacher to participate in the annual Creative Generation concerts that Queensland Education has put on since 2005.   It's a show put on in the Convention Centre auditorium which features many excellent student vocalists (mostly from High Schools, but some primary school kids too), an orchestra backing that plays for just about the whole two hours, massed choirs, hundreds of dancers, drumming, a Big Band section, and even drama students sometimes doing a bit.  The staging and lighting is done by professionals, and there are some (not many) adults lending a hand musically.   But the end result (and we have been to three now) is a very professional and enjoyable show that is open to the public for 4 performances.   (Tickets are pretty cheap, but they don't sell out  -  it seems to me it doesn't get the publicity it deserves.)

Of course, they don't allow photos or video during the performance, but this is what the pre-show stage looked like on Saturday night:

And here is a screenshot (taken from their Facebook page video, so it's not great quality) as to what it looks like when nearly everyone is on stage at the end:

This is not one of those cheesy inter-school performance competitions that used to be popular and were dominated by private schools that taught microphone technique from year 7 3. (Have they stopped? You don't see them on TV any more.)    They feature primarily "pop" pieces but with the orchestra and massed choirs, can be quite moving in parts -  both from the effect of the music, and also when you see Special School kids being incorporated into segments.  

And this year, my daughter got out of the orchestra and did one "solo" bit (by which I mean, she and two other violinists were standing on stage doing their shared solo parts on one song.)   For that, she had the fun of being professionally made up and having her hair styled by a team of make up artists.   Of course, the end result was startlingly "adult" on a 15 year old, but she got used to it.  

Even though it may be self serving publicity, I am inclined to believe those from Queensland Education who say that our State system instrumental and music programs are top notch.   (Of course, a lot of the talent would be having private lessons too, like mine, but still...)   I am curious as to what the comparisons are like with the other State's public education systems.

But the end result is this:   for any ageing person suffering from the old "young people aren't what they used to be" syndrome,  and even those who whine endlessly about our education system, their attitude is surely held in ignorance of these school and community activities. 

This is the best thing about having kids participating in these things:  it makes it pretty much impossible to stay pessimistic about the future of the world when you know about the effort and talent of large numbers of our youth as shown on Saturday night, and at QYO too.

Never was the saying "takes one to know one" more accurate

Have a look at this sophisticated bit of analysis of Australia's energy policy from Catallaxy, and be sure to glance at the comments too.  

They take their fire drills seriously in India

It's hard to believe that a bunch of Indian college students were made to jump off a second floor balcony into a safety net below as part of a fire drill.   (The story is about a student who was pushed, hit her head on the way down, and died.)  Have a look at the photo in the article, which will explain her nervousness.

What a nutty drill.  Don't they have fire exits in that country?

In the "funny 'cos it's true" category

From The Onion:

Herpes and brains

Ed Yong has an interesting look at the previously rejected, but now somewhat more plausible, idea that herpes infections in the brains may play a significant role in many cases of Alzheimer's dementia.

To love a jerk you have to be a jerk

Just checking how the angry, angry, entertainer is going.  Here he explains when he started to love Trump:

It's so transparent, it's embarrassing for them:   just as in the US, to love Trump you basically have to be an over 50 year old white guy (the older the "better") who has never come to grips with feminism, climate change or the change in sentiment to gay relationships:

and:

The latest Washington Post-Schar School poll, released Friday, highlights the differences in the way women and men see Trump. Overall, the president’s approval rating among men is 54 percent positive and 45 percent negative. Among women, it’s 32 percent positive and 65 percent negative.

He's the last Hoorah of those, particularly men, who have already lost the culture wars, and think that exposing their anger at losing is a way that it'll be won back.