More great assorted links

I'm a fan of history especially history that helps explain the world I live in today. One piece I got to see personally was the science-led ban on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). I did independent study on the issue while in college in the late 70s, and it's fascinating to look back. Back then, science was more respected and not just a ping pong ball in adversarial politics. 

A great, passionate talk about race relations in the US. Insight after insight. Watch and learn so much that you need to learn. 

Unusual mail-in ballot numbers in Wisconsin. Probably some fraud, but not huge amounts. And during covid, nursing homes were making sure residents got to vote. But that makes sense because residents weren't getting visits. 

Explanation of US oil production and the effects of covid. Demand cratered, pumping didn't slow, the market was over saturated, prices cratered, producers went bankrupt, production dropped sharply. 

The view from Twitter employees on the Musk takeover. Nervous. (Funny, this one fell apart, but here's a historical record.)

Fact-checking the 'blockbuster' expose movie about voter fraud. The premise is very weak--the Dems supposedly had 2000 ballot harvesters, based on cell phone tower ping data. 

The military has a problem with white supremacists. But according to some conservatives, the military is actually trying to censor conservatives. Here are some cases. 

Mark Esper, former Secretary of Defense, describes how Trump was unfit to be president. Maybe compare that with Rick Scott's reasons for calling Biden unfit. 

How were voting rights for black people secured? It was a long process, where the federal government ignored the problem for years despite having the mandate right in the 14th amendment to enforce those rights. 

A pilot project sent mental health teams to respond to minor police calls in Denver. It was successful, so maybe we'll see more diverse response teams become more common rather than relying so much on police. 

An software engineer at Google has been suspended for sharing private information. It concerns his opinion that an artificial intelligence (AI) application has achieved sentience. That puts the engineer into an ethical dilemma.

Image: abcnews.go.com

October links: too many

GOPers learn to negotiate. The GOPers in Congress learned and managed to fund the government. No shutdown. Trump was out of the loop.

Lying scummy politics. A scummy, lying trick in a campaign ad. Chris Collins, indicted for insider trading, gives a completely false translation of his opponent's words.

A lying scientist. Cornell

Trump outrageous again. I think it's part of his plan. In love with NK dictator.

Revision of a critique on conservatism. Maybe it is a lot of paranoia. This is a very good read--maybe the most important in several months.

Dangers in US-China relations. Link.

Coerced sex is legal. If done by police.

Russia investigation update. A Trump operative considered using phony accounts. Buried in this article: sentencing for Manafort and Flynn. Does that mean the investigation is almost over? I'm guessing yes. You don't sentence your informants until they have fulfilled their side of the bargain.

Famous for 15 minutes. A mom screws up against #metoo. Funny.

California voter registration. Always curious about this black hole.

Climate change links.

Anti-democracy. Georgia puts voter applications on hold.

Antifa and Nazis are still fighting, but I lost the link.

Image: aip.org

More links - even more interesting

Unmasking unmasking. Republicans are trying to shift the attention on Russian election interference to the unmasking of names in intelligence documents. It turns out that the House Intelligence Committee asked for some unmasking itself. Perhaps unmasking names isn't as bad as they're pretending it is.

Clinton Emails. I had an argument with another Bloomberg commenter on whether we should assume Hillary's server was hacked, even in the absence of leaks of her emails. The commenter provided a link to a video clip of a former intelligence officials saying that he'd have no respect for foreign intelligence agencies if they hadn't hacked her emails. (Sorry, I can't find the link. It was a respectable news channel.) I don't think this is compelling enough evidence to say the realistic people must assume her emails were hacked. Fox News (not a respectable organization) claimed that it received info about known hacks. But I guess they backed down on that. This New York Times article discusses some reasons to strongly suspect it happened.

But a final bit of speculation: it was a very close election. If foreign intelligence agencies has hacked her server and had emails, and didn't want to see Clinton as president, isn't it likely that they would have leaked the emails before the election? Consider whether some not-so-Clinton-friendly countries like Russia, Israel, or Saudi Arabia had those emails. Would they not have tried to tip the election? If indeed she'd been hacked, I'm rather surprised that information hasn't clearly surfaced.

Trump is trying to hire... but will people serve? That's a good question tackled by this must-read article. There's a telling anecdote of an interview for a high position.

Unwarranted suspicion. The investigation of contacts between Trump advisers and Russians was started because of malice on the part of John Brennan, the former CIA director. The investigation was totally fake. Don't you believe me????? (I often don't believe the Washington Times.)

Trump war room. With Trump's return from his first foreign visits, he may be setting up a war room to fight back against the mounting Russia news blizzard. How they might fight back: Deny Russian contacts happened. Then claim what did happen is perfectly fine. Or get the supposedly recused chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to jump back in and run interference again. Or coordinate/non-coordinate with a group to run commercials attacking former FBI directory Comey.

Unfortunately, I doubt that they'll decide to be transparent on all Russia contacts. Cover-up and obfuscation seem to be the go-to strategies of politicians -- see Hillary and her email server. Also, a very readable speculation on Trump's mood and how it permeates everything.

Impeachment. A conservative gets that impeachment would be a fiasco. For the record, I don't see impeachment happening, due to the prez being a Republican and Republican control of the House. Duh! How the hell would it happen?

Don't cry for Robert E. Lee. The Atlantic has an illuminating article on the myth of Lee versus the reality. He wasn't exactly the reluctant defender of slavery. A good read as statues are being removed.

Paris climate accords. Trump, true to his rhetoric, pulled the US out of the non-binding accords. The effect is to make the US look greedy and rather irresponsible, and everyone else look more like grown-ups. Go, team, go!

Signs of more instability in the Mideast? Several major Mideast countries, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia, cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. What's going on? Even more infighting in that region, it appears. There are Muslims fighting the West, Sunnis and Shia fighting, Kurds being suppressed, and maybe now Sunnis fighting other Sunnis. What a mess. Here's a reflection: perhaps Obama was partly successfully in controlling the chaos. But he's gone now, and Trump's policies will give rein to more chaos. Update 6/12/17. An article explaining the Qatar situation. Another good article. More updates 7/16/17. Report that the United Arab Emirates probably hacked Qatar and placed false information to start this action. Trump doesn't understand this and isn't listening to the smarter cabinet secretaries. Secret alliance documents. Interesting, but the news story is somewhat muddy. Analysis that the Saudis are overplaying their hand.

Former libertarian turns supporter of welfare state. I guess he stopped fighting the wave and started communing and learning how the wave thinks. The wave wants the welfare state that is embodied by Social Security and Medicare. However, most GOP lawmakers haven't read between the lines, or won't be saying out loud that entitlements have won, even in the GOP. Because of this, legislative paralysis wins.

How to get caught leaking. Interesting background on the first leaker arrested in the very leaky start of the Trump administration. Possibly memorable trivia, but maybe throw-away trivia.

Rhetoric games. A National Review columnist notices one of the most common rhetorical tricks: 'Hey, what about this [outrage/blunder/hypocrisy]?'

The Swamp

Image: tulane,edu

Difficult decision on Keystone pipeline

The decision of whether or not to allow the construction of the Keystone pipeline will be made soon, I think. A lot of people have an opinion on this pipeline, but I doubt that many have actually sorted through the major issues. I haven't either, because I've found that getting answers on pollution is extremely hard. In other words, you can work very hard and not see any definite increase on your knowledge.

So if I had to decide, what criteria would I use? It's tempting to put my finger on the scale (for the pipeline, as the outcome that angers fewer people), but I'm trying hard to resist that temptation. The biggest reason for the pipeline is the jobs it would provide. With unemployment high and not many new industries developing, this type of project is too rare an opportunity--new development in sector that has a solid future and adds net earnings to the economy. (I assume federal and state governments aren't subsidizing this pipeline, but plan to reap net revenue gains. That better be so.)

On the other side are environmental considerations. The entire project is not doing the earth any favors. Extraction and refinement of this dirty oil will cause a higher level of pollution than many energy sources, even many other carbon energy sources. If this was a question on whether or not to develop this resource, the answer would probably be against development. However, it has already been developed, due to choices made by Canadians, not us. Also, this is not currently the dirtiest oil, so there is the likelihood of net environmental  benefit. We could choose to take the position that we won't participate in such a polluting enterprise--that would be principled stand for those who value the environment far above other considerations.

Since the US doesn't control the development of the tar sands, and since it isn't the dirtiest oil currently being used, the environmental arguments aren't a slam-dunk for me. The US control is only over whether or not to build the pipeline. So we should know what the dangers of the pipeline are, and we should minimize them. However, I'm not completely comfortable with this position. The more people are involved in the carbon energy economy, the less incentive we have to make incremental changes to cleaner energy. I may be making the mistake of valuing political peace, expediency, and jobs over the global environment, and that may very well be shortsighted and cowardly.

Image: northernrockiesrisingtide.wordpress.com

Other sources on environmental impact:

• Oil sands vs. Canadian CO2 promises
• Readable article on relative emissions
• Wikipedia's long article

Compromise on Regulation?

This post dates from early September, and was one of those odd occurrences that I reported in Political Reboot. It seems like ages ago. It's worth a quick look for environmentalists, and haters of bureaucrats and shills for industrial polluters.

 Sept. 2, 2011

Obama is stopping implementation of regulations proposed by the EPA.

(Apologies for that sentence, but that's what it takes to put the idea into the fewest words possible. Two agents: Obama and the EPA. Two objects: proposed regulations vs. their implementation. I'm bored already.)

I'll try to rouse myself by talking about things that matter: jobs and people's health. Very few people (other than Ron Paul) want to go back to the 1960's when pollution was rampant, our rivers were poisonous to varying degrees, and there were basically no controls.

We want some regulation, but we don't want it to be the fief of bureaucrats who use miniscule test results to build up their own sense of power and importance by protecting us from an almost imaginary danger. I've intentionally put this is derisive terms because I think it's true of some regulators. On the other hand, some regulators are trying to save us from small but real threats that could kill or disable perhaps 2 out of 50,000.

Republicans are corruptly using the focus on regulation to help big industry avoid important regulation. Under the mantle of protecting small businesses from choking regulation, the repubs are trying again to allow power generators to avoid the requirement for better pollution scrubbers.

Call me skeptical, but I don't think there are many small businesses that run coal-fired power plants. But of course it would be terrible to waste this opportunity to delay pollution controls yet again. After all, eight years of avoiding updating under Bush weren't enough. I'm holding on to this article to refute the inevitable talking pointy-heads on the comment threads [alternative link, but same article].