I’ve been trying to make tweaked practice questions for the AP Physics 2 test. To gauge the ‘types’ of questions, I downloaded the six practice questions they provide in AP Physics 1 & 2 Sample questions. I got a kick out of this question. Why? Read the learning objective.
Do you see a “moving fluid” here? I don’t.
Generally speaking, I’d put this under a learning objective for “the hydrostatic equation” which makes the physics more straightforward. That said: the fact they put this under “Bernouilli’s equation would seem to explain why none of the 143 (to my count) learning objectives says “motionless fluid” or “hydrostatic equation”.
Lucia,
what do you recommend your students do when confronted by something like this?
Lucia,
What? If this is supposed to be representative of Bernoulli’s equation, these folks have some serious problems. Really, static fluids in a column and Bournoulli’s equation? Wow.
j ferguson,
Nothing. Hopefully students are not presented with the “learning objectives” and merely need to answer the question their teacher gives them. A teacher should be able to figure out that the students need to know “the hydrostatic equation”. The amusing thing is merely that the AP says all sorts of thing about ‘understanding’ and the other things they are supposed to understand about “Bernouilli’s Equation” is that it’s “conservation of energy”. (Which, one can kinda sort of think of it that way. But then that doesn’t really explain all the why it applies everywhere in an irrotational fluid. And.. well… blah.. blah…)
But really, the answer to this is due to force balance which is not the same as “conservation of energy”. But a student can survive this problem either by (a) for the time being thinking this is “Bernouilli’s equation with v=0” or (b) really getting this is a force balance and using the hydrostatic equation. The student will be fine. But the AP claiming this question tests their understanding of Bernoulli’s equation. Well.. rather amusing.
Steve F,
Yeah. The whole thing is “understanding” of the hydrostatic equation requires merely understanding force. Treating it as some sort of “Bernoulli’s equatino when v=0”, is a bit odd. A student who does that will get correct answers … but…well odd. Imagine if the test then asked them to explain why “Bernouilli’s equation” applies? The answer would be tortuous. Meanwhile, just discussing “the fluid must support the weight above it” — which is the concept for the “hydrostatic equation”. well… trivial. Or at least, from the pov of high school, accessible.
The question itself — which merely requires checking items on a list of multiple choice options– ends up fine. It’s also good student need to know how to do it. It’s just the connection to that “Learning Objective” related to “Bernouilli’s equation is a bit…well.. as the church lady used to say “Isn’t that special?”
This actually makes me feel more sorry for the high school teachers than the students.
Lucia,
“This actually makes me feel more sorry for the high school teachers than the students.”
.
Depends I guess on how much they actually understand. I had a couple (two!) of high school science teachers who actually had conceptual knowledge of their subjects, but most did not seem to. Math teachers were generally better in that respect. English, history, etc? Well, didn’t seem to matter much.
SteveF,
If the teacher is hopeless, there is nothing to be done.
But assuming they have a clue and they’ve been assigned AP1 for the first time, they should want to align their class to ensure the topics in the learning objectives are covered and their students master those. Other topics in physics may either be deferred for later or covered briefly if their students pick up quickly enough to cover extra stuff.
The documents the AP has at its site are l_o_n_g. But the number of example problems are few– I think the sum total is about 30 multiple choice. They also release the free response; it’s been given 2 years so there are now two of those. (Teachers listed as teaching an approved by the college board AP class can get access to more– but my impression is that its still doesn’t contain many example problems. )
To the extent that the few example problems don’t match the learning objectives…. well, I feel sorry for the teacher who does try to do a good job. Because they can’t feel very confident about matching their class to the learning objectives. Assuming they care (and at least some do) that’s not quite fair to them.
Possibly they can console themselves by saying, well… my kids did learn just as much physics. But really… if photo electric effect is on the test but Compton scattering is not, it’s better to spend time on the former, and perhaps skip the latter. (There are 143 learning objectives by the way.)
I once arranged for Russian 12th grade math test papers to be translated into English and then asked the head of the mathematics department at North Carolina’s top rated high school to comment.
Her comment was that one third of the questions were beyond the NC “Standard Course of Study” so her students would not encounter them unless they studied mathematics in university.
Without a strong grounding in mathematics the teaching of physics suffers. While Educrats talk up a storm about STEM, the dirty little secret is that only 10% of NC high schools have even one teacher with a physics degree.
So you have poor basic math skills, too few qualified physics teachers and to top it off lousy physics textbooks.
John Hubisz at NC State University reviewed high school physics textbooks in detail and published scathing critiques but his findings were mostly ignored:
https://www.physics.ncsu.edu/people/faculty_hubisz.php
galloping camel,
State standards of study tend to be low. Lots of American kids take material well beyond their state standards of study.
I will have to get his articles.
Dead right about low standards in some states. That goes for “Common Core” too. Will the Trump administration return the control of K-12 education to local communities?
gallopoing camel,
I don’t know what Trump is going to do. I’m all for more choice for parents, but I think we are still waiting to hear what is ultimately done.
I do like the existence of tests. There are things I like about AP and things I don’t like. I like an external body with standards that kids, parents and schools voluntarily try to achieve. Other things… well… one can quibble with their standards. Though, actually, the real issue for me is when a test is new (like AP Phys 1/2) figuring out exactly what they are.
My view is that you can figure out what the curriculum is better from sample questions than from reading 200-300 page “visions” documents describing the curriculum in theory. I mean… does covering resistive circuits mean being quick with complicated layouts with 15 resistors? Or simpler — sometimes more “trick” problems with two batteries and resistors in weird places, but which, if you “get it” are really quick to do? The answer to this affects what you have your kids practice. Yet on a “vision” like “curriculum” type document written in edu-speak, it can be difficult to tell. But if you see a few tests, then you know.)
College Board has been redoing the history guidelines with a liberal perspective. Some states are suggesting they will accept alternatives to College Board testing, but I don’t see how that works when AP is owned by them. Plus who is available to write and do these other tests?
MikeN,
The College Board is a private entity and is not a degree granting institution.
I’m not sure what “states” would be “accepting” wrt to AP tests. As far as I am aware, the only entities that “accept” the scores for something are universities that could elect to grant college credit for sufficiently high scores. Quite a few do– for a subset of classes they thing worthy with sufficiently high scores. The schools get to decide whether they do or not. The college board had no real power here. The other way in which AP tests can matter is schools can view the tests as giving a baseline for whether a school in general had sufficient rigor (this would be based on overall AP scores) or whether a student achieved at a high enough level and use this to decide whether to admit a student.
Because the tests have been fairly widely adopted, many schools do use them when gauging credenials for admission.
State universities or schools could accept results from any number of other private credentialing entities if they wished. That is: assuming these other credendatialing entities exist and have students take tests. The problem is: who does exist? What test exist? (Real questions. I’m familiar with AP as a test. It international bacalaureate may do test– but I don’t know any students doing that.)
Lucia, without colleges looking at AP tests for admissions or course credit, the College Board disappears. The suggestion is that other groups can administer the same AP tests, with state governments forcing the public colleges to accept them, with the goal being to allow for the same history curriculum and not the College Board liberal one.
MikeN,
Yes. If no colleges accepted the credit and none considered them a “plus” when admitting, the AP tests would become worthless.
State governments can force state colleges to accept test scores from whomever the state pleases. But obviously, those tests need to exist, and they need to be fairly reasonable facsimilies of something at college level before any states are going to do so. But they can’t force private schools to accept them — whether AP or otherwise.
Most state governments do not force state colleges to accept AP credits though some do. Illinois forces their state colleges to “accept” them. That said: the even state colleges forced to accept them find interesting ways around making the credits useful. For example: UIUC will give credit for algebra based physics if a kid gets a 3 on calculus based physics. The result is that kids in engineering , physics and many other STEM fields still need to take calculus based physics for graduation. (This is a good thing btw. A kid who gets a 3 on the AP Phys C test needs to retake the class no matter what the college board claims about what that score means.)
I suspect university history departments skew just as liberal as the college board. So kids who take the history at college will probably be exposed to equally liberal material. So I’m not overly concerned that the AP leans liberal on history.
Evidently, UIUC will give a kid credit for US History 1– if they get a 3 or 4 and for History 172 (3 hours) if they get a 5. I’m guessing History 1– which does not match any “real” course, probably doesn’t fill many graduation requirements, while History 172 fills something.
https://admissions.illinois.edu/Apply/Freshman/college-credit-AP
Despite the state law, UIUC manages to avoid counting a fair number of AP credits towards graduation. I’m sure the same would happen with any other tests– unless it was really college level. Even then… well… kids who transfer schools often have trouble getting their credits recognized (for good reasons and bad ones.)
The states would now be forcing colleges to accept another tester as equivalent to AP. There is a difference between what colleges will present and trying to change the high school history curriculum for a larger audience.
MikeN
I suspect that if there were other private entities providing tests that attempt to test whether high school students have achieved at the college levels, states that require their public universities to accept the AP would likewise require them to accept these hypothetical other tests. States that don’t require their state colleges to accept the AP probably wouldn’t require them to accept other tests either. And no one can require the private schools to accept them.
But as far as I am aware, no other testing group does this– at least not in the US. So it’s rather moot.
However, states that don’t require colleges to accept AP, can still require them to accept the new testing the same as they do the AP.
The push is to create this alternative testing as pushback for the College Board’s liberal history curriculum. Texas has previously mandated history textbooks to be more conservative, pushing back against what other states did.
What I don’t get is that people are suggesting this other test could be sold as an ‘AP test’. I think College Board would be able to block that.
MikeN
Who is creating alternatives to the AP tests? Real question. Basically, I’m not aware there is any actual push to create such a thing.
If someone creates it, they will need to call it something else. Perhapes UEE: University Equivalent exams. Or CCE exams: College Credit Equivalents … or something. (CLEP is already taken.)
States can mandate curricula. It would be good if more students did so- and did it in a way where testing, test outcomes and so on were treated as “credits” for the students. That’s what NY State has done for a long time with the Regents.
Lucia – I’m just skimming and tired, so I could be being dim…
… but the question asks for the quantities which influence the force exerted by the water on the bottom of the tank? Isn’t that F=mg? Which is F=rho.volume.g? And doesn’t the volume require all those dimensions? Apologies (and embarrassment…) if I’m missing something totally obvious!
The volume is not required. In a motionless fluid, the pressure difference between the top and bottom supports only the weight directly above the fluid. So consider an imaginary tube of fluid from the bottom to the top– that’s what you use to get the pressure difference.
The shape change is a good way to test whether someone ‘gets’ this issue. A good conceptual question — which I’ve never seen in any of the highschool books is why the pressure at the bottom doesn’t support the weight in the entire vessel. One portion of the answer answer is that forces are also exerted on the water surfaces of the vessel. Notices that vessel has some horizontal bits.
I’m now intrigued. If volume is not required, in the Earth’s gravitational field, are you saying 1 litre of water exerts an equal vertical force to 2 litres of water on the surface on which it sits?
Curious –
I had the same thought, that the force exerted by the water on the bottom of the tank — $latex (\rho*g*(H_T+H_P) + p_{atm})*A_T $ — exceeds the force exerted on the table upon which the tank rests. The way I resolved it is to consider the *upward* force of the water on the top of the tank, which is $latex (\rho*g*H_P + p_{atm})*(A_T – A_P) $ .
The net force on the table due to water then works out to be the weight of the water, as expected.
HaroldW – I think we are on the same page.
Please can I (pedantically perhaps!) check therefore that you also think all 4 dimensions are required?
Can I further check that you also agree that the force exerted by the water on the base of the tank is F=rho.volume.g?
Thanks
HaroldW,
Your resolution is “the” conceptual question I think students in classes like AP Physics 2 (which is supposed to emphasize conceptual understanding) should be asked.
Curious –
“Can I further check that you also agree that the force exerted by the water on the base of the tank is F=rho.volume.g?”
No — that’s the point which the test question is highlighting, and which lucia describes as the key conceptual question.
The water exerts force on the bottom of the tank, according to the first expression I gave above, which doesn’t involve A_P. It also exerts force on the top of the tank (second expression). The *net* force on the tank due to water is F=rho.volume.g as you give, which does involve all four of the given dimensions.
But that’s not what the test asked for!
HaroldW – thank you: that has clarified the conceptual question for me!
I don’t know of anyone that is making the tests. Just that there have been calls to do so. Seems like it would be too difficult a task. Especially if they had to replace all of the AP tests, which is I think needed to actually damage College Board into redoing its curriculum.
In Shattered, the authors reveal that Hillary went thru her employees’ emails after she lost to Obama in 2008 to see what went wrong, if anyone was leaking etc. She made sure no one would have a chance to do this to her.
Hi MikeN, that is exactly what I thought when I read that.
j Ferguson, Lucia,
Ken Fritsch commented yesterday on Nic Lewis’s post on climate sensitivity at Judith’s blog. He is (I hope) OK.
Great, Thanks SteveF
This look familiar to anyone?
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/the-peer-reviewed-saga-of-mindless-eating-mindless-research-is-bad-too/
MikeN,
Can you say Michael Mann and Steve McIntyre? Except that McIntyre was dissed for being an outsider, so less wagon-circling, it looks very similar.
Just as an insight into the various educational issues that have come up in the past several months here. I attended a meeting for parents of gifted children (my 11-year-old daughter in English) with respect to her school several days ago. The head of the gifted program remarked that those in the top 5% of the Cogat (one test identifying gifted children) got what they were learning the first time. Those in the top 15-20 % needed two or three tries to learn the material. Average students needed 5 or 6 attempts to learn the material. To me a very simple, but interesting insight.
JD
Yep. I think this is why they need some sort of ability tracking. It’s one thing to listen to the same thing three times when you got it after 1 time. It’s another thing to listen 6 or more times when you got it the first time. And lets face it, the bottom 15-50% need it more than 6 times. If you have kids who got it after the first time in the same room as the kids who need 12 repetitions in the same class you either have the kids who get it the first time sit there doing… heaven knows while the others get it 12 times. Or you go with the fast ones.
I remember 6th grade social studies. It was one of the classes not sorted by differential ability (neither were home ec, or french). I had permission to read books while everyone finished their worksheets. I read lots of fiction.
The teacher can give the quick kids supplemental packets, but it’s still all around easier if the school splits into groups that are like “top 20%”, “”bottom 20%” and “everyone else” and then has the teachers cover more material in the higher class and do more repetitions in the other classes. Given the bell curve, the differential ability spread in each class probably ends up about the same with a 20%-60%-20% split. But you need enough students to have enough kids in each of the groups. ( A school with only 30 8th graders is going to be hard pressed to justify three sections, two with 6 kids and the others with 18. Still, if they can run three sections, it would still be better to have 10,10,10. )
JD, then having test prep books for the COGAT would ruin the testing, right?
Lucia: Ability tracking
…
Just tonight my daughter echoed the gifted coordinator’s remarks. She said why do we have so much homework after we have already learned the subjects at school?
JD
MikeN: “JD, then having test prep books for the COGAT would ruin the testing, right?”
….
Haven’t thought about it much. However, see no evidence of that from my daughter’s experience. Between different school districts, the different quality of teaching, and the different quality of the classroom experience her scores have been all over the place. In fact, when my daughter was in a noisy classroom that bothered her in the 3rd grade, [she is currently in the 5th grade] she actually regressed in Math and scored in the bottom 47 %. (Currently, she is in the top 15% in math) In English, on achievement tests, she went from the top 3% at end of fourth grade, to the top 15% at beginning of summer [got no sleep the night before just by chance] to the top 25% at the beginning of the 5th grade (Following six weeks in China speaking only Chinese last summer) to the top 5% in December of 2016.
….
In her new school district, she had to have 2 achievement tests in the top 5% on top of the Cogat to get in the gifted program. The December score got her in English and her transition was very easy.
….
My take away (something of a guess) is that if you score in the top 5% of the Cogat as well as potentially necessary achievement tests, even if done partially through training, you have reached the level necessary to do the gifted work in the manner described by the gifted coordinator.
JD
MikeN,
Test prep makes a difference. But….
Well.. I don’t know if you remember the story of the little girl in my 4th grade who was force to stand in the garbage can for missing flaschards? No amount of test prep was going to put her in the top 1/2.
I was thinking of these COGAT workbooks I see in the grocery store. If the 15-20% can do it after 3 tries, then having the workbook to do the first two times means they can move to the top when they see it the third time on the real test.
MikeN “If the 15-20% can do it after 3 tries, then having the workbook to do the first two times means they can move to the top when they see it the third time on the real test.”
….
I can see 2 potential problems with this. First, each test is different, so the fact that you have learned the answers to one set of questions wouldn’t necessarily translate to the newer actual test questions. Second, moving from the top 15-20% to the top 5% is a fairly big jump. The higher up you get, the tougher the competition and the harder it is to improve. On the other hand, if you are able to move to the top 5%, it probably does mean you can do the work. By the way, I wasn’t aware of the practice Cogat tests, and my daughter never did any preparation.
JD
MikeN/JD
There seem to be test prep materials for sale here:
http://www.criticalthinking.com/articles/test-preparation-practice-for-cogat-assessment
They recommend parents have their kids study for 6 months.
I suspect the may help, but if study for tests given annually requires 6
monthsweeks I imagine parents can only boost their kids a small amount relative to the scale. After all: kids are learning all year long.Might I be tempted if I knew the gifted “cut off” was 20% and my kid was testing on the bubble? Yeppers! But I doubt you could push a kid whose current test performance is around 25% to 5% by using prep. The kid likely isn’t going to like studying outside school for 6 months– and the parents even less.
edit: I thought it said months. I guess 6 weeks might make improvement do-able. Still…
FWIW, let me share my children’s strong opinions on learning math and physics:
The #1 difficulty is being taught (as opposed to self-study).
The #2 difficulty is an arbitrary regimented pace of instruction.
I”m not sure #1 is universally true. I think there needs to be a balance of “chalk and talk”, experimental investigation, and self study. If they get too much of one, they will always think that’s the problem. But most kids have trouble with pure self-study.
Point #2 is certainly true. The pace can be both too fast for some, too slow for others. The ones for whom it is too fast miss a few things at the beginning and then…. they are lost.
I can’t say so much for other sciences. But in physics, typically, the first quarter introduces scalar/vector, some kinematics and Newton’s laws. (It doesn’t need to, but it typically does.) If they really don’t “get” the scalar vector distinction with some ability to apply it the ideal situation would be for the ‘courses’ to be quarter long chunks. Kids who got lost in the first quarter would repeat it in the second quarter. Meanwhile, the rest would progress to the next quarter.
Unfortunately, this would require a huge amount of scheduling flexibility and a budget of nearly $∞ . So what really happens is either the teacher moves and the kids who don’t get scalar/vector onto more complicated topics or the other students need to keep plodding over scalar/vectors.
If the former is done, the students remain confused as they move on into work/energy (where they don’t understand the importance of direction in computing work) or momentum (where they don’t understand the importance of direction when a ball bounces vs. splats like a clay blob) waves, buoyancy (where they still don’t get the importance of direction in action of pressure, buoyancy force or weight), Coulomb’s law (where they still can’t figure out superposition because they don’t understand the importance of direction….) and so on. If the later is done, the kids who did master scalar/vector never learn much physics. Oddly, this is often the worst choice, because the teacher tries to “deal” with the problem of scalar/vector by by throwing out more and more complicated kinematics problems– turning the class into a festival of algebra 2. when the major problem that will prevent kids from mastering future problems is just not getting the difference between scalar and vector in simple applications.
(It may seem odd to people who do physics a lot that not understanding relative motion can be deferred as that is very important. But kids who don’t get that when covering kinematics the first time have no disadvantage in the later topics– at least not until special relativity. The reason they have no disadvantage is that it never comes up. And if so, special relativity is becomes precisely the place to correct the problem. )
In the case of video lectures given by a good teacher and replayed by an individual at their own pace, I suppose that might equal or exceed what could be learned from a good textbook on one’s own. Being tutored might also be better.
But for my children, being taught caused problems. One example; when my son was 8, he was at the bottom of his class in math. After I relented to his pleas to self-teach, he ended up mastering 1st year university calculus while still in elementary school.
YMMV.
No one prescribed path necessarily schools;
Curiosity, not narrow pedagogy, rules …
And it takes as long as it takes.
bts (teacher.)
blueice2hotsea,
I think that would work for some kids and not others. There are upsides to videos.
The downside of videos include:
1) You can’t stop the lecturer and ask them a question when you find something puzzling. Rewinding and repeating doesn’t help if their explanation is not the one that really helps you.
2) Pausing, rewinding and repeating is much more difficult than re-reading pages in a book. At least I find it so– and it’s hard to mark up a video where one can put notes in a book (provided the person studying owns the book.)
3) Videos do not solve the problem that students who are disinclined to self study won’t magically do so just because it’s a video instead of a book.
Of course, some students are reluctant to ask questions anyway. And some teachers are reluctant to let students ask the questions the students want. If so, not being able to ask a video something is not worse than having a teacher. But I know I’d take a book over a video most of the time. Some videos are good for certain things– not derivations though!
Tutoring has the potential for being better. But tutoring for every moment of education is not cost effective. In the sciences it’s actually useful for groups of students to do experiments and not do everything in a “one tutor/one kid” environment. Study of literature also benefits from multiple students in a class.
It is hard to figure out an optimum.
lucia-
1) “when you find something puzzling” is the beginning of curiosity; of learning how to learn; of the difference between what to think and how to think. It’s OK to go slooww when puzzled and to go fast over what is understood.
2) Some lectures (and lecturers) are pure gold and more so if they were recorded. Think about it. A library of diverse golden lectures might help answer the one size fits all problem.
3) A disinclination to self-study by pre-schoolers is to be expected; they are accustomed to being spoonfed. But school-agers ought to have both permission and the expectation to self-study, to THINK about what they are memorizing, to one day understand it.
Think about your 6th grade social studies class and your daily in-class recreational reading. Why were you not required to study social studies for the class period, same as everyboody else? Or rather, why were you not permitted to study 7th/8th grade social studies? Why were you held back?
My criticism of the flaw in videos is not that the student has to go slow. The problem person , when asked, can address the question in a students might– provided the student poses it. A video cannot. A video is static. Yes, the student can rewind. But rewatching the same thing over and over, while slow, also doesn’t result in answering the puzzle. Real humans at least have the potential for answering.
The answer might be an actual answer. OR it might be helping the student find another resource. Or something. But a video can’t do that.
Or they can waste a huge amount of time with students watching endless videos that others think “golden” and which might be golden. Just not at this point.
Even with videos, someone needs to find “just the right” one for what the student needs now. I like the existence of videos. But I know that they aren’t “the” solution.
Certainly, they are not better than books. (Note: books also come in a huge variety. So, in principle, books already solve the “one size fits all” problem. Each kid might need a different book. But now: who figures out which kid needs which book, and when do they need them.
I agree that it would have been better for kids to be moved to other classes. I think the reasons the school didn’t come up with “self study” was mostly resources. (Also, the school system had already done that in 5th grade math. It was horrifying. The class disruption was impossible– spit balls, paper airplanes, gum… what have you. Only four of us were doing any math.
About a 1/4 way through, the math teacher changed back to chalk and talk– but let four of us continue on self study. The four were me, Karen, Willy Roberts and…Sharka I think. I’m not sure about Sharka. Her english wasn’t so good so it might have been someone else. (Sharka had just arrived fresh from escaping the Prague spring in the trunk of her family’s car. Her English improved rapidly– but at first she didn’t know it. )
Self study works– but not for most kids. And not for most 5th graders. Or even most 6th graders. They’d rather throw spit balls, airplanes, play with their friends or do any number of other things that seem fun that minute.
I don’t think videos would change this much.
lucia –
Just brain-storming here. Looking for ideas.
.
Interuptable lectures work in a tutoring relationship. And for groups of students on the same learning trajectory. And if a teacher mispeaks or is wrong, great. But the main point of interrupting a lecture is to tranform the classroom into a private tutoring session. And that’s bad for most.
.
Canned lectures are selectable, interruptable (where the student interrupts their own lecture, not everyone else’s), and can be sped up or slowed down by the individual. If a show-stopper is encountered, then a teacher can assist or chit-chat.
.
BTW, the USA ranks 32 out of 36 OECD countries in math ability for 15 year olds. Maybe we are teaching to the bottom of the class.
Re: Diversity
There was mildly irritating occurrence at my daughter’s school this week. About 5 chidren were to be chosen to be presenters at her 5th grade choir performance. The names of the children who wanted to be presenters were put into a hat, and some children were passed over to increase diversity according to my daughter. Because she is half Chinese, my daughter was chosen to be a presenter. I am disappointed with what occurred, but I will not raise a ruckus about it. Shows the real-world consequences of identity politics and identity education.
JD
BTW, the USA ranks 32 out of 36 OECD countries in math ability for 15 year olds. Maybe we are teaching to the bottom of the class.
Australia too,
Their most be two types of Anglophiles, those that want to be Vikings and those that get Maths. The pathways are there but culturally, environmentally they just do not turn in.
Sri Lankans seem innately bright followed by the Chinese and Indians yet the majority of these peoples went nowhere with the skill in their own countries.
There is no incentive to turn on the lights in our current generations. We get by better socially and living wise without these skills.
I would say I think that almost anyone, of any race, can do well in maths if of average intelligence and some motivation to succeed. How to turn the switch on?
blueicetohotsea
If they are present at the right time. Which isn’t likely to be the case if 20 kids are each watching a different video. Also, the teacher assisting only happens they are willing to answer questions (which seems out of fashion.)
That’s my preferred route: sift kids so they are grouped with others near the same trajectory. There have been fads where they mixed everyone without regard to ability levels, and I think that’s an error.
So are books. So are series of hand outs. We’ve had selectable materials a long time. This is no a new feature brought by videos.
I don’t know about you, but I find it very difficult to rewind to the right point. I find the difficulty of scrolling back and forth in videos one of the things that makes videos much worse when used for lots of academic material than books.
I do think short videos have their place. I think a library of short “how to solve problem X” videos are useful (after kids have struggled a bit with “problem X”, otherwise they don’t pay attention.) These should be no longer than 10 minutes or if a video contains multiple problems, there should be some sort of index, and a mechanism to get to “just the right” problem– like flipping in a book.
FWIW: kids who are also taking AP classes tend to like these videos:
http://www.flippingphysics.com/ . Well.. the ones saying they like them all correspond to male names. I like some stuff about them — speeding up writing things on the blackboard is great. Also: if you are at his site, he gives an index about where to scroll to find “bits” a student might specifically want to watch. (Videos generally lack this– which makes the fact that you can rewind to find what you want a bug– because you end up just wasting time rewinding.)
I find other stuff in the video.. well… so annoying I can’t stand to watch! I don’t know if it’s a sort of boy/girl thing or an adult/teen thing. But … oy. It’s like seeing good features mixed with someone perpetually running their fingernails on a chalk board.
Bear in mind: The kids watching the flipping physics videos all also take a class. So it isn’t “only” a video. Some kids prefer Bozeman Physics.
Maybe. But it’s worth nothing: those higher ranked countries aren’t using videos to get the better performance.
JD, not sure if it is math specifically, but one survey found that US was teaching better than nearly every country when you factored in race. The exceptions were Shanghai and Finland.
That is Chinese in America were performing better than China, Japanese in America better than Japan, etc.
angech (Comment #161688): “BTW, the USA ranks 32 out of 36 OECD countries in math ability for 15 year olds. Maybe we are teaching to the bottom of the class.”
A Japanese friend once told me (this was over 30 years ago) that Japanese high school students can evaluate all sorts of integrals at an age where American students have never seen an integral. He also told me that the Japanese students have no idea of what an integral is or of the logic behind evaluating them; they learned to solve them by rote. He thought that the U.S. approach was much better.
So maybe we are just teaching differently. The problem with standardized tests is that they must make assumptions about teaching methods and learning objectives. Students who have been taught in a manner that lines up with those assumptions will do better than students taught using a different philosophy.
MikeM
Yes. Which is why, when possible, I like to see tests a student’s teacher wrote. Yes, one could say “just learn physics”. But some teacher have lots of questions involving interpreting graphs. Some have questions that are all text. And so on. Of course ideally all students know how to deal with both types of questions. But it does help student grades if you know “this student needs to interpret graphs”, vs. “They only need to interpret text based questions”.
The same goes with my trying to have a clue what types of questions the college board really puts on the AP tests. AP Physics 1: Techically, you could easily pass without a calculator. Numbers — when they are there at all– are round and arithmetic is easy. But you need to know how to explain why something happens in words.
lucia-
.
[A teacher can assist or chit-chat if] they are present at the right time. Which isn’t likely to be the case if 20 kids are each watching a different video.
IMMEDIACY is unimportant.
.
[Selectability] is not a new feature brought by videos.
Yes. And it’s only one of several advantages shared in common with books. All reasons to prefer canned vs. live lectures.
.
I don’t know about you, but I find it very difficult to rewind to the right point.
Tap the back arrow once or twice… OR … mentally exit the lecture (which moves on without you) and try to formulate an intelligible question which can be used to make a timely interruption.
.
I do think short videos have their place….
Yes to all points!
.
Well.. the ones saying they like [videos] all correspond to male names
And some of these males would be former miscreants who shot spitballs in primary and middle school.
.
It’s worth noting: those higher ranked countries aren’t using videos to get the better performance.
Maybe. But to be excellent the US must first achieve mediocrity. Videos can help us get there!
.
IMO, the problem is not students and least of all, teachers – except where teachers have administrative authority in determining admissions.
blueice2hotsea
In principle. If all students are motivated. If not, spitballs ensue.
Yes. I know this trick. It is still much more difficult to deal with videos than books.
Videos have a place. But I don’t think it’s major.
For the record, girls shot spitballs too. I did. Once spitballs and paper airplanes are flying around, everyone does it.
Agreed.
Books are magic FOR ME not videos. Others awaken to animated visual imagery i.e.. lectures. But how is it possible to have your teacher lecture math for 6 hrs. in one day if you are on a learning frenzy Oh!
If you listen to the most renowned and respected expert on IQ (Charles Murray, ha ha) he says the Asian advantage is pretty specifically in one area, spatial visualization.
.
Now as we all know and have been informed by our thought leaders and defenders of science, it is a scientific impossibility that evolution could have variable effects above the neck (except baldness, skin color, eye color, ear size, mental disorders, nose shape, etc.). As the human species diverged 50,000 years ago only non-IQ aspects changed in the divergent groups.
.
I have been informed by countless people who have never read Charles Murray’s work that he is wrong. It is because the critics are extremely emotionally invested in this outcome that we know it comes from a calm cool analysis of the facts.
.
Here is about a 45 min interview with Murray. Judge for yourself how insane this guy is. Just crazy.
https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/forbidden-knowledge
.
What is particularly striking is how Murray was spot on in his past analysis of a cognitive elite rising and causing a social crisis.
I sold spitball shooters dba “collapsible straws”. Got shut down.
In a classic Streisand effect, The Bell Curve is the #1 seller in Demographic Studies for the past couple months at Amazon. Some of the critics have good points (the effects of poverty, etc.), but most of them just scream racist and demand he be no-platformed.
Tom Scharf,
There are a lot of graphs in The Bell Curve with just lines. There are no data points or error bars. I find that disturbing. That doesn’t mean that I don’t agree with Herrnstein and Murray’s general conclusions, just that it’s possible that the level of certainty may be a lot lower than it looks.
The one graph on page 68 that does have data points plotted looks more like a shotgun pattern than a significant correlation.
Tom Scharf-
The Chinese have made amazing progress but their innate math ability is overrated. International PISA testing is restricted to the best “show” cities, regions, etc. which are 17% of the total population. And even there, menial jobs are often filled by internal migration of Chinese parents from outside administrative areas which are jobs that disallow those worker’s children from education and testing in the show city unless permanent residence permits can be obtained.
Tom Scharf-
.
My professor of “Psychological Measurements” drilled the point that General Intelligence is a synonym for adaptability. Academic I.Q. (what we are tested for in school) is a subset of G.I. concerned with verbal acuity, logic, abstract thinking, etc.
.
So an academic genius with little moral, emotional and physical intelligence could be less “intelligent” than someone with average I.Q.
blueice2hotsea ,
Obviously there are many aspects to success and separating cause and effect is almost impossible. However what was noted and still seems to be accurate is IQ is one of the best indicators of success, which shouldn’t be confused with the only factor, or does not exclude that prejudice/racial injustice is also a factor. Grit or the capacity for hard work, willingness to work for long term rewards, etc. It’s the lazy genius vs. hard working average person debate. It matters, but IQ matters the most when measuring a lot of socioeconomic outcomes.
.
As Murray stated, they aren’t defenseless when trying to separate these things out. Twin studies and so forth allow for some theories to be supported and others not so much.
.
The bigger deal is that the smart people are isolating and marrying themselves and producing more isolated smart people which is creating a larger gap with the underclass through both culture and genetic effects. Even if one accepts this proposition it is unclear whether anything needs or should be done about it.
Dewitt,
Nothing drives me more crazy in climate science than graphs without scales or trends without raw data shown. I was aghast after the first time I looked at the raw data used in tree ring studies. No wonder they needed statistical inventions to get their preferred answer.
.
I’m only a casual observer on IQ data but have read a few of the “debunking” articles that seemed like rather poor attempts if the goal was proving the gap is entirely a social construct. Nutrition, lead poisoning, stereotype threat, low expectations, preschool education, and so on. Just because IQ is the best indicator doesn’t mean it cannot be overcome with other strengths or social policy cannot close the gap. It may mean there are limits to how much the gap can be closed in certain measures.
Tom Sharf-
IQ is one of the best indicators for ACADEMIC success because it is an indicator of academic intelligence.
.
Emotional intelligence might be a better indicator for success in performance arts such as theatre, music or clinical psycholgy. No?
blueice2hotsea,
Perhaps, but is there a standardized test for emotional intelligence? I haven’t heard of one. For a number of performance arts, you would need physical intelligence as well. Of course, you have to define that too.
blueice2hotsea
It’s not possible. But cramming can result in learning, but it tends to be temporary. So it’s not a good idea to intentionally structure a system to encourage cramming. Obviously it’s going to happen. But if anything, a system designed to discourage cramming end encourage spacing (i.e. slow steady acquisition) is better than one that facilitates cramming.
Until studied and disproven, or course one has to admit it might.
My guess is that IQ helps in all of those to. If nothing else, actors need to be able to memorize lines. Writers can be more creative if their long term memories hold more info from books, plays, interactions– that tends toward better IQ.
My cousin married a set designer. Being intelligent helps you be better at designing sets that can hold up, whirl, do various things.
Just because you don’t need to be a genius to do certain things doesn’t mean that smarter in the academic way doesn’t help you learn and do many things more easily.
Heck, being smarter rather than less smart probably helps someone be better at running a hair styling salon.
But of course if my guess has been disproven, then it will turn out my guess was wrong.
blueice2hotsea,
IQ measurement is not all encompassing. Academic intelligence also correlates with many things such as income, number of kids, marital success, smoking, etc. One can look at the data but also be careful to not become too reductionist in outcomes. In summary there aren’t many downsides in winning the genetic lottery for IQ. This is way more true today than 150 years ago when being a smart farmer didn’t matter much.
.
IQ and musical instrument ability appear correlated, but an IQ for artistic ability is probably pretty hard. Dance ability and oil painting may not correlate so well. Nobody in my family can dance, so it must be genetic, ha ha. But then again it might be the prejudice of low expectations. I do feel fairly confident I would score low in dance IQ if there was a measure.
Tom, “The bigger deal is that the smart people are isolating and marrying themselves and producing more isolated smart people which is creating a larger gap with the underclass through both culture and genetic effects. Even if one accepts this proposition it is unclear whether anything needs or should be done about it.”
Sportsmen in Australia seem to marry very good looking, tiny, blonde girls with little obvious sporting talent. Despite this dubious mismatch there seems to be a high percentage of sporting offspring with talent.
Smart people come from all walks of life. I doubt that they isolate themselves out genetically. Because more are always being produced from the rest of us. Socially I always remember a bright kid misfitting in our little country town. Went off to Uni and said “Wow, this is good, there are people here just like me”.
angech: “I always remember a bright kid misfitting in our little country town. Went off to Uni and said “Wow, this is good, there are people here just like meâ€.”
Reminds me of me.
I grew up working on a farm. That created in me the capacity to do physically demanding things, but which also gave me the capacity to work hard in areas that aren’t just physically demanding.
Later as I started doing field research, that gave me the capacity to achieve things other people simply weren’t willing to expend the physical effort to do.
(Carrying 100-lbs of equipment up the side of a mountain at high elevation comes to mind…not that many people are both physically capable and willing to work that hard. Nor deploy in hazardous environments simply to answer scientific curiosity.)
Generally it’s my experience that people who can learn are usually limited by what they place value in and what they are willing to put effort into:
“Finding your untapped potential” sounds really great until it starts to involve the often massive personal effort, emotional turmoil, social sacrifice and even physical pain required to achieve it. IQ is part of the picture, because it preselects what “your untapped potential” is, but I find having drive, vision and even courage are just as important.
A small cup of wine that is 9/10s full might contain more than a large cup mostly empty.
Carrick
Yes.
Oddly, I suspect part of the reason “studies” find IQ predicts outcome more than anything else is that we are actually better at measuring the academic aspect of intelligence than other traits that matter. I think it’s difficult to come up with a 1 or 2 hour test to measure “drive”, “courage” or even “vision”. You could ask a bunch of questions, but many people will give deceptive answers to something like “On a scale of 1-5, how willing are you to stick to a task you began when it gets tough?” Many people really don’t know. And of course the answer of how willing you are to stick to a task should and will also depend on whether someone places a positive value on something about the task.
Some people value the notion of doing tasks, some only value tasks for their outcome and so on. And of course, in some political eras (e.g. WWII Germany) a combination of “drive” and “value” might lead you to join the resistance to a political regime, which might ultimately result in loss of wealth, position, health, and even life. Those who joined “the resistance” were certainly not going to rise in the hierarchy of the prevailing political power structure. Or, failing that, one might just resist in some passive-aggressive way. (e.g.
So… yeah. He was a dummkopf… In other words “low achievement”. 🙂 )
This sort of interaction betwen “values” and “what tasks a person will stick too” means a social scientist setting up a study of how “drive” affected “achievement” might have trouble showing a good correlation.
More broadly, there are many ways “values” affects “achievement”. Way back when, Roman Catholicism was inclined to monasticism and to some extent self-abnegation. A person who valued that would join a monastery– possibly cloistered. They’d likely have no particular ambition to move up in the hierarchy. By today’s measures, which are often economic, one would likely deem them as “achieving” practically nothing. The same measure can often undervalue the “achievement” of those who decide to be homemakers. But in both cases the person with “drive” to achieve what they value even if it’s not what someone else values.
Ok.. that was long. OTOH: this is me. 🙂
Carrick,
I have always told my kids that success is due to both effort AND intellect… One without the other is of little use. There is (of course) strong correlation between IQ and financial success, but my guess is that there is a similar correlation with effort. Or as Edison noted, “99% perspiration”.
Nobody has a problem when people talk about genetics and obesity, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, or fill in another negative characteristic, but for some reason genetics and intelligence is taboo. This seems like a rather arbitrary selection. Nobody likes to be called stupid, but people don’t like being called fat either. To the extent that genetics affects obesity it can potentially direct treatments to more effective outcomes.
.
There appears to be some misguided fear that bringing genetics into the discussion of education will cause people to spend less, or not engage in policy changes since genetics can’t be fixed. I believe it can allow more efficient spending on areas that can be fixed.
.
The hard core belief from the pro-science team that everyone starts out equal and if they don’t end up equal that means social policy is broken or discriminatory doesn’t help. It’s really a minor point but making this an arbitrary religious taboo reflects badly on the social sciences.
Tom Scharf,
I think the difference is that at least during some historical periods, groups were characterized as “less intelligent” based on no evidence and as far as one can tell for no reason other than cultural or racial animus. And lots of groups have supposedly been the dumb ones in different places and different times. Irish? Polish? Blacks? Hispanics? In the past, east asians were stereotyped as immature and childlike– which isn’t exactly brilliant.
While it is almost certainly true that some part of intelligence is genetic, it is also true that some broad generalizations are not based on good science. I read The Bell Curve long ago — more than a decade. I recall at the time, there were quite a few places where I thought the claims were not well supported by the evidence brought forward. I didn’t keep the book, and I thought little enough of it to not give remembering much in the book a high priority. So, I’m not well able to explain what I think is wrong with it now. But… well… I am definitely open to the notion there is a large element of intelligence that is hereditary. I am also open to the possibility that average intelligence could vary across broad racial categories. But I was not convinced that the Bell Curves actual claims held up. (And I don’t plan to go out, get the book and reread it. I think there are better people doing better work on heredity and intelligence– it’s the DNA folk.)
I would also suggest that anyone who is very impressed by The Bell Curves claims about intelligence of different races and that this is somehow due to genes, might need to square this idea with the observed “Flynn Effect”:
http://dujs.dartmouth.edu/2013/02/is-our-collective-iq-increasing/#.WRIcO8m1tL4
My personal anecdotal experience is that there is a substantial genetic component to academic intelligence. My own 2 children have done well on the Cogat with very little intervention by me. (They both instinctively like school, and I have mostly tried to stay out of the way while, however, encouraging their academic proclivities with a light touch.) There are three children at the Chinese Church I attend who are all amazingly bright. The oldest (16) had a perfect score on both parts of the ACT and said it was easy. There are also an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old, and speaking to them is like speaking to an adult. (Their mother was an engineer in China [simply works at a grocery store here], and their father is an architectural Ph.D student.) Also, in the second grade, my daughter had a classmate who had 2 physician parents, and the classmate’s handwriting was so good it looked like that of an adult.
….
I would distinguish between academic skills and good judgment, which is more important. I don’t doubt that Michael Mann and Peter Gleick have good academic skills, but their judgment is abysmal.
JD
We probably don’t want to dive in The Bell Curve, but it’s commentary on race wasn’t the primary focus of the book, it was how intelligence affects (more accurately correlates to) socioeconomic outcomes and the emergence of a cognitive elite / social stratification. In 1994.
.
It basically said there were measurable differences in races as a side topic and the world exploded. The most controversial phrase:
.
“If the reader is now convinced that either the genetic or environmental explanation has won out to the exclusion of the other, we have not done a sufficiently good job of presenting one side or the other. It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences. What might the mix be? We are resolutely agnostic on that issue; as far as we can determine, the evidence does not justify an estimate.”
.
Given this the Southern Poverty Law Center concludes:
.
“According to Murray, the relative differences between the white and black populations of the United States, as well as those between men and women, have nothing to do with discrimination or historical and structural disadvantages, but rather stem from genetic differences between the groups. The Bell Curve, which remains Murray’s most controversial work, firmly lays out Murray’s belief, shared with Herrnstein, that the groups that make up the “underclass†are there solely because of their genes.”
.
I only quote the SPLC here because it was quoted endlessly as an authority after the Middlebury controversy.
.
If I worked in the social sciences I wouldn’t touch this subject with a ten foot pole. Instant career suicide.
The main thing is that variation within identifiable groups is far greater than the differences in averages for those identifiable groups. This applies to vertical jump, maximum sprint speed, eye-hand coordination, and academic excellence. So it is a little nutty to conclude that because someone is from east Asia they are automatically good at spacial reasoning… because they very well may not be. Same for being fleet footed… there are lots of very fast white kids, and lots of very slow black kids, even though on average the black kids are faster than the white kids. It is only in the most demanding environments, where only the most talented excel, that differences in the “extreme tails” of the distributions shows up in who can, and can’t, compete successfully. When an identifiable group has a higher mean capability, then the number of individuals from that group who can succeed in the most demanding environment will be greater (and perhaps much greater) than that group’s population compared to the entire population.
.
Efforts to make outcomes equal, independent of capability, are necessarily discriminatory against the most capable people. I chalk up the left’s insistance on equal outcomes to straight Maxist ideology: to whom accourding to need, from whom according to ability. It is as socially and economically destructive an idea as humankind has ever generated, but most academics seem to believe it.
Tom Scharf,
I didn’t say it’s main commentary was on race. However, it did make comments on race. Much of the controversy over the book is over those commentaries it did make. You can call it ‘side’ topic, but this “side” involved quite a few pages and they are there in the book notwithstanding your characterization that a particular “phrase” is the most controversial. Sometimes, pages of discussion on a topic doesn’t happen to have a single sentence that makes the controversial sound bite. So there it is.
In any case, even if we look at that one sentence, the controversy is justified. Although he doesn’t make an estimate he does deem it “highly likely” that genetic differences in intelligence between racial groups contributes to the differences in outcome. It’s a bit hard to read that as suggesting differences could be small enough to not be noticeable. Honestly, 10% to 20% would hardly be noticeable. And if it was unnoticeable, no one could deem it highly likely genetics contributes. So while he doesn’t actually make an estimate, I think a fair reading is that he thinks the contribution of genetics to the difference between outcomes for races is … oh well, certainly bigger than 20% of the difference.
When I read the book I didn’t think his book make a good case even for that claim. I think it would be better to suggest, “The evidence all around is so ambiguous that it may be mostly one or it may be mostly the other. We just don’t know.”
So yes: his saying that its highly likely the genetic component contributes to the disparity in outcomes is controversial, especially because I think the basis for the claim is tenuous. Or at least the basis in the book appeared tenuous. (But as I said before: I read it long ago.)
The “upper/ruling” social strata have always claimed they were cognitively elite. So the claim that this intelligence stratification exists, it has something to do with “smart breeding with smart” predates Medel genetics. The effect just somehow has to do with “breeding” or “family” or “blood” or what not. I don’t recall Murray presenting much evidence that the “IQ” stratification into Eloi and Morlocks is happening more now than it did way back when (when everyone also claimed it was happening.)
I wouldn’t be surprised if SPLC didn’t make a strawman of precisely what he wrote. That’s what politically oriented organizations doe. But I do think most people reading the book would have gotten the impression that was the main thrust of the book taken as a whole. It was the impression I got. And that is so even if you can’t extract the gist in a single one sentence quote.
As for the Middlebury controversy: The behavior by those closing down speech in Middlebury is appalling. But their behavior doesn’t make Murray’s book any more convincing than it was before.
The DNA people are. But they work with smaller subgroups, in ways that are cleaner and don’t touch on broad racial issues. There have been papers claiming to find genetic bases within the broad racial categories. So there isn’t the “this race v. that race” thing going on.
Anyway: there almost certainly is some hereditary component to intelligence. There is likely some hereditary component to most things we observed varying from person to person. It’s even hypothetically possible that the average varies between races for some reason or another. It’s just as far as I could tell, Murray didn’t present very good evidence it does– but despite that concluded that it’s highly likely differences in the genetic contribution to IQ is part of the reason for the difference in outcomes for races.
As for social science in general: we all know there is a replication crisis in social science. I suspect studies of intelligence across racial groups aren’t going to be immune to the sort of things that happened in the “pizza papers“. So really, unless evidence seems really strong, I’m going to tend to be skeptical of it. As far as I’m concerned The Bell Curves falls into the category of “Stuff a social scientists wrote and which isn’t very convincing.”
Off topic but interesting: Trump has fired James Comey. Better late than never I guess; it would have been more graceful for Trump to have asked for his resignation on Jan 21.
SteveF
Yeah. Comey…. I think he always “meant well”. But he’s somehow lost the connection with what’s necessary in that particular job.
Mind you: I’d never take that job. I’m not suited to that sort of job.
Comey played cutesy for a long time. I think the final straw was his inaccurate testimony before the Senate. It was minor. But apparently so was the Flynn issue. And perhaps firing Comey also means the person who violated the Espionage act by leaking about Flynn was fired.
To fire him for actions that got Trump elected is mean. Comey’s crime appears to be that he didn’t comment on the Russia investigation to go against the false information in the media, while leaks were being made against him, which they didn’t catch.
Well, I think this paragraph from Rod Rosenstein pretty well frames the chief justification for firing Comey:
Comey’s “misstatements” at the last Senate hearing didn’t help either. Nor did his unwillingness to drop the probe against Trump, which I suspect has been transformed by these events from a modest flame into a forest fire.
DeWitt Payne-
is there a standardized test for emotional intelligence?
.
I think there about 10 or so measures which restrict access to qualified practitioners, but are the psychometrics any good is the question. In psychology, science trumps art in theory, but not in practice.
Comey’s ‘misstatements” sounded to me like he’d been set up. The firing flap seems wildly disproportionate.
MikeN,
I suspect it was mostly that the FBI had not found those who were leaking Trump’s phone call transcripts (and other leaks of NSA generated phone transcripts), that pushed Trump to fire him. Had Comey handed the andministration someone to prosecute for leaking classified information, he would probably have remained in office. Comey’s real ‘sin’ was setting the ‘wrong’ priorities for the FBI from the POV of the Trump administration.
SteveF, what you’ve written above sounds very plausible.
john,
I am speculating, of course. But for the FBI to have no suspects in such a clear case of criminal activity by ‘insiders’ is almost unbelievable. A transcript of Trump’s awkward phone call with the Australian PM was handed to a media outlet hostile to Trump. I can not remember another instance where a sitting president’s official communications were so compromised for political purposes. Someone should be in Federal prison for this. No one is, and only Comey can be held to account.
The Trump Administration probably viewed Comey as a loose cannon. The recent mistakes are just a convenient excuse to him loose. Politically speaking, it is probably the smart thing to do.
JD
Pretty good discussion of how much Comey has bungled… everything.
Or course people are going to wonder about timing of firing. But the fact is: he was not leading the FBI effectively. Those complaining about his firing now were all wanting him fired at some time or another. Sometimes, you just need someone else in a job. To replace him, he needed to be fired.
I think Comey will turn out to be the anti-Trump leaker. He was foot dragging with Hillary to a ridiculous degree and he has trolled out the Russians-stole-the-election scam as long as possible.He turned the FBI into a political player and did not do effectively. Firing him in a humiliating and high profile way is only appropriate.
lucia: “Pretty good discussion of how much Comey has bungled… everything.”
Thanks for the link. I stopped paying attention to this a while ago, but my first reaction to the firing of Comey and the immediate Democrat response was “Wait a minute, haven’t the Democrats been saying Comey should be fired?”.
p.s. Perry Bacon writing at 538: “The early reaction from Democrats suggests that whatever concerns they had about Comey are outweighed by worries about Trump”. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-trump-fire-comey/
So this clown Bacon thinks that the Dems turn-on-dime is based on principle. Talk about being lost inside the bubble.
lucia:
I think Trump could have just asked him to step down early, then gone through an orderly process of replacing him.
This is what Bill Clinton did after the corruption issues with William Sessions came to light. Sessions refused and then was fired.
Mike M:
But there are two issues here, not just one.
One is the ongoing investigation of the Russian involvement in the last elections, which Trump and most of the Republican Party would clearly love to quash, and other is the issue of Comey’s mishandling of the investigation of Hillary Clinton, which for different reasons probably, pretty much everybody agrees occurred.
Because people in his administration (and himself by proxy) are under investigation, Trump has put himself and his administration in a legal and ethics bind now. Probably the best way forward would be an special prosecutor, unlikely to happy due to all of the butt-wipers in the Republican party, but it is something that wasn’t even a remote possibility before this firing.
SteveF—If you think Trump had problems with leaks from inside the FBI before, just wait.
Sigh… “unlikely to happen”.
I think Comey probably knew his job was over the moment he got handed the Clinton turd on a silver platter. The very definition of a no win scenario. I don’t understand why he didn’t just resign earlier, this was almost inevitable. He was not going to be able to effectively do his job because one side was going to end up hating him with a passion.
.
It is mildly interesting to watch the normal political hypocrisy take its exact expected course. Everyone says the things you expect them to say, nobody believes a word of it.
Well, in a normal world we would now say that the Russian investigation is now untouchable–that any hint of interference will be seized upon as proof of criminality in light of what happened to Comey.
Is this a normal world?
Carrick,
The chances of a special prosecutor with subpoena power under a Republican congress is pretty close to zero. The Bill Clinton witch hunt showed that if you dig hard enough and long enough you will eventually find something. In today’s political environment the opposition would want a special prosecutor with subpoena power under any justification whatsoever and then fish away indefinitely. Politicians policing themselves has a trust factor of zero. (font change: 10,000 point, bright red, bold, Cyrillic) THE RUSSIANS (font change: normal) conspiracy seems to have very little there there after 7 months and it isn’t because nobody is looking or the government doesn’t leak like a sieve. This attack looks increasingly like a desperate partisan fantasy. There are many more fruitful attack vectors on Trump.
Tom Scharf:
Before this, I think it was zero. Now it is definitely possible, and there are already senior Republican Senators calling for it. And there is almost no it would NOT be harmful to Trump if it happened, especially given the animus between him and the judicial branch (self inflicted wounds being his speciality).
Unlike what some pundits are (rather bizarrely) claiming, it is absolutely not true the appointment be approved by the DOJ.
Briefly the independent prosecutor gets assigned, pursuant to the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, by a special panel of judges in response to a request from Congress. Neither the DOJ nor the President play any role in its authorization.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Office_of_the_Independent_Counsel
All that said, I think it is much more likely that Congress will establish an independent committee to handle this congressional investigation. This is a step below an independent counsel and much less like pouring gasoline onto an open flame.
Carrick,
This is the point where 100% 24/7 Trump derangement hyperventilating hurts the cause. Firing the FBI director that was universally hated by both sides (short memory) isn’t a scandal, just like the last 100 “this is the one” scandals.
.
What is the left going to do? Stop “cooperating” with Trump? Become obstructionist? March on Washington? Have the media lapdogs attack him with great fervor? Accuse him of being a traitor? A liar? Incompetent? A Russian stooge? An authoritarian? A tyrant? Unite forces? Have Ivy league historians opine on this move in the NYT?
.
We could literally put the last 100 days of media and politics into a blender, hit purée, and then pour it into tomorrow’s headlines and nobody will notice a difference.
.
And finally, all the screaming seems to be missing the part where they demand Comey be put back in his job, ha ha.
.
This is currently the left’s strategy as far as I can tell:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xgx4k83zzc
Speaking of pouring gasoline onto a fire….
Comey sought more resources for Russia probe days before he was fired by President Trump, officials say
Regardless of intent, the timing almost could not have been worse.
Tom Scharf:
I think you’re underestimating the impact of a sitting president apparently interfering with an ongoing criminal investigation of his administration.
There were artful ways that Comey could have been replaced without creating a firestorm. This was not one of those.
Carrick,
Trump could have done many things including what you say. And Clinton did do things different when he ousted Sessions. But… well… Trump is Trump. I think nearly everyone would agree that he lacks grace. Certainly he does not do things in the way protocol might dictate. So I wouldn’t interpret him not carrying out the firing in some other way or the way Clinton did in the past as meaning much more than “That’s Trump.”
It is true that some people are going to suspect the reason had to do with investigations into Russia. They may or may not have. And it’s true that a sitting president does have a lot of power, including the means to interfere with investigations of himself. If he did, Comey or someone else may end up blabbing. Or something will “leak”. My guess would be: if the firing was to thwart the investigation into Russia, an important leak will happen in less than two weeks.
Carrick,
BTW: I’m not against either a Congressional investigation or a special prosecutor. It would actually be helpful to all, including Trump to have some sort of investigation into whether this had to do with Comey getting close to “Russia”. Well… including Trump assuming he’s not guilty.
But I can’t assume firing Comey was due to “Russia”, because there were oooohhhhh so many reasons why Comey ought to have been fired. That, perhaps, it should have come sooner is true. But that’s no reason why he should have been fired today. Or tomorrow. Or yesterday.
lucia:
I’m not particularly worried about this one way or the other. We have a system of checks and balances, and they seem to be working fine. If Trump is playing games with the legal system, it will catch up to him sooner rather than later.
I was just pointing out that this dismissal could have been executed much better. Certainly Trump has compromised himself politically.
And I’d prefer the independent committee over the independent counsel. I think the latter has proven to not be effective law, and has caused lasting harm to our political system. I honestly don’t anticipate that happening, but the fact it’s even on the chart now says something about how poorly Trump has handled this.
Carrick: #161756 Link pertaining to Office of Independent Counsel
…..
The second sentence of your link states that it was terminated in 1999. Neither the President nor the DOJ would be involved in this because it is defunct. As far as I know, the only legal mechanism for an Independent Counsel with general powers now is through the DOJ “independent counsel” who is appointed by the Attorney General pursuant to United States Department of Justice regulations. 28 Code of Federal Regulations 600.1 (See your own link)
Also, the firing of Comey per se doesn’t expose Trump to any legal risks. Comey serves at the President’s pleasure. Trump or members of his administration may have other legal problems, but none directly related to firing Comey.
….
In Morrison v Olson, Justice Scalia in his then dissent described what has evolved to be the current situation after the death of the Independent Counsel Act:
““Under our system of government, the primary check against prosecutorial abuse is a political one, … The prosecutors who exercise this awesome discretion are selected and can be removed by a president, whom the people have trusted enough to elect. Moreover, when crimes are not investigated and prosecuted fairly, non-selectively, with a reasonable sense of proportion, the president pays the cost in political damage to his administration.â€
JD
FBI Director has to approved by Senate right? Democrats will declare the nominee too partisan and insist on a special prosecutor, and get a few Republicans to agree.
Thanks JD, I’ll learn to read someday. I had thought I remember it being cancelled, but in skimming it I missed that. :-/ Oh well.
Still, I think the independent committee is a better approach, regardless. In my opinion, the independent counsel has been a train wreck from day one.
As I said above, I see the chief issue with the firing of Comey is that he is formally in an oversight position of an ongoing investigation of the Trump administration, so there are direct ethical questions, and well as what amounts to legal exposure from Trump selecting a replacement FBI head who will nominally be overseeing an investigation of Trump.
Carrick: “and well as what amounts to legal exposure from Trump selecting a replacement FBI head who will nominally be overseeing an investigation of Trump.”
….
This highlights the point I am trying to make. Trump has no legal liability for firing Comey. There may be heavy political consequences, but no legal consequences for the firing. It seems like there is no legal remedy for the situation, [No one to investigate Trump unless he approves] which is exactly the case and it is not the least bit unheard of for there to be wrong and no legal remedy in the American system.
JD
JD Ohio, I agree that the firing itself is legal. The potential issues come in with the replacement.
Unless you’re claiming that it’s legal for the president to interfere with an ongoing investigation (‘m pretty sure it’s not legal), that’s the exposure I’m referring to.
Carrick,
You used artful and Trump in the same sentence, that’s an oxymoron. Perhaps Trump was scared Comey might find something and he fired him. If Comey already knows something the chances of that not getting out is zero.
.
Perhaps Trump knows there is no Russian scandal (he would know) and fired him because this is a distraction and waste of time and Comey works for him. That would be understandable. So everyone gets to map their biases onto the (lack of) evidence.
.
Would an independent committee investigating this put it to bed? I doubt it in the current environment. It’s fine by me but I think the take Trump down by any means necessary is a bit too prevalent right now. A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich, and the Democrats would indict Trump if he ate one with Russian mustard.
.
I stand by my own conspiracy theory that if Putin wants to sow discord in the US he would manufacture evidence Trump is colluding with them. KGB defector testifies blah blah blah. Plausible deniability and let the partisans tear down their own country. Who needs nukes?
Tom Scharf-
Murray used the old Standford-Binet, ‘the best predictor of future academic success’. But it was also an aggressive screening tool for academic placement. See the problem?
.
And IQ tests which use timed written questions are pre-filtering the IQ indicators on reading proficiency. The result: notoriously slow/dyslexic readers such as Einstein have low IQ!. And outside academia, dyslexia is supposedly positively correlated with high intelligence. Therefore IQ is a measure of academic intelligence and probably a subset of human intelligence.
.
Finally, try to imagine a dyslexic genius with ADHD forced to sit quietly in classes for the educably mentally retarded – for 10 years.
Carrick: “Unless you’re claiming that it’s legal for the president to interfere with an ongoing investigation”
….
In the sense of stopping the investigation, I would say probably yes. (I haven’t researched it closely) In the sense of committing crimes to stop the investigation (for instance, asking people to commit perjury to cover up past wrongs), then no.
…..
Issues such as this were part of my concern when Obama was not only refusing to enforce immigration laws but actively working to undermine them. Prosecutorial discretion is a huge power (as acknowledged by Scalia) and its application can undermine the informal bonds that hold a legal system together. The Left which cheered Obama for actively undermining immigration law, has no moral standing to criticize Trump for firing Comey or for simply stopping the investigation. Prosecutorial discretion as used by Obama is the exception which swallows up the whole.
….
I would add that no one involved in the formal investigations has accused Trump of colluding with the Russians. So, he has grounds to say this is a mess, let us move on. Much like, he has grounds to say that the Hillary Clinton email episode is a mess and let us move on even though many legal observers believe she committed a crime. (Mukasey for instance)
JD
blue
I suspect no one ever gave Einstein an IQ test. Also, I think real IQ tests include parts that are not reading based.
Some standardized test try to estimate IQ. But that’s not necessarily real. I think most people don’t really have their IQ measured.
I’m not sure what you mean. Do you mean that because people who do have high intelligence and dyslexia don’t move into academia while those with high intelligence and no dyslexia do, you expect dyslexics outside academia to contain high intelligent people who otherwise wouldn’t be outside academia? Thereby creating a positive correlation? Or something else?
For what it’s worth: I don’t think there’s much evidence Einstein was dyslexic.
http://www.albert-einstein.org/article_handicap.html
blueice2hotsea,
I’m pretty much done on this subject, but you can find racial differences in almost every measure of “intelligence”. SAT’s, IQ tests, grades, high school dropout rates, college readiness, academic competitions, K-12 standardized tests, patents, etc. It’s very common to find the same sort order Asian / White / Hispanic / Black. Maybe they all measure the same thing and it’s an unfair measurement in some way. The world awaits a better measurement system. The fact that intelligence is hereditary is not controversial. The fact these certain differences exist is not even controversial, why they exist is. It is not socially acceptable to state these facts and ponder if they matter.
.
Are these perfect measures? Obviously not. Does collating by race accomplish much? No. Should it change current policy? No. Is it an interesting area of study? Yes. Could it be useful in the future? Maybe. If your genetic profile indicated you were a visual learner / ADHD / dyslexic / Aspergers / whatever then maybe the curriculum could be tuned for that from an early age.
Comey investigating anyone? Not hardly. He’s management, not anyone who actually does anything. His firing won’t stop any ongoing investigation until and unless his replacement orders it stopped. This is nothing like Nixon’s firing of Archibald Cox, which led to the resignations of AG Elliot Richardson and DAG William Ruckelshaus. I don’t see anyone resigning in protest.
Considering the rumors I heard about internal unrest in the FBI over the mess Comey made meddling with the Clinton investigation, I suspect a lot of the agents are celebrating his firing.
Tom Scharf
Where isn’t it socially acceptable? It’s fine to state facts here. We’ve been discussing facts.
It is a IQ scores vary across racial groups. It is a fact that heredity contributes IQ. But those two together do not combine to turn into a fact the idea the differences in scores we see between racial groups is due to heredity.
Heredity is not the only factor affecting IQ’s and other factors known to affect IQ also vary across racial groups. Beyond IQ is also rising rapidly across the world at a rate that seems impossible to explain based on heredity– which suggests other non-hereditary factors are important to scores and in a way that could potentially explain differences we see across racial groups.
It may be that a significant amount of the difference between average racial IQ is hereditary; it may not be. The data in Murray’s book did not strike me as evidence that there was a strong likelyhood there was. Of course I may be wrong: but my impression is that his claim– and he made it– that the likelyhood was high– was unsupported.
Presumably, I am allowed to say this, just as you are allowed to express whatever evaluation you have of the evidence in that book (at least here, though possibly not at Middlebury.)
No. But I never based my judgement that Murray’s conclusion was not supported by the evidence in his book with any notion measures of IQ were imperfect.
Whether the answer is yes or no, Murray’s conclusion still appeared unsupported.
And.. whether or not… Murray’s conclusions still appeared unsupported.
It happens I’m not upset that Murray wrote his book, nor that people are interested in it, nor that people would talk about it. In fact: I think it’s good to talk about it. But, as it happens, having read it, my view is his conclusions were not supported by the evidence in that book. The rhetorical questions just asked don’t change my mind on that.
DeWitt:
This is exactly why Comey was set up with an inaccurate description of the contents of the Weiner Mobile. He was able to amply demonstrate that he had little if any clue as to exactly what it was that he had represented as thousands of heretofore un-reviewed emails.
Lucia, there was a report issued by a group of scholars after the Bell Curve came out, that said Murray was right. He never said hereditary was the only factor or if I remember correctly even the dominant factor, but that it had a large influence. The racial section was a small portion of the book, and since then Murray has been saying the same thing while focusing on whites only, like in Coming Apart and his bubble test. I’ll try to find the link.
Off-topic. Showed up on my facebook page — crowdfunding Rayton Solar, which claims to be able to produce potentially more efficient solar panels potentially more cheaply than currently.
With a video by Bill Nye.
>manufacture evidence Trump is colluding with them.
Tom, the PR firm that hired Steele whose dossier led to FISA warrant of Trump is right ow being accused of being an agent of Russia.
SteveF, I agree with your take on Comey’s firing: after awhile one gets a clear picture of whether someone is supports you or is trying to knock you down.
.
1) He made scant efforts into finding or deterring leakers.
.
2) The chances of Trump being a Putin puppet are laughable yet he kept the talking point alive by giving the keeping the fruitless investigation going. Remember Obama’s national security staff had been scouring surveillance of Trump through the election yet found “no evidence” of ties according to Clapper and Brennan in January.
.
3) He belittled Trump’s claim of wiretap despite knowing that there indeed had been surveillance.
.
4) He had no criticisms of the Obama and produced zero hides for the many scandals.
.
5) He let Hillary and her staff off the hook on national security violations with a warning in place of a DOJ referral.
.
Now one can finally imagine there may be some progress in finding leakers and getting to the bottom of many Obama mysteries.
.
BTW, Mark Steyn did a good post on this today. Steyn also started a premium membership last weekend to raise funds for his Mann law suit. For $150 you can get a book of your choice, lifetime commenting privileges on his posts, and a coupon for his gift store. I joined.
Carrick (Comment #161769)
May 10th, 2017 at 2:06 pm
JD Ohio, I agree that the firing itself is legal. The potential issues come in with the replacement.
The president pick a replacement, usually for 10 years. No issues there. I presume you agree that the hiring itself is legal as well, of course.
Angech: “The president pick a replacement, usually for 10 years.”
….
That is true, and I would expect real fire works there. On the other hand, the easy work around is to just leave the deputy or some other comparatively high level official in charge if confirmation becomes a war, which is quite possible.
JD
Ron Graf,
All political apointees should be asked for a formal letter of resingation on Jan 20 following a presidential election. No exceptions. 99.7% of those resignations should be accepted, and 100% accepted for divas like Comey and political hacks like Sally Yeates. Trump was crazy to let all the Obama holdovers hang around past Jan 20; they should have been out of the office on Jan 21 AM. The leakers were almost certainly deceptive hold-over worms like Yeates.
Carrick,
“If you think Trump had problems with leaks from inside the FBI before, just wait.”
.
Well, we are not sure were the leaks came from, only that they were clearly a violation of law. I rather suspect the next director of the FBI will be more ‘sensitive’ about the need for Trump’s official communications to not be published in the Washington Post or the NYT.
.
I will be extremely surprised if lealks like those from January/February happen again. Comey may not have cared much about politically motivated leaks damaging to Trump, but you can be certain the next director of the FBI will care.
MikeN
I’m willing to believe there was some report written by some scholars who said he was right about something. Obviously, I can’t engage this without information that might help me find the report and read what they said.
I never said he said it was the only factor. I did just engaged the quote you posted. And, he did go on about it quite a bit. I guess whether the section was “small” or not is in the eye of the beholder.
I have no idea what he’s said lately. The early work seemed sufficiently flimsy that I haven’t devoted my life to following his later work or discussions. That said: clearly, the things he said about races– which he did say and devoted space to in the Bell Curves, really can’t be said by focusing on one race only. I’d need to read what he’s written to know if he’s pretty much stopped talking about race… or to learn what he is talking about.
But– he did say things about race. And he made conclusions about that that seemed unsupported by the content of his book. But if he’s stopped claiming those things and is discussing something else, I have no problem with that. Obviously, I can’t engage this “something else” without reading it– and you don’t seem to be telling us what that is. So I’m not going to try to comment on that.
Lucia,
There are persistent differences in measured average intellectualy capacity for identifiable groups (east asians, Jews, people of European descent, people of west African descent, native Americans, etc). There is little doubt that at least part of those percistent differences in measured average can be attributed to environmental/cultural factors. But the suggestion that “all groups are equal” in capabilities (both intellectual and otherwise) is clearly mistaken; the contrary evidence is overwhelming.
.
The political implication of claims of absolute equality of capabilities between identifiable groups is explicit discrimination against more capable individuals to ensure “equality of outcomes” for groups, rather than equality of opportunity for individuals. The implicit argument is tbat any difference in outcome between identifiable groups is proof positive of social discrimination against identifiable groups, which must then be ‘rectified’ via explicit descrimination agains more capable people. I find such arguments to be utter rubbish.
SteveF
If someone makes that argument implicitly or explicitly, it’s not a strong one. Irish who settled in the Applachians did worse academically and economically than those who settled elsewhere. I don’t think this was due to “positive social discrimination” against the groups. Sometimes circumstances happen.
If someone makes it explicitly it’s pretty easy to counter that argument.
That there outcomes were difference doesn’t imply that the differences need to be equaled by explicit discrimination. It’s true some people make that arguement, but it’s not something that follows automatically. And in my view, the existences of the differences– for whatever reason– is not necessarily something that needs to be rectified.
SteveF,
I should add that it’s not at all clear that the argument that one race is economically disavataged because of lower IQ cannot be used to argue for precisely the social policies you dislike. It’s pretty common to say that if disadavantages are innate, one must levelize. After all: the argument goes, if the disadvantaged can’t help it, we should lift them up.
I’m not into government trying to impose equal outcomes whether or not IQ differences exist between races. I think it’s both unfair and worse: economically counter productive. Most people will not expend extra effort if they can’t benefit from their own efforts. The result of such systems is economic privation, sometimes severe.
http://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local–files/definitions-structure-and-measurement/Intelligence-Knowns-and-unknowns.pdf
They didn’t endorse a genetic cause for race IQ differences, but shot down other causes and declared the reason is unknown.
Murray hasn’t backtracked from the statements on race in his book. He has merely tried to avoid the reaction to The Bell Curve.
> if disadavantages are innate, one must levelize.
When I read a review of The Bell Curve, the outrage hadn’t developed yet, and my reaction was that these authors are liberals talking about inequality pushing for government intervention. It might have been New York Times, which is not critical, but the review by Malcolm Brown covers three books and not quite what I remember.
Lucia,
“It’s pretty common to say that if disadavantages are innate, one must levelize.”
.
That is not the argument I have seen advanced to justify “affirmative action” to equalize outcomes. If that were argued, I am pretty sure it would be broadly rejected by voters.
.
What is usually claimed is that all differences in outcome are due to widespread racial prejudice, not inherent differences between groups, and giving explicit preference to certain individuals is to compensate for that widespread prejudice. This is why there are endless (and bizarre!) claims of “subconscious” racial prejudice and “racial micro-aggressions” by those on the left. The reality is that the left wants more equal outcomes, quite independent of why outcomes differ. Claims of racial prejudice are just a means to the end they desire.
MikeN, SteveF,
My experience is that people who want to levelize want to levelize. They will use any evidence to say the reason we should do something is to levelize. If one proved the differences were innate, then their reaction is “We must levelize because of this because it’s not their fault!”. If one proved they were due to racial prejudice the answer is “We must levelize because of this because others are doing it to them!”
I, on the other hand, think we should not levelize– but my view has nothing to do with the innate ability of any groups of people.
The problem with levelizing is it results in lack of motivations. And in my view, no matter what the reason for the differences, the lack of motivation results in the majority of people not working toward improving their own — or anyone else’s lot. The end is not only economic stagnation, but even moving backwards. Sufficient levelizing and people all end up in the stone-age.
Government enforced sharing of all output equally results in very little to share. It does so no matter what the reason for differences in group achievement when people are allowed to keep most of what they produce.
I do think that if there is explicit prejudice holding a specific group back, that should be fixed. Any systemic problem should be fixed. But, certainly, in the 60s or so, we didn’t need any studies of IQ to diagnose systemic prejudice. We still had official, entirely visible redlining. We had official policies in social places not permitting blacks to join various clubs. We had hotels not renting rooms and so on. Virginia had laws prohibiting blacks and whites from marrying. (Loving v. Virginia was decided in 1967.) Much of the overt stuff is remedied.
I think some care needs to continue in watching to see if prejudice is affecting opportunities of people– I’m sure it still sometimes does. But I also don’t think socialism ever the way to correct it. I also don’t think overly strong affirmative action– which is pretty darn close to quotas in disguise– is the way to fix it. Whatever the motivations, AA has not seemed to have worked.
(I think improving gradeschools and highschools and making sure all kids have access to good schools is a better way to fix things. But– at least in principle– everyone claims to want better schools. Yet… cities don’t end up getting them.)
lucia,
The joke in the former Soviet Union went: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
Lucia,
I think the general interpretation in polite company is quoting racial IQ stats is a dog whistle for white supremacy, thus socially unacceptable. Asian supremacy never seems to come up, ha ha. The counter argument is that socioeconomic differences are due almost entirely to environmental / structural racism causes (this argument is socially acceptable). I think the social sciences really, really wants this to be true for non-academic reasons. There is a monoculture in this academic area in my view, with cultural dysfunction and genetics out of the Overton window. It’s possible they do examine these things, but the media filters it out. It’s not like I read their journals.
.
Being labeled a racist or (gulp) white supremacist is today’s scarlet letter. For a public facing person one slip-up in this area can cost you your career.
.
I think you need to examine Murray’s words here. He said: “It seems highly likely to us that both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences”. My interpretation here was that structural racism is in the environmental category. He explicitly states he cannot separate them with current data.
.
I didn’t read the The Bell Curve, just published reviews, so maybe you are right. I think what critics think Murray said does not match what he wrote or continues to say in his interviews. It looks like a classic witch burning to me. Many, many academics state lots of unproven things and don’t get mobbed or black balled for it.
.
The scary argument is: Intelligence is hereditary. Intelligence leads to better socioeconomic outcomes. There are differences in racial intelligence. There are differences in racial socioeconomic outcomes. Racial socioeconomic outcomes correlate well to racial intelligence scores. This chain is cause and effect and self reinforcing. It is an IED of an argument with each link having good evidence, but a lot of links that weaken and alternate degrees of freedom. Oodles of social commentary are poured from the media every day and this subject is verboten.
.
You are correct that it is not proven, but it hasn’t been disproven either. What has been proven are socioeconomic outcomes are complex and multifaceted. It should be acknowledged that even if this was true, and proven, many of the possible solutions to social issues remain unchanged. Understanding causes can lead to more efficient solutions. For example if culture and genetics are significant then disparate impact laws that attack discrimination make less sense as solutions.
.
Murray: As our society continues to move toward a more and more knowledge based economy, these differences will be amplified. Coming Apart examines this problem in only the white community because variance within a group is much larger than variance between groups and, errr, Murray is capable of learning what bringing racial differences into it earned him. His main thrust is the increase in cognitive elite stratification blah blah blah, but he has a 23 year old scarlet letter that will never go away.
Lucia,
“I think some care needs to continue in watching to see if prejudice is affecting opportunities of people– I’m sure it still sometimes does.”
.
Sure, it happens all the time. For example, the Ivy’s discriminate against every “over-represented” population category… Specifically Asians, Jews, Whites. Medical schools admit much less qualified individuals by discriminating against “over-represented” groups, effectively setting lower admission standards for favored groups, and higher standards for disfavored groups.
.
The entire AA approach is socially pernicious because it institutionalizes and legitimizes discrimination based on race, religion, etc. It institutionalizes the very thing it is supposed to eliminate.
SteveF,
I agree.
SteveF: “The entire AA approach is socially pernicious because it institutionalizes and legitimizes discrimination based on race, religion, etc. It institutionalizes the very thing it is supposed to eliminate.”
I agree. As long as the left keeps fanning the flame of racism, we will never get to a society in which race does not matter.
There used to be prejudice and discrimination against Catholics; that still existed 50 years ago, but is no longer significant. But it would likely still be an issue if we had AA for Catholics.
I wonder how many Americans could name the two Catholics elected to national office.
Tom Scharf
Sometimes it is a dog whistle. In fact, since few people spend much time studying IQ and researching evidence one way or the other, often if it comes up it is a dog whistle. This doesn’t mean it’s always a dog whistle. There are circumstances where it is natural for the stats to be brought up; in those cases it is not a dog whistle. So… there we are.
Well. My judgement against him is not what he concluded, but that he came to conclusions based on tenous data. So, my tendency is to discount what he’s likely to conclude in future work– though that might be unfair. That said: I’ve naturally not run out to buy and read his new work. After all: I suspect he’s likely to exhibit the similar poor reasoning he did before. But perhaps not.
Maybe his book is worth reading. Maybe not. But if he’s worrying about
” As our society continues to move toward a more and more knowledge based economy, these [in outcomes due to IQ being hereditary] will be amplified.”
Then… all I can say is he’s hardly the first to worry about that. I’m pretty sure that “concern” the dumb or unable breed with the dumb and the bright with the bright predates Mendel. Like Malthusian prophesies that the end is nigh, these horribles never seem to happen.
If you mean he’s worried about something else being amplified, maybe he’s right. But I can’t tell from what you wrote. I infer it’s what I inserted.
Back to IQ:
I didn’t say it had been disproven. And if Murray had limited his statement to the notion that IQ is hereditary and that might explain the difference in outcome is not disproven, so we just don’t know, I wouldn’t criticize him. (Of course, in that case, his book wouldn’t have sold.)
But Murray claimed a particular thing was highly probable. If things are not proven– nor anywhere near proven, that claim is wrong.
On your comment on social sciences: I agree that there are many– often in the social sciences who very much want the reason for existing differences to be purely environmental– and others who really want those environmental features to be on going racial discrimination (as opposed to the historic legacy of different people having settled into different professions and different parts of the country.) But by the same token, there are other people who want the reason to be “clearly” heredity.
My view is: we don’t know. We don’t even know which way things lean. And Murray’s error is to say we know anything with “high probability”. I don’t think we do. I have no idea whether people whose believe things lean one way or the other on the IQ debate are right or wrong. But I think Murray was incorrect is assessing we knew anything with “high probability”- and suggest that is something we actually know based on concrete evidence. I think he is rightly criticized for making conclusions that aren’t supported.
I don’t like the entire dog whistle thing at all. One can imagine there are (not so) secret signals that show one is on the same team. This implication though is overused in order to impeach the character of anyone who even enters a subject area without engaging the actual argument. I read a lot of Murray / Middlebury articles because I have a strongly held position on free speech, and I can’t tell you how many times “Murray, who the SPLC says is a white supremacist” came up, but I can tell you how often a discussion of the evidence of genetic dependencies were discussed, approximately zero. Typically if there was anything it was simply an assertion he has been proven wrong.
.
Realistically there isn’t any particular requirement the media dive into this in order to cover the story, but if they are going down the tar and feather route, they should allow a defense. It wasn’t entirely one sided. Here the NYT covers an experiment where they transcribe his Middlebury speech and send it out for scholarly opinion. Some without his name, some with. Interesting results.
.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opinion/sunday/charles-murrays-provocative-talk.html?_r=0
.
So we probably agree more than we disagree, and my emotional attachment isn’t the legitimacy of racial IQ arguments but prior restraint on speech from academic institutions, including faculty, unwilling to even hear the argument. A religious attachment to identity politics seems to be in play.
.
There are very few who attempt to justify Middlebury behavior, but I would like to give credit where credit is due. The Middlebury administration (unlike Berkeley) made a major effort to let Murray speak and did not allow him to be disinvited. They just recently handed out (unknown) punishment to upwards of 70 students for their behavior. That’s something. I am under no pretense that Middlebury is a champion of balanced academic viewpoints, but they showed some spine where others have failed miserably.
Tom Scharf,
Sometimes accusation of dog whistles are attempts to shut down legitimate discussion. By the same token, sometimes, people do dog whistle. There are left wing dog whistles and right wing dog whistles.
I’m totally against prior restraint of speech. I think those blocking Murray from speaking at Middlebury were totally wrong. But by the same token: I think Murray made tenuous conclusions in the Bell Curve. I’m not going to pretend otherwise merely because a group who dislikes him was wrong and out of line.
For that matter: I think Milo is a meaningless self-promoting turd. But I think if he’s invited to speak by university students that should be allowed on the same basis as other people are allowed to speak. Same for Coulter (who at least is witty. Sometimes she isn’t wrong.)
But I’m not going to pretend I agree with people on things merely because some other idiots want to shut down discussion of issues. WRT to IQ and race: I think the discussion of IQ and race is important and it ought to be permitted. This is not to say that I don’t recognize that at least sometimes the brought up in certain circumstances and ways, it can be a dog whistle.
DeWitt:
Well, no.
FBI management assigns personnel to tasks, approves investigations as well as allocates fund and (what probably got Comey fired in real life) asks for new funds to expand investigations. They aren’t walking the streets digging up details, that’s true, but the idea they can’t control the direction, scope or even existence of an investigation, that’s simply not true. If Comey or whoever replaced him ordered the FBI to stop investigating the Russia connection, that’d be it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are happy he’s gone, but I’m sure far more are more unhappy with the circumstances of Comey’s leaving. A few have gone as far as to say off-the-record that they view Trump as having declared war on the FBI.
SteveF: Based on the history of leaks, I’d be really shocked if there weren’t leaks of the same or greater magnitude.
You guys seem so surprised that these leaks happen, but they’ve been here all along. The bottom line is don’t do stupid stuff, and the leaks won’t debilitate you like it did with Trump’s criminally stupid act of keeping Michael Flynn on board after being warned about Flynn’s illegal acts that, in many people’s view, were borderline with espionage.
Carrick,
Perhaps my memory fails me, but I can’t think of another instance where the transcript of a president’s conversation with another head of state was leaked to the press. Maybe you can provide an example.
Milo is an idiot. The charge that the right is intentionally inviting idiots to speak as an instrument to inflame academia is likely 100% accurate. If so, then team academia seems rather eager to jump into that bear trap with both feet.
Carrick,
Please don’t make me inadvertently go to Salon. It burns my eyes.
.
IT’S ALL FALLING APART
Trump makes liars of his staff — even Vice President Mike Pence
.
Self care: See Melissa McCarthy sing “I Feel Pretty†as Sean Spicer
.
The White House may have permitted a security breach when it let the Russian government take photographs
.
Look past Jim Comey: The Census director’s sudden resignation may create serious long-term problems
.
Nixon didn’t have Twitter: The parallels are clear, but Trump might be more dangerous
.
A coup in real time? Historian Timothy Snyder says the Comey firing is Trump’s “open admission of collusion with Russia”
.
Americans are witnessing a slow-motion coup
.
What’s the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?
Hint: It’s not “president”
.
WATCH: Samantha Bee defends “independent turd†James Comey
.
I can’t go on, ha ha.
Carrick,
This is from Wikipedia’s description of salon.com:
Do you really think that is a credible source of information about Trump, his administration, or his policies? I sure don’t. Every story is written to cast Trump in the worst possible light, and neither facts not reason seem involved. Believing what Salon.com writes about Trump is about like believing everything Breitbart wrote about Obama.
Carrick,
By the way, salon.com was founded by David Talbot, a lifelong dedicated leftist who seems more than a little enchanted by wild-eyed conspiracy theories. Here is wiki describing his book about the Kennedy assassinations:
Salon.com does seem to have swallowed the founder’s lunacy, hook, leader, and sinker.
Carrick,
I did indeed imply that Comey or his replacement could control, i.e. expand or stop, the investigation. But, as you say, he isn’t the one digging up the data, so he isn’t an investigator, he’s a manager. Firing an obviously incompetent manager is not a declaration of war unless the rest of the organization feels they are incompetent as well.
The FBI, IMO, is not particularly good at what it does, and largely, never has been. Under Hoover, they were government thugs. They need a good shake up.
In The Bell Curve, Murray argues that before people might marry anyone, but now it is more who they met in college, creating a cognitive elite. Race got all the coverage, but it was one chapter of the book.
Interesting detail in the APA review of the science, IQ is actually increasing. What is a 100 IQ now would have been 105 when he wrote the book, and 120 in the 1950s.
The FBI needs to be a bit cautious. In the event of a major terrorist attack it isn’t going to look very good if they spent a bunch of time investigating their own government with little to show for it. One can imagine nobody is going to give the FBI the benefit of the doubt if they miss something on the terror front. Heads will roll.
MikeN,
That’s the Flynn effect. Nobody really understands it too well. It may stop occurring (or peak) after a period time. Nutrition, better medical, more stimulating environments, etc. It’s a bit of a mystery.
MikeN
Which is nonsense. People didn’t just randomly marry in the past.
Some people do. But most people I know did not marry someone they went to college with. I am an exception.
I’m not sure what the relevance of it being only one chapter is.
He said made conclusions that did not appear supported by the data in his book. Some related to race. They appeared to not be well supported by the data in his book. He was criticized for this bit. That’s normal.
Yes, that bit got more coverage. Had he not had that stuff about race in the book, likely the book would have gotten no coverage. It would just be another book that contained discussions no one cared one way or the other about (and that also appears rather unconvincing.) It would simply not have sold and not be discussed at all. So: yes. Chapter 13 is what made people read the book, criticize it and discuss it.
Tom Scharf (Comment #161810)
What you’ve written reminds me of Melville’s Billy Budd, the message of which was in essence “First, mind the store.”
Out of curiosity, how many of the people who are married on this list met their spouses in college. (I did. In grad school.)
New academic study links rising income inequality to ‘assortative mating’
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/01/29/new-academic-study-links-rising-income-inequality-to-assortive-mating/
.
“A new working paper by an international team of economists finds that better educated people are increasingly more likely to marry other better-educated people while those with less formal schooling are more likely to choose a less well-educated partner.”
.
This was a working paper in 2014, I was too lazy to track it any further. Part of the reason it is increasing inequality is because women are entering the workforce more and so “assortativing” to college women now provides more bang for the buck. Wait, what did I just say? No I didn’t mean it that way, ha ha. Great, now I am a white supremacist and a sexist.
.
I imagine one can find counter arguments in about 1 minute of searching.
Tom/Mike
It’s worth nothing that on average todays African American’s score higher on IQ’s tests than WWII era European American’s IQ. So if the IQ of the African American’s is supposedly deficient mostly due to their having fewer genes for smarts, one can’t help but wonder how their IQ managed to rise. Also: It’s a bit difficult to attribute this to the claimed “sorting” effect Murray is worrying about.
I met my wife during my first job, but it should be noted that the workforce there was probably 85% college educated.
.
It might be surprising today, but way back when it was a bit shameful if the wife made more money than the man given the traditional roles in society. I think there is zero shame in that today, or more likely a point of pride if you ask me.
Apparently the Flynn Effect is race neutral.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2907168/
Hah, I met mine in junior high. We then practiced on others and married at 42. that was 32 years ago. Yippee.
Tom,
But the combo of “prosperity/power” has always tended to marry off with “prosperous/power”.
When I was a kid, lots kids Mom’s had not gone to college. But kids parents tended to come from the same socio-economic strata.
My mom — doctors daughter– married my dad– lawyers son. Their families knew each other because her uncle worked for my Dad’s grandfather.
My great-grandma mechanical engineer/manufacturer/plantation owners daughter married my great-grandpa head of engineering team building railroad from Santiago to Havana because her parents were involved in the consortium that funded the project to build the railroad.
I would suggest that in terms of “IQ”, there was already stratification. Because none of doctors, lawyers nor engineers were dumb back then and their kids were already marrying each other.
Of course incomes would be more equal if people married at random. But I think they have not done so for a long, long time.
I seriously doubt that people are getting smarter. It’s more likely, IMO, that the test has flaws.
OTOH, who marries whom may be affecting the rate of autism and Asperger’s syndrome, or not.
Now adays, women who are smart are highly likely to go to college. This was not the case before the… hmmm 50s? 60s? That the correlation between education of the bride and groom is increasing does not necessarily tell us the correlation between their IQ is increasing.
DeWitt
That’s my view. And, moreover, it seems plausible those flaws are broad enough to shown noticeable differences between large groups of people whose life experiences were different. We might not know what that is, but the fact of the Flynn effect suggests it is there.
SteveF:
I’d be able to pick ten different qualified examples of leaks that are each unique, many much more serious than this. So I’m not sure of your point.
Well I was taught that if a thing is true, it’s true regardless of who states it.
Though I recall you using Peggy Noonan and Sean Hannity. These people aren’t even reporters, nor even analysts, they are opinion writers, and neither has been known to be particularly beholden to the truth. So “credible source” seems to be in the eye of the beholder here.
The Salon article was literally the first relevant item popped up in my search. I went into that comment with the foreknowledge that there were many copies of it (plagiarized from an original most likely) floating around. Looking at the Google links a b it more, I believe the original traces back to this Washington Post article:
Link here.
Lucia,
“So if the IQ of the African American’s is supposedly deficient mostly due to their having fewer genes for smarts, one can’t help but wonder how their IQ managed to rise.”
.
All groups have had a similar rise, the relative differences remain. Why all IQ test scores have increased is an interesting question.
Carrick,
That’s powerful confirming evidence for my opinion that FBI agents are incompetent. Anyone with half a brain could see it coming. It probably would have happened even faster if HRC had been elected.
DeWitt:
I’m not sure that’s a meaningful distinction.
If I have students under me collecting data, and I am directing their efforts, paying their salaries, assigning them tasks, etc, I certainly would be considered an investigator, even if I didn’t collect any of the data personally.
They may not like him (some of them were clearly at loggerheads with him), but I think you’re overstating the case here. I’ve nobody in that organization who said he was an incompetent manager.
I don’t entirely disagree here. However, if I have a hornets nest under the eaves of my shed, I would want that removed.
There are good ways of doing either of these and bad ones. Bad ones usually stir up hornets and you get stung, which is pretty much what happened here.
DeWitt:
You obviously don’t work there, so I’d like you to explain how you find this to be confirming evidence.
It’s certainly inconsistent with your stated worldview, which ab initio doesn’t make it wrong.
Carrick,
“So I’m not sure of your point.”
.
And I am really not sure why you can’t see the point. The specific leaks from the first days of the Trump administrations were unique, extreme, and targeted specifically to damage Trump.
.
WRT nameless sources within the Federal Bureau of Investigation: unidentified sources could be anybody, from custodian on up… assuming the sources actually exists. I am pretty sure most bureaucrats detest Trump… no surprise there, since he has been saying the bureaucracy is a big part of ‘the swamp’ in Washington. We’ll see if the FBI retaliates against Trump, as that anonymous source suggests. I doubt it very much.
Comey, btw, as Deputy AG under Bush, was responsible for the appointment of Patrick Fitzgerald as special counsel in the Plame affair. You know, the one who railroaded Scooter Libby rather than the actual leakers, Richard Armitage and Karl Rove.
SteveF, truly damaging leaks would be ones where people were killed or significant US assets were destroyed. Those have actually occurred, this is chicken sh*t by comparison.
Trump lies and gets embarrassed because somebody leaks the truth? Oh boo hoo.
Actually, it says he was an “intelligence official”.
Carrick,
Do you think that Comey would have survived in a Clinton administration? I don’t.
Your example of directing your student’s research is not relevant. Comey did not come up through the ranks of the FBI as an agent. He’s been a prosecuting attorney for most of his career.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Comey
DeWitt:
That’s a trick question: I don’t actually know who would have survived the Clinton administration.
But honestly I don’t know. Had Clinton or her administration been under investigation at the time, it certainly would have raised my hackles, and probably everybody here who is dismissing the seriousness of the issue because Trump did the firing rather than Clinton.
I think it’s directly relevant, regardless of the nature of his appointment. It has to do with the role that Comey would have as oversight of that investigation. The fact he went looking for permission to expand the operation as well as additional money certainly tells us he was playing an oversight role of some sort.
Carrick,
I’m reminded of a former Director of Research where I worked. When he was a lab head, his name was on every patent that came out of that lab. In one particular very high profile product, he had precisely nothing to do with the invention. But he still claimed credit for the invention.
It wasn’t a trick question. I didn’t ask if you knew. No one could. I asked your opinion, which you dodged and redirected.
Carrick,
“intelligence official.”
.
Yup, anybody, from custodian on up.
DeWitt:
I did answer it when I said “honestly I don’t know,” as in I don’t feel I can form a educated opinion. There’s not enough information without specifying a scenario.
I don’t see how it’s redirection to notice double standards though.
I’ve seen it in European labs too, but there the department head also personally controls the purse strings, and directs people to work on particular problem. There it’s usually considered appropriate for him to claim priority on ideas, especially those he came up with himself.
Where I work, the PI is considered to be the chief investigator. That would be the guy who decides what research is done, when it can be done, and how much can be spent. Not that dissimilar to the FBI director, in a major case like this. I can imagine plenty of low-profile scenarios where he wouldn’t properly be considered part of the investigation, but this isn’t one of those.
That’s enough semantics for one evening for me.
SteveF:
It’s not particularly credible to argue the WaPo would quote a custodian and describe him as an “intelligence official”. So, probably not.
Carrick,
The Washinton post is not particularly credible, independent of who they claim to be quoting. The WaPo wants to see Trump driven from office, because they disagree with his politics, his apointees, and his policies. They are nothing but political advocates for the ‘progressive left’, not really a news organization… much like a hardcopy version of CNN.
.
I can almost hear the screaming and howling when Trump appoints someone like Gorsuch to replace Kennedy. And Ginsberg? Convulsive collapse by many progressives seems almost certain. Even if he accomplishes nothing else, Trump is going to have a big impact on how the constitution is ‘interpreted’ for decades to come.
“The fact he went looking for permission to expand the operation as well as additional money certainly tells us he was playing an oversight role of some sort.”
The FBI does not have any money to cover an operation?
What absolute rubbish.
Does this mean any time any new crime is reported to them they have to run to the government and ask for more money?
Similarly if the villain sticks up another bank they have to ask permission to expand their operation
Absolute rubbish.
How can people, not Carrick, the news organisations and Comey make up fake news like this.
Re the silly race/ intelligence debate.
Look at Obama, look at hidden numbers
Look at Eddie Murphy and Sidney Poitier.
All human beings have all ranges of intelligence open to them.
And we all share very common, very close genetic relationships going back less than 100 generations.
Carrick,
I find little difference today in practice between most of those called journalists and those who write opinion articles other than the opinion writers are honest about their work being their opinion rather than news.
Carrick (Comment #161833): “The fact he went looking for permission to expand the operation as well as additional money certainly tells us he was playing an oversight role of some sort.”
That turns out to be a fake “fact” (not even an alternative fact). It originated with unnamed sources in Congress, undoubtedly with an agenda, speaking to people in the media with the same agenda. It has been denied by the DoJ. It has also been denied, under oath, by the acting Director of the FBI (Comey’s deputy) in testimony before a Congressional committee.
The furious FBI agents story has a similar pedigree. Only fools would believe such stories in the present climate.
The hysteria over the Russian election bs is as if UFO kooks took over NASA. This is ridiculous. The only group trying to delegitimize the 2016 election are the democrats and their supporters. The implication that somehow the President only gets to exercise his authority if democrats are in charge, which is what the last few months have been about, is starting to annoy me. A lot.
Thanks Mike M, I wasn’t sure from this distance if it was one of Carrick’s known facts or not. For the reasons above it did not pass the smell test and people should have been able to discern this.
It did however pass the blame anything on a Trump test which seems to function as a bypass for thinking.
I wonder if the Americans will use Sarin to help the Kurds against there erstwhile Sunni rebel friends in Eastern Syria.
I see they are arming them to match the arms they gave the rebels but a little more help would not go astray.
Then they will have to arm the Turks to match the weapons they gave to the Kurds. Etc.
angech,
“Then they will have to arm the Turks to match the weapons they gave to the Kurds. Etc.”
.
The Kurds have very limited military capabilities. Not so the Turks. They are a NATO member and have a capable military, though one that seems soon destined to become an ‘islamic’ force opposed to European style pluralism rather than a secular one aligned with European style pluralism. I don’t see Turkey’s political trajectory over the last decade as consistent with NATO membership in the future. If I were a Turk, I’d be very worried, and looking for a new place to live.
angech,
“And we all share very common, very close genetic relationships going back less than 100 generations.”
.
This is completely wrong. 100 generations is about 2,500 years. Racial groups became isolated in different geographic regions a lot further back than 2,500 years ago. Native Americans and Europeans probably are separated by more than 60,000 years, or more than 2,000 generations. Genetic studies of Aboriginal Australians suggest that they separated from Africans approximately 75,000 years ago (3,000 generations), and had some interbreeding >50,000 years ago with the very ancient Denisovan people of South Asia before being isolated in Australia. (Much as modern Europeans and their descendents outside Europe carry a couple % Neanderthal genes.)
.
All humans can have offspring with each other, so our genetic differences are not large, but there are some differences.
Thanks Steve
I had been thinking of those genetic tests you can get which show the difference ancestral drifts that we have
angech,
I am not sure what an ‘ancestral drift’ is.
.
My understanding is that those tests will tell you if you have ancestors from different regions and racial groups, but I do not know how reliable they are.
SteveF:
As opposed to Peggy Noonan, Sean Hannity or
Trumper Fox News Network? Um… right.Obviously we have to be critical of any source, regardless of their political leaning, especially when a story contains confidential sources.
angech–apparently you don’t understand how budgets work.
Mike M—you are right.
The story has evolved over time from asking for agents and money for the investigation to a request for additional prosecutorial support:
Carrick,
Hannity is a buffoon, and I can’t listen to him for more than a couple of minutes before I flip off the TV. He’s as bad as the nutters on CNN.
.
You do a disservice to Peggy Noonan to suggest she is at all like Hannity; I think she is usually quite thoughtful, especially compared to many other political commentators. And she is a very talented writer. She penned Reagan’s speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of the d-day invasion: (https://townhall.com/tipsheet/townhallcomstaff/2015/06/06/dday-n2008661). This year Noonan won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary; Hannity is not in the same class.
.
WRT Fox News: The on-screen people range from pretty wacko (like Hannity and Napolitano) to pretty reasonable in their political views (Krauthammer, Dana Perino and Tucker Carlson, though I think he should lighten up a little with guests who disagree with him).
This is becoming a coup by tinfoil hat kooks. Unfortunately it looks- for the moment- like the target of the coup may not have the resources to effectively stop the coup. I did not celebrate election night. My impression at the time was that the choices we were given by our two parties were not going to work out well for the health of our Republic. I had no idea we would see the transparent fearless corruption brought to bear to undo the election by the losers. I thought it would be more if a slow walk and chronic whining. Instead we get fabricated Russian boogeymen conspiracies and increasing violence by the left that is tolerated if not praised. And a suppression of discussion by the major media. This could get very bad very quickly. We entered the age of post normal science with the imposition of “climate consensus”. Perhaps it took a move away from civil and rational society to permit that to happen. The implications of a post rational, post civil society should give us pause.
Carrick,
The “after he asked for resources” story went through the media like a tidal wave, all media covered it. It was covered uncritically as an obvious cause and effect relationship.
.
Here’s the NYT burying the lead in a story titled “Acting F.B.I. Chief Contradicts White House on Russia and Comey”: He also said the F.B.I. investigation had the resources it needed, partly disputing an account that Mr. Comey had sought more aid.
.
So…the acting FBI director “disputes” an account (the NYT headline from previous day) from an unsourced leak from (Democratic) congressional officials. Clearly just a he said / she said situation.
.
In a politically toxic atmosphere these leaks allow stories to be framed by partisan “officials” and when that is combined with a partisan hyper competitive media the results are predictable. It’s a feeding frenzy to take down Trump. Yah! What heroes they are. Can we pass out some Congressional Medals of Honor?
.
So what if a major theme on this story reported by national media was misleading? It really doesn’t matter, at least to me. In the Trump media era this is anticipated. I would imagine most Trump supporters just see this as SSDD.
.
So how do you know if reports on Trump are accurate? I have no idea.
Carrick (Comment #161849) quoting NBC news: “the Russia investigation had stalled because of a lack of prosecution resources from the Justice Department, in part because the job of deputy attorney general had been vacant so long”
and later in the same article: “One big problem, an official with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC News, was that there long had been no deputy attorney general to organize and coordinate the prosecutorial response.”
.
OK, the investigation was hindered not by lack of resources but by organizational problems at DoJ. The cause was Congressional foot dragging. According to Wkipedia “President Donald Trump nominated Rosenstein to serve as Deputy Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice on January 13, 2017. Rosenstein was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 25, 2017.”
So the story has “evolved” (Carrick’s term) from a vulture to a rabbit.
SteveF, responding to Carrick: “You do a disservice to Peggy Noonan to suggest she is at all like Hannity; I think she is usually quite thoughtful, especially compared to many other political commentators.”
I was going to say much the same thing myself.
Flynn effect – My guess is this is similar to athletics. When I went to high school in the 1800’s it was rare for a slam dunk to occur in a high school basketball game. It is routine now, and it’s not because of genetic advances. Better training, earlier training, advancement in the science of athletics, etc. Olympic athletes get better and better.
.
Not a perfect analogy. Is the entire population now better at basketball? I don’t know. The average high school player is definitely better.
.
IQ tests are supposed to measure raw talent, but there is likely some degree of training that can raise an IQ test score, whether that is nutrition, early access to a stimulating environment, or other factors isn’t clear.
Peggy Noonan is quite thoughtful; her views very often different and distinct.
I also don’t find Sally Yates a political hack. Her performance in the hearing was impressive. I suspect that the nature of her employment over the years has necessarily been political appointment. I find that insufficient as evidence of hackdom.
j ferguson,
“I also don’t find Sally Yates a political hack.”
.
If she were not a political hack, then she would have turned in her resignation when she didn’t want to represent the President. Simply refusing to represent the President in court was the ultimate (and unprincipled) hack behavior for the acting AG; she was making a purely political statement, not a statement based on principle. Trump was badly mistaken to not demand a letter of resignation from every Obama appointee on January 20, including Yates.
.
I listened to her testimony before Congress. I think it’s clear she is either a political hack or impossibly dumb (or maybe some of both). Jonathan Turley described her testimony as “Alice in Wonderland”, and I agree.
I think we have beaten this dog to death, but Murray just started putting out the short form of “The Bell Curve” for anyone interested. It is the unaltered summaries that begin each chapter.
.
http://www.aei.org/publication/the-bell-curve-explained-introduction/
.
http://www.aei.org/publication/the-bell-curve-explained-part-1-the-emergence-of-a-cognitive-elite/
.
It’s not complete at this time.
SteveF (Comment #161857): “If she were not a political hack, then she would have turned in her resignation when she didn’t want to represent the President. Simply refusing to represent the President in court was the ultimate (and unprincipled) hack behavior for the acting AG; she was making a purely political statement, not a statement based on principle.”
.
I have no idea if Yates is or is not a hack. But her behavior was not that of a hack, it was self-righteousness of a type that is common on the left.
SteveF,
I concede that I am easily fooled.
.
I do not buy the theory that the justice department is obligated to prosecute/defend/support unconstitutional actions of the Executive.
.
Obviously there will be disputes as to whether an action is unconstitutional. I have no problem with Yates’ firing. Under the circumstances, I thought it appropriate. I feel she should have resigned, but maybe she was fired before she’d realized it – in support of your view of her prowess.
.
I relish the thought of her as Alice in Wonderland given Trump’s superlative evocation of the Queen of Hearts.
Just to weigh in on the IQ thing, racial differences vary widely depending on geography. Black IQs go up in many other countries, Asian IQs fall. Which kind of tells us that if a kid is poor and has a diet of lead paint and sugar while going to a sub-par school, IQ may not be so good. Bring that same kid up in a nurturing environment that is in some cases specifically designed to improve test performance you see different results.
Lastly, variation within races is larger than variation between races.
Tom Fuller: “Just to weigh in on the IQ thing, racial differences vary widely depending on geography.”
Both academic and economic success correlate with race. But at least with respect to the latter, I have seen claims that if you account for the home situation (socioeconomic status, marital status of the parents) the effect of race disappears. So a white kid with a poor single mom who dropped out of high school has about the same small chance of success as a black kid with the same background.
The effects of environment on IQ have been studied relentlessly. They didn’t just start asking these questions and studying it yesterday. The gold standard is twin studies. Twin studies brought up in different environments show environment makes a difference (about 30%), but the genetic role persists and is significant (about 50%). There’s lots of data out there.
.
The genetic influence on IQ has been estimated to be from 0.3 to 0.8 over a bunch of studies. It’s kind of bizarre but the measured heritability of IQ changes over a lifetime and is strongest in adulthood. The shared family environment differences seen in childhood diminish in adulthood.
.
There are big academic pissing matches on how to measure, how to control for stuff, etc. that I’m not qualified to parse.
.
Summary of Correlations between IQ and degree of genetic relatedness:
Same person (tested twice) .95
Identical twins—Reared together .86
Identical twins—Reared apart .76
Fraternal twins—Reared together .55
Fraternal twins—Reared apart .35
Biological siblings—Reared together .47
Biological siblings—Reared apart .24
Biological siblings—Reared together—Adults .24 [63]
Unrelated children—Reared together—Children .28
Unrelated children—Reared together—Adults .04
Cousins .15
Parent-child—Living together .42
Parent-child—Living apart .22
Adoptive parent–child—Living together .19[64]
.
Heritability of IQ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
If a group is fed lead paint for breakfast every day, then that group’s IQ score would be lower. If one race was in an environment where they were more often fed lead paint, that will make a difference. For different races that are brought up in different average environments that environmental difference might account for the difference in group scores. In order to overcome this you would compare the scores of different groups brought up in highly similar environments, both low end and high end.
.
Unsurprisingly environments where kids are malnourished and fed lead paint show environment plays a larger role in IQ.
.
If you really wanted to know the answer in group genetic IQ’s you wouldn’t study the lead paint group, you would study the group where environment was less likely to play a major role and then compare group scores.
.
Carrick,
To flagellate the deceased equine some more: By equating Sean Hannity and Peggy Noonan, you cause me to question whether it’s worth engaging you on current events. It calls into serious question your ability to evaluate sources.
Carrick, We must have misunderstood you.
TomScharf
Yes. Most people here agree that IQ is at least partly hereditary. And that is consistent with the data. But the data you post also indicates we cannot discount environment as mattering to IQ. The numbers you show indicate a sufficient influence of environment we can’t discount the possibility that the differences in races in a country could spring from the fact that the races experience different different conditions when they are raised.
Beyond that: even twin studies suffer from the difficulty that in the US (and likely most countries) families who are allowed to adopt are screened. Kids are not placed with parents who wish to adopt but who have detectable ‘issues’ in their life. For example: if adoption agencies could tell a parent had a drug or addiction problem, no infant — or even older child– is going to be placed with that parent. They probably won’t even place them in a situation that looks economically precarious. Love is great– but so is food and shelter. And adoption agencies aren’t going to put an infant in a situation where, in their estimation, food or shelter have a strong probability of being lacking.
But plenty of kids are born into poverty or to parents who have various personality issues, addiction issues or experience economic privation.
The fact that adoptive parents are screened limits the degree to which the effect of the effect of the full range of environmental factors present in a country like the US can be detected in the study. This will tend to undercount the influence of “environment”. The degree of that undercount I don’t know.
Actually, if you want to know how much the spread of environment that actually exists in the US influences IQ relative to how much the spread of genetic IQ that actually exists in the US influences IQ, you would do a controlled twin study in which the adoptive parents came from the full spread of environments and IQ’s including the families whose houses experienced lead paint.
You can’t learn how much heredity affects IQ compared to environment by doing an experiment in which environment is the same for all subjects. That’s just not the way this can be done. (It’s like trying to learn how temperature and pressure affect volume by only varying pressure and holding temperature constant. Of course you learn pressure matters. You can’t learn if temperature matters.)
No one is going to do this study. Infants aren’t going to be placed in a way that maximizes anyone’s ability to answer the question, “How much is IQ influenced by environment vs. heredity.”
j ferguson,
“I do not buy the theory that the justice department is obligated to prosecute/defend/support unconstitutional actions of the Executive.”
.
Nobody in the States is obligated through employment to do something that they believe to be unlawful. In the case of a US Attorney (or AG!), they work for the President, who is given by the Constitution authority over the execution of laws. If the President instructs a US attorney do something they believe unlawful, then they should simply resign, as some have.
.
I do not doubt that Ms Yates believes (wrongly) that Trump’s executive order was unlawful. What I question is her refusal to act as instructed by her boss, instead of resigning. BTW, I believe the lower courts will ultimately be reversed by the SC when this case reaches them. At that point, Sally Yates can continue to believe the executive order was unlawful, or she could consider accepting reality.
SteveF
I agree with this. She should have resigned.
Afterwards the President nominates someone else who must be confirmed. If there is no way to interpret the Presidents order as legal, it is likely no one will accept the nomination or none who accept can make it through the confirmation process.
The fact is: Obama lost plenty of of cases at SCOTUS. See http://thefederalist.com/2016/07/06/obama-has-lost-in-the-supreme-court-more-than-any-modern-president/.
So, in the end, the arguments his Justice Department was willing to advance were often rejected. In some cases unanimously. But Obama’s Justice department did advance many losing arguments.
Now, Trump may well end up advancing even more losing arguments than Obama. But unless there is zero shred of argument for Trump’s position, the Justice Department really kinda sorta has to advance it. If an AG can’t bring themselves to advance a particular one, they need to resign.
Tom Fuller,
“Lastly, variation within races is larger than variation between races.”
.
Of course, just as I noted up thread. To encounter an individual and assume their capabilities (intellectual, athletic, artistic, etc.) are specified by their race is madness. The individual differences within identifiable groups are larger than the differences in averages for those identifiable groups. There is a huge overlap in the ‘distribution of intellects’ between say, randomly selected Jewish people in New York and randomly selected Italians in Rome (or randomly selected people in Beijing or Tokyo). But that does not mean the two identifiable groups will have the same average intellect.
.
The real issue is the social consequence of differences in the means for different identifiable groups. In environments which demand the greatest capabilities, for example, Division 1 college basketball, identifiable groups with greater vertical jump and greater speed of foot will always, absent explicit discrimination, be represented at a higher proportion than their proportion of the total population. The same must apply to environments were the highest intellectual capabilities are required to succeed.
.
So long as society acts as if only equal representation in all fields of endeavor is acceptable (enforced by “equal representation” rules), we will diminish human accomplishment… in addition to hurting individuals through institutionalized discrimination.
SteveF
Yep. And moreover, no matter what the cause of differences in IQ, by the time people are adults, the differences exist. Sadly there is a spread in the average across races (and I do think it’s unfortunate no matter what the cause.) But the problem is that once this is the case you will see the differential in outcome in jobs where intellectual ability is required. While differential outcome can be caused by discrimination, and history certainly tells us it has, without additional evidence, by itself, differential outcomes do not prove discrimination.
SteveF,
I think you would agree that the salient issue with the immigration edicts should be what they do, and that alone. Not what they might be imagined to be intended to do based on previous utterances of their author. Anyone ought to be able to see if the intention was to exclude Muslims, these edicts were not as good at this as others might have been, not enough Muslim countries banned. I wonder at the quality of Trump’s attorneys’ defense of these things
I agree that it seems very likely that recent rulings on their efficacy are likely to be overturned by SCOTUS.
Lawrence Summers was thrown out at Harvard for suggesting women are less interested in and less capable of math and science, citing a difference in variance that leads to more men at the high(and low) end. One MIT professor in attendance proceeded to prove his point by saying she was ill at hearing this. This is disputed by many, with Harvard having a debate on the subject shortly afterwards.
MikeN,
The ‘debate’ at Harvard, as best I can remember, had nothing at all to do with the merits of Summer’s argument, nor with the merit of opposing arguments. It was closer to “Should he be castrated on the public square, or just driven from his job”. Fortunately for summers, they just drove him from his job. I am tempted to believe just being a professor at Harvard usually makes you insane; I can find no other reasonable explanation for all the craziness in Caimbridge MA.
.
William F Buckley noted that he would much prefer to be ruled by people randomly selected from the Boston phone directory than by a group of Harvard professors. Smart guy that Buckley.
Steve: I’ll give Noonan a second chance. I hadn’t really been following her, and saw a really badly flawed article that amounted to a hit piece, and that put my opinion of her in the tank. I noticed that she has a list of accessible posts, so that gives me something to look at.
Of the people you list, I like most Charles Krauthammer. David Gergen is another (I wish he were on Trump’s staff, Trump needs somebody who understands how Washington works, as opposed to the hacks that are working for him). I also like Chris Cillizza, mostly because I find him entertaining even when wrong (doesn’t take himself so bloody seriously as some pundits). Jennifer Rubin is sometimes interesting, but she’s gotten a bit rabid lately.
Tom Scharf—How do we know what is true is a great question. There are so many underlying issues here.
One is bias, driven both by the views of the writer and the interests of his readers (the down-side of market driven news). Another is plagiarism.
If journalists did not so regularly engage in copying each other stories, then five separate articles would represent four confirmations of the original story. As we saw with this story, multiple “independent” articles, but all clearly based on the same WaPo article.
I even saw this the other day with video journalism (clear plagiarism in articles by NatGeo and BBC on the lyrebird).
One thing I’ve used for years as a metric is whether a story “evolves” or whether it stabilizes around “one version” of the truth. It’s generally a bad sign when it keeps evolving.
Mike M—yes the Democrats are guilty of dragging their feet. But then again so is Trump’s administration. The vast number of unfilled positions has been because they haven’t even nominated people for those positions. Perhaps you’ve seen something newer, but according to this, as of April 4:
To reiterate that article on Trump nominations, as of April 4 the numbers are:
GWB 2001: 275 nominated, 27 confirmed, 10% confirmation rate
Obama 2009: 130 nominated, 40 confirmed, 30% confirmation rate
Trump 2017: 74 nominated 24 withdrawn, 50 considered, 26
confirmed, 50% confirmation rate.
Even if we toss in the 24-withdrawn nominations, that still leaves a 34% confirmation rate…
Carrick,
“I’ll give Noonan a second chance.”
.
That’s good, since ‘you guys’ seem to rarely give anyone a second chance. 😉
Over the last few years, I’ve developed a refined distrust of our establishment media. They have really become nakedly partisan. That’s the way it was in the 19th century of course, so its nothing new and the Republic will survive, but it shows the whole “4th estate” idea as a self-righteous self-serving lie.
If one wanted to make the case for genetic differences by race independent of environment:
http://www.unzcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Chanda_RacialSATs.png
.
Whites at the lowest income levels ($200K), and a 150 point SAT gap persists at all income levels. There is definitely something going on in the African American community, whatever that is.
.
For the first generation of mixed race black / white children the SAT gap is cut in half to about 75 points.
.
Things get a bit confusing though when you examine how immigrant blacks perform, which is substantially higher than natives even though their native country also scores poorly. The answer may be super selection bias, but that is hotly debated. The black / white gap also changes in other countries.
.
So Flynn of The Flynn Effect fame puts a turd on the table. Latest book: American blacks, it says, “come from a cognitively restricted subcultureâ€. In an interview he decodes that for the layman: “The parenting is worse in black homes, even when you equate them for socio-economic status.”
.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/sep/27/james-flynn-race-iq-myths-does-your-family-make-you-smarter
.
Cultural differences is certainly a possibility but my guess is that explanation is about as popular with liberals as genetics. In a way this is a “better” answer than genetics because it implies it can be fixed, unless parenting skills are genetic, ha ha.
.
With that, I proclaim we are not one inch closer to the answer than which we started.
j ferguson,
Yes, executive orders (and laws) should be almost always evaluated based on the actual words, not what the author may have said or done at some other time. Same thing for the Constitution.
.
I think Trump was blindsided a little by Yates… the permanent ‘career lawyers’ at Justice had concluded the EO was legal. Yates rejected her own experts… to make a political statement.
.
I agree that the DOJ arguments were weak, shoddy, and incomplete. My guess is that there was more than a little foot-dragging at the DOJ.
Tom Scharf,
Not seeing how exactly one would use this to ‘make’ the case. You still have to put an awful lot around this.
Not seeing how that’s a turd.
I agree we aren’t closer to an answer. I don’t think we have an answer to whether IQ differences between racial groups are genetic. Maybe yes; maybe no.
Carrick (Comment #161875): “Democrats are guilty of dragging their feet. But then again so is Trump’s administration.”
That is irrelevant to the issue at hand since Rosenstein was nominated a week before the inauguration.
Your link is interesting. I was aware that it seems to be taking a long time to fill positions, but had no idea that is has always been nearly this slow. Trump is about three weeks behind Bush or Obama. Disappointing. But I suppose that is to be expected from an administration determined to avoid most of the usual swamp denizens plus the Christie screw up.
Tom,
“With that, I proclaim we are not one inch closer to the answer than which we started.”
.
Actually, the ‘controlled experiments’ of identical twins, fraternal twins, siblings, and adopted siblings, raised together and raised apart are strong evidence of inherited capabilities. And it is important to note these results are independent of race. The basic results are very solid: inherited capacity is extremely important. Yes, if you feed toddles nothing but lead based paint chips and sugar water for breakfast every day, they will do poorly. The Flynn effect demonstrates that broader intellectual exposures, better nutrition, and an intellectually stimulating environment will improve IQ test performance. But that is not the real issue; the issue is if cultural differences can explain the continuing differences in measured IQ.
SAT scores across income levels could arguably control for environment. This can be torn apart, a $50K white home may be substantially different than a $50K black home because X, Y, Z. Income is not the same as wealth. The environment may not be well correlated to income, but to the neighborhood you live in. The quality of the schools for equal incomes may be significantly different. Blacks with high income may be less likely to have gone to college themselves. High income blacks may still have a much higher number of single parent homes than whites. And on and on.
.
They have been picking apart these controls for decades and the end result is there are persistent IQ gaps. Some of these environmental controls do make a measurable difference.
.
It’s a turd because it is a “blame the victim” answer to the question. To say doing this evokes an emotional response from the social justice crowd is an understatement. Even the interviewer’s full response is indicative:
.
“He then tells what sounds like a version of those dodgy jokes about the Irishman, the Scotsman and the Englishman. Except this isn’t a joke. “Go to the American suburbs one evening,†says Flynn, “and find three professors. The Chinese professor’s kids immediately do their homework. The Jewish professor’s kids have to be yelled at. The black professor says: ‘Why don’t we go out and shoot a few baskets?’â€
As I emit a liberal gasp, he continues: “The parenting is worse in black homes, even when you equate them for socio-economic status.”
.
I’m kind of surprised he got away with that without being banned from society. Maybe the UK is a bit more sane.
.
If the culture is a major factor we have created a social environment where it is near impossible to talk about it and try to fix it.
Tom Scharf,
“I’m kind of surprised he got away with that without being banned from society.”
.
He can get away with it because he is very close to a secular saint for those who reject the importance of inherited intellectual ability… and it helps that he is very old, so will soon stop making politically incorrect statements. He is right about culture being a huge factor in economic and social outcomes, but that is one of the many verboten subjects for progressives….. they much prefer active discrimination against the successful to get more equal representation in all endeavors.
I don’t care. People are people and can be whatever they want to be. They can disagree with me , tax me and be brighter than me. They can smoke as much as they like except in front of me at the football.
Everyone has a limit.
Carrick, Obama had many Cabinet members appointed on day 1, with only some needing more than a week. Bush actually got his full cabinet within a few weeks while Obama needed months to get the last ones who were replacements. Trump got Mattis and Kelly on the first day, and only one more by the end of January. Democrats have been slow walking the nominations, with Republicans threatening to eliminate the 30 hour rule. Paul Ryan cited this rule as a reason for the House not acting quickly on other matters.
Trump’s low numbers are also affected by his not nominating people. Obama’s later Cabinet picks with Republicans in charge took longer too.
Mike M:
I don’t get the impression they are slow in nominating people because they are being thorough, given large number the number who have withdrawn their nominations. A fair number of these just seem to have been poorly vetted (they couldn’t meet ethics requirements from the Office of Government Ethics, that unlike Trump, they are required by law to meet).
Beyond that, there seems to be no coherent strategy beyond the loyalty pledges that many of them were required to give. (I would imagine this emphasis of loyalty over honesty, lawful or ethical behavior would cut down the number of people interested in being on his staff.)
Requiring a central figure (his name escapes me right now) to approve all appointees also blocks the normal process of populating the staff, where the senior staff members appoint more junior ones and so forth.
Interestingly, for somebody who claims to want to “drain the swamp”, there doesn’t appear to be much interest in teaching the staff ethics in government.
MikeN: I agree… the Democrats dragging their feet is certainly part of the story. It just turns out, when you look at numbers, as opposed to anecdotes, the bigger issue appears to be the appointment process within Trump’s administration.
Carrick,
One of the great unknowns in this staffing effort will be the number of people asked who refused.
.
By now, it must be universally realized that Trump is not easy to work for. I wonder how long it will be before we see present staff members departing.
.
I’ve never worked in a shop like Trump appears to be running, but I did leave some places for reasons I thought sound but with a lot less provocation than I sense there.
Regarding the firing of Susan Yates and refusal to obey an unlawful order, that does bring up the specter of the Saturday Night Massacre, where Nixon ordered his AG Elliot Richardson to fire the special prosecutor, which Richardson refused to follow, and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered his Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox and he refused and resigned too. Finally, Robert Bork was then given the order, and complied with the order.
The original order was later found in court to be illegal, so Bork probably broke a law or two, especially with the quid pro quo of a potential Supreme Court position that was offered to him by Nixon.
It’s not clear to me what the best path forward is when your boss has given you what you think is an illegal order, when there is nobody above your boss in the organization. I wasn’t particularly impressed with Sally Yate’s remaining on board as opposed to resigning and making a public stink that way, but this would have to be an individual choice as to what you think is the best way to call out a questionable order.
It occurs to me that even if the President has some freedom to act in ways that would be illegal for anybody else (like impeding an investigation of himself), that act would still be obviously illegal for his staff. I doubt that many people in Trump’s organization are willing to take their loyalty pledges so seriously, they’d go to prison on Trump’s behalf. If we lived in a third world country, where the punishment for oath-breaking is death rather than selling movie rights, maybe, but not here.
j ferguson:
I would have to imagine for some, e.g., HR McMaster, they are there because of loyalty to our country, rather than to Trump. I think you’re right though–these don’t seem to be conditions where people are going to want to hang around very long.
There have been conservatives who have been wishing for less sovereign strength from the executive office (they have a valid point, I think), and oddly they seem to be getting it, from a president who seems to want to be treated like a king, and as a result has some of his power to effectively govern.
j ferguson—what about Mike Pence…do you think he’ll stay under these circumstances, where’s he’s being forced to constantly lie for Trump (only to get contradicted by Trump)?
I’d imagine after a while, Pence’s credibility would be about zero if things keep going like they are right now.
Carrick,
As someone else pointed out several of Obama’s efforts were overturned in the Supreme Court or are still being actively litigated. Those that were rejected are “illegal” and these “illegal orders” were pushed by an apparent law breaking DOJ. Right? We will eventually find out if the travel ban is legal or not. To turn this around, if the Supreme Court finds this legal, then she was refusing to enforce a legal order, or in other words to do her job. Presidents routinely press the limits of authority with executive orders (maybe you missed the last 8 years?) so the mere fact Yates thought (but never specified) it might not pass muster isn’t enough.
.
In my view this with just a grandstanding exercise because she didn’t want to work for Trump anyway. The reasonable response was that Yates should have resigned.
.
If people don’t want to work for Trump, fine. Leave. Please. Trump got put in office because people were sick and tired of the DC culture of entitlement and arrogance, so I doubt many tears will be shed in Trump country. Fantasies of a reverse Atlas Shrugged where the government walks out are going to be met with a standing ovation from Trump supporters.
.
If everyone in the federal government got to exercise their own personal veto it would be chaos.
Carrick (Comment #161890): “I don’t get the impression they are slow in nominating people because they are being thorough”.
I never said that was the issue. But one issue is finding people other than the usual suspects.
.
Carrick: “(they couldn’t meet ethics requirements from the Office of Government Ethics, that unlike Trump, they are required by law to meet).”
Those requirements are written for career feeders at the public through. Easily met by people like the Clinton’s (so much for the standards being high), but hard to meet by people from the real world.
.
Carrick: “Beyond that, there seems to be no coherent strategy beyond the loyalty pledges that many of them were required to give.”
I doubt that you can provide any real evidence for either part of that claim.
.
Carrick: “Requiring a central figure (his name escapes me right now) to approve all appointees also blocks the normal process of populating the staff, where the senior staff members appoint more junior ones and so forth.”
I don’t know that is not normal. But it probably makes things harder when you are trying to avoid swamp critters. Also, senior staff can’t appoint their staffs if the Senate delays confirmation.
.
Carrick: “Interestingly, for somebody who claims to want to “drain the swampâ€, there doesn’t appear to be much interest in teaching the staff ethics in government.”
I see no contradiction. I’d much rather see an emphasis on serving the public than on observing technical “ethics” rules that don’t actual ensure ethical behavior.
Carrick (Comment #161892):
For someone who makes a big deal about ethics, you seem to be ethically challenged. Part of the problem is your sloppy use of the word illegal. Sloppy language leads to (and results from) sloppy thinking.
Although illegal can be used to mean “contrary to law”, it usually means “contrary to criminal law”. Once we recognize the difference, your argument collapses.
.
Carrick: “It’s not clear to me what the best path forward is when your boss has given you what you think is an illegal order, when there is nobody above your boss in the organization.”
That is perfectly clear to most people. You either do as you are told or go to the police.
.
Carrick: “Regarding the firing of Susan Yates and refusal to obey an unlawful order”.
Nonsense. Yates never received an unlawful order. A constitutionally questionable action is not unlawful until it has been ruled on by the Supreme Court, or by a lower court if the administration decides not to appeal.
.
Carrick: “that does bring up the specter of the Saturday Night Massacre”
Trump Derangement Syndrome, in full bloom.
.
Carrick: “where Nixon ordered his AG Elliot Richardson to fire the special prosecutor, which Richardson refused to follow, and resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered his Deputy AG William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox and he refused and resigned too. Finally, Robert Bork was then given the order, and complied with the order.”
Richardson and Ruckelshaus did not resign in protest. They resigned because they had a choice between disobeying an order, which they would not do, and breaking a promise they had made to Congress (under oath, I think), which they would not do. Bork had made no such promise to Congress, so he obeyed the order.
.
Carrick: “The original order was later found in court to be illegal”.
How? Who had standing?
.
Carrick: “so Bork probably broke a law or two”.
I don’t see how. If the order was found illegal it would only mean that Nixon had no authority to give it, not that it would be a crime to obey it.
.
Carrick: “…Sally Yate’s remaining on board as opposed to resigning … would have to be an individual choice as to what you think is the best way to call out a questionable order.”
Only if you don’t give a damn about ethics, and only care about political advantage.
Pence may have a deal with Trump to hang in until Trump can’t stand it any longer and resigns.
Carrick: “ I think you’re right though–these don’t seem to be conditions where people are going to want to hang around very long.”
.
All agree that working conditions are affected by level of appreciation by the superiors, co-workers and those outside the organization. Working in a Trump administration is less favorable than the Obama administration, but I believe that it’s based on having to withstand constant press harassment and slanders as well as a politically organized public resistance movement where one gets jeered at any public appearance.
.
The MSM is basically has all the burners turned up to high on Trump doing everything they can to evoke something they can exploit into a new headline. Fake news is self-perpetuating.
.
Contrast this with the MSM’s routine swallowing of anything they were told by an Obama WH. So much so that when terrorist’s hit a foreign US compound on 9-11-2012 the WH, CIA and DOS were so at ease they concocted a bold lie cover story. Yes, hundreds of Obama administration officials were in sync, showing great confidence, as exemplified by Susan Rice spreading the fake cover story on news outlets.
.
Perhaps there is a happy medium that the press should keep the burners on for every WH.
Carrick,
For the record I appreciate that you come here to have your views challenged. I hope you find it as entertaining as we do. Echo chambers are boooorrringgg…..
The entire Trump technically violated law X if you interpret it as Y and should be impeached may be a fun exercise and I imagine it is all really part of the stages of grief, but I wonder how many people have really thought that through.
.
He’d be replaced by Pence who would be even worse for liberals mainly because he would be competent and possibly capable of governing. The left would obstruct Pence just as much demonstrating that it never was about Trump to start with.
.
The bigger factor would be that it would switch the emotional energy back to right. The perception that the left will not even allow a properly elected person to be President if it’s not from their tribe without taking him out through legal trickery is going to enrage the populist contingent. The dancing on the grave of Trump will be a sight burned into the retinas of a generation. Believing your tribe is entitled to a veto by any means necessary on who is President only reinforces everything that got Trump elected in the first place.
.
That being said, this is a fantasy response to a fantasy impeachment. I don’t think the left does itself any favors with the constant impeachment talk on technicalities, especially when it comes from alleged respected scholars. These isolated demands for legal rigor seemed to have started on Jan 20th.
Carrick is earning an extra shiny tinfoil hat these past few days. It is fascinating that Obama was defended by lefties for abusing the law and Trump is either prevented or threatened for attempting to carry out the law. The ACLU is so arrogant and comfortable with this sort of corruption they allowed that if Clinton had written the immigration EO It would have been ok. But since Trump wrote it, it is bad. Tinfoil encasing corrupt brains. Tech.
MikeM–To start with, illegal means “not according to or authorized by law”, so it could be statutory law or constitutional law or even civil law. Nobody else is required to assume your usage, simply because that’s how you’d use a word.
But I was, as it turns out, referring to criminal law, as you’ll see below.
I think you were actually a bit silly on your argument there were only two options to respond to an illegal order. In fact, there are a host of options, including reporting to a non-law-enforcement agency such as an ethics office. In fact, federal regulations even spell out the process, it’s why you take those ethics courses so you know what they are.
Sally Yates took an oath to uphold the constitution, which I believe is 5 U.S.C. 3331. If she were given an order which would cause her to violate that oath, that would be an unlawful act for which there is a criminal liability, see 18 U.S.C. 1918.
If the order turned out to be illegal, it’s also a criminal violation under 5 U.S.C. 2302(b)(9)(D) to remove her from office for refusing to obey the order. So in fact, she’s entirely within her legal rights to maintain her current position while refusing to obey an unlawful order. Moreover, she’s afforded some legal protection for that (with a Republican congress that protection is thinner than it might otherwise have been).
Here’s a link to the judgement. You’d need somebody like JD Ohio to explain the standing to you, but the firing was ruled illegal in that judgement.
There were potentially criminal acts on multiple levels from Bork obeying the order. He obstructed justice, he failed to uphold his oath of office, he colluded with the president to do so in return for personal gain (quid pro quo). I honestly think, if the appetite had been there to punish him, he’d have spent a good number of years in prison for his part in the Archibald Cox firing.
Tom Scharf:
Well thank you, I do and yes echo chambers are extremely boring. I appreciate the people that take time to respond to these views too, if the responses are reasonable anyway. For people who are used to chasing people off with insults, well, you’re wasting your time.
As I’ve said above, I don’t think there’s anything illegal about the firing of Comey. Just stupid. The way it was done was really stupid.
Hunter: “Carrick is earning an extra shiny tinfoil hat these past few days.”
No need to earn a tinfoil hat, you only have to choose to wear one. Like Carrick.
Mike M:
Fourth grade insults now?! Seriously… I see what you like about Donald Trump now.
Re: Carrick: “firing of Susan Yates and refusal to obey an unlawful order”
There are plenty of arguments to be made on both sides. It wasn’t clearly an unlawful order. She simply made a dramatic gesture to raise her standing among Democrats. If we are concerned about unlawful orders, we should consider the many illegal acts committed by the Obama administration in actively undermining illegal immigration laws. Of course, not a peep from Yates or the AG on those matters. Here is a link where judges from the most liberal circuit, (the 9th Circuit) argue that Trump’s order was legal. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/15/five-9th-circuit-judges-dissent-arguing-for-vacating-panel-decision-on-president-trumps-immigration-executive-order/?utm_term=.cc1aae817d99
If Yates disagreed with Trump, she had every right to resign based on her principles. However, she or any other Attorney have legitimate bases to argue in favor of the order. She is not a model of moral rectitude. She is simply grandstanding.
JD
JD Ohio—My point was only that it was within Sally Yates’ legal rights to behave the way she did, nor is there a “rule book” that says resignation is the only option here.
It is also not a “no brainer” that the lower courts would find this revised EO unlawful, and it’s not a “no brainer” that the SCOTUS will find portions of the revised EO unlawful. I think it was a “no brainer” there were serious problems with the first EO though.
That said, in this case, it certainly comes across as her either grandstanding or running for office, possibly both.
If I were a betting man, I’d bet the SCOTUS will render a judgment at least in part against the revised EO. This is as much because I don’t view the DOJ as competently arguing this case on the Administration’s behalf as because I think there are legitimate problems with the EO.
Since we bring up Obama—my two cents here: In some important ways, I view Obama as having been a much more dangerous president than Trump ever could be. Obama is a constitutional lawyer, and so both knows the bounds of the law and understands much better how to artfully exceed it.
When Trump screws up, it’s generally been obvious, at least to those of us not hitched to the Republican wagon. But I don’t think it’s intentional, and I think he’s generally made a good-faith effort to correct the issues when they’ve popped up, including with the revised EO.
When Obama’s encroached or crossed the line, I think in many cases it was deliberate. But if he had significantly exceeded his authority to the extent you suggest, I really think with a Republican Congress, there’d have been stronger repercussions than this. I think he’s clever enough to not go that far is all.
Carrick those numbers mean little without a certain amount of time for the Senate to act. What if Obama has named people in the previous week. His percentage would drop without any delays by the Senate.
“Pence may have a deal with Trump to hang in until Trump can’t stand it any longer and resigns.”
.
This is little more than a wet dream of the left. I would be happy to accept a wager at 4:1 that Trump serves out his first term. Bill Clinton was a scandelous liar and clearly guilty of purjury before a federal court, but had enough senate support to survive. Does anyone really think there will be 67 votes in the senate to throw Trump out of office, no matter what imagined crimes he may have committed? And this assumes that there are enough votes in the House… and there won’t be. If anyone thinks Trump will be driven from office, I have a large bridge in New York I would like to sell to you.
.
Truth is, based on state voting patterns in the last election, and the votes the libertarian candidate drew, it is hard to see how Trump loses re-election, save a huge change in the political landscape. Third party candidates will get no oxygen in 2020.
.
Ruth Ginsberg may not outlive the Trump era, even though she probably hopes to.
Hi SteveF,
I stand by my bet that Trump will not serve out his term, but a good dinner together whoever buys is better than money.
The problem with impeaching him is neither temperament nor ignorance is a basis for impeachment. I hope if it comes to it that there is great clarity on the reason and it is not that he’s unsuitable for the job which I think is insufficient cause.
I agree that the a lot of the left has bunched undies over this guy’s program agenda, but there are others that worry about the effects of his impulsive, often thoughtless acts.
MikeN:
I don’t see how you can argue this position. If Trump has nominated about 1/2 the number of staff that Obama, clearly that’s a significant contributor of the problem with his staff positions not being filled.
I’ve already stipulated that part of the cause is the Democrats dragging their heels in any case. If Trump’s not getting names sent to the Senate in a timely manner, then obviously that is a contributor.
SteveF:
I agree there’s no chance of impeachment in the next two years. However, I think there’s at least a non-zero possibility he won’t go through four full years of this fresh hell without resigning.
I’ve heard speculation that he might be happy to get most of the agenda pushed through that he committed to on the campaign trail, then return to private life.
Carrick:
I bet he’d be delirious. I doubt that ‘most’ will be the operative word although there does seem a good chance that he’ll do some worthy things, but ones which had less curb appeal on the trail.
Carrick,
“However, I think there’s at least a non-zero possibility he won’t go through four full years of this fresh hell without resigning.”
.
Are you in inclined to bet on that prospect? I would accept 4:1 odds the he serves out his first term. Wet dreams are nice enough, but reality is not the same. BTW, I suggest you carefully consider history before placing any bet agsinst Trump serving out his term.
.
I am reminded of the pre-election projections of Hillary’s certain victory when I hear people talk of Trump’s certain exit. Those who are delusional are incapable of learning.
SteveF:
I don’t give Trump all that much credit for his unexpected victory:
A combination of enormous Hillary hubris, improved RNC outreach, Russian hacker/Wikileaks interference and FBI incompetence allowed him to overcome steep odds. I think he personally hurt himself as much as he helped himself.
Trump has already filed for his 2020 campaign. Campaign finance law makes this an inconvenience for the left’s fundraising and spending.
Carrick, the lack of nominees sure Trump is contributing. His agriculture secretary or deputy were not sent in for a long time. My point is the percentages are irrelevant if it doesn’t account for when the nominations were made.
Carrick,
“I don’t give Trump all that much credit for his unexpected victory”
So am I safe in assuming you would not wager on Trump’s tenure?
.
What makes me more than a little crazy is people who claim Trump is the second comming of the devil himself, but are unwilling to bet on any subsequent outcome. Would you be willing to bet that Trump won’t be re-elected in 2020?
>hard to see how Trump loses re-election, save a huge change in the political landscape.
That’s a large caveat. Clinton was saved with perjury and obstruction charges by his party and overall popularity, but Trump does not have this. There are dozens of Senators that would be eager to throw him out if they thought they could get away with it.
One other possibility is IF Trump does take a political nosedive, he might declare victory and quit before his term runs out, putting the chances too close to 4-1 for me to take your side of the bet.
What would you consider for the following hypothetical-
If Trump is reelected, he will be impeached(not necessarily removed).
MikeN: Again I’m not sure what you’re saying, we’re looking basically at are the total nominees and confirmations for roughly the first 3 1/2 months of each administration. The argument that was advanced above, and which I’ve heard elsewhere, is the reason Trump doesn’t have more people is because the Democrats are blocking them from being nominated.
Since this is the actual period and these are the actual numbers, the percentages are entirely relevant to addressing that question. Over that period, the differences in number of nominations is certainly meaningful.
SteveF: I’m simply not a betting man (it’s just no in my nature), otherwise I’d take you up on Trump 2020.
lucia-
.
I suspect no one ever gave Einstein an IQ test.
Sure. But the operational definition of an IQ test is to compare a child’s learning ability with that of same-aged peers’. That’s how Einstein’s parents would have known he was gifted, intelligent and had low “IQ”. And so they home-schooled Einstein until he could be mainstreamed.
.
Also, I think real IQ tests include parts that are not reading based.
Yes. Even 80 years ago IQ tests were having some success with this. But Einstein -the child- was…a…slow…speaker which signals oral instructions might not fix things.
.
I think most people don’t really have their IQ measured.
For most people, reading proficiency and rote memorization are proxies for intelligence, so I think it’s really being measured.
.
I’m not sure what you mean [by dyslexia is supposedly positively correlated with high intelligence outside academia].
What I mean is there would supposedly be a positive correlation between dyslexia and intelligence among those dyslexic students who leave academia – even though dyslexia and intelligence are not correlated and academia selects for higher intelligence.
Highly intelligent dyslexics are more likely to be undiagnosed than other dyslexics, (especially in lower-income schools with budgetary contraints that result in preferential evaluation of only the most alarming cases) and so develop strong antipathy for academia. At every level of the education system, the more intelligent dyslexics would be exiting the system at a faster rate than the lesser intelligent dyslexics because they despise it most.
.
For what it’s worth: I don’t think there’s much evidence Einstein was dyslexic.
http://www.albert-einstein.org…..dicap.html
.
What they are ‘arguing’ is that if all observations of Einstein’s behaviour by himself, his sister, parents and biographer are FALSE, then it is unreasonable to conclude that he was dyslexic. And I would agree except they forgot to eliminate his papers and colleagues observations. e.g. Ever notice the dearth of references in an Einstein paper? Wasn’t much of a reader, was he?
SteveF,
Trump’s problems which are driving hysteria on the Left and the capacity and willingness to do anything about it are not closely linked. Obviously he will not be impeached unless a sufficient (and large) number of Republicans decide it must happen.
.
I don’t think that likely.
.
From that standpoint your position is very sound.
.
Mine, is that in his random walk through policy positions, amid sweeping ignorance of how the government works, or is supposed to work, he will sooner or later really step in it, and will be encouraged to resign, or will in effect be encapsulated in some sort of invisible regency.
.
He’s clearly a very versatile guy, which is why I don’t think resignation is impossible.
.
And of course this scenario presupposes he had no role in the Russian Tea Dance, assuming there actually was one.
.
I won’t put money on it, but even assuming he’s still there in 2020, whether he re-runs or not, the Republicans will win again. The Democrats don’t seem to know who they are. The Republicans do.
blueice1Hotsea
I don’t think that’s their argument.
SteveF
The problem for me is I soooooo hope he gets sick of the job and leaves. But he seems to be reveling in it. Sigh…..
j ferguson,
Democrats do seem torn between the currently dominant group of extreme leftist, focused on identity politics and instituting Denmark-like public control of most private activities (with Denmark-like taxes and redistribution!), and the much smaller number of pragmatic democrats like Bill Clinton. I think you are right about their chances in 2020, because the policies the currently dominant Democrats want offend too many voters….. voters those Democrats do not care about at all (the ‘deplorables’). When you are willing to insult 40% of voters, you start in a pretty deep hole.
Lucia,
I don’t think he is going to resign. He is too angry at the Democrats to do that. He loaths people like Schumer and Pilosi, and even more, the MSM that dump on him every day. Staying in office, instituting policies they abhor, and even more, getting re-elected, are the best ways to make those folks miserable.
.
Although Trump denies it, I think Obama’s public ridiculing of Trump over doubting where Obama was born is why Trump is in the White House today. Had that never happened, Trump wouldn’t have cared enough to run. I suspect Trump now rather enjoys reversing most of Obama’s executive orders and regulations.
SteveF,
That may be true. I have always thought Obama mishandled that. He should have asked Hawaii to provide the long form certificate in 2008.
Yeah.. some might have still done all the “it’s a forgery” thing. But it would show he was willing to release the full official record.
Not doing so… well…. I think he was outraged. Don’t really blame him, but sometimes outrage results in counter-productive decisions. And this was one– from a political point of view.
I do think Trump is enjoying reversing Obama’s stuff in particular.
If you look at how much Trump’s aged in just 110 short days, I’m not sure he physically capable of doing this for eight years. Plus given his exponentially increasing isolation from the rest of the Republican Party, it’s starting to look like a fairy tale that he’ll get much of his agenda at through at this point.
That doesn’t put him in much of a position for a follow up term. Maybe he’ll get lucky and Hillary will run against him twice.
As far as I can see the Republican agenda currently amounts to “reversing everything Obama did in the last eight years.” A continuation of the “Party of No” in other words.
Obviously at some point, you run out of steam on things you can repeal, or even find to repeal. What happens then is anybody’s guess, since, as far as I can tell, the Republicans have not thought that far ahead.
The Democrats as the opposition party, have an easier time of it… they can run the “Party of No” platform back into power. But they will need to address their increasing geographical isolation if they really want that. Simply catering to the thin-blue slivers on the coastline almost makes you not a national party.
blueice2hotsea: “Ever notice the dearth of references in an Einstein paper? Wasn’t much of a reader, was he?”
A famous physicist (I forget which one) who knew Einstein once said of him “He read little, but thought much”.
SteveF, et. al.,
Your calculations about Trump in 2020 are neglecting the high probability (near certainty, IMO) of a deep recession in the next four years that will make the ‘Great’ Recession look like a walk in the park. The proposed tax and regulation reforms aren’t nearly enough and major tax reforms aren’t likely to pass before things fall apart.
Carrick,
“I’m not sure he physically capable of doing this for eight years.”
.
The guy is 70 years old and breaks 80 on difficult golf courses. (He scores even better than that, of course, when he cheats!) Since taking office, Trump has played a round of golf with both Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy; both said he is a very good player for someone his age, and “really takes a good rip at it”. This does not sound to me like someone who is aging rapidly. He is obviously overweight, but he neither drinks nor smokes. Social Security says that a man 70 years old today will on average live another 15 years, and wealthy people generally live a few years longer than poor people.
.
I don’t doubt Trump suffers the effects of age like we all do, but barring some medical catastrophe (eg. heart attack or stroke) he is likely to remain well enough to run again if he wants to.
DeWitt Payne: Greater Recession? How so?
DeWitt,
What will bring about this deep recession?
j ferguson and SteveF,
The fact that you ask that is evidence that the end of one of the longest expansions in recent history is near.
What could trigger it? There are so many shoes waiting to drop, I’ll probably miss some. Let’s see. There’s China’s debt crisis. There’s the Canadian housing bubble. There’s Italy, Spain and the EU in general. And that’s not to mention that the US economy is overleveraged with no end in sight. The US stock market is wildly overvalued. The VIX is below ten. That’s off the top of my head. With a little effort, I can find more.
“What will bring about this deep recession.”
.
The economy, like climate, has many positive feedbacks. The weak recovery actually is likely to postpone the next next natural downturn. Yet if Trump is not too careful in what he wishes for we could end up with a 3%+ growth rate, and that’s when inflation can start, especially if cheap imports and illegal labor are curtailed. But maybe the Fed (US central bank) is mature enough to control it with counterweights (negative feedback). We certainly need to applaud them for managing to keep the boat afloat during the Obama years.
.
The greatest danger is economic collapse from fiscal mismanagement. If humanity can mature politically and economically then AGW problems will solve as a matter of normal business no matter how they manifest.
.
Carrick, I appreciate your perspectives. I’ve said many times that Trump has many flaws. The key is that he acts from the premise that America’s strength comes from individual initiative and the pride and motivation that comes from personal property rights.
.
President Obama and Bernie Sanders and the new Dems have bought into the old idea that taking from the rich and giving to the poor is a noble cause, one that can be fulfilled by government. I heard Rep. (D) Nancy Pelosi quip this week that the Trump policies are “Robin Hood in reverse.” Robin Hood, if I remember correctly was against high taxation. The corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham needed extra taxes to buy off the nobles for political support. The corrupt Dems need extra taxes to buy v—–.
The longest post WWII expansion was 120 months from March, 1991 to March, 2001. It ended when the dot com bubble burst. The next longest was 106 months from February, 1961 to December, 1969. The current expansion, dating from June, 2009 will hit 96 months in June. The median, including the current expansion is 58 months.
Ron,
Annual GDP growth in the most recent prior expansion, November, 2001 to December, 2007, was 1.4%. It lasted 73 months and then we got the ‘Great’ Recession. Annual GDP growth during expansions has been declining more or less steadily with each expansion since WWII.
This economic expansion is different from previous ones in that there was never high growth. Obama is the first president on record to not have 3% growth for a year. The irrational exuberance is not there to be cleared away.
Carrick, Suppose Obama named 80 nominees on March 20. Suppose Trump named 20 on the same day. Those shouldn’t count towards the total.
From the recent biography of Obama, he wrote while in law school:
“[Americans have] a continuing normative commitment to the ideals of individual freedom and mobility, values that extend far beyond the issue of race in the American mind. The depth of this commitment may be summarily dismissed as the unfounded optimism of the average American—I may not be Donald Trump now, but just you wait; if I don’t make it, my children will.â€
MikeN,
That’s another sign the end is near. Every economic expansion is different until they’re not.
SteveF, playing partners of the President will of course say this about him. Jack Nicholson said it about Bill Clinton, who claimed to break 80, while American Spectator did an in depth investigation to show he was taking mulligans and that his doctor rushed out onto the course to give him medicine.
There is a big difference between someone who is 70 surviving 15 years, and being President for 8 years. A part of Trump’s appeal was his energy compared to Hillary, where he ran ads of her ‘stumbling’. If he wears down, would he still be as popular? Bill Clinton went from coloring his hair gray to get respect from seniors to coloring it to look young. Obama also looked noticeably older, which might have happened anyways over the eight years. What if Trump needs help getting up stairs in 2020?
DeWitt, according to http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth-annual
the average looks higher than 1.7, with growth over 2 almost the entire time.
MikeN,
I haven’t a clue where Wikipedia got that low number. I should know better. If you take the FRED data, GDP in the fourth quarter of 2001 was $10,701.3billion and $14,685.3billion in the fourth quarter of 2007. Compounding quarterly, that’s an interest rate of 5.31%. That’s a rather far cry from 1.4%.
The thing is, though, the debt to GDP ratio was a lot lower from 2001 to 2007 than it is now.
MikeN,
Not according to FRED. 2010-2015 were all over 3%. The high was 2014 with a compounded rate of 4.2%
Mike N,
“playing partners of the President will of course say this about him. Jack Nicholson said it about Bill Clinton, who claimed to break 80..”
.
I hope you mean Jack Nicklaus, not Jack Nicholson. But long before Trump ran for President he was featured in a couple of golfing magazine articles. They said he was an accomplished player as well. Everything I ever read about Bill Clinton’s play was that he was a weak player.
Mike N,
“What if Trump needs help getting up stairs in 2020?”
.
Could happen, but seems very unlikely. If it did, he would probably lose re-election.
I would think Trump is enduring tremendous stress. A lot of what he intends isn’t going well. He has to know it. I suspect, despite his apparent thin skin, that he’s pretty tough.
.
Assuming, and I do, that he was very much hands-on in his development work, he would have had to deal with almost daily bad news. There is an astonishing number of different ways a project can encounter trouble and very frequently none of the solutions is attractive, or sometimes even digestible.
.
This kind of experience should be ideal training for the presidency.
SteveF, yea Nicklaus. I remember watching a show called Dream League and laughing when a guy was penalized 15 yards for saying Nicholson, and now I did the same.
DeWitt, there is a striking difference in sources. Others have written about the lack of 3% growth, but then others have very high numbers for growth the last few decades. Not sure what is causing the disparity.
MikeN
It’s tough if you don’t know Jack. 😉
From an AP story:
“More than a lack of momentum on major policy goals, Trump is said to be seething over the flood of leaks pouring out of the White House and into news reports. He’s viewed even senior advisers suspiciously, including Bannon and Priebus, when stories about internal White House drama land in the press.
A dozen White House officials and others close to Trump detailed the president’s decision-making and his mood on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss private conversations and deliberations.”
Mike N, DeWitt,
Are those growth figures in constant dollars? The higher numbers could be unadjusted dollars and the lower inflation adjusted.
SteveF,
It didn’t say, but I suspect nominal dollars. Inflation adjustment is another large can of worms. Of course GDP is also a can of worms. Unless inflation is really high, like it was in the 1970’s, I’d rather see nominal dollars.
That’s not to mention that having a few years of 3% or above doesn’t make up for a -2.7% rate in one year. Over the eight years of Bush, real GDP increased by 15%. Over the eight years of Obama, real GDP increased by 15%.
http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp-inflation-adjusted/table
MikeN (Comment #161946)
What if Trump needs help getting up stairs in 2020?
If I was married to Ivana for another 3 years I would need help getting up the stairs
DeWitt Payne (Comment #161933)
neglecting the high probability (near certainty, IMO) of a deep recession in the next four years that will make the ‘Great’ Recession look like a walk in the park.
Sigh, not another accurate forecaster of doom.
FYI I have increased my meager stock holdings in the hope of an American interest rate cut massively boosting the market.
I doubt anyone here, well apart from one, would have expected a Clinton win to do anything but send the stock market down. This win was a blessed relief.
What was that Sage advice, when everyone is yelling sell, sell, sell you should buy.
It is a random walk, read Market Wizards again. Both our prognostications our based on Niente.
angech,
The massive move to index funds is yet another problem. Everybody isn’t yelling sell. Quite the opposite. The stock market isn’t a random walk, nor is it efficient. Search on ‘stock market returns do not follow random walks’ and see how many hits you get from high profile organizations. Interest rates are going up, not down.
SteveF: I wouldn’t personally consider golfing to be a particularly strenuous activity. George W Bush ran and chopped wood when he was president. Those are much more physically strenuous activities.
Plus, Trump is very clearly obese, and that’s a bill that comes due as you age. At 6’3 and his obvious girth, he’s as likely to be 236 lb as I am to get a large cash payout from the tooth fairy for my lost teeth. If I had to guess, it’s 30-40 lb under his true weight, probably he weighs more since he took office.
We know from all previous presidents, that stress associated with the office significantly ages them, and it’s certainly had its effect on Trump’s visual appearance already. I’m with jferguson—I can’t imagine having such low approval numbers would be very healthy for a person who tracks that sort of thing (by all accounts he does), nor having so much trouble getting anything significant accomplished. That depends on mostly getting the highly fractionated Republican Congress to coordinate, because it’s pretty clear that Trump isn’t exactly in the bridge-building mode with the Democrats at this point.
As to whether he’s enjoying this—he says he isn’t and that he liked his former life much better. If he doesn’t accomplish much, if the Republican Congress remains as dysfunctional as they are now or they lose their majority, a the question is whether there really is much point to a second term.
MikeN—it’s interestingly that the lack of loyalty of his subordinates seems to bother him at least as much as not getting his goals met. I’d guess he’s more used to having big projects go off the rails than he is with the constant internecine squabbling he’s surrounded by right now.
The FRED link here says it’s “real GDP”. I’d guess they’re using CPI as a deflator, which isn’t particularly an accurate way of measuring it.
If you wanted to understand these numbers better, I think you’d need to compare it to world-wide numbers (how did we do versus Europe), since the economies are so tightly linked.
Carrick,
GDP and accuracy are close to being mutually exclusive terms. Then correcting GDP for inflation adds more uncertainty. As I said, cans of worms. Year over year changes when measured by the same organization using the same methodology probably means something. Two significant figures for the percent change is probably pushing it.
DeWitt, I greed that GDP is not a perfect measure of total economic activity by a society. Not withstanding issues about what it really measures versus what it doesn’t, I don’t understand why relative changes in GDP wouldn’t be accurate to at least two digits (at least if we exclude periods of extreme market turmoil), if not more.
The trouble is CPI wasn’t designed to normalize GDP to measure real economic growth, it was designed to estimate changes in costs of good and services to a “typical” family. So the weightings used for CPI are borderline lunatic if you wanted to use them to appropriately weight actual GDP activity.
CPI, like most indexes, were originally developed by the federal government to help with future government spending decisions more so than to “take a pulse of the economy”, so it’s not surprising to me that it wouldn’t be an ideal deflating index for real GDP.
Carrick,
Something like 40% of the CPI is how much it costs to rent a house or apartment. I guess that may have something to do with GDP, but I’m not sure what.
Usually, real GDP uses the GDP deflator, which is similar to, but not the same as, the CPI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator
In the late 90s George Bush Sr played a round of golf in a little over an hour, faster than I could play a video game round. His dad and grandpa were President of the PGA.
SteveF, there was an editorial a long time ago in the Wall Street Journal asking what are the chances we go to war with Mexico in the next year. It then listed plausible links of how a war could start and asks the questions again.
You say it is likely Trump finishes his term, giving >80% chance, and I suspect you are like Mosher(and me) and making safe bets and so you think the chances are 95% or more.
Yet you concede if he is severely unhealthy he is unlikely to win reelection.
I submit that there is a good chance if Trump is unlikely to win reelection, then he will leave early. I agree with Carrick that the age factor makes it possible Trump’s health takes a downturn as president.
That is just one possible way Trump leaves office.
If I had to bet, I would bet with you, and I was saying Trump would win the popular vote if they reran the election. However, I don’t think it is quite as slam dunk as you make it out to be.
DeWitt—thanks. I always heard it explained as CPI adjusted. Maybe in some (non-official) places it is.
Regarding Trump and golf:
I don’t know how accurate this is, but it gives a description of Trump’s ideas about exercise as well as what he considers physical exertion.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/15/politics/donald-trump-exercise/
We really don’t know how much exercise he gets, but it seems like he always rides a cart when he’s on the course.
Everybody’s hair turns gray when they become President lately. Obama was obviously using Just For Men a couple years in. The most stressful job in the world.
.
I don’t think we are heading into some super recession, or more accurately it isn’t much more likely than anytime else recently. We may have a downturn because things are pretty much humming at the moment so a little less hum wouldn’t be surprising. Low unemployment, record markets, etc. I trust economic predictions less than climate predictions. If DeWitt is that confident then he can short the market and get rich. Good luck.
.
On the other hand market downturns seem to be more based on emotion (fear) than the fundamentals. The media is going to fuel the fear fire even more than usual if the time comes. They would be happy to help tank the economy if it meant getting rid of Trump or even making him look bad.
DeWitt,
Interest rates going up a little are good for some business surely, Banks. They indicate a recovering economy at this stage.
Correct?
In other words with decreasing unemployment, increasing company profits and the possibility of a windfall tax cut that will power businesses forwards you want to come out and say that these good signs are mere harbingers of doom.
You are right in that it is not possible to have “doom” unless you are successful first.
Re the ” The longest post WWII expansion was 120 months from March, 1991 to March, 2001. It ended when the dot com bubble burst. The next longest was 106 months from February, 1961 to December, 1969. The current expansion, dating from June, 2009 will hit 96 months in June. ”
Seeing we have only had a stock market for a short time 100+ years and you are talking about runs of 10,12 and nearly 6 years I’m the later stages of this small sample there is nothing to say a run of 30 years of expansion is impossible.
Correct?
It is equivalent to predicting El Niño change.
Random walk theory is a bit like the pause.
People deny it when the trend goes one way and go quiet when it goes back to the start point.
CNN is using their 8 million point font again. Trump blah blah classified blah blah Russians. Snore….
.
Apparently he told the Russians about ISIS laptop bomb plots.
.
CNN proudly revealed this last month, I guess they forgot.
First on CNN: New terrorist laptop bombs may evade airport security, intel sources say
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/31/politics/terrorist-laptop-bombs-may-evade-security/
.
Perhaps there is meat to this, but I doubt it, and I’m not going to extend effort to find out. A bunch of shrieking banshees. I haven’t watched CNN for months now, and every time I go to their site it is all Trump all the time.
Allegedly the story is that Trump revealed which country is providing the intel and how. Presumably Pakistan or Qatar or the like that has infiltrated the group. CNN is reporting the story is verified by former White House officials. What could they verify?
MikeN, That he said it.
Just did my first power point presentatation ever before 30 people, well received. Many years of stage fright so just incredible to get through OK. New attitude to teachers though, how do they get up and do that day after day?
Thanks to all here for honing my argumentative skills.
angech, congrats on getting through it. It gets easier with practice. Teachers that do presentations daily are truly gifted.
MikeN, that the head of national security who was there in the meeting, along with others there and who gave reps for integrity categorically dismiss the WaPo anonymous sourced story makes thus yet another example of deceptive “reporting” that has become their hallmark.
angech,
The business cycle existed long before the stock market. Stock market crashes are not necessarily recessions.
NPR is currently foaming at the mouth over the laptop thing.
Trump basically has confirmed he did it.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39937258?SThisFB
As I understand the problem, the information he gave them allows them to trace back to the intel source and possibly provides methods. Because we do not share common interests, Russia may work to shut down that source, which could be very difficult to replace. It could cost lives too.
angech: The key I’ve found is distinguishing adrenalin from fear, which people sometimes confuse. When it comes to presentations adrenalin is your friend.
Carrick: “Trump basically has confirmed he did it … the information he gave them allows them to trace back …”
Trump confirmed that he told the Russians something. The White says it was not something that reveals sources. The claim that it is a problem comes from press reports derived from anonymous sources.
If it were not for the facts that there are many swamp critters out to get Trump and the main stream media shares that objective, this might be cause for concern. Under the circumstances, it not something that deserves to be paid attention to.
Wolf! Wolf! Wolf! It has gotten old.
I’m glad Hillary is not president. But I’m not glad Trump is. The fact is: the man is not suited to the presidency. Sadly, neither major party candidate in the last cycle was.
One problem with this story is that it’s hard to not believe Trump did precisely what WAPO reports.
The fact is: much of Trump’s previous job was self-promotion, bragging, puffery. Those traits were probably helpful in building his “TRUMP” brand, running luxury hotels and so on. They are not helpful when a person’s job requires maintaining high level secrets.
Yeah. Maybe Trump didn’t do what WAPO claims. But doing that would be so consistent with his personality that it’s very difficult to discount it as unlikely.
Honestly, I think these reports shouldn’t be ignored. It is true there are critters out to get Trump. That doesn’t make the stories untrue. Trump is the proverbial bull in the china shop. It would be better for him to be in the pasture.
I’m still hoping for Zeus to hurl a lightening bolt and take him out. Or Thor to flying Mjlnir and remove the guy. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
lucia: “One problem with this story is that it’s hard to not believe Trump did precisely what WAPO reports.”
On the contrary, it is easily to disbelieve that. You could, like Trump’s critics, believe that Trump is not detail oriented. Then he could not have revealed key details, because he would have been unaware of them. Or you could go along with Trump’s fans and believe that he his much better at details, and much more in control, than he lets on. What is hard to believe is the combination of traits that the story implies.
.
lucia: “That doesn’t make the stories untrue.”
That attitude just enables the spreading of fake news. The story should be ignored unless some actual evidence is provided.
Mike M:
Paraphrasing what McMaster actually said, Trump didn’t reveal sources, locations or methods. McMaster left open whether you can reverse engineer what Trump said to reveal the sources, locations or methods from/by which the information was obtained.
I believe if it’s code-word, then either you can reverse engineer it to reveal sources, locations or methods, or it’s misclassified.
Lucia:
I agree with Lucia that Trump revealing this sort of information is “so like him”. However, exaggerating the nature of the disclosure is “so like the media”, regardless of whether it’s Trump or Obama.
I also suspect the laptop story itself is about 50% science fiction (nobody seems to be asking credible the information is), and how you defend against the threat seems wrong, but that’s a separate issue from a president who needs better message discipline.
angech
Congratulations on doing something that is hard for you!
First, it’s not as hard as you think. Things that are not novel stop being frightening. Also, public speaking doesn’t scare everyone. That’s partly personality differences and partly exposure.
When I was in primary school, kids all had to do a little. In 2nd and 3rd grade, we each had to give a little talk for “show and tell” from time to time. Later we had to do a little ‘research’ project and make a presentation. I did one on phosphates in detergents. This continued to some extent through 8th grade. I then went to a catholic school and I don’t recall any public speaking requirements in classes. In college: engineering design and capstone labs all involved presenting results to the class.
Nowadays, lots of American high schools are doing “modeling” in physics. Most of the classes have the students perform experiments, then present their results at the end of class. One upside is they all get used to standing up in front of others and presenting. They also get used to presenting material rather informally in a way where the critical thinking is more important than grammar, punctuation, tidyness and so on. Getting the argument out is an important skill. (A potential down side is the high school kids get little to no practice in formal report writing. But that’s not necessarily a big deal. I would guess some teacher in some subject is going to be stricter than necessary on all those things because… well there is always a teacher who cares more about grammar, spelling, punctuation, tidiness, format and so on than about the quality of argument. So the students probably won’t escape without having someone whomp on their spelling errors.)
Anyway, the emphasis on making presentations tends to make American kids have less anxiety over public speaking. It also tends to teach kids to be fairly polite during and after other people’s presentations. (Though perhaps this has changed. Thinking of Middlebury here.)
The funny thing is I remember being at an ASME meeting and going out to drinks with some Greeks and some French attendees afterwards. One of the French guys observed that he loved american meetings and presentations because most people seemed willing to talk, few people were rude and everyone understood that at a certain point things needed to be tabled. All the non-American’s agreed that was one of the best things about the US. (That said: maybe it’s changing. )
MikeM
Nonesense. That someone doesn’t attend to details doesn’t mean they never remember any. Generally, people who are not detail oriented still remember a number of details. The collection is incomplete and sometimes haphazard.
I’ve often half listened to conversations not attending to details and still remembered lots of details. Who doesn’t do this if when doing something like preparing dinner while a spouse has come home and is unwinding? (Ok..maybe someone. 🙂 ) Jim would certainly know better than to spill any security info during these conversations. I’d probably remember about half of it– which is precisely in line with “not detail oriented”.
Well, perhaps you find it hard to believe. I find this story matches his personality precisely. He certainly remembers some details, certainly enough to be a lively story teller when schmoozing. That doesn’t make him “detail oriented”.
He likes to throw out “snippets” to puff himself up– things to make up a story line that he thinks makes him look good. He is not very attentive to secrets– in his past business there really wasn’t much in the way of secrets. Beyond that, few could gain advantage by trying to learn the Trump business “secrets” such as they were.
I’m not concerned about “fake news”. I think that’s just a line people are throwing out now to try to supress stories they want people to ignore.
In fact: that doesn’t make the stories untrue. And I disagree that stories should be ignored merely because they are not yet fully supported. I think such a policy would be dangerous.
Carrick
Agreed. That’s why my attitude to some of these stories is that one should be aware of them– not ignore them– but take care in judging whether they are true or not. I also try to gauge what is more believable and what is not believable. My judgement is different from other people’s.
I wasn’t really thinking about the laptop thing. Just the general “over sharing of sensitive/classified/secret info.” That part sounds soooooo like Trump.
Carrick,
My thought on McMaster’s observations on Trump’s statements is that they are quite particular. They do not dispute the specific allegations in the WAPO article. Believing as I do in McMaster’s integrity, I think his comments are intended to diffuse any call for immediate action regarding Trump’s access to this sort of information.
.
He would do this to give the people who make these sorts of decisions within the intelligence community time to discuss among themselves , with Senior Congressman, and others who are privy to these issues what they can and ought to do under the circumstances.
.
I wrote here some time ago that I thought Trump’s departure would be because the intelligence community would lose confidence in his capacity to keep secure information secure, would realize that they could not throttle the flow to a president, and would share these concerns with senior senators who would would convince Trump to resign.
.
I’ve seen nothing to change my view on this.
Typically Presidents are not given deep specifics about sensitive programs. He was briefed about what to speak about in the meeting. This is yet another bit of fiction provided by WaPo to keep the tinfoil hat club wearing their beanies and hoping to find a decoder ring in the next box of cracker jacks. This birther, truther, and UFOs all in one.
hunter,
It does seem possible that what Trump was given was sufficient for him to witlessly divulge some sensitive element. In other words, presidents frequently must be told things whose components are sensitive, especially if some recommended action requires his permission.
j ferguson, I have a very high opinion of HR McMaster too. I suspect he is behind the tweets by Trump this morning. The wording and phrasing has his earmark on them.
An extreme example of this would be Trump giving out the nuclear codes. Legally he can do this, but doing it makes him unfit for office.
I think this is exactly right.
The sensitivity of this information has to do with sources, locations and means of gathering, and not with the explicit information itself, which as I pointed out above, may have a significant sci-fi element to it.
Hunter, McMaster denied something that was not in the story. He is already being questioned about revealing classified material to waiters at Mar A Lago, or at least reading it with them nearby.
If the city where ISIS is engaging in the plot is revealing, then publishing the story reveals to ISIS that they are blown in this city, and possibly which country has infiltrated their ranks.
That the Russians could reverse engineer from the name of the city is surprising, but WaPo is holding back details that would allow for a proper evaluation. They already have published many stories against Trump found false- including Deputy AG threatened to resign over Comey.
What are you guys smoking? The IC is going to unilaterally decide to not give the President relevant information? I’m not sure where in the Constitution the IC gets to be one of the checks and balances. Exactly where do the voters get control here? This is insanity. If they “officially” did this I am 100% behind firing every upper management person who was within 100 miles of this decision, I don’t care who is President. This is the very definition of a rogue agency.
.
Perhaps they wink and nod and unofficially filter stuff, but you better not get caught.
.
I can imagine this scenario, IC in congressional testimony: “We did have intel that the Norks might launch a nuclear ICBM but we decided to not tell the President because we didn’t trust him.”
I see the media is blaring that Israel provided the info. It’s super duper serious when Trump does it in a private meeting, but they don’t mind telling the whole world. The cognitive dissonance of the media never fails to amaze.
.
I don’t doubt that Trump may have used bad judgment, but ISIS is a common enemy. If there was intelligence sharing between Russia / US on ISIS that would be a good thing. Exactly how ones does that when you can’t trust Russia is a bit difficult, and the sharing part would be important going both ways.
.
The hyperventilating from the left and the media on all things Trump just make everyone’s eyes glaze over. They have to fill newspapers every day and I guess Trump is the devil’s spawn sells better than reason.
Tom Scharf,
You have the dilemma nailed. Of course the agencies cannot make the sorts of decisions you suggest, but they do. The president doesn’t need to know everything. In some cases the president cannot know some aspects of a program, in others even the existence of the program. Sorry, no examples.
.
They also can’t fire the president, but they can suggest that our elected folks convince Trump that he might be happier in some other situation. Since that’s already been done once, with Nixon, the only question is the provocation. How bad does it have to get?
.
I have no idea.
If one uses the “will it matter in 5 years?” filter, will anything Trump has done in the last 120 days be meaningful? The only thing I would say is the Supreme Court nomination.
.
I don’t see where anybody would change their vote based on what has happened so far. In fact the establishment is so unhinged that those who voted for anti-establishment reasons are going to feel entirely justified.
I think WaPo is rapidly transitioning itself into as big a security threat to the US as Assange ever was. Bezos’ arrogance in protecting his huge fortune is breathtaking. Trump, if he doesn’t let the losers talk him into quitting, will win this. And especially so if it turns out, as was always likely, that Russia did not hack the DNC but that it was mysteriously murdered DNC insider. Truth is stranger than fiction.
Tom Scharf,
If Trump resigns, it will matter in 5 years. If he doesn’t, I don’t know.
In other news, the missiles are on their way… to completely obliterate the Republican agenda that is.
Source: Comey wrote in memo that Trump asked to end Flynn investigation
Wondering if this will ever stop.
Carrick,
No, the wild eyed accusations and hysteria, based on anonymous sources of course, will continue indefinitely. Toobin at CNN has as much credibility as an angry 5 year old has … or the ‘Trump dossier’ has, which is to say: none.
.
None of the hysteria is likely to lead to anything.
>If one uses the “will it matter in 5 years?†filter, will anything Trump has done in the last 120 days be meaningful? The only thing I would say is the Supreme Court nomination.
The pipelines won’t be destroyed. A billion dollars a year for Buffett’s railroad gone.
MikeN,
To that you can add: inncreased petroleum exploration/production off shore, relaxing of Obama’s auto milage requirements, a long delay in the ‘clean power’ plan, a smaller number of illegal immigrants, and lots of others.
Carrick, major contradiction in the story, assuming the source is Comey. He said he didn’t say anything before because it would influence the Russia investigation, and that team was not made aware of the conversation. The investigation is ongoing, so why reveal it now?
The actual line is weak, but then Trump is good at such vague statements. “I hope you can let this go.†Should have been ‘will let this go’, but instead we have a statement that means I hope your investigation leads to the point where nothing is possible to charge.
DeWitt Payne
May 15th, 2017 at 7:58 am
“The massive move to index funds is yet another problem.â€
“Optimistic investors want to believe that there’s a wizard behind the curtain, who can help them “beat the marketâ€, but study after study finds that the simplest and most lucrative approach to investing may be the best. In most cases, creating a portfolio of low cost index funds, which are cheaper and more tax-efficient than their managed cousins, is the way to go.â€
http://www.jillonmoney.com/index-funds-still-beat-managed-funds/
Stock index fund hedge by owning many stocks. General Motors is on the brink. Who cares? Stock index funds are one of the most stable things compared to individual stocks. They have the advantage of about 3/4s of point of lower annual costs. So you start each year with 0.0075 more money as your broker doesn’t have it. If it is not a random walk, one has to figure out what the future walk will be. If you can’t do that, the index fund is a good answer.
It is true, as President Obama served, the S & P 500 index more than doubled. I’d argue that the stock market is efficient. It takes all kinds of information, weights it and mixes it together, and we get a stock price. Those with superior information would be able to profit on the market’s alleged weakness. Today, next year, the next decade and on and on.
The trend has been to lower cost funds, smaller load fees and to index funds. And I think people are getting more value. I have a total stock market fund that has 0.04 in annual fees. That not 1%, that’s 4/100s of 1%. I predict that’s the future. I did have to scrape $100k together in one type of account (traditional IRA) though to get that low annual fee. I’d also argue that stock index funds provide more stability as there should be less active trading. An alarmist can say, the markets are dangerous and you need me to take care of your money. I said no. But everyone’s not like me. And there is risk in the markets. And everyone’s risk tolerance is an important variable.
Greg Jarrett reports that Comey faces possible disbarment for refusing to reveal that Trump attempted to obstruct justice in asking Comey to shut down the Flynn investigation. Is this even remotely plausible?
Ragnaar
I have a pension called an industry fund in Australia, < 1% management compared to 5% for managed pensions. I have a small self managed fund but accountants and registration eat into about 0.8%. Wish I could get 0.04, seems a mirage.
Random walk on the stock market is not on a flat line as you point out, There is an average??? 8% increase yearly so the random walk is from this trendline.
DeWitt is pretty knowledgeable, I was just trying to point out what my father in law amongst others used to say, Every time someone buys a share someone sells a share.
They both believe in the reasons they are doing it for but the market Don't care.
Lucia , thanks
Wish I had had some of that public speaking training as a youngster in Australia.
Played Bridge that night, On a real high, hands shaking holding the cards.
Let’s see the alleged memo. Properly authenticated. Remember: this is a media that has been pushing lies about a lot of stuff for a long time. Think of how this same media rallied in mass to cover up climategate. To repeat the lies that “big oil” pays skeptics. Has refused to call out Mann for lying about his Nobel prize claim. Media has become very comfortable with lockstep echoing of provable lies and in covering up the truth. I will not be surprised by this being done against the President. I said we are witnessing a slow motion coup some time ago. Sadly I may be correct.
MikeN,
Are you asking if it’s plausible he’ll be sent to jail? Or the law states he was obliged to report the attempt if he believed it had occurred. The latter is certainly plausible.
Comey ‘refused’ to reveal or wasn’t asked and didn’t? Maybe if it’s the second, there isn’t any naughtiness. I’m not so sure Trump’s request meets the test for obstruction. If it doesn’t, then it seems doubtful that Comey is guilty of anything related to Trump’s request.
As hunter suggests, we’re going to see a lot of stuff in the next month in the media which isn’t correct but is there to fan the flames. Coup is one way to look at it, although the people who are most anxious to get Trump out of there don’t like Pence much either.
Trump isn’t going anywhere…. except to the Middle East, and then to Europe. Comey refuses to testify to Congress (closed session) about being fired. I think that says about all that is relevant.
.
WRT Trump telling the Russian foreign minister and ambassidor about ‘laptop bombs’: HR McMaster and Rex Tillerson were both present and did not think Trump said anything inappropriate. On the other hand, the number of people from the White House who were present was small, and at least one of them immediately leaked that conversation to people outside the administration. Trump should not invite to future such meetings anyone who was present at this meeting except McMaster and Tillerson.
SteveF, Clearly you don’t think it was Tillerson. Comey’s refusal to testify may have been the ‘closed’ session. Although that might speak to the showboater in him.
hunter (Comment #162010): “Let’s see the alleged memo. Properly authenticated. Remember: this is a media that has been pushing lies about a lot of stuff for a long time.”
Exactly. What we have here is a whispering campaign by Trump opponents within the government, with the media acting as an enthusiastic amplifier. Sensible people will pay no attention unless substance is provided.
The media analyzing any and all “reported” by “unnamed sources” excerpts in the worst possible way is what has led politicians to become so defensive in speaking and made them all mindless zombie robots. The excerpts are not chosen randomly by leakers to inform, but rather for maximum political impact. It’s like throwing chum into the water. I think people are sick of it, and when Trump started speaking off the cuff he became more popular. The people want free speaking politicians, the media effectively attempts to muzzle them.
.
I prefer Trump keep being Trump, and not cave to the media’s rules of engagement (even though it’s like watching crash up derby). It’s getting to the point where I need to disable news notifications on my phone because every time Trump takes a sh** my phone lights up like the 4th of July. Get a grip people.
Putin says he wants to “help” by giving the Russian side of the story. He must be having the time of his life. Hilarious.
jferguson,
Seems to me that treated as an 8th grade logic problem:
If Trump’s request does not amount to obstruction, then Comey wasn’t required to report it. No laws were broken.
If Comey didn’t think it amounted to obstruction, and Comey didn’t report it, I suspect no laws were broken. (Law generally require mens rea.)
If Comey did think it amounted to obstruction and didn’t report it…. Perhaps Comey broke a law.
If Comey thought it amounted to obstruction and was correct, and didn’t report it, then Comey probably broke a law, and Trump broke a law.
MikeN had asked
I later saw Jarrets article and he’s pretty much pointing out the final two possibilities and described Comey as having put himself in a box. Which seems true because if Comey believed that Trump was obstructing justice it seems the law would require him to report that. Not just write a memo to file. Writing a memo to file is no reporting. It’s a little more than writing it in your diary for yourself, but no where near reporting. On the other hand, if Comey did not believe Trump was obstructing justice he didn’t need to report it.
But one would then presume that whatever the words Trump said, Comey did not get the impression that the meaning of those words suggested “obstruction of justice”. In that case, why should anyone now consider that memo to contain evidence Trump intended to obstruct justice? Now, one might the reason one could now consider it evidence is they form an bit of evidence when placed in the body of evidence. That sort of thing does happen. Nevertheless, one does need to consider the fact that Comey does not seem to have considered it obstruction of justice back then when weighing the evidence of “obstruction of justice” by the president.
The fact is, wrt to Comey now giving evidence that he might have thought the president was trying to obstruct justice, we need to ask why this guy who seems to like to give the impression of being more-ethical than though didn’t act.
If Comey ends up appearing in Congress and provides a memo which he or others suggest indicate Trump was trying to get him to obstruct justice, Comey’s going to be asked questions. Congress-critters are bound to ask him obvious quesitons. Like for example:
When Trump said things now being claimed to suggest he was trying to obstruct justices, did Comey tell the Trump he thinks Trump’s request amounts to obstruction of justice? It seems to me that in such a circumstance Comey should have. So if he inform Trump what he though under that circumstance, why not? If he did inform Trump, then we’d want to know what did Trump said? And if that part of the exchange occurred but is not in the memo to file, why isn’t it? (One would think that sort of exchange would be important.)
If Trump seemed to suggest or order things Comey though amounted to obstruction of justice, did Comey say he would resign rather than do what was suggested? If not, why not?
The fact is: if someone is using a “memo to file” as evidence, they are going to recognize the memo is pretty close to “memo to myself”. It will be as complete or incomplete as the writer deemed “appropriate” at the time. People are going to weigh the information contained in the file with information not contained in the file.
As for my opinion about any Comey memo: I’m waiting for it to be made public, to read what it says before I judge what it means. When it surfaces– and if it exists, I assume it will– I’m sure there are going to be a lot of questions that need to be asked.
jferguson:
He hasn’t been in front of Congress yet. I don’t know who else would be asking.
I think there would need to be more memos. As a law enforcement officer, it is within his rights to withhold information, if he were allowing Trump to incriminate himself with his behavior, for example.
SteveF:
Yes. It means Comey wants the hearing to be public.
Honestly, I’m wondering what else you would have expected them to say. They certainly aren’t going to call out their boss on national TV. Let’s put them in front of congress and have them testify under oath, if you really think Trump didn’t say anything inappropriate.
But they didn’t deny the actual Washington Post story either.
Carrick, your point that Comey may have been accumulating evidence and accordingly had no obligation to reveal parts of what may have been the beginning of an investigation makes a lot of sense.
lucia:
Comey wrote an internal memo to his department and discussed the incident to other senior FBI officers. So the FBI was aware of it and Comey actually did report it.
Again I don’t think so.
Comey is not Trump’s lawyer. The FBI is an independent agency, so Comey did not work for Trump, even if Trump could fire him, and therefore had no obligation to protect Trump from his own potentially illegal behavior.
I think Comey should have allowed Trump to engage in any further potentially illegal activity, collecting evidence and reporting this evidence to his department. Then if a pattern emerged, this should have been reported at that time to the Justice Department or the US Congress. This appears to be exactly what was happening here.
I don’t think so. First it’s not “one memo”, it’s “a number of [] memos to record Trump’s statements that [Comey] found troublesome.”
Secondly, these are written records of the recollections of one person, made at the time of a potentially illegal activity, or simply made when a conversation of note between an officer and a subject of interest had taken place, and serve as a legal record of the recollections of that individual.
Third these memos are hardly unique to Comey. This one on David Patraeus was written by Deputy FBI Director Sean Joyce.
We shouldn’t be shocked that when a subject engages in potentially illegal activities with a law enforcement officer, that the officer doesn’t arrest the subject at that point, nor that the officer doesn’t warn the subject that what the subject is doing is illegal.
The officer might consider that this is part of a general pattern of behavior on the subject’s part, and that warning the subject would stop the subject from engaging in the illegal activity with the officer, but probably not in general.
That is, a warning by the officer would not serve the public interest.
Stopping the pattern of illegal activity (if it exists) is in the public interest, so recording that and any other potentially illegal acts until a pattern has emerged would be an appropriate response by the officer.
In principle that’s what was going on here.
I think the probability that Comey is in any legal jeopardy here is about “zero”.
I don’t have time to get into some potential subtleties, but it almost certainly isn’t a crime to ask that an investigation be ended even if the target of an investigation is guilty. It would probably be a crime to ask someone to lie about the investigation as a counter-example.
…
Presidents and prosecutors have the right to focus on what they consider to be important and are not obligated to prosecute all crimes. For instance, it is a crime to assist someone to enter the US Illegally, and as far as I know virtually no one has been prosecuted under that statute. If a prosecutor were to try to enforce the law, his superior could legitimately tell him to stop the investigation. This isn’t obstruction of justice.
JD
“In that case, why should anyone now consider that memo to contain evidence Trump intended to obstruct justice?”
.
Satire, right? Applying logic to TDS may lead to the collapse of the universe.
.
Comey would be crazy to testify at this point. A den of thieves with all the knives out. Oh, and can we now have carefully selected excerpts from his Clinton investigation notes?
JD Ohio:
I imagine it would get more subtle when the person making the request has the authority to terminate the employment of the person doing the investigation.
It might even get more complex, if the person making the request actually fired that other person later.
And even more complex if part of the reason for firing that individual was because the investigation was still ongoing.
JD Ohio,
As a country, i think making more of Trump’s question than it warrants would be very bad. I don’t think the guy has any business in the White House (there’s something Freudian in there) but if he’s going to be moved out, it would be political violence no matter how its metered out.
.
The reason has to be sound and comprehensible to everyone. that doesn’t mean that everyone will understand or agree, but it has to be plain as day. If they can’t come up with something like that now, they should wait until they can.
.
I still think failed relationship with the agencies will be the linchpin.
.
Trumped up charges would be a disaster.
Carrick,
Trump’s behavior is also explained by there not being a Russian conspiracy, and no Rubik’s Conspiracy Cube is required to explain it. Funny how that never comes up as an explanation for anything in the media.
Does the memo exist? What other memos regarding, say, Obama steering the Hillary email investigations exist? Or concerns about Obama using diplomacy as a ruse to fund Iranian military and terror adventures and his lying to Congress about it? Or notes about Obama insiders getting billions for failed solar? And exactly what crime did Flynn get accused of?
Tom Scharf:
First, there’s no way Trump could know there wasn’t a conspiracy between his aides and the Russians. This isn’t a fictional novel so he doesn’t have perfect knowledge of things he wasn’t involved with.
Secondly, even if he knew what he couldn’t possibly know, interference with an ongoing investigation would still be illegal.
Obama, by the “standard” being given to impeach Trump clearly also obstructed justice in declaring early in that Hillary had committed no crime just a few harmless mistakes.
Carrick, your reasoning is increasingly lacking in reason. Trump is accused of being Putin’s clock pistol holder by one if the greatest intellectuals of the left. Now he couldn’t know about it? Your tinfoil is over heating.
j ferguson,
.
NPR: Trump Impeachment Talk Grows From Conspiracy Theory To Mainstream
.
This is not going to surprise a Trump supporter in the least. We can all feel nice and secure that our representatives and media are looking out for our interests and not just indulging themselves in self serving counterproductive fantasies.
Carrick,
Trump may believe there is no conspiracy and acts accordingly. People don’t behave based on the inability to prove a negative. Spaghetti monsters are about to get Carrick, I suggest you move to Belarus where spaghetti monsters will never visit.
hunter, you should look up what Wheaton’s Law is, then try and follow it.
What I said basically was there’s no way Trump could know whether his aides colluded with Russian officials or not. There are obviously things that Trump knows whether they are true or not, but this is not one of those.
Tom Scharf:
Sorry, but that still doesn’t justify him interfering with an investigation, which would be unlawful regardless of his opinion about things he doesn’t know the facts on.
Carrick, couldn’t he know his aides colluded, assuming they did?
j ferguson:
Yes, but remember the starting point was Tom Scharf’s comment that “Trump’s behavior is also explained by there not being a Russian conspiracy”.
Tom’s premise was there wasn’t a conspiracy and Trump knowing there wasn’t one. I didn’t see how Trump would know about something he wasn’t involved with. Nor did I see how it was explanatory.
The tinfoil fevered brains have Trump st once being a cock puppet for Putin and being oblivious of a Russian conspiracy by underlings. Yet there is no evidence of a conspiracy except in an increasingly obvious bad faith echo chamber.
jferguson—I see what you’re referring to now. I should have said in my comment to hunter:
“What I said basically was there’s no way Trump could know that his aides were not colluding Russian officials. ” That’s more accurately what I had said previously too.
hunter, it’s notable you seem incapable of making any argument without descending into these excruciatingly childish insults.
I have never made the argument that Trump is Putin’s puppet, nor am I required to do so, before I can discuss whether Trump’s aides potentially colluded with Russian officials. So this is a classic straw man on your part.
But even if Trump were a puppet of the Russian government, that still doesn’t imply Trump would know all of the details of everything his subordinates have engaged in, legal or otherwise.
angechangech
May 17th, 2017 at 3:47 am
That 5% in fees is asking for someone to charge less.
They show the expense ratio here:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=VTSAX
The above are Admiral shares.
Carrick,
In public session Corey can more easily refuse to answer questions ‘on national security grounds’. I think Comey should testify, should answer all questions, and should be very careful he does not purger himself.
.
WRT McMaster’s public statement about Trump’s meeting with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador: Do you think McMaster is simply lying when he says Trump told the Russians nothing that was inappropriate for the conversation? Do you also think Tillerson is lying? (Not rhetorical questions.)
NBC NEWS:
Charles 1 ?
.
Napoleon?
.
Nicholas II?
SteveF:
The way I’d put it, there are two types of questions here, questions of facts and questions of judgment.
On the question of facts, there seems to be no dispute, even from McMaster, that Trump divulged code-word level information to the Russians, that he did it without consulting the country of origin of the information, and that he divulged it to the Russians even when the US wasn’t willing to share this information with its allies.
Since I’ve seen nothing from McMaster that contradicts on either of these three, then I’d say “no, he’s being honest on questions of facts” even if he’s trying to sew confusion (which is always wise in cases like this).
On the question of judgement, I’ve personally witnessed this battle before, between different groups over what information can be publicly divulged and which can’t (even in cases where our adversaries were already aware of the information).
From that experience, I can say it’s very possible that an ex-military type wouldn’t have a particularly sympathetic view of intelligence originating from the 3-letter agencies, and might well have thought, as a question of judgement, it was appropriate for the President to reveal this information, even if he thought the process of declassification could have been handled better.
So on the question of judgement, I don’t think you can accused McMaster of personally lying. Though we’re back to this issue: Even if he personally disagreed with the President’s judgement, what do you expect him to say? Of course he will support the President on questions of judgement. That’s his obligation here.
j ferguson, yep.
Also, Abraham Lincoln (reward for saving the Republic). Benito Mussolini (displayed on a meathook no less). The Romanovs (entire family paid the ultimate price, Anastasia screamed in vain). The list is very long indeed.
McMaster is buying time. If he said Trump revealed information to the Russians which could be the basis for backtracking to the source (and that was a bad thing), where would we be today?
3 letter agencies include DIA.
jferguson—this is definitely a case where you might expect to have to lie to maintain national secrets.
Newsworthy item here:
Interview in the WaPo with Matthew Miller, ex-DOJ guy.
“I don’t think it’s exceptional either for an FBI director or for anyone at the FBI or at the Justice Department [to take notes of this sort.”
“[M]aybe Comey was actually trying to build an obstruction-of-justice case against the president here.”
“Look, there’s one thing I agree with the president on: That Comey is a showboat. ”
” [If] you were really looking to damage the president, you wouldn’t leak the most damaging memo first. So who knows what comes next?”
“One of the tests of the next few days is whether DOJ will try and block the FBI from turning these over to Congress.”
Lucia, you leave out the possibility that Comey didn’t think it was obstruction then, but thinks it is obstruction now.
Carrick,
“That’s his obligation here.”
.
Seems to me that me his obligation is to either say nothing publicly, and tell Trump privately if he disagreed with Trump’s judgement, say nothing and resign if he felt strongly enough about it, or say what he has publicly said if he did not see anything wrong with what Trump told the Russians. Everything I have heard and read says McMaster is quite willing to tell his boss when he disagrees (and is a generally stand-up guy to boot). Absent clear evidence, I would never suggest he is telling the public the opposite of what he honstly thinks. I’m a little surprised you think that.
SteveF:
I didn’t say anywhere that he did. I just said that would be his obligation here. When you deal with national security issues, sometimes deception is necessary. If deception is necessary for national security reasons, good luck finding “clear evidence” of that.
I also said on matters of judgement, it would be inappropriate for him to do anything other than support his boss, at least publicly. Compromise is generally necessary in matters of judgement regardless.
There shouldn’t be anything controversial on either of these issues.
Robert Mueller is appointed special counsel.
I’m glad things are not boring this year.
I prefer boring.
Carrick,
Don’t worry. When Mueller finds no collusion with Russia he will be accused of a cover-up by every MSM outlet.
Carrick,
We clearly have very different ideas of what McMaster’s obligations are.
SteveF: We’ll see what Mueller finds. Unfortunately these things always seem to turn into fishing expedition
Lucia: Actually, I feel your pain.
Mueller unlike Ken Starr doesn’t have to make his name. when he concludes that there is nothing to some of the allegations, people are very likely to believe him. Great choice.
Boring….like when the Obama head of the IRS helped cover up the abuse of citizens by the IRS and dems rallied to help. Or when Obama deliberately lied about the Iranian scam he pulled and funded Iranian terror, military expansion and paid ransom in unmarked bills.
I am disgusted by the tinfoil twits and their cynical smarmy faux justice. And dismayed that Republicans don’t have the balls to tell the dems to eff off.
Collusion is not by itself a crime. If he is special counsel on the Russia probe, then that was not a criminal investigation, and there is no need for a special prosecutor. If he is special counsel with regards to obstruction of justice by Trump telling Comey to stand down on Flynn investigation, then that has to do with Turkey not Russia, but is at least a crime.
Ken Starr didn’t have to make his name either. He was already considered a likely Republican pick for the Supreme Court, and had been used as special investigator by the Senate who was trusted to be discrete in reviewing Bob Packwood’s diary. He was not the first special prosecutor, and was only attacked because Clinton needed to distract and sent James Carville to do it.
This will likely become a permanent fishing expedition. The left should be dancing with glee. I’m guessing this thing will still be going two years from now and have almost nothing to do with what it does today.
.
Let the witch hunt begin.
Tom Scharf,
Yes, it probably will. I only hope the group under Mueller keeps the press conferences to an absolute minimum and doesn’t leak continuously. Probably too much to hope for.
MikeN, Re:Starr’s stardom
You’re probably right about Starr not needing to make his name. I was going from memory and at the time thought his history prior to getting the special prosecutor gig pretty obscure. This says nothing of his competence.
.
Mueller certainly does not have an obscure past.
This is kind of a bind for the FBI. If they go to all this trouble and then ultimately say “nothing to see here” it is going to look bad, exactly like a partisan witch hunt.
.
So I think they will want to find something no matter what, and if it ends up being inconsequential in the grand scheme, the comparison to the failure to do anything with the Clinton investigation will be immediate and ugly, ugly, ugly.
.
Heads I lose, tails you win.
.
One would assume that if they are doing something like this they must have something worth looking at, but it could just be the new guy doing some CYA. I would be surprised if they were actually able to keep any secrets in this political environment.
The overly broad scope of the letter authorizing Mueller as Special Prosecutor is not encouraging.
link
It seems to grant Mueller very broad powers. Payback by Rosenstein?
I think some here are too optimistic that there will be no collusion or links between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government. Links will be found. Whether they are actionable is the question.
I predict the investigation will be broadened to include links with other governments, such as Turkey.
And I absolutely don’t expect any diminishment of leaks, nor any serious investigation of them by Mueller.
The “sexy” outcome and a feather in Mueller’s cape is the bringing down of a presidency…pretty much a prosecutor’s wet dream.
Under Star it was Clinton Inc. doing the leaking, numbing the public into ignoring the substance. Sort of ” who ya gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” defense.
Tom Scharf (Comment #162061): “This is kind of a bind for the FBI.”
Not for the FBI; it is a probable disaster for the Democrats. Mueller, not the FBI, will be controlling the investigation. If he finds nothing, as I expect, the Democrats will learn the meaning of the old Chinese curse: “May you get what you wish for”.
angech and SteveF,
Add to my list of shoes waiting to drop, a Constitutional crisis in the US over Trump. People buying S&P index funds now will be crying in their beer.
The real witch hunt was Plamegate with Gerald Fitzpatrick and Scooter Libby.
Fitzpatrick was going after real witches. Judith Miller tipped off the Holy Land Foundation of a raid, and Scooter Libby was Mark Rich’s lawyer.
J Ferguson, it was obscure compared to Mueller. I only heard this much later, when Starr testified and a Senator said his Supreme Court chances were gone.
MikeN,
Never been a special prosecutor named Fitzpatrick (my name); it was Fitzgerald.
Probably Patrick Fitzgerald: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Fitzgerald
Not Gerald Fitzpatrick.
j ferguson (Comment #162060): “… probably right about Starr not needing to make his name… Mueller certainly does not have an obscure past.”
Starr already had many accomplishments, but he was still on the way up. Mueller was, I think, semi-retired. He is 25 years older than Starr was when he become special prosecutor. So Mueller is in a position to play the elder statesman, beholden to nobody. I think there is a good chance he will carry out an investigation and be done with it, rather than embarking on an endless fishing expedition.
Mike M,
My thoughts exactly.
The chances of Mueller wrapping up is pretty small. Something additional can come up that requires investigating. Fitzgerald found perjury while investigating Plame even though he already knew the names of the leakers within a few days if not hours.
Mueller is authorized to go after Flynn. If he looks at Page, he can probably find some perjury case if he is interested.
Page?
Mike N,
I hope you are mistaken. Mueller should appreciate the damage that accusations of collusion between Trump and the Russians are doing and at least finish that up quickly. If Flynn failed to report significant income from Russian business dealings (before or during the campaign) as seems plausible, then Mueller can prosecute him on tax evasion. But that doesn’t seem connected to the more substantive issue of Trump colluding to corrupt the election….. for which there is not a bit of evidence so far.
j ferguson,
I think he means Plame.
Carter Page. we need a roster.
No, Carter Page. The guy who appears to be exaggerating his role in Trump’s campaign, and was the basis for FISA warrant.
SteveF.
It’s a bit amazing, to me at least, that Flynn was advocating an approach to a Syrian issue favored by Turkey apparently while being retained by them as a consultant, the relationship unrevealed to the Trump folks, an approach which wasn’t taken after his departure.
j ferguson
After Bill Clinton collected a huge speaking fee from Russian interests, Hillary approved Russian purchase of US uranium assets. That seems far more blatant corruption than anything Flynn has done. But yes, Flynn had clear conflicts of interest. Unlike Hillary, he won’t get away with it.
SteveF,
I never understood how Hillary got away with the straddle back in her Little Rock days. It was blatant bribery. Not unlike the poker games which when politicians play with local businessmen they always walk away with significant winnings.
.
I’m prepared to believe that Flynn is basically honest which is why he left himself open to the problems he now has. It probably never crossed his mind that not everyone would understand that what he’d done, he did in good faith.
.
Hillary on the other hand …
j ferguson,
“Hillary on the other hand…”
… spent her whole adult life doing her personal impression of Leona Helmsley: “Acting within the law is for the little people”. Turmp’s supporters didn’t shout ‘lock her up’ for nothing; IMHO she is a criminal.
Trump let slip what people long suspected:
“There is no collusion between myself and my campaign.”
I didn’t think the Tweet was serious that Maxine Waters claims Putin came up with Lock Her Up and Crooked Hillary.
Peggy Noonan: https://www.wsj.com/articles/democracy-is-not-your-plaything-1495149082
Lucia:
.
Heh, funny. Does anybody know the etymology of that “Fitz-” prefix?
NIels,
“Fitz-” is a patronymic prefix. Along the same lines as “Mac-“. [And many other versions across the world.]
Thanks, HaroldW. “Fitz” means son of. I should have guessed that. “Fitz” even sounds like “fils” – son in french.
Evidently, that’s exactly where it comes from. The Normans.
Lucia,
“The Normans.”
1066, the most important year evah!
I tend to think 10 October 732 was more influential. By my high school English teacher– who was English- did lean toward 1066.
While I recall 1066 very strongly from high school (?) history classes, 732 did not make an impression on me, suggesting that while the rise and fall of Moorish control in Europe was covered, the critical battles weren’t mentioned much. When visiting Spain, the emphasis was placed on Granada (1491-92), the final battle, rather than on Tours or earlier Iberian victories against the Moors.
lucia: “I tend to think 10 October 732 was more influential.”
Certainly a very important date. But the three sieges of Constantinople in that era were probably just as important. But I think the most influential date in history occurred sometime around 30-33 A.D.
HaroldW,
Well, when comparing Spaniards to Frenchmen, it’s not surprising Spaniards tend to pay more attention to Spanish battles and French to French.
I tend to suspect that if Martel had not won at Tours/Poitiers, the battle at Granada would not have even happened.
Mike M. I think the decisive battles between Christian and Moslem countries mattered a lot. The two groups were culturally distinct.
I think 1066 was an important battle, but on the other hand, it was between a group of sorth-of-French-speaking Christianized former-Vikings against a set of sort-of-English speaking Christianized cousins of Vinkings (anglo-saxons) who was marching back from fighting another Viking, Harald Hardrada. In some ways, the battle between Harold and Harald vanquishing more honest-to-goodness Vikings may have been more important than William the Conquerer winning. Or not. The Norman’s replacing the Anglo-Saxons does matter.
It did result in quite a bit of change one way or another. So: yes, important year.
I think it’s difficult to pick out a most important year. But 1066 is at least in the running.
Dilbert on Climate Science:
http://dilbert.com/strip/2017-05-14
.
That guy kind of resembles a certain someone, ha ha.
.
Scott Adams probably should keep his strips policy free.
I like July 27, 1694, Founding of Bank of England
.
This was the date they got the gold out from under everyone’s (well some people’s) beds and gave them a national debt to worry about.
Lucia –
“when comparing Spaniards to Frenchmen, it’s not surprising Spaniards tend to pay more attention to Spanish battles and French to French.”
Yes, that stands to reason. But I was surprised that the guides didn’t mention the centuries prior to Granada, when the Moorish and Christian regions were in conflict. It’s not like the American war of independence, where it was all over in a matter of a few years.
“I tend to suspect that if Martel had not won at Tours/Poitiers, the battle at Granada would not have even happened.”
That seems likely, but there were 700 years in between. If not Martel, perhaps Charlemagne would have begun the process. As it happened, 732 was the tourning point.
I think the “Democracy is in danger” articles are getting a bit old and make about zero sense. Noonan is part of the DC establishment and Democracy isn’t her plaything either. The tone is that “democracy” needs to be taken from the democratically elected Morlocks currently in charge. Yes, that is saving democracy to the entitled.
.
The only danger I see is a certain group who feels entitled to having their way. If one was to predict last November how an entitled self serving establishment would behave after Trump won, this reality would be pretty close. I must say it is pretty entertaining to see these people lose their minds.
.
Realistically the nation could use a major foreign crisis or terror attack to remind everyone we are on the same team.
.
I’m also still waiting on the predicted Brexit apocalypse.
Tom Scharf (#162095) —
Scott Adams received some criticism for that cartoon, including the following version from Russell Seitz, as tweeted by Michael Mann: https://twitter.com/MichaelEMann/status/863899446744162304
A similar point of view taken by Climate Crocks: Dilbert’s Dimwitted Denial. Have to give them a plus-1 for alliteration — I absolutely adore alliteration.
TomScharf
Probably. But something gets into these cartoonists sometimes. For example: Gary Trudeau.
Search for Dilbert fungible for another classic.
TomScharf,
I’m puzzled by your remarks re: Peggy Noonan’s piece. Did you actually read it.
.
I had taken the gist of it to be the folks who voted for Trump should be respected and his office not yanked away from him without careful thought to whether they will appreciate the reason. In other words the reason has to be very compelling. If it isn’t, they shouldn’t do it. I agree. What could follow could be much worse than anything we’ve seen already.
.
I didn’t get any hint that she was thinking of them as the great unwashed, or deplorables or anything like that. I don’t think she thinks that way.
.
Tom, are you comfortable with Trump’s performance to date? Not just the policies, but the entire show, so to speak
j ferguson,
I read it. It was kind of confusing. First she warned the left as you said, and then proceeded to say the right should go slap some sense into Trump and do it her (the establishment) way. Noonan is usually good. She is basically a never Trumper I think. Most all pre-2016 conservative columnists at major newspapers are anti-Trump.
.
I don’t think Trump has done much in concrete terms. The Supreme Court. Basically no major legislation passed. So a better criticism is he hasn’t delivered what he promised instead of he has started the end of the world as some like to assert. A bunch of executive orders to reverse Obama’s is OK, but just like Obama they may have a short shelf life.
.
He is unstable and compulsive, basically what everyone expected.
.
I would accurately call myself a “Trump supporter sympathizer”. I voted for him, but held my nose, was within a hair of throwing my ballot away. About 50% of the criticisms of Trump are spot on, but the card has been way overplayed to absurdity. The crapping on his voters by the self certified tolerant ones was crossing the Rubicon in my view. These white trash knuckle dragging racist xenophobic sexist moron cultist denialist losers have every right to elect a President of their choice. Besmirching their character because they aren’t sufficiently enlightened has simply been ugly to watch. I understand this always occurs to some extent, but this time was different.
.
I am from WV originally and drove right through rural Alabama/rural Florida last week and if one can’t do that and start to understand why there is discontent by just looking around, then you don’t want to know. It’s a case of urban voters saying “I want even more for me” and that is a time honored voting priority I can understand. You can do that without being a total d*ckhead though, ha ha.
.
I digress. Short answer is Trump is about as bad as I suspected he would be, but hasn’t come close to screwing the pooch yet. That’s the benefit of having a very low bar. I ask myself “How would Clinton be any better at this point?”.
.
What would change my mind? Material things. Screwing up the economy. Starting a kinetic war on a whim. Smoking meth in the White House bathroom. Doing a bunch of anti-libertarian things. I don’t put much emphasis on “the show” which has been a minor circus, but the people throwing the tomatoes in the first five minutes of the show also look bad.
.
His most redeeming quality is he is an unmistakable messenger that fly over country is very unhappy and feels disrespected. What they do with that message is their decision.
Tom, thank you so much for taking the time to write this. I held my nose, and probably some other parts and voted for Hillary, but in all honesty can easily imagine we would be in a mess with her in office about now. Like some others here, i loath (Thanks for the best word SteveF) her and really wish she would recede back into the woods.
.
I’m from fly-over country. I hate hearing people ridicule us. Living on the east coast, in a nest of liberals, I get to hear a lot of this.
.
I continue to think that the problems we’ll face ten years down the road will make today’s seem like child’s play.
.
Thanks again,
John
j ferguson,
“…we would be in a mess with her in office about now. ”
In some sense, no. The MSM (AKA the choir) would sing her praises every day, and only troglodytes like me would complain about her creeping socialism policies (and the fact she is a felon). Nobody would be investigating Bill’s astronomical speaking fees, which might double in both size and frequency.
.
Political correctness would, of course, be triumphant, and legislation to control free speech (AKA block ‘hate speech’ and ‘micro-agressions’ via criminal penalties) would be before the House. Climate ‘denial’ would bring criminal charges from DOJ… or at least a threat thereof. Hilary’s SC nominee would make Sotomayor look like a right wing nutcase, and the SC would quickly aprove both gun confiscation and any limitations on free speech Congress was willing to pass.
.
But there at least would be no MSM drama like with Trump.
Peggy Noonan may have been a NeverTrumper at first, but at a certain point she started writing that Trump was connecting with people and we should take him seriously.
No legislation leaves out all the regulations they have repealed with Congressional Review Act.
SteveF, I had every reason to think Hillary could emit a disaster almost from the start although it might not have been a recognizable as some of the things Trump has done.
I thought it might be her fumbling the famous 3:00AM phone call.
So far, there is really no evidence of collusion. It is a lot of speculation and a meme devised by Democrats to delegitimize Trump. I personally am doubtful is anything substantive on collusion will be found. There may be other issues however that impact members of the administration.
David, the only group in collusion to delegitimize the v2016selection is democrats, bureaucrats and media. Bezos and Soros are egging it on, for their own reasons. Soros has been corrupting media with invitation only “study groups” for journalists. Bezos is worth 81 billion$ on paper, with a stock valued at over 500X earnings. One good hickup can’t Bezos loses hugely. Soros has been living out his James Bond bad guy fantasy. Democrats/bureaucrats want their control of the trough. Republicans are divided and mostly clueless. And Trump thinks this is like a company takeover where he can command loyalty and impose rules. It’s a tough situation. The Russian b’s is perfect brain candy for technical or easily lulled.
j ferguson,
Hillary gets all the big policy decisions wrong, but acts like a politician (eg has views revealed only “in private”, and others for public consumption). Trump is exactly the opposite… he tells everyone what he thinks…. but has a propensity to speak (or tweet) without considering the consequences, which causes most of his problems.
SteveF,
I think you have it right.
Harold W,
Climate crocks refuses to address the substance of Dilbert’s questions…. the response is “I know there is going to be a catastrophe, how dare Adams question that.” It’s the same crap argument the alarmed have used since the late 1960’s, though the nature of the future catastrophe changes (population explosion, famine, global social breakdown, complete resource depletion, peak oil, etc…. now global warming).
SteveF,
Yes. CC quotes Pharyngula, “It is definitely true that human activity is warming the Earth. It will lead to a global catastrophe, depending on how you define catastrophe: it will cause acute economic disruption, resource wars, and the death of millions. Is that catastrophic enough for you?”
That’s presumably sufficient for their readers.
Of course, the reliability of the methods by which such predictions are arrived at, is exactly Adams’s point.
SteveF (Comment #162110): “Hillary gets all the big policy decisions wrong … Trump … has a propensity to speak (or tweet) without considering the consequences, which causes most of his problems.”
.
That is totally wrong. Hillary gets all the policy decisions wrong from the perspective of the people because she gets them all right from the perspective of the elites. Her two faced speech is the natural result of that.
.
Trump’s problems result from the fact that he is trying to break the power of the elites and return power to the people. The elites know they are close to having complete control; since Trump is trying to snatch that away, they are trying to destroy him by any means necessary. Yes, some of Trump’s behavior provides them with means, but that only affects the details of the attacks.
.
Imagine that Sanders had been elected and imagine that he tried to take down the elites (yes, that is hard to imagine). The same thing would be happening, but the details would be different. Where Trump is depicted as a would be strongman, Sanders would depicted as week. Where Trump is depicted as out of control, Sanders would depicted as hopelessly impractical. Etc. The only important difference would be that Sanders would have long since caved, since, like most politicians, he has only a tiny fraction of the fortitude that Trump has.
Could there be something elitist in being unnerved by the rantings of a colossally ignorant psychopath?
.
I suppose this is a proscribed rhetorical question, but …
.
sigh.
If Clinton had been elected, I suspect she’d have already promised a few hundred $B (or more) of US taxpayer funds to the Energy Transitions Commission, which is seeking $300-600 B per year, over the next 15-20 years.
[The word “commission” connotes a governmental organization. But not in this case. They are merely concerned citizens. Very wealthy, but not elected or appointed.]
j ferguson (Comment #162115): “Could there be something elitist in being unnerved by the rantings of a colossally ignorant psychopath?”
.
What evidence is there that Trump is a psychopath? Only that the MSM says so.
.
What evidence is there that Trump is colossally ignorant? Only that the MSM says so.
.
What evidence is there that Trump “rants”? Only the characterization of his unconventional style by the MSM.
.
You’ve got to stop believing what the MSM tells you to believe.
Mike M. How can you possibly ignore his tweets? Or the things he says which are recorded and replayed on television? His speeches during the campaign? Do you think the foolishness was dubbed in?
.
I certainly do not need any of the clearly editorial bias of the MSM to convince me this guy is unhinged.
j ferguson: “How can you possibly ignore his tweets?”
Not being a bird, I don’t tweet. And I don’t follow anyone on twitter. So I don’t know anything about Trump’s tweets other than what the MSM chooses to select and present with their own spin. I suspect that you do not know any more about that then I do. And I know that the media is spectacularly biased in presenting such “information”.
.
j ferguson: “Or the things he says which are recorded and replayed on television?”
See above. Trump does have an unconventional style when speaking impromptu. I find that style very unsettling. But the proven effectiveness of his style undermines the theory that it is due to incompetence.
.
j ferguson: “His speeches during the campaign?”
His formal speeches (nomination acceptance, immigration, inaugural, state of the union) have been quite good and give no evidence of what you and the MSM media claim. As for his informal speeches, like those at his rallies, see above.
.
j ferguson: “Do you think the foolishness was dubbed in?”
No, he does sometimes say things that are foolish. All politicians do; Trump more than most. In addition, I think that potentially foolish sounding things have been selected out and presented in a way to make them seem foolish.
Here’s the NYT putting out unfettered alarmism on a 3 part series on Antarctica. Check out the tone of this writing. If one was to read Ch 13 of the IPCC report, this stuff below looks like a fantasy. Yeah science! The last report I read was that this “collapse” was unlikely, will occur on geological timescales (centuries to millennia) and would start 200 to 900 years from now if it did occur, and it was already too late to stop it. Perhaps they could note for the layman that it never goes above freezing there year round.
.
This is staple climate journalism. Previous studies have downplayed this scenario, so you find “some scientists” who have a new theory/model that can’t yet be disproven and highlight it like they have a shocking new discovery and are the new Cassandra. Nobody will publicly challenge it on fear of being labelled and excommunicated.
.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/18/climate/antarctica-ice-melt-climate-change.html
.
“Because the collapse of vulnerable parts of the ice sheet could raise the sea level dramatically, the continued existence of the world’s great coastal cities — Miami, New York, Shanghai and many more — is tied to Antarctica’s fate.”
.
“A rapid disintegration of Antarctica might, in the worst case, cause the sea to rise so fast that tens of millions of coastal refugees would have to flee inland, potentially straining societies to the breaking point. Climate scientists used to regard that scenario as fit only for Hollywood disaster scripts. But these days, they cannot rule it out with any great confidence.”
.
“THE RISK IS CLEAR: Antarctica’s collapse has the potential to inundate coastal cities across the globe.”
.
“If that ice sheet were to disintegrate, it could raise the level of the sea by more than 160 feet — a potential apocalypse, depending on exactly how fast it happened.”
.
“Incorporating recent advances in the understanding of how ice sheets might break apart, they found that both West Antarctica and some vulnerable parts of East Antarctica would go into an unstoppable collapse if the Earth continued to warm at a rapid pace.”
.
“In their worst-case scenario, the sea level could rise by six feet by the end of this century”
.
“If the rise turns out to be as rapid as the worst-case projections, it could lead to a catastrophe without parallel in the history of civilization.”
Mike M.
I’d suggest you pay very close attention to the happenings over the next year or so. I base this on having done this during Watergate.
I think most if not all of the hearings were either broadcast or rebroadcast in the evenings so it was possible to watch all of them. We did, and I’m glad. I don’t think there is much misrepresentation in the press today of what happened then and how it was dealt with. I thought the reporting of the deeds themselves as it evolved was accurate and did not exaggerate.
.
I don’t suppose that you realize that it is insulting to suggest that someone’s opinions have been handed them by the media. No one is suggesting that of you, certainly not me.
.
As to tweeting, I don’t, nor facebook. When Trump’s tweets are published it appears that they print images of them, and to date, no one (except you) has suggested that they are invented by the MSM.
.
I do agree that there is a firestorm of negative invention in the MSM regarding his activities. And i also agree that a lot of it is over the top. For example, I’m not so sure that his asking Comey if the Flynn investigation could be dropped constitute obstruction of justice, although he apparently went to some lengths to be sure he asked without any other witnesses.
Mike M.
I follow Trump on Twitter. So do many people.
Of course the media are going to “select” which of a presidents public statements they comment on. The media have always done this for any and every president since George Washington. I suspect the media did it with the utterances of royalty before George.
In my opinion and that of many who follow Trump on twitter, Trump tweets silly ill considered things. Twitter is a public forum– and that is precisely why Trump uses it.
Trying to insist people should ignore things he says in public is ridiculous. Among other things:
(a) not going to happen,
(b) it’s never happened, and
(c) there is nothing about the fact that he happens to say them over twitter than magically vaults the statements into “things people are required to ignore”.
Water isn’t going to listen to anyone if who tells it to run uphill and I’m not going to listen to anyone whose response to criticism of Trump’s tweets is “ignore them”. No one else is going to follow the directive to ignore Trumps tweets either.
Because I do read Trumps tweets, I know they often sound foolish to me. His recent tweets complaining about unfairness and “witchhunt” sound whiney and foolish to me. These foolish tweets were followed by a bunch of twitter mockery of the statement. Perhaps you would disagree those tweets were foolish. But as far as I can tell, the way the media makes them “seem” foolish and/ or whiney is merely to report that what he tweeted.
j ferguson,
What people suggest is that Trump is narcissistic, not psychopathic.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/narcissistic-personality-disorder/basics/definition/con-20025568
Psychopaths also exhibit narcissistic traits. But all narcissists aren’t psychopaths. Given that Trump is both a billionaire and President of the US, I don’t think he has an inflated sense of his own importance.
But this is all speculation. No ethical psychiatrist would diagnose someone they haven’t personally examined and would not make the diagnosis public without the patient’s consent. It’s called the Goldwater rule.
Andrew McCarthy in National Review on The President’s Power to End a Criminal Investigation. In short, he does have that power and it isn’t necessarily obstruction of justice by definition.
j ferguson: “When Trump’s tweets are published it appears that they print images of them, and to date, no one (except you) has suggested that they are invented by the MSM.”
I never suggested any such thing. I said the media select specific tweets and present them in a context that exaggerates their deficiencies.
.
lucia: “Because I do read Trumps tweets, I know they often sound foolish to me.”
I am not surprised. I don’t doubt that many of them ARE foolish. And many more likely sound foolish, at least to the likes of you and me, due to Trump’s odd style. I was objecting to j ferguson’s characterization of them as “the rantings of a colossally ignorant psychopath”. That is the effect the main stream media are aiming for. I am not buying it.
.
Although I support Trump’s goals, I do not like his style. Trump is being attacked because of his goals. His enemies use his style as a basis for their attacks, but if his style were different, it would be just as bad. The attacks would be different in detail but just as vicious and directed towards the same purpose: Ensuring the subservience of the people to the elites.
DeWitt Payne:
We have two shrinks in the family. Psychopath is not a clinical term and accordingly not one either of them would apply. Nor would they be comfortable with remote diagnoses. You say the problem is ethical. My take is less charitable based on the reaction to the Goldwater remote diagnoses. The industry lost credibility and I think that is how they came to their reluctance to opine on the mental state of public figures.
.
No inflated sense of his own importance? Shirley you jest.
Robert Merry on why Removing Trump Won’t Solve America’s Crisis.
j ferguson,
Please don’t call me Shirley. Sorry, couldn’t resist.
One could accuse him of running for President because of his inflated sense of self importance. The thing is, though, he won. That implies that his opinion of himself was, in fact, justified and not inflated.
Tom Scharf –
Another alarmist topic was the Guardian Damian Carrington writing in the Guardian that the “impregnable” world seed bank in Norway is threatened by climate change. [I chuckle at the juxtapostion of “impregnable” and “seed”, but that’s just me.] Water in the tunnel, due to permafrost melting!
But … not as alarming as it would seem. Popular Science quotes Cary Fowler, who helped create the vault, “In my experience, there’s been water intrusion at the front of the tunnel every single year.”
vox.com has added an update to their article, but the Guardian has not (at this time).
Medicalizing dissent from the enlightened path is a common refrain on the left. The belief that all people should be able to agree on social policy if given the same facts is the basis for concluding that those that don’t agree must have something wrong with them.
j ferguson,
President of the US is the most important and consequential job on the planet. If Trump thinks he is important now, he would be correct. Given the amount of attention given to him, everyone else agrees. The self importance of Trump might seem over inflated until you compare it to the importance of everyone else on earth.
The Guardian: “Hydrogen itself isn’t actually a fuel – it’s an energy carrier.”
Discuss.
DeWitt Payne and Tom Scharf, I hear you, but I suggest that the role and authority he actually has as president does not nearly ascend to the exalted image he has of himself. I suggest further that this is where the real trouble is going to arise.
I completely agree with Merry’s view of some of the consequences of his removal should it be done by others. Resignation is the only route, although I’m sure that many people will think, maybe perceptively, that he was hounded from office.
HaroldW,
The first thing I saw was this:
That’s misleading at best and wildly incorrect at worst. 5kg of compressed hydrogen at 700bar has an energy content of 39.4kWh/kg compared to gasoline at 12.88kWh/kg. But that neglects the energy to compress the hydrogen and transfer it from storage to a vehicle. That’s estimated at anywhere from 1.7 to 6.4kWh/kg. Then there’s the cost of high pressure storage tanks. Gasoline and diesel have none of that.
The Toyota Mirai has a tank capacity of 5kg of hydrogen at 70MPa (3150psi). Its EPA range is 500km and EPA ranges are usually optimistic. His figures for recharging an electric vehicle are way off too. That might have been true of early battery cars, but newer technology would allow recharges in ten to twenty minutes, about as fast as you can fill a hydrogen tank. Electric charging stations are way cheaper than hydrogen stations. And, of course, you can charge your electric vehicle at home.
Then there’s the safety issue. I don’t think I would want to keep a hydrogen powered car in a closed garage.
The new Hyundai Ioniq hybrid has a fuel tank capacity of 11.9 gallons and a combined EPA fuel economy of 55mpg. That’s a range of over 650 miles or over 1000km.
Electrolysis of water is not particularly energy efficient. It’s way cheaper to make hydrogen from natural gas, so most hydrogen today isn’t carbon free either. In a recent review article, the lowest energy cost/kg of hydrogen was 47.8MJ/kg. So electrolytic generation of hydrogen has an energy efficiency of 82%. And that was the best. The worst was 83.4MJ/kg, or less than 50% energy efficient. That’s also not including the capital and operating costs of the electrolysis plant.
More pie in the sky.
Aren’t there also metallurgy issues with liquid hydrogen storage, piping, valving?
What about the cella hydrogen that they produce in plastic coated pellets? Is that feasible for cars?
Much of Trump’s foolish speaking is because he is speaking to fools.
I forgot to include the EPA mileage rating for the Mirai. It’s 67 mpg equivalent. That’s only slightly better than the Hyundai Ioniq hybrid’s rating of 55mpg. Looking at stored energy, I think the EPA may be being generous in rating the Mirai. Five kg of hydrogen has about half the energy content of 11.9 gallons of gasoline and the Mirai has about half the range. So the two cars are very close in kWh/km.
MikeN,
Cella is not particularly forthcoming about what’s required to get the hydrogen back out of the pellets or the overall energy efficiency. I suspect fairly high temperature and not very good.
Vox takes on IQ and race. It doesn’t really add anything to what we already discussed. Better than most which simply assert Murray is wrong on everything as preordained fact. They spend more time agreeing with Murray than not which contradicts the headline.
.
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/5/18/15655638/charles-murray-race-iq-sam-harris-science-free-speech
.
Additionally here is a survey of intelligence researchers.
Asked: What are the sources of U.S. black-white differences in IQ?
.
0% of differences due to genes: (17% of our experts)
0-40% of differences due to genes: 42% of our experts
50% of differences due to genes: 18% of our experts
60-100% of differences due to genes: 39% of our experts
100% of differences due to genes: (5% of our experts)
M=47% of differences due to genes (SD=31%)
.
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00399/full
.
As we all know the consensus of experts shouldn’t be considered meaningful in a contentious area that is full of uncertainty.
Tom Scharf,
That bimodal distribution probably reflects the distribution of political views more than actual data. Some people simply will not assign a significant fraction of differences between identifiable groups to genes, quite independent of overwhelming evidence for a significant genetic component. When data which refute strongly held personal beliefs is presented, those data are almost always rejected.
Harold W,
The suggestion that hydrogen is a reasonable way to power cars is so nutty that it should be ignored… unless the loony greens are trying to get government subsidies for yet another boondoggle. Almost nobody is going to invest money in such nonsense.
On the ‘hydrogen economy’: The term was coined by electrochemist John Bockris in 1970, although he didn’t invent the concept. Back then, it was thought that nuclear power was going to be so cheap that metering wouldn’t be necessary and the energy inefficiency of electrolysis wouldn’t matter. That didn’t work out.
As long as hydrogen continues to be produced mainly from natural gas, it would be more economically efficient to power transportation with the natural gas, which is a primary energy source as opposed to hydrogen, in the first place. And the carbon footprint would be about the same.
A battery storage electric vehicle charged using a high efficiency, combined cycle electric power plant burning natural gas is significantly more efficient on a well to wheels basis than converting the natural gas to hydrogen and using it in a fuel cell powered electric vehicle. A gasoline powered hybrid Internal Combustion Engine powered vehicle has similar well to wheels efficiency as a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that uses natural gas produced hydrogen. I didn’t see data on a natural gas fueled hybrid ICE.
At least some of this depends on the Wikipedia article being correct. That’s not a completely safe assumption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_economy
Down towards the bottom of the Wikipedia article, there’s a section on costs. It turns out that the least expensive source of hydrogen is coal gasification followed by steam reformation to convert the approximately 1:1 molar ratio of CO and hydrogen to CO2 and generate more hydrogen. You’d have to do something with all the CO2, though. You get twice as much CO2 per mole of hydrogen with coal than with natural gas.
CH4 + 2H2O → CO2 + 4H2
C + 2H2O → CO2 + 2H2
DeWitt: “it was thought that nuclear power was going to be so cheap that metering wouldn’t be necessary and the energy inefficiency of electrolysis wouldn’t matter.”
The claim of too cheap to meter is a myth. It arose from some reporter misunderstanding what he had been told. The high capital cost and low fuel cost of nuclear led to the suggestion that it would make more sense to pay for access to capacity, than for power used.
It any case, the hydrogen economy is pie in the sky.
Tom Scharf
May 20th, 2017 at 9:52 am
About AR5 on Antarctica, in an attempt to figure what they’re saying, I think this is not misleading:
“Projections of Antarctic SMB changes over the 21st century thus indicate a negative contribution to sea level because of the projected widespread increase in snowfall associated with warming air temperatures (Krinner et al., 2007; Uotila et al., 2007; Bracegirdle et al., 2008). Several studies (Krinner et al., 2007; Uotila et al., 2007; Bengtsson et al., 2011) have shown that the precipitation increase is directly linked to atmospheric warming via the increased moisture holding capacity of warmer air, and is therefore larger for scenarios of greater warming. The relationship is exponential, resulting in an increase of SMB as a function of Antarctic SAT change evaluated in various recent studies with high-resolution (~60 km) models as 3.7% °C–1 (Bengtsson et al., 2011), 4.8% °C–1 (Ligtenberg et al., 2013) and ~7% °C–1 (Krinner et al., 2007).â€
So Zwally who can be portrayed as an outlier suggests the IPCC was correct.
DeWitt, just because something is legal doesn’t mean it is not worthy of impeachment. Removing an FBI director to make a case against you disappear would be one case.
Oil prices are fungible.
http://dilbert.com/strip/2006-02-19
MikeN (Comment #162147)
DeWitt, just because something is legal doesn’t mean it is not worthy of impeachment. Removing an FBI director to make a case against you disappear would be one case.
Seems there would be an element of illegality there MikeN, the bit about to make a case against you disappear. Sacking FBI directors is quite legal when they stuff up.
Ragnaar (Comment #162146)
About AR5 on Antarctica,
“Projections of Antarctic SMB changes over the 21st century thus indicate a negative contribution to sea level because of the projected widespread increase in snowfall associated with warming air temperatures have shown that the precipitation increase is directly linked to atmospheric warming via the increased moisture holding capacity of warmer air, and is therefore larger for scenarios of greater warming. The relationship is exponential.”
Reminds me of Lucia emphasising that feedbacks cannot exceed the input (Why ECS cannot be negative or zero).
Is this sort of comment really mathematically correct or am I missing something?
Surely someone is pulling the wool over our eyes.
Even if more snow falls as it gets warmer in a region??? Does the total amount of ice and snow get bigger or smaller in that region?
If it snows more but loses more ice by melting is the claim plain misleading?
I thought Antarctica had been getting smaller in ice volume generally as it gets warmer (over Millenia).
Which does not fit the narrative.
Help DeWitt! Ragnaar, Anyone?
angech,
I’ll try to explain. In temperate climates, wintertime snow is (of course) in large measure controlled by temperatures, with the probability of snow decreasing as you move from higher to lower latitude. You see rain instead of snow as it warms.
.
Antarctica is very different. Virtually all of the continent stays far below freezing year round. The extreme cold is due to three separate effects: 1) the continent lies at the pole, 2) the continent is isolated from warm air intrusions by the surrounding (very cold) southen ocean, and 3) the ice sheet is so thick that most of the surface is at relatively high altitude, and temperate falls under these conditions by ~10C per kilometer elevation increase (dry adiabatic lapse rate).
.
It is so cold that the vapor pressure of water (vapor pressure over ice!) is extremely low. There is not enough moisture in the air to produce snow very often. If global warming increased the air temperature over Antarctica by a couple of degrees (has not happened so far) there should be more frequent snow because the slightly warmer air can hold more water.
.
The only place where significant warming has happened is the antarctic peninsula, which juts out into the Southern Ocean, and so is much, much warmer than the main part of the continent. The Southern Ocean has warmed slightly, and so has the peninsula. There has been some loss of ice from the peninsula, but not the rest of Antarctica.
.
The Steig et at/O’Donnell et al kerfuffle a few years ago stemmed from an erroneous claim of significant warming for the whole of the continent on the cover of Nature magazine (Steig et al), which was shown to be in error by O’Donnell et al. (which was authored by a bunch of ‘denialists’). Steig et al had solved an ‘inverse problem’ in a way which essentially discarded a great deal of perfectly valid spacial information, and this ‘solution’ essentially smeared the significant warming of the penninsula over the rest of the continent. This warming of the whole continent was what Steig et al were looking for (the group included Mike Mann and several other of the alarmist unhinged!), so the group did not question their calculations, even though ground stations on the continent showed no such widespread warming! O’Donnell et all demonstrated where Steig et al went wrong… and they didn’t like it. Since Steig was enlisted as a reviewer, he did his best to keep O’Donnell et at from being published. Fortunately the journal editor overruled Steig and published O’Donnell et al. It was an ugly fight.
.
Finally, a more recent paper has shown that in fact, rising CO2 over the high regions of Antarctica is expected to actually cause local cooling, not warming in Antarctica, exactly the opposite of the Steig et al result, and confirming O’Donnell et at were right.
angech,
If you want data, look at the Vostok ice cores and calculate the rate of accumulation. The deeper layers compress so it’s not very impressive before the previous interglacial, but it clearly shows that the depth increases much faster during an interglacial than at the glacial maximum (black dots and left scale in the graph below).
A plot of the difference between ice age and gas age vs depth shows that it takes a lot longer to seal off gas bubbles from the surface at glacial maximum than during an interglacial. Note that snowfall is so slow that it still takes about 2,000 years to accumulate the 60 or so meters of snow required to seal off bubbles during an interglacial (pink dots and right scale).
http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u43/gplracerx/VostokIcecoreaccumulationrateandice.png
Note that during the current interglacial, the accumulation rate is far lower than during the peak of the Eemian interglacial. And that rate is probably lower due to compression than the actual rate. That’s yet another indication that the Eemian interglacial was a lot warmer, at least near the Antarctic continent than the current Holocene interglacial period.
MikeN,
But Trump never ordered any investigation to be stopped when he fired Comey, which would also be legal, given his power as Chief Executive and the principle of prosecutorial discretion. Nor, if the quote was correct, did he order Comey to stop investigating Flynn. Firing Comey had little or no effect on the various investigations being conducted by the FBI. If anything, it spurred them on. Comey was the manager, not the principal investigator. In business terms, he was the Director of Research, not a group leader.
You are correct, though, that impeachment would be the correct method to use to remove a corrupt President. There is no solid evidence yet, however, that Trump is corrupt and should be impeached. Incompetence isn’t a high crime or misdemeanor.
Replace incompetence with stupidity in the above. Incompetence has too many other connotations.
The Antarctica “collapse” is based on a theory that sea water will break through a barrier and intrude into the below sea level bowl that a large section of the WAIS ice sits in. This might then cause an acceleration of ice melt from instability below and basically cause the ice sheet to fall into the ocean and melt. I hope I’m not being too technical, ha ha.
.
The current melt rates are way too low and way too stable as to be meaningless to those who want catastrophe headlines for political purposes. About 1mm / year for Greenland and Antarctica combined. 1000 years to get to 1M.
.
So to get to 2M by 2100 as the article suggests through just Antarctica you are looking at that contribution increasing by a factor of about 40x starting tomorrow, that for a process that typically changes only on geological time frames.
.
So basically this collapse theory is full of uncertainty, has very little direct evidence it is happening or will happen, and likely to be a very long term process. In the meantime my understanding is net ice is increasing in Antarctica for the time being due to the snow over the much larger EAIS.
.
A NYT”s reporter is capable of reading Ch 13 and doing this math and asking rather difficult questions to be fair and balanced (pun intended). That they never do means I am either badly misinformed or they are incompetent or intentionally misleading their readers.
.
What I find is that they insert very carefully constructed weasel words to CYA if they are called out. A careful reading can find these:
.
“they cannot rule it out with any great confidence” = it’s very unlikely to happen and we aren’t going to ask how unlikely.
.
“the scientists confront a frustrating lack of information.” = there is very little direct evidence to support this theory.
.
“if greenhouse gas emissions continue at a high level” – If we assume the RCP8.5 scenario that is unlikely…
.
“But those computer forecasts were described as crude even by the researchers who created them” = The modelers don’t even believe it themselves and won’t commit to their veracity.
.
“Compared with other parts of Antarctica, the shelf seems stable now” = There is no evidence it is happening
.
“Dr. DeConto and Dr. Pollard do not claim that this is a certainty” = Let the reader infer it is close to certainty while not reporting what the assessment actually is.
.
Etc. There is nothing wrong with climate scientists running around Antarctica trying to figure out what is going on. There is something wrong with environmental activists distorting what the data shows and doesn’t show. This 3 part series could be summed up with “there is an unfounded theory being investigated”.
OK, I’ll try to be a little bit more concise in the future.
What would cause more snowfall on Antarctica is what I call a wavy jet stream. Cold air parcels would reach further North while warm ones would reach further South. A rigid jet would have the opposite effect, isolating Antarctica even more from warmth and humidity. In the NH the lowered PETG was suggested by Francis to result in more meridional flow as I remember it. This meridional flow while warming the Arctic on average, possibly cools the planet more than before (still warming but with negative feedback). Lacking water vapor in the North this new Northern warmth is where less water vapor is and can more easily find the TOA.
If with terribly different geography in the SH the same thing happens, the lowered South PETG would result in more wavy jets. More meridional mixing and more of what is needed to make snow on Antarctica.
Introduction from Tsonis 2007:Â
“One of the most important and mysterious events in recent climate history is the climate shift in the mid-1970s [Graham, 1994]. In the northern hemisphere 500-hPa atmospheric flow the shift manifested itself as a collapse of a persistent wave-3 anomaly pattern and the emergence of a strong wave-2 pattern.â€
My assumption is that wave-3 is a wavy jet and wave-2 is a rigid jet.
Here’s the Francis plot:
http://icons.wxug.com/hurricane/2011/francis_amplification.png
The Fall Winter drop off is around the beginning of the hiatus. Any mid-1970s response is delayed but may be there when taking in the Spring response as well.
SteveF,
Yeah, I think the distribution shows that there is enough uncertainty that people can assert their personal preference and justify it. What would really help get to a better answer is if one side starting calling the other side deniers and asking for them to be prosecuted under RICO.
The idea that firing Coney was illegal or impeachable is mire annoying tinfoil hat idiocy. There was no obstruction of justice in any action yet reported. The idea that a President can not disclose Intel as the President deems appropriate could be criminal in the circumstances of meeting with an Ambassador is more idiocy. And the dems know it. So does anyone with any experience observing foreign affairs or history. It is as stupid as claiming that the Antarctic is getting ready to catastrophically melt…..but the same people are pushing both sets of ideas.
>Seems there would be an element of illegality there MikeN, the bit about to make a case against you disappear.
No, it’s not illegal. the President is the head of the executive department, so making a case disappear is within his power.
Scott Adams predicted that Trump would morph slowly in opponent’s minds from
“He’s Hitler” to
“He’s incompetent.” to
“He’s competent but I don’t like him.”
What happens to his supporters. The AltRight and white supremacists would prefer he be Hitler, and go away if he is merely incompetent.
Having a competent Trump might eat into his base too much. How can he be draining the swamp if he is behaving normally?
Mike N,
“Having a competent Trump might eat into his base too much.”
.
The number of voters who would prefer him to be ‘like Hitler’ is probably a lot smaller than the number who would prefer him to be competent (sounds almost like you agree with the thrust of Hillay’s ‘deplorables’ gaff…. half of Trumps supporters are simply evil).
.
The “but I don’t like him” part is going to always be the view of those who are opposed to his policies… but those voters would oppose Trump’s policies no matter who was president. Have you ever seen a film of a monkey troop in a houling frenzy as it works itself up for “war” against another monkey troop? Looks much like the MSM since November. It’s not a coincidence.
It’s kind of ridiculous, but I guess necessary. Scott Alexander (no Trump fan) actually tried to count up the number of Alt-Right, white supremacists and KKK members using a variety of methods. Conclusion: You can’t win elections courting these groups, duh.
.
Section III
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/16/you-are-still-crying-wolf/
.
The fallacy of guilt by association is just that, a fallacy. Reprehensible people and groups have the right to vote and it should stay that way. Candidates can and should disavow these groups if it becomes a campaign issue. The media should ask these questions if it is an issue, but they should not proactively create the issue (see media frenzy over “Heil Trump”) or hound a candidate once a disavowal has taken place.
Tom,
I get what you’re saying, but. Nobody twisted President Trump’s arm (presumably) to put Steve Bannon on the National Security Council, and Bannon was in fact the executive chairman of Breitbart, which is a self proclaimed platform for the Alt-Right.
.
IMO, if one is satisfied that the Alt-Right is reprehensible, one has a reasonable basis for wondering about the President’s voluntary association with them.
mark bofill,
If that is important to you, then don’t vote for Trump. The point of counting the deplorables is that you lose more votes than you gain when courting these groups.
.
I don’t think Steve Bannon helped Trump get elected if you count the for/against on this issue, it was small potatoes. How many people who go to Breitbart were going to vote for Clinton until Bannon joined the team? I would say approx. zero.
.
I’ve only been to Breitbart a couple times, it looked like the right’s version of Salon or Huff. Post.
Tom,
Oh, me personally I’m not worried about it. I don’t think I disagree with what you’re saying, I just question where you’re drawing the lines. In my view you can’t just lump the Deplorables in with the Alt-Right in with the white supremacists.
.
No, I don’t think Breitbart was a significant factor in the election either. I only mention Breitbart because it was pertinent to establishing Bannon as a voice for the Alt-Right. Whatever that is exactly. 🙂
Tom,
I’m sorry if my remarks were unclear. I wasn’t trying to argue that the Alt-Right got Trump elected. What troubled me was the ‘guilt by association’ thing. It’s not that Alt-Right supports Trump that associates Trump with them, in my view, but rather it’s Trump’s voluntary association with Bannon. That was what I was getting at.
mark bofill (Comment #162164): “Bannon was in fact the executive chairman of Breitbart, which is a self proclaimed platform for the Alt-Right.”
I don’t pay attention to Breitbart, but mark’s statement did not sound plausible to me. I figured it should be easily enough to verify, if true. It looks like the only way mark’s statement can be considered true is if it is so misleading that it is effectively false.
Here is what I found: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/11/19/bannon-alt-right-young-anti-globalist-anti-establishment-nationalist/
“Bannon also highlighted the diversity of views that were given a platform at Breitbart News, while also making it clear that both he and the site had “zero tolerance†for “racial and anti-Semitic†views.”
“Our definition of the alt-right is younger people who are anti-globalists, very nationalist, terribly anti-establishment”
“We provide an outlet for 10 or 12 or 15 lines of thought—we set it up that wayâ€
.
mark bofill wrote: “IMO, if one is satisfied that the Alt-Right is reprehensible, one has a reasonable basis for wondering about the President’s voluntary association with them.”
Trump on the alt-right: ““I condemn them. I disavow, and I condemn.†http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/11/22/donald-trump-disavow-alt-right-groups/
Mike M.,
Thanks! I hadn’t seen that.
mark bofill,
That’s a good point. If you do bring a leader from (insert evil group) onto your inner team, claims you support the (insert evil group) are warranted. Bannon isn’t David Duke as far as I can tell, but I can’t say I even know what the Alt-Right really is either.
.
Based on what Breitbart shows right now I would say they are anti-illegal immigrant and anti-political correctness. Their selection bias on what to anecdotally report is opposite of what the MSM would typically report. Highlighting immigrant and black crime for example. It looks plenty biased, but seems run of the mill partisan click bait.
Mark Bofill
I’ve heard that “self proclaimed” smear before too. But one needs to be careful about accepting claims not accompanied by quotes.
Whatever one thinks of Breitbart news, it is clear not the “self proclaimed platform for the Alt-Right.”. Breitbart has never proclaimed itself Alt-right and disavows them. There are others who accuse it of being Alt-right, but nothing others proclaim because Breitbart having “self” proclaimed that thing.
Lucia,
No joke! I could have sworn I’d read something by Bannon saying this, but I can’t find a reference. Somebody published a good snow job and I swallowed it I guess. I’ll dig more into this later.
Thanks.
Mark,
Yeah… a lot of the “nazi/alt-right” claims about Trump or his supporters are circular. The argument often seems to go:
How do we know Trump is Nazi/alt-right? His supporters are!
How do we know his supporter are? They support Trump. Who is a nazi/alt-right.
I’m no fan of Trump. But some detractors definitely advance criticisms that have no merit.
I wonder why mark bofill echoes the lie that Breitbart is some sort of extremist / racist site? There us no actual evidence of this except for the circular cross references if those who make a living lying about conservatives. These are the people who egged on the suppression of the tea party movement by means of similar echo chamber tactics plus of course the abuse of tea party civil rights by the IRS.
🙂 I like you guys. It’s OK to ask me direct questions; won’t offend me or anything.
.
Why do I echo the lie that Breitbart is some sort of extremist / racist site? Well, two [err, three (3)] things:
.
1. I didn’t realize I was doing that. I don’t know exactly what alt-right means (although a brief and shallow google leads me to agree with Tom above). I didn’t think that meant extremist / racist. But I hasten to add that I don’t really know what Alt-Right means.
.
2. I thought Trump could be associated with the alt-right because of Bannon. But both Mike M. and Lucia have pointed out that that isn’t correct. Chalk it up to an honest misunderstanding. 🙂
.
3. (Most importantly) I finally had some free time and wanted to re-enter the conversation.
.
Does Alt-Right mean extremist / racist? Real question.
Or on the other hand, if people really prefer the third person I wouldn’t object (mmm – at least for starters) if you referred to me as ‘His Exalted Grace’.
…Might get old after awhile…
#Kidding
SteveF, I mentioned Hitler only because it was the first part of Scott Adams prediction list. The tradeoff is with ‘He’s incompetent- different type of guy’ and ‘He’s competent-business as usual’
So, I find a reference now although I’m pretty sure it’s not the original one I read. Mother Jones, Sarah Posner.
This turned out to be false I guess. I’ll go on researching.
Thanks all.
.
[Edit: this is what I originally read. I see that it was indeed not by Bannon, that was my error.
.
I thought Bannon was openly alt-right, but that alt-right didn’t mean father-raping mother-stabbing no good dirty gosh darn pure evil.]
Alt-right is a similar kind of fuzzy concept that racist has become. In order to cast a wider net activists dumb down the definitions of these terms to be as all encompassing as possible. However when they label others with this term they want people to think of the more strict vile interpretation of it.
.
This is known as the motte and bailey doctrine.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey
.
People routinely do this in the climate wars (the d word).
Tom,
Once again I agree completely. My pet example is ‘colorblind racism’. These days people who pay no attention whatsoever to the color of someone’s skin are defined racist. That’s pretty wacky in my book. In my opinion (not that I really want to get back into it) this is really a device to attack those who are not supporters of policies designed to accomplish equality of outcome.
mark bofill: “Does Alt-Right mean extremist / racist? Real question.”
There are racists that call themselves alt-right. But the term itself seems to mean different things to different people. Labels tend to have limited usefulness and no usefulness at all when they become epithets.
Speaking of racism, there’s the Duke Divinity School ‘Crisis’ causing a professor to resign. Here’s an article with copies of the relevant correspondence.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/duke-divinity-crisis-griffiths-documents/
I think updates 2 and 3 are particularly interesting and relevant. I haven’t read the comments and probably won’t.
Sensitivity training seems to me to be punishing the innocent rather than actually doing something.
mark bofill, I apologize for my response being inflammatory. Altright like fake news are useless terms that are used by far too many to dehumanize those they disagree with. It’s a lot like the d word in common climate use. Alternative explanations that can rationally explain a set if evidence for instance was a good thing in the pre-post normal science. And alternative.explanations are certainly used in the legal world….reasonable doubt etc.
No worries Hunter, I appreciated your question. It clarified matters.
Wow. Thanks DeWitt.
I think this is part of the appeal of the alt-right. I may be wrong, but I think of this as yet another example of political correctness gone feral. True or false, I personally suspect that enough people believe these sorts of incidents happen often enough that PC needs to be reined in [to help explain our current political situation and our President].
Go Thomas Pfau, btw!
That was an interesting read.
DeWitt Payne,
That’s a pretty chilling report, although I would wonder that anyone would be surprised that something like that could happen in that discipline.
.
I was once forced to sit through 3 days of ‘diversity training’. No-one was amused by my remarks that training was for seals not people; unless we were thinking of ‘potty training.’
.
It finally came down to do it or find another job.
.
I think it was an obligation the company had assumed with a government contract.
j ferguson,
It is clear the dean can’t force tenured faculty to attend ‘training’ of any kind. It was the copy-to-everyone email, stating that going to the training is a waste of your precious time, which caused the dean to go nuts. Since no tenured professot is actually required to attend the training, presumably they can also say publicly why they will not attend, and urge others to do the same.
.
The dean was left with only one way to punish him: declare him a racist, and impose discipline based on that declaration alone. There was no formal hearing nor even a meeting where formal complaints were made…. since those would likely not lead to the dean’s desired outcome. I predict this will not end well for the dean; she is clearly not suited for her job.
.
The corrosive nature of the academic left is evident in this sad story. But I doubt it will change any time soon.
DeWitt,
I saw that earlier, it’s actually kind of hilarious. The guys first sarcastic response imploring people to not attend sensitivity training was quite funny. I think the diversity office needs to get a sense of humor. The moral preening from them is a bit excessive.
.
It does appear this guy has been causing problems for quite a while which remains undocumented which is probably part of the story, but he definitely made the right move to go public with it and make them defend their actions under bright shiny lights.
.
At some point the overlords of tolerance need to be held accountable and punished for their excesses. As far as I can tell, they answer to nobody. One can only imagine what being brought up on charges in diversity court is like. Guilty! Next. Guilty! Next. Guilty! Next.
Good news: Patent lawsuits must now be filed in the state of the defendant’s incorporation. The East Texas patent troll economy just crashed and burned. This is one in a series of Supreme Court rulings lately that attack patent troll exploitation. Slowly but surely this problem is getting solved.
Harvard study of Trump media coverage the first 100 days
https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-donald-trumps-first-100-days/
.
It’s exactly what you would expect.
.
CNN wins and exceeds even the NYT with 93% negative coverage.
Immigration which is apparently a split decision in the public is 30 to 1 negative in the media.
.
“Trump’s coverage during his first 100 days was negative even by the standards of today’s hyper-critical press. Studies of earlier presidents found nothing comparable to the level of unfavorable coverage afforded Trump.”
.
For the most part the media didn’t cover this story, ha ha. Trump deserves some of it, but it is excessive.
What is happening at Duke(I’ve seen Duke extremely close and personal) and the rest of Academia has nothing to do with political correctness. It has to do with a tiny minority of people abusing the concept of tolerance and turning it into an oppressive non-rational dictatorship by the minority. I’m very glad my family connection to Duke is now severed. I will not miss that pretentious corrupt school at all.
It is excessive. I have no use for the guy, but I’d like the reasons to be legitimate or at least seem that way to my fevered tinfoil chapeaued mind.
.
A lot of what we (well maybe just me) read is written by youngsters who don’t know the tax code and assume anything which might have benefited Trump in his business guise is available only because of payoffs and corruption.
.
It would be nice if JD could provide some insight into the allegations that asking about shutting down an investigation is really tantamount to obstruction. Should Trump had have one of his minions do it? It’s pretty clear the guy is no good at all on the machinations of his office, but obstruction?
Edit: Machinations isn’t the right word. Mechanics might be better.
SteveF: “I predict this will not end well for the dean; she is clearly not suited for her job.”
She is probably not well suited for what the job should be. Sadly, she probably is well suited for what it is.
Mike M.,
for sure.
Speaking of brain rot, here is a shining example: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/trump-anti-terror-call-drive-worse-article-1.3185752
The author, Clarke, is described as “a senior White House counterterrorism official for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush”.
The whole thing is a silly exercise in Trump bashing, but what really got my attention was “the way to take the air out of the radical movements is to provide room in Islamic societies for diversity, freedom of expression, and participation in government”.
Right. The goal of bin Laden and his successors has been to make Islamic societies more like the decadent West. Got it.
Clarke goes on to write “employment options and the free and effective public education systems to develop a trained workforce are perhaps the best counter-weight to the siren song of Al Qaeda and Daesh”. As if the 9/11 hijackers were not educated, middle class men. The New York Times once said that “the view that
poverty drives terrorism” is “a notion that countless studies have debunked”. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/14/opinion/the-madrassa-myth.html?_r=0
So we have a terrorism “expert” who is confused about something that even the Times can get right. No wonder that the War on Terror has been such a disaster.
If Clarke represents competence, then I am happy to give
incompetence a try.
It had never occurred to me that ISIS needed diversity training.
The extent that the views pushed by Clarke have been adopted by the West correlates very directly with the expansion and danger of radical Islam.Clarke and his ilk represents the naive arrogant degenerate thinking ISIS relies on to continue pushing their way to setting the agenda over the West. Clarke probably endorsed Obama’s disastrous Arab spring strategy and also was surprised to discover how far the jv team progressed.
jferguson (#162197) —
You’ll notice that there have not been any terrorists coming out of Duke Divinity School. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.
Mike M.
That was an op-ed, so it’s not exactly “The New Your Times once said….” It was also published in 2005. But our news organizations still seem to pay too much attention to the fantasy known as the Arab Street.
HaroldW,
They just had the diversity training. Give them time.
ISIS has plenty of diversity. There are two types of people in their society, those with their heads and those without them.
.
Clarke should probably take note that oppressive regimes (Saudi Arabia, Saddam, Iran, Gaddafi) seem to be plenty effective at controlling terrorism on their own soil. It is the lack of an oppressive regime where terrorism thrives (the new Libya, the new Iraq, the new Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan). The Clarke’s of the world will never admit that sometimes the stick works better than the carrot.
.
The answer to “make them more like us” is the default solution for the myopic elites in the establishment to all problems. The white working class, ISIS, poverty, crime, the religion plagued, southern culture, etc.
.
I don’t really have any problems with the meritocracy but it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to see that everyone can’t win in that competition. If you are a loser in the genetic lottery, were born into poverty and a dysfunctional home environment, and live in a local culture that devalues the meritocracy then the chances of you solving your problems by “being more like them” is low. If the losers in the meritocracy band together social unrest will occur. Trump is phase 1.
J Ferguson: “It would be nice if JD could provide some insight into the allegations that asking about shutting down an investigation is really tantamount to obstruction.”
I don’t practice criminal law and haven’t looked at it closely, but here are my first impressions.
…
1. Trump didn’t shut down the investigation. He asked Comey if he would shut it down. There is a big difference.
…
2. Prosecutors have no obligation to investigate every crime. For instance, millions of immigration law crimes go totally “uninvestigated.” If a rogue prosecutor, were to decide to investigate people who helped shelter illegal aliens, I believe the Attorney General (or the President) who is the Attorney General’s boss, could stop the investigation. By the same token, from a purely legal perspective, my first inclination is that the President has the right to stop any investigation, including investigations into his own behavior. (Not saying that is morally right)
…
3. I would distinguish between committing crimes to stop or hinder an investigation (for instance, suborning perjury) and simply stopping the investigation.
….
4. In contradistinction, to what I have said above, I briefly reviewed the obstruction of justice statute, and under the interpretation of some courts, it does appear to be very broad. Other courts, however, limit obstruction crimes to where a defendant corruptly interfered with an investigation. See link in http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/20/trump-russia-meeting-obstruction-investigation-238639
….
As a practical matter, if I was Trump, I would consider re-starting the Hillary Clinton email investigations and also look at the lost EPA emails. Who knows what will turn up, when a real investigation, not ultimately controlled by Democrats, is undertaken. At some point the Democrats might realize that they are dealing with a double-edged sword.
JD
JD, thanks. I suppose when the President says something it may be looked at in a different light than someone not having an official capacity – why it isn’t a good idea to wonder why he cannot be rid of the turbulent priest.
Still, if I were Trump and was certain there had been no mischief in my campaign, I would ask if the investigation needed to run its course or might be curtailed because at least to Trump it seemed unlikely to be productive.
There must be a way to have that sort of conversation without it being thought an obstruction attempt.
Thanks, JD, for the informative comment. One quibble. You wrote “Trump didn’t shut down the investigation. He asked Comey if he would shut it down.” Actually, he said he “hoped” Comey would see fit to shut it down. That is even harder to see as improper interference, especially since Flynn had already resigned.
J Ferguson: “Still, if I were Trump and was certain there had been no mischief in my campaign, I would ask if the investigation needed to run its course or might be curtailed because at least to Trump it seemed unlikely to be productive.”
….
This is not as simple as it seems. Some discussions could have multiple interpretations. Also, separate issues might come up that could be characterized as wrongful. Politics is a dirty business and a close examination of either the Trump or the Clinton campaign is likely to show highly embarrassing incidents.
JF “There must be a way to have that sort of conversation without it being thought an obstruction attempt.”
…
There should be, but not in the current climate. The Democrats hate Trump with every ounce of their being and will do anything possible to take him down. For instance, Trump is currently getting zero credit for not deporting the young children, not born in the US, of illegal aliens. The presence of these children is clearly illegal and Trump is acting in a humanitarian fashion, but gets zero credit for doing so.
JD
A mother called into CNN who still hadn’t had contact with her daughter 4 hours after the concert. Any parent can crawl into that mindset and understand how horrible that must be.
.
Targeting 8 year old girls? Rage.
.
I will not be surprised if there is backlash on this one. If I was a UK Muslim I would be keeping a very low profile. If Catholic jihadis were running around the Middle East targeting their little girls I wouldn’t be very surprised if a few churches got burned down.
.
It’s more complicated then that of course. Muslims can’t stop all jihadis any more than we can stop all crazy mass shooters in the US. The rage needs an outlet though, and if the government appears impotent in stopping the slaughter of its own civilians the rage might be pointed toward the locals.
A US attack on North Korea soon may be in the works. At least that’s what George Friedman, founder of Geopolitical Futures.
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-attack-on-north-korea-is-imminent-george-friedman-says-2017-5
Looks like pure speculation. Letting the Norks get nukes with a deliverable missile system is indeed a tough call. Pakistan, Iran, North Korea with nukes and missiles, what could go wrong? It’s not obvious an attack will stop anything except move development into an underground bunker. I doubt South Korea wants to do all the dying here for the cause. Taking out any new missile on the pad might be an option, but could trigger the same thing.
>oppressive regimes (Saudi Arabia, Saddam, Iran, Gaddafi) seem to be plenty effective at controlling terrorism on their own soil.
India burns train cars full of Muslims in retaliation. Their equivalent of the Al Aqsa Mosque was destroyed in the 80s by a mob when a governor sent the police away.
I suppose it’s like everything else; why be a terrorist when the government does it so much more effectively?
An interesting comparison: Holder’s dismissal of civil case with criminal overtones where Black Men were intimidating white voters. From Wiki:
“In testimony before the Civil Rights Commission, Adams [DOJ Attorney] stated “I was told by voting section management that cases are not going to be brought against black defendants on [behalf] of white victims.”[35] Adams accused the lawyers who ordered the narrowing of the case of having not read the documents describing the facts and applicable law before making this decision, and claimed that his superiors had instructed him and others in the voting section to no longer bring any cases against minority offenders. ” ….”In September 2010, Coates was granted whistleblower protection and testified before the Civil Rights Commission in defiance of his supervisors’ instructions.[45]
Coates’ [Adam’s supervisor] testimony included accusations similar to those made by Adams, stating, “I had people who told me point-blank that [they] didn’t come to the voting rights section to sue African American people.” See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Black_Panther_Party_voter_intimidation_case
Almost certainly, this could have also been prosecuted as a criminal hate crime or as a form of assault. Imagine how this would have been handled differently if it had been white people intimidating black voters.
Also, if one wants to consider Obstruction of Justice, there is very good evidence (certainly probable cause) that Eric Holder lied about the case being dismissed at the request of career attorneys without the intercession of DOJ political appointees. See http://www.theblaze.com/news/2012/08/08/did-eric-holder-commit-perjury-in-black-panther-voter-intimidation-case-watchdog-publishes-some-revealing-documents/
JD
J Ferguson wrote: “Still, if I were Trump and was certain there had been no mischief in my campaign, I would ask if the investigation needed to run its course or might be curtailed because at least to Trump it seemed unlikely to be productive.”
There is no way Trump can be “certain that there was no mischief in his campaign”. Sometimes subordinates do things without asking permission or even informing the boss. Sometimes they don’t ask for permission TO protect their boss (though Trump would never appreciate that excuse). If Trump was involved in any “mischief”, he would certainly proactively lie to Comey about it – such lies are second nature for him.
The FBI has zero reason to believe what any target of an investigation says – even if he is the President. Many Presidents have been notorious prevaricators. The FBI can only discover the truth by getting strong evidence of wrongdoing against at least one subordinate – say Flynn – usually in return for a reduced sentence. Then the FBI needs to confirm every aspect of Flynn’s story, to establish whether he is reliable. Leaking a story that Flynn is cooperating (whether he is or not) will likely provoke nasty tweets from Trump and eventually drive a wedge between Flynn (who could be facing jail time) and his former colleagues. In many cases, it takes a chain of subordinates to reach the top, and investigators may reach a dead-end that is real or false. (They reached a dead end with the computer technician who erased the Clinton email server when it was under subpoena.)
Every government official is required to recuse him- or herself from any investigation that involves that official. Jeff Sessions mislead Congress about his meetings with the Russian ambassador and he has stepped out of the line of command over the Russia investigation, leaving all decisions up to his number two. Loretta Lynch compromised herself by meeting in private with Bill Clinton at the height of Hillary’s email investigation and she stepped aside. Eric Holder recused himself from a leak investigation. For more see: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/recusal.pdf
The President normally doesn’t directly supervise investigations by the DOJ, and there is no reason to begin if the investigation involves him or his staff. He must step aside – or stay to the side – and let an uninvolved subordinate supervise. If he doesn’t do so, that is potential grounds for impeachment. The authors of the Constitution deliberately left the terms for impeachment vague (high crimes and misdemeanors) because they recognized impeachment was a political, not a legal, process involving checks and balances.
frank,
You don’t understand. Or I put it badly.
.
Trump can be ‘certain’ without being correct. I was trying to imagine circumstances where a request to discontinue an investigation might seem a good idea, at least to Trump. Of course Trump’s certainty that nothing was done cannot certify that nothing was done.
.
everything else you say is pretty much how I see it.
The other thing is that Flynn is very publicly not cooperating.
frank,
Yet another call for impeachment based on an alleged cover-up of a collusion crime that has zero evidence based on obstruction of justice for an ongoing never obstructed investigation with a special prosecutor. I hope your high minded constitutional verbiage also includes the part where crimes need to be proven. Or are you on team “unfit for office and impeach him anyway” if you interpret the legal jargon just so?
.
The real (political) target is Trump, everything else is a sideshow. If you want to dispute that, please do. One thing Trump does know is if he was colluding with the Russians. While Trump’s actions can be construed as consistent with him colluding and trying to cover it up, they can equally be construed as him knowing he never did and trying to end a useless investigation which he says is a witch hunt. Have you considered this might actually be a witch hunt (as was Bill Clinton’s)?
.
Perhaps Flynn lied about his finances, then he should get whatever is coming. He’s already been effectively fired for lying and has been disgraced. If I was Flynn I wouldn’t testify either given the circus that is going on, what is his upside here? I don’t have any sympathy for Flynn, but the media is going to lynch anyone they can and they could care less if it is based on evidence or not.
Frank: “Every government official is required to recuse him- or herself from any investigation that involves that official.”
…
Could you cite a statute or court case for that assertion? My assumption has been that officials generally recuse themselves simply for practical reasons. If I, as AG, for example, have a past history that would indicate that I have close or positive connections to someone who might need to be investigated, it is easier for me to wash my hands of the matter and let someone else handle it. One aspect of the practicality of recusal is that if a government official whose objectivity can be questioned investigates something and nothing is found, the subject of the investigation isn’t really cleared in the eyes of the public. Your link simply lists instances of recusal, but it does not provide any statutory or court case authority mandating recusal.
….
As a relevant, but tangential point to your post, I would observe that there is a much stronger case for the recusal of Justice Ginsburg from cases involving important Trump administration policies than the past recusals you referenced, but I doubt that Ginsburg will recuse herself even though Supreme Court Justices are supposed to be more objective than politicians.
JD
Why does nobody care about the leaks from the intelligence community? I’ll leave out the Trump stuff as it is too colored from a partisan view, but there is the recent leak of the bomber’s name without approval from the UK and the news that an entire CIA cell was apparently killed in China over the last 10 years. And of course there is Snowden, Israel provided ISIS intel and on and on.
.
Nobody is getting prosecuted, and as far as I can tell there really aren’t investigations, and on top of that the intelligence community doesn’t seem to care themselves beyond platitudes. The 4th estate seems linked to the hip with the IC recently so they could care less. It’s kind of crazy.
Tom Scharf,
Somebody also leaked the details of the January raid in Yemen. The bad guys were waiting. The Seal team came under fire as soon as they landed.
Tom Scharf: “Why does nobody care about the leaks from the intelligence community?”
Good question. It might be that the investigations are being conducted quietly, as they should be. I suspect the press is ignoring the issue because they are in effect in cahoots with the leakers, since they share a common cause in bringing down Trump.
I did see some speculation that part of the reason for firing Comey was that the FBI was not doing enough to investigate leaks.
UK Daily Mail…IC is at it again
.
“Grisly photos of scorched remnants of suicide bomber’s backpack, ID card, detonator and shrapnel found on bloodied floor of Manchester Arena are leaked by US intelligence officials”
.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4538814/Remnants-backpack-bomb-killed-22.html
Trump’s itinerary, headquarters of Islam, Judaism, Catholicism, Bureaucracy, and Mafia.
PBS Frontline: Bannon’s War
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/bannons-war/
.
If you can make it past the parts where reporters from the NYT, WP, and New Yorker try to tell you what Bannon really thinks it’s not too bad. It is surprisingly short on Bannon’s own words which I take are few and far between.
.
It is a bit ironic that one of the themes is Bannon’s viewpoint of the dangers of Islamic jihad and the documentary came out on the day of the Manchester attack.
JD Ohio asked: “Could you cite a statute or court case for that assertion? My assumption has been that officials generally recuse themselves simply for practical reasons. If I, as AG, for example, have a past history that would indicate that I have close or positive connections to someone who might need to be investigated, it is easier for me to wash my hands of the matter and let someone else handle it.”
Interference with an investigation can be obstruction of justice. That is why involved officials recuse themselves, even though no law says they must do so. In many cases, it turns out to be far easier to prosecute for obstructing an investigation into a crime (“the cover-up”) than to prosecute the crime itself. Martha Stewart is one famous example. We may never know whether Trump was involved in any collusion with the Russians – just like we don’t know if Nixon was involved before the Watergate burglaries – but conclusive evidence of his obstruction of justice can be just as fatal to Trump as it was to Nixon. We already know that Comey kept records of his conversations with Trump and immediately shared them with other FBI officials. (If tapes exist, they may harm Trump more than help him.)
Nixon’s involvement in the payment of hush money to the Watergate burglars is almost certainly a more serious form of obstruction of justice than anything Trump has done so far. However, impeachment is not about sending someone to jail for committing a crime. If enough Republicans are dissatisfied with Trump’s performance in office, obstruction of justice is one charge that can be put on the list. At the moment, I don’t think that charge is strong enough by itself. However, if some evidence of collusion is found (even if it can’t be linked to Trump), or if Trump continues to be an ineffective and UNSTABLE leader, or especially if key cabinet leaders resign; any excuse will be good enough. Conviction requires the vote of only 19 Republican Senators. In addition to obstruction of justice, we have mishandling of secret information, conflicts of interest with his businesses, and probably failure to release his taxes in response to a subpoena over conflicts of interest.
Tom wrote: “Yet another call for impeachment based on an alleged cover-up of a collusion crime that has zero evidence based on obstruction of justice for an ongoing never obstructed investigation with a special prosecutor. I hope your high minded constitutional verbiage also includes the part where crimes need to be proven.”
Impeachment and removal from office (conviction) are not punishments for committing a crime. Impeachment is political, not criminal. Since the law he violated was probably unconstitutional, Andrew Johnson probably didn’t commit a crime. Clinton was impeached by the House for perjury and obstruction of justice, but proving those charges in a court of law beyond a reasonable doubt would have been difficult. Nixon was respected as a leader by Republicans, so they weren’t going to remove him for anything less than an unambiguous crime. Trump is not respected (but his voters are feared). Before he became Vice President, Minority Leader Gerald Ford famously stated: “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.”
Justice Ginsburg’s comments about Trump puts her at risk if she doesn’t recuse herself. At the moment, few would go along. It’s all about politics, not criminal law.
frank: ” In many cases, it turns out to be far easier to prosecute for obstructing an investigation into a crime (“the cover-upâ€) than to prosecute the crime itself.”
Any prosecutor can easily impede an investigation without breaking the law. They have discretion as to what to prosecute, make decisions about what leads to follow, the power to grant immunity to witnesses, etc. I seem to recall questionable use of such things in the Clinton investigation last summer. JD is right; they recuse themselves to avoid the hassles that would come from the appearance of impropriety.
.
“We may never know whether Trump was involved in any collusion with the Russians”
Yeah, like we may never know if a flying saucer crashed outside of Roswell.
.
“However, impeachment is not about sending someone to jail for committing a crime.”
It should only be used as a check on abuse of power. That has never happened.
frank, impeachment is for “high crimes and misdemeanors”. It is *not* a vote of no confidence. Impeachment occurs in the House. It is followed by a trial in the Senate, presided over by the Supreme Court. Nothing like a political move. Trump seems very reasonable in his policy approach. His intemperate speaking style is annoying. The penetration of his Administration by law breaking leakers is becoming a threat to national security. The red scare v2.0 by cynical dems and corrupt media is going to backfire hugely.
Mike M wrote: “Any prosecutor can easily impede an investigation without breaking the law. They have discretion as to what to prosecute, make decisions about what leads to follow, the power to grant immunity to witnesses, etc.”
Agreed, but no attorney general or executive law enforcement official has the authority to OBSTRUCT an investigation. They have the authority to assign their resources to the most serious crimes and cases that are likely to result in convictions. In theory, they shouldn’t let their personal biases influence these decisions. Or, do you approve of influence peddling?
Don’t you believe that Russian affiliates committed crimes (in particular, breaking into computer systems) in an attempt to influence the 2016 election? Don’t you agree that Congress and the DoJ should investigate the possibility that officials in the Trump campaign cooperated with and benefitted from such criminal activity? The vast majority of Republican legislators (the future jury) agree and are doing so. They appear to be extremely unhappy with the appearance of presidential interference.
I’m happy to acknowledge that there is plenty of room for disagreement about the likelihood that such cooperation occurred. (Many people’s opinions are based on politics and past examples of a double standard in how the law has been applied.) Superficially, it appears extremely unlikely that anyone would do something so stupid. In my formative years, I refused to believe that the Nixon administration would do the stupid things they did. I felt personally betrayed by the man who asked me to believe that he wasn’t a crook. Now I’m more cynical about all sides (particular the Clintons and their Mafia). Furthermore, the Russians are pretty effective at subverting people. A remarkable number of Trump associates, as well as Trump himself, have important contacts with the Russian kleptocracy. And there has been a remarkable amount of dissembling about those ties. Trump’s comments about Putin during the campaign appeared idiotic then, but suspicious now.
You are certainly entitled to come to different conclusions about the situation. However, I question your judgment IF you are asserting that prosecutorial discretion permits Trump or Sessions to obstruct THIS investigation.
As for Comey, I think his reputation as a non-partisan law enforcement official caused him to exceed his authority when dealing with highly partisan subjects. I felt his motivations were good, but the results were problematic. He should have resigned (when a successor was ready to take over) so that someone unscarred by the past and not associated with contentious partisan issues could do his non-partisan job. Trump had good grounds to dismiss him – UNTIL he opened his mouth and admitted that he did so because Comey was conducting a witch-hunt.
Hunter wrote: “impeachment is for “high crimes and misdemeanorsâ€. It is *not* a vote of no confidence.”
The National Constitution Center (by charter, a non-partisan organization) has a website where constitutional scholars explain the history and meaning of various clauses. The scholars were selected with the assistance of the (conservative) Federalist Society and the (liberal) Constitutional Society. Since it was written before Trump was elected, nothing was written with today’s situation in mind. Each section begins with a common interpretation and is followed by areas that remain contentious. It is worth reading. Both sides agree that impeachment is not simply a vote of “no confidence”, nor is it limited to specific crimes. Like much of the Constitution, this power is meant to be applied with some flexibility. In the end, Congress’s power to “over-rule” the electorate is limited by that fact that Republican legislators will be subject to retaliation by Trump supporters at the next election. Dozens will lose their seats if they can’t justify their actions to voters.
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/articles/article-ii/article-ii-section-4-by-neil-kinkopf-and-keith-whittington/clause/49
“The Clause seems to rule out the possibility of Congress impeaching and removing officials simply for incompetence or general unfitness for office. Impeachments are not a remedy for government officials who are simply bad at their jobs. It is a remedy for abuses of public office. But the line between general unfitness and abuse of office can be blurry.”
“The impeachment power is a tool that most members of Congress are unwilling to use if it can be avoided, but they have also wanted to preserve it as a tool that is flexible enough to be used in any exceptional circumstances that might arise.”
Frank: “no attorney general or executive law enforcement official has the authority to OBSTRUCT an investigation.”
Of course they don’t. But that is irrelevant since they can get away if obstructing if they want, without doing anything provably illegal.
.
frank: “Or, do you approve of influence peddling?”
That is insulting and uncalled for.
.
frank: “Don’t you believe that Russian affiliates committed crimes (in particular, breaking into computer systems) in an attempt to influence the 2016 election?”
I don’t know, I don’t care, and I can’t imagine why anyone would care. Now if the Russian government did that, it would be a different story. But there is no evidence of that. And it makes no sense that Putin would want Trump to beat Clinton. He was pushing Obama around and there is every reason to believe he would have pushed Clinton around just as easily. But he can’t push Trump around.
.
frank: “Don’t you agree that Congress and the DoJ should investigate the possibility that officials in the Trump campaign cooperated with and benefitted from such criminal activity?”
Only if there is evidence. Which there isn’t.
.
frank: “The vast majority of Republican legislators (the future jury) agree and are doing so.”
I doubt it is the “vast majority”. A whole lot of Republican legislators are gutless wonders who live in fear of disapproval by the elites.
.
frank: “Furthermore, the Russians are pretty effective at subverting people. A remarkable number of Trump associates, as well as Trump himself, have important contacts with the Russian kleptocracy.”
The Clintons even more so.
.
frank: “I question your judgment IF you are asserting that prosecutorial discretion permits Trump or Sessions to obstruct THIS investigation.”
I question your reading comprehension skills if you think I said anything like that.
.
frank: “As for Comey, I think his reputation as a non-partisan law enforcement official …”
Excuse me while I stop laughing.
frank: “… caused him to exceed his authority when dealing with highly partisan subjects.”
Oh, I see. That reputation was in his own mind.
.
frank: “He should have resigned … Trump had good grounds to dismiss him …”
We agree!
frank: – “UNTIL he opened his mouth …”
Silly.
frank,
You sure seem to be going down the road of “if we don’t have evidence it doesn’t really matter”. Just make some accusations and throw them out of office. Yeah justice! I imagine this is all just a liberal whack off session, I hope they are enjoying themselves. I figured they would wear themselves out eventually, but apparently there is an endless supply of election entitlement Viagra, ha ha.
.
If this were really going to happen then if an opposing party had a super majority in the Senate and control of the House, the President would routinely be thrown out of office the day after inauguration because you know, things, really bad things.
.
I have no idea how this works for the left. Some red meat to chew on I guess. Trump supporters will just vote Democrat next time after the left did everything in their power to remove a duly elected official by any low life technicality they can think of. Subvert the electoral college! Cancel the election results! Do over! Bring out Hollywood! Recounts with no evidence of fraud! Bring out the (cough) unbiased scholars. Yes, I want to be on that team next time, a fine upstanding bunch.
Montana Republican candidate body slams reporter from The Guardian. I just can’t decide if that would make me not vote for him or instead vote for him twice.
Off topic, but it’s important that you all know that climate change is a danger to whales. Will they shrink, will they die off?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/05/why-did-the-biggest-whales-get-so-big/527874/
>Republican legislators will be subject to retaliation by Trump supporters at the next election.
However, the Republican establishment is eager to make this message disappear. Just as they rallied against the Tea Party challenges to incumbents, they will be working overtime to reassure them they are protected from any retaliation. What needs to happen is for the people working overtime for impeachment to receive the message that if Trump is impeached, he will still be the GOP nominee in 2020.
HaroldW:
That seems unlikely given that the last interglacial period was significantly warmer than this one. They’ve been pretty much this size for roughly the last 4.5 million years, and for the first 1/3 of it, the Earth had periods which were significantly warmer than now. 3 of the last 4 interglacial periods were warmer too.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png
HaroldW (Comment #162275): “Off topic, but it’s important that you all know that climate change is a danger to whales.”
The big problem with the article is that ocean overturning is much weaker during glacial periods than during interglacials. So the article would seem to get a key point exactly backwards. If overturning does get weaker from warming, then the oceans will pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and all will be fine.
There is a perfectly good explanation for the increase in whale size. They evolved baleen, which allowed efficient feeding strategies well suited to really big organisms. Then the increase in size was inevitable.
Mike M.
I’m sorry you thought some of my comments above were uncalled for. I reread your comments about what prosecutors do and have gotten away with, but you didn’t explain how prosecutors and their supervisors (including the president) SHOULD behave.
Your comments about evidence and lack thereof reminded me how little evidence exists. Unfortunately, the evidence is mostly in the form of top secret intelligence. Whatever it is, it prompted the FBI to open an investigation last summer (which remained secret until a few months ago) and it prompted Obama to warn Trump about General Flynn. Trey Gowdy (not one of those “gutless” Republicans) interrogated the former head of the CIA about the nature of the evidence at a hearing at the link below. At best, it’s not substantial, but worthy of investigation. He said Congressional investigators have received copies of the intelligence the CIA sent to the FBI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKrlfqWzE4c
Frank wrote: “As for Comey, I think his reputation as a non-partisan law enforcement official …â€
Mike M. replied: “Excuse me while I stop laughing.”
Although a registered Republican until recently, Comey rose mostly as an apolitical career prosecutor. He served on the staff of the Senate Whitewater investigation. Later, he worked as a deputy attorney general for GWB. Famously, Comey and Mueller threatened to resign when White House officials tried to pressure AG Ashcroft into signing a document authorizing domestic surveillance from his hospital bed. He supported other controversial programs, including some forms of enhanced interrogation. When Obama appointed him director of the FBI, he was confirmed 93-1. He was rumored to be on a short list for an appointment to the Supreme Court, which drove the liberals nuts. (Still laughing?) When he testified in front of Congress about the email investigation, Trey Gowdy recited earlier Clinton’s testimony and asked if it agreed with what she told the FBI. He unambiguously and repeatedly said: that is not what she told us. (I thought Gowdy (another former prosecutor) “won” their debate on the merits by a narrow margin, but that the prosecution probably would fail in a real courtroom.)
Firing Comey for the reasons in Deputy AG Rosenstein’s memo would have been perfectly normal, which is why Sessions? requested the memo. Firing Comey because Trump wanted the FBI investigation stopped smells like obstruction of justice to me. Since intent is difficult to prove, it was idiotic of Trump to sound off about his reasons for firing Comey.
I’d like to believe that Trump can “drain the swamp” in DC and successfully tackle the ACA, tax reform and the regulatory state. I don’t think he has the knowledge, leadership, or discipline to accomplish much, and could cause great harm. I hope you are right about this.
frank, firing Coney was done because he has become a very ineffective director. He either refused or was unable to deal with Obama holdovers breaking the law by leaks. His probe into Clinton was clearly effected by political pressure for a long time. His firing would do nothing to impact the so-called Russian probe.
By the way the Montana race, widely dog whistled as a big Republican defeat was won by the Republican. Democrats and big media hacks are not going to like the response of voters from non-tinfoil hat parts of the country to the transparently contrived news and democrat spinning.
There is nothing more transparent than someone from the left singing the praises of Comey. I’m getting whiplash.
frank (Comment #162280): “but you didn’t explain how prosecutors and their supervisors (including the president) SHOULD behave.”
I saw no need to. They should bend over backwards to be unbiased and if there is an issue with that they should recuse themselves. But this thread started with claims about legal requirements and legal consequences.
.
frank: “Your comments about evidence and lack thereof reminded me how little evidence exists.”
That was my intent.
frank: “Unfortunately, the evidence is mostly in the form of top secret intelligence. Whatever it is, it prompted the FBI to open an investigation last summer”
Or maybe it was just enough to give cover to an investigation prompted by politics.
.
frank: “Although a registered Republican until recently, Comey rose mostly as an apolitical career prosecutor.”
My impression is that Comey has always been extremely political. But he does seem to have been non-partisan, always putting his own interests ahead of either party (or the public’s).
.
frank: “Firing Comey for the reasons in Deputy AG Rosenstein’s memo would have been perfectly normal … it was idiotic of Trump to sound off about his reasons for firing Comey.”
It was idiotic judged by the norms of politician behavior. But Trump is awfully clever when it comes to manipulating the debate. Maybe that was one of his rare missteps, or maybe the Democrats will end up looking like fools.
.
frank: “I’d like to believe that Trump can “drain the swamp†in DC and successfully tackle the ACA, tax reform and the regulatory state.”
I enthusiastically agree.
frank: “I don’t think he has the knowledge, leadership, or discipline to accomplish much, and could cause great harm.”
Don’t underestimate Trump. He has had the knowledge, leadership, and discipline to build a fortune and to win the Presidency in a highly unconventional manner. If anyone can drain the swamp, Trump can. But it may not be possible. The swamp critters are entrenched and are fighting for their lives.
An observation about Russian interference in US election.
….
I haven’t researched the issue closely, but I am not aware of any law that would prohibit anyone, particularly a foreign country, from influencing an election per se. I can see how it would be a violation of federal law to cooperate with an adversary in a way that contravenes US policy set by an elected office holder. (in some cases, treason, for instance would be the consequence of cooperating with a foreign government) However, candidates for office have no official policy in place, because they don’t hold office and have no official authority. Thus, working for one candidate or the other, does not trip any bells in my head. (Partially, because I doubt that anyone, to this point, has thought of passing a law to outlaw cooperation with a foreign government that wishes to influence a US election.) Additionally, I would point out that Obama tried to influence the Brexit vote, and the US has a long history of interfering with the elections of other countries.
…
Of course, some of the individual acts done in conjunction with cooperating with a foreign government may violate the law (for instance, stealing computer passwords) However, that is different from concluding that the underlying goal or act is unlawful. Again, I am not saying as a matter of policy that foreign interference should be ignored. Rather, I am saying that on my first take, I see no underlying illegality.
JD
JD,
Alan Dershowitz is having a hard time finding a crime here even if some of the accusations are true.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/05/19/alan-dershowitz-questions-russia-special-counsel-says-theres-no-crime
Tom Scharf: Dershowitz
….
Seems like my instincts appear to be correct. Wasn’t aware of Dershowitz’s comments. Thanks for your link:
“He explained that it would not be criminal, even if it happened, for the Trump campaign to have collaborated with the Russians in an effort to get their candidate elected.
“That’s political wrongdoing, but it’s just not a crime,” Dershowitz said. “Nobody can point me to a statute that would be violated. And a prosecutor is only allowed to look for evidence of a federal crime.”
….
Unfortunately, there appears to be a lot of unsubstantiated hysteria about obstruction of justice. On the other hand, the leaks out of the Trump administration are almost certainly, in a good number of cases, felonies. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were done by Obama holdovers or Clinton supporters. Wonder what efforts Comey made to find the leakers.
JD
Mike M. In today’s news, I see that the FBI had received an email last spring from a Russian source alleging that the head of the DNC (Debbie Wasserman Schultz) had received secondhand reassurance from AG Lynch that Hillary Clinton would not be prosecuted. Preliminary investigation suggested that the email was probably fake, but Comey was faced with the dilemma that his boss was compromised by both her talk with Bill Clinton and by this dubious email that could be released anytime Lynch announced the DoJ’s decision to not prosecute Clinton. Apparently, that drove him to publicly announce his recommendation not to prosecute without asking permission from the compromised Lynch. He also informed Congressional intelligence oversight committees about what he had found. Lynch wasn’t informed about the document until its investigation was completed after the Clinton decision was announced.
Perhaps I’m naive, but Comey still sounds like a courageous man (or overly-self-confident man, take your pick) man relying on his non-partisan reputation to resolve a dilemma: Your boss may be compromised and her boss is the President, who can’t make the decision. (Deputy AG Sally Yeats certainly appears partisan.) Unfortunately, Comey promised to keep Congress informed about any new evidence (probably a serious mistake, since the FBI doesn’t normally issue updates about investigations).
I would say Obama (foreign power) collaborated, possibly even (gasp) conspired, with the UK to win the Brexit vote even going so far as using threats with the “last in line” message. He was invited by a devious conspiring political evildoer who apparently was trying to win, or even worse Obama was meddling on his own accord to swing a foreign vote.
JD: When the impeachment clause was put in the constitution, the framers used the word treason and worried about a President conspiring with foreign powers. Is it treason to conspire with agents of a foreign country to help elect a president who is favorably disposed to that country? (It is hard for me to say no.)
As you note, the US (and Russia) have tried to influence many foreign elections. That isn’t a crime here in the US, but it could be a crime in the country that we tried to influence. Suppose Obama had secretly donated funds to the Stay campaign in Britain. Or suppose the British had secretly funded Roosevelt’s re-election campaign in 1940. Before Pearl Harbor, MI6 ran secret operations in the US with the knowledge of the Roosevelt administration and the FBI.
While President Bill Clinton received donations that originated in China, but the DoJ didn’t pursue this vigorously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_United_States_campaign_finance_controversy
Frank,
Comey should have handed the problem over to a DAG if he felt the AG was compromised. It’s exceeding his authority, not acting courageously, to take that responsibility himself. That alone was sufficient grounds for him to be fired. Having been a DAG didn’t give him the authority to act as one when he was FBI director.
frank,
I don’t think it technically matters if it is done in secret or not, you are either doing it or you are not. Doing it in secret may be more to guard against political consequences, not criminal. I suppose it might be important if you were trying to prove a criminal conspiracy where an attempt to hide would be seen as admission of guilt.
JD Ohio: I would suppose it depends on the nature of the collusion and acts associated with it before we could say whether any laws were broken.
Clearly there are examples of collusion (e.g., high treason) where the act would fall under various prohibited activities governed by federal statutes.
Also, the collusion itself need not be illegal, but activities surrounding it very well could be. Since collusion is a political dubious activity at best, the individuals involved would have a clear motive in hiding the evidence, and the acts involved in covering it up (e.g., lying to FBI agents about it) could be a crime even if the act itself wasn’t.
Thus arguing, as some have, that prosecutors shouldn’t even be examining the acts to see if crimes were committed in the process seems to be a particularly poor one to me. After all, nobody has said anything about limiting the investigation to just whether there was collusion or not.
DeWitt: Regardless of whether there is valid motive for firing Comey, the question is what the actual motive was for Trump firing Comey. It’s not even about whether Trump act successfully impeded the investigation. If the act were made to unsuccessfully attempt to impede an ongoing federal investigation, it would still have the same legal issues.
Trump has himself, unhelpfully for his lawyers, listed the Russian investigation as the main reason for the firing. Also, the timing matters: If the firing had occurred in the first weeks after taking office, one could well argue it was related to Comey’s prior behavior in the general election. There is no plausible argument for why the firing occurred in May, nearly four months after Trump takes office, if it were supposed to be associated with Comey’s mishandling of the Clinton investigation.
I know you like Andrew McCarthy’s arguments that Trump can legally impede an investigation. But I don’t think this argument particularly holds any water.
Even if Trump could legally make an order which impeded an investigation… how exactly does that work?
Everybody else on his staff obviously must fall under appropriate statutory law, and that itself leads to a logical contradiction to McCarthy’s arguments.
If Trump gave them an order, they would be legally required to ignore it. He couldn’t even write an executive order saying “it’s okay to ignore statutory law” because that’d be a violation of separation of Article 1 and Article 2 powers (it would amount to legislation, which is prohibited).
I think in practice, the President is pretty well boxed in by statutory and constitutional law. I think that’s how the system is intended to work, and I really doubt any Supreme Court, even one stacked with Republicans, would give the President the green light on this issue.
Is collusion different from conspiracy?
jferguson, good question. According to this,
they are not the same thing and collusion is always illegal.
I should have used the word “collaborate”.
Carrick,
If Comey had been micromanaging the Russia investigation, that would be another reason to fire him. That’s not his job either.
I think you put entirely too much stock in Trump’s intent. No one can read his mind. I’m not even sure that what comes out of his mouth is much of an indication either. Intent matters in a crime. Firing Comey wasn’t a crime.
DeWitt,impeding an investigation is generally a crime. You can do all sorts of otherwise perfectly legal things, which performed in that context makes them illegal. And as I said, attempting to impede an investigation is a crime too.
Trump said why he fired Comey. I see no reason to not accept his word here.
Carrick: “Remember, conspiracy describes a secret plot that may or may not be illegal, collusion is always an illegal or fraudulent plot.”
….
The Grammarist is not a good source for legal understanding. I have never heard of collusion being described as it was by your link. An alternative from Wikipedia article on collusion:
“Collusion is an agreement between two or more parties, sometimes illegal and therefore secretive, to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading, or defrauding others of their legal rights, or to obtain an objective forbidden by law typically by defrauding or gaining an unfair market advantage.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collusion Of course, Wikipedia is not infallible either, but as a simple, quick way of seeing whether there is an alternative viewpoint, it is useful.
….
Other than in the context of economic regulatory law, I have never heard of collusion being used as a word of art. If for instance, I collude with a friend to get out of a social engagement, it is not a crime.
JD
Frank: ” Is it treason to conspire with agents of a foreign country to help elect a president who is favorably disposed to that country? (It is hard for me to say no.)”
….
To Alan Dershowitz, (who I agree with), no it is not treason. Not even close.
…..
People are supposed to influence elections. Suppose, the Mexican government announced that it would give certain trade concessions to the US ahead of an election in order to influence the electorate to support candidates who would support loose immigration laws. There is nothing wrong with that. A semi-awkward way of saying that is that there is no enforceable policy or position that candidates can effectuate during an election. Thus, there is nothing to commit treason against when a country or an individual is solely trying to influence an election.
JD
Carrick: ” I would suppose it depends on the nature of the collusion and acts associated with it before we could say whether any laws were broken.”
….
A big distinction has to be made between Trump and his campaign workers. (who could be at risk for obstruction of justice charges) Trump because of his ability to hire and fire the FBI Director (as well as his ability to give pardons) is effectively the chief prosecutor of the US. As I mentioned before, there are many, many laws that are broken and not enforced. For instance, under Federal Law it is still illegal to use Marijuana, even for if state law permits recreational use. See http://www.safeaccessnow.org/federal_marijuana_law
…..
It is up to the chief prosecutor (For the US, effectively Trump) to decide whether to prosecute people who use it in states where usage is not prohibited. If Trump decided to fire a prosecutor who was investigating marijuana usage in a state where private usage was permitted under state law, Trump has the right to stop the investigation and the prosecution. It is possible that Trump’s subordinates could be guilty of obstruction of justice, but so far, I see nothing where Trump is anywhere near committing obstruction of justice. Even if obstruction of justice crimes were committed by Trump associates, no one is obligated to prosecute them. (For instance, Michael Brown’s friend who lied and committed perjury by stating that Brown had his hands up, was not prosecuted for perjury or obstruction of justice, even though he was certainly guilty of perjury and very likely guilty of obstruction of justice under Missouri law as a result of his false statements given during the course of the Grand Jury investigation.)
….
I think the mistake made by 85% of the public and many people here is the idea that there is some sort of special consideration given to a decision not to prosecute a crime. In fact, there is none and it happens all of the time.
JD
The problem JD, is that routine decisions to not prosecute clear vioations of law when it is politically expedient, and never revoke laws that may have outlived their usefulness, is that we then risk becoming as lawless as a banana republic. Take it to its logical conclusion: all activities can be made unlawful, and the president, through the attorney general, can then prosecute anyone he (or she) wants to, at any time, for purey political purposes. Sounds a bit like Putin’s Russia to me. Enforcing laws, and keeping those laws up to date and relevant, are crucial to preserve liberty.
On the Montana race… It took a bit before I found the audio tape of the incident only as opposed to one including a news reader interpreting or a witness giving their view. The latter are easy to find.
JD Ohio, thanks for the comments on collusion. I was surprised about the distinction between conspiracy and collusion. Like you I had thought it was possible to collude without intent to commit a crime. I’d have used “criminal conspiracy” for that.
But in any case, Dershowitz said “collaborate” not “collude” so I should have said “collaborate” and not the more charged “collude”. I plead exhaustion.
Certainly it’s possible to collaborate without committing a crime, regardless of the political price paid. It is precisely the political stakes that is driving this interest in collaboration, conspiracy or collusion. And it is the political stakes that plausible would drive stupid people to stupid acts to cover up the “collaboration”, even when no crime had otherwise been committed.
I don’t by the way agree with the notion that Trump can fire people at will, if that firing can be shown to be associated with an attempt to obstruct justice or impede a federal investigation (note I said “if”). There are a great many examples of things that in a general context are legal, that in the wrong context are illegal.
I think this is exactly why the firing of Comey has come under scrutiny from the Justice Department. The extent of Trump’s troubles depends critically here on what Trump and his aids say about his motivation in the future, and of course on any paperwork that Comey has on their conversations.
That said, I’m not a betting man, but if I were, I would bet that no substantive evidence is found. Even if there were, there’s exactly a zero chance that Congress would act on it.
But I understand the legal and political need to scrutinize the firing of Comey.
I also agree with the distinction between Trump and his aides. Trump is unlikely to be in political jeopardy here, but his aides may well be.
Lucia—I wish I could find a recording that went further back in time, to see how long Gianforte was being badgered before he came unhinged. Here’s a description by FoxNews reporters. But it’s likely there was more than just a “body slam” involved (multiple blows were apparently thrown).
I would say the pundits as usual are drawing the wrong conclusion. It’s not a referendum on whether a body slam of a reporter matters.
In fact, by the date of the battery on the reporter, 238,320 ballots had been already cast. In the end, 377,465 votes were cast, meaning nearly 2/3s of the voting had already taken place.
And even then, had there not been a third party candidate to dilute the vote, Gianforte likely would have lost. Gianforte did well in counties where Trump did well (see the third link) so there isn’t any huge backlash against Trump at this point among Republicans (but that isn’t news either, if one trusts polling results).
The only real takeaway I see is Democratic squabbling continues to contribute to their nation-wide demise.
Carrick: ” had there not been a third party candidate to dilute the vote, Gianforte would have lost”
That is just nonsense. There is no way that a 3rd party candidate could have increased Gianforte’s vote total. Past experience is that Libertarian candidates tend to draw roughly equally from both parties and have little effect on who wins.
Carrick,
Crazy Sessions decides he is going to start vigorously enforcing sodomy laws (or choose a left wing bugaboo) and Trump fires him because he won’t stop and he doesn’t want these laws enforced. Are you then calling for Trump to be impeached for obstruction of justice? Are you saying that there is a special exception in this case legally?
.
Another fun fact: The president can apparently pardon himself. It may not end well politically after that I imagine. What a grand circus that would be.
Carrick: “I don’t by the way agree with the notion that Trump can fire people at will, if that firing can be shown to be associated with an attempt to obstruct justice or impede a federal investigation (note I said “ifâ€). There are a great many examples of things that in a general context are legal, that in the wrong context are illegal.”
The law says otherwise. Trump’s motives are irrelevant to whether firing Comey was legal. They could be relevant to whether the firing was improper. But that is a political matter, not a legal one.
I am ignoring the detail that, technically, Trump did not fire Comey. Rosenstein fired Comey.
Mike M:
I would say the nonsense is in claiming that third party candidates, libertarian or not, “tend to draw roughly equally” and “have little effect on who wins”.
They are usually protest candidates rather than serious ones, in which case the effect can be very asymmetric. See for example Ross Perot and the 1992 & 1996 elections.
Mike M:
The question here is “which law?”. There are laws governing influencing ongoing investigation, laws relating to obstruction of justice as well as laws (and specifically federal regulations in this particular case) which permit Trump firing Comey.
Simply because you didn’t break one law doesn’t mean you broke no law.
Tom Scharf: I’m not calling for Trump’s impeachment, and I wish other people would stop doing so. It’s counter-productive. But if Trump impeded or obstructed an investigation or attempted to do so, that’s a very different can of worms than a prosecutor using his professional judgement in cases that prosecutor himself is not involved in.
It the personal stake in the outcome that makes it different, and why we generally expect prosecutors to recuse themselves in those cases, for both legal and ethical reasons.
“Carrick: “I don’t by the way agree with the notion that Trump can fire people at will, if that firing can be shown to be associated with an attempt to obstruct justice or impede a federal investigation”
….
To avoid confusion and useless misunderstandings over language, I will use the phrase and term “stop investigations” in the sense that you are using “obstruct justice.” (Obstruction of justice is a very specific crime that I don’t think you understand the meaning of–You are assuming that there is obstruction of justice when the issue of whether there is obstruction of justice is the very issue under discussion) First, I would point out that Comey as head of the FBI only investigates. He presents the results of his investigations to the Justice Department and the Justice Department decides whether to prosecute. The Attorney General has 100% authority to totally ignore his findings.
You could check the weird situation between Comey and Lynch with respect to the Clinton email investigation. She said she would accept Comey’s recommendation, but she did not recuse herself or formally withdraw her authority over Comey. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/02/us/politics/loretta-lynch-hillary-clinton-email-server.html?_r=0 So even if Comey recommended [please understand his findings are only recommendations — they have no binding legal significance], Lynch could have simply ignored them. Please notice that covering Clinton and Obama’s behind, Lynch never formally relinquished her authority to totally ignore whatever Comey recommended. If he had recommended prosecution, in my mind there was a very good chance that she would have rejected his recommendation.
….
In the same way, Trump could legally ignore the findings of Comey or whoever else heads the FBI. It is very clear that stopping an investigation, refusing to prosecute even though there is a recommendation to prosecute [or even very clear evidence of a crime, as was evident in the perjury committed in the Michael Brown case], or firing an investigator for refusing to comply with the policies of those legally entitled to make the decision to prosecute is not even close to obstruction of justice when done by the person with the authority to decide whether to prosecute or investigate. Both Trump and Sessions have that authority. As those responsible for deciding whether to prosecute or not, they can’t be found guilty of obstructing justice for exercising the authority that they have. (unless there is a crime connected with the exercise of that authority, such as bribery)
JD
Carrick: “It the personal stake in the outcome that makes it different, and why we generally expect prosecutors to recuse themselves in those cases, for both legal and ethical reasons.”
…
Very true in a political sense and practical good government sense. Totally irrelevant in legal sense when prosecutor or prosecutor’s boss decides not to prosecute. There is no law saying prosecutor or President can’t exercise his discretion if he has personal interest in matter.
To shorten the discussion, I would ask you to cite a statute or case that says that the President or Attorney General’s authority to terminate an investigation is limited by their personal involvement in the case. Since there is so much Trump animus throughout the Internet, if there are limitations on the ability to stop the investigation, they should not be hard to find.
JD
Carrick,
Talk about doubling down on nonsense. Can’t you admit a mistake, even when it is mathematically obvious? Gianforte got an absolute majority in the Montana election.
Ross Perot was not a Libertarian. I am amazed that you would imply that he is.
Polls have repeatedly shown that Libertarian candidates draw roughly equally from both major parties. Partly because 3rd party votes tend to be protest votes and partly because the Libertarian positions have major overlaps with and difference from both major parties.
There is good reason to believe that Ross Perot drew his support roughly equally from both major candidates:
“The effect of Ross Perot’s candidacy has been a contentious point of debate for many years … examination of the Perot vote in the Election Night exit polls not only showed that Perot siphoned votes nearly equally among Bush and Clinton …” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1992#Analysis
Carrick: “The question here is “which law?â€.”
That is a question for those who claim Trump broke the law. Which law do you think Trump may have broken?
Thanks to JD for informative comments.
Carrick
Agreed. I think it would not have been one even if there had been no early voting. Sometimes, the vote isn’t “about” an issue the media is focusing on nor “about” any particular misbehavior. When DC voters re-elected Marion Berry, it wasn’t a referendum on crack smoking!
I’d also like to find a recording going further back in time.
I also want to note this eyewitness statement is mostly consistent with the tape, but there is at least one discrepancy
On the tape, you can hear the Guardian reporter continuuing to press Gianforte for an answer after Gianfort tells him to talk to Shane Scanlon. So the reporter asked, gianforte says he will discuss later. Reporter refuses to accept that, and presses for answer again. Gianforte tells him to ask someone else. Reporter refuses that and this time, almost immediately Gianforte cleans his clock.
Getting physical is wrong. It does appear to have been more than a “body slam”. I can’t actually tell from scuffle sounds– but I think it seems like more.
That said: it’s pretty clear this reporter was definitely refusing to go away. The right response might have been “Security, could you get this person out of here?”
lucia: ” it’s pretty clear this reporter was definitely refusing to go away. ”
It sounds like there is also an issue of how physically aggressive the reporter was. Shoving a recorder into someone’s face could cover a pretty wide range of actions. In any case, Gianforte was wrong to get physical. But it is not obvious that he was so wrong as to deserve to be forced from office.
4th circuit has rejected Trump’s travel ban. This
Haven’t gone thru the legal argument, but this 24 word block suggests it won’t be good.
> but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination. Surely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment yet stands as an untiring sentinel
Sounds to me like 11 justices in the Fourth Circuit need impeaching.
MikeM
I doubt if the House will expel him. Expulsion is rare, and other than backing the Confederacy for things like treason, bribery etc. Sometimes people resign. We’ll see if he does. If so evidently there will be another special election.
He has been charged with assault. It will be interesting to hear more when the court case takes place.
If Fox News plays video of him assaulting the reporter all day, I’ll know he’s innocent.
MikeN,
I don’t think he’s innocent of assault. That said:
http://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/45/5/45-5-201.htm
I think he did (a). I doubt “he kept holding a mike in my face and wouldn’t go away” is a defense. But if the penalty ends up being $500, he may well just pay it and go off to Congress and fit right in with most of the rest of the Congress-critters.
Then Montanan can decided whether to reelect in 2018.
“(c) purposely or knowingly makes physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature with any individual”
So, *if* the reporter made physical contact, Gianforte might have a legal out. Can I assault someone who has assaulted me? Only, I would guess, if my response is way out of proportion. Which Gianforte’s might have been.
I would think that a misdemeanor would not be sufficient for Congress to refuse to seat Gianforte.
The reporter committed the first assault.He trespassed into a restricted area and stuck his phone in the candidate’s face and the committed trespass by refusing to leave. But assaulting Republicans is becoming common place. There should have been uniformed security there to deal with crap like that. Assaulting the reporter may or may not have been justified but was apparently very minor.
The charge is a minor misdemeanor. $500 fine. A democrat would not even have the issue raised. This is a non-event.
Hunter,
I don’t know if he trespassed nor not. Even if he did trespass, trespass isn’t assault.
JD wrote: “I think the mistake made by 85% of the public and many people here is the idea that there is some sort of special consideration given to a decision not to prosecute a crime. In fact, there is none and it happens all of the time.
And the constitution offers one extreme solution for those in the executive and judicial branches who abuse their discretion not to prosecute a crime.
DeWitt: You are correct in saying that Comey exceeded his authority – something which can be done courageously or stupidly or both. From a practical perspective, AG Lynch was under investigation by the FBI until she was cleared of the accusation of having prejudged Hillary. Given her long association with the Clintons and inappropriate conversation with Bill, Comey may have felt that Lynch should have recused herself and her failure to do so was suspicious. Comey and Yates both reported to Lynch, but as head of the FBI, Comey effectively outranked Yates. He certainly had more experience in Washington DC. When AG Ashcroft was in the hospital, Comey took a dispute over domestic surveillance directly to President Bush and threatened to resign because the seriously ill AG was being pressured to sign a document he didn’t approve from his hospital bed. He successfully negotiated a compromise. President Obama couldn’t help Comey with this problem. Comey played in the Big Leagues in DC and had been confirmed by the Senate 93-1; Yates had been called up from Georgia to finish the Obama season.
lucia, I know people who have had assault charges filed against them for merely patting the complainant on their shoulder. In the recording I heard the reporter was sticking his phone in the face of the Congressman. After being told to stop. After being told to leave a restricted area. Whatever the Congressman did to the reporter it must be minor since there is at most a $500 fine.
Hunter,
Or six months in jail.
I just don’t anticipate the jail time. He’s a billionnaire with no priors, he’ll have a good lawyer.
I’m just pointing out that trespass isn’t assault. It’s not.
Patting someone on the shoulder is at least physical contact. It’s not “trespass”. While it might be evidence that “assault” gets over-interpreted, it doesn’t turn trespass into assault. They just aren’t the same thing.
I’ve read nothing that says the reporter was asked to leave the area nor that the area was restricted. I admit I haven’t read all possible versions of this story. Do you have a link to something that says they were? I’d love more details.
lucia, I listened to the recording. He was asked to leave, asked to get the phone out of the Congressman’s face, to wait until the interview the Congressman was preparing for was finished. The reporter refused and kept sticking his phone in the Congressman’s face. The trespass was not assault. Invading personal space repeatedly could qualify. And it seems the claim about grabbing the reporter by the neck was false..
This report really calls Comey’s integrity into question: http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/james-comey-fbi-investigation-fake-russian-intelligence/
It says that Comey ended the Clinton email investigation because of intelligence that he knew was false and planted by the Russians. But it is from CNN, so who knows if it is true.
The fact that the assault was against a reporter helps him, a lot. If it was against almost anyone else, his wife, a random citizen, a protester, etc this would be more serious. Instead it was against a non-human, ha ha. Very few Republicans are going to want him fired over beating up a reporter from The Guardian. Now publicly they will say the expected things, privately they aren’t going to let the press get glorified as yet another victim class that needs protected from the evil right.
.
Gianforte was clearly wrong here, and should pay the same price for it as any citizen in the same circumstances. As for political consequences against a press that has been going out of their way to antagonize the right at every opportunity, no.
“Thanks to Trump, Germany says it can’t rely on the United States. What does that mean?”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/05/28/thanks-to-trump-germany-says-it-cant-rely-on-america-what-does-that-mean/
.
“Merkel on Sunday declared a new chapter in U.S.-European relations after contentious meetings with President Trump last week, saying that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands.â€
.
My response is the same as the WP: Thank You Trump. We may not mean it in exactly the same way though, ha ha.
.
Frankly this statement from Merkel is an outright admission that Europe hasn’t been pulling their weight and they know it. Who considers Europe pulling their own weight bad news? I suppose the seniors in their 80’s and 90’s in Europe may not be too fond of seeing a Germany re-arming again.
Thanks for the link Tom. The WaPo article says “Germany and Europe are likely to take on a much more substantial and independent role”. That sounds good to me. It goes on to say “President Trump’s disastrous European tour”. I’d say it sounds like it was very successful. Once again, the elites are firmly ensconced in their bubble.
….we didn’t get rolled for yet more money.
…..we didn’t fall for the open borders sickness
……we didn’t fall for the climate pressure.
…..we strengthened our alliance in the Middle East
…..Merkel is unmasked as a lefty extremist with delusions of grandeur
Sounds pretty darned successful to me.
MikeM, the Comey relied on fake intel is more fake news. There is the possibility that he was worried how it would look if the fake intel became public, and so he made a public statement to reassure the public. However, this doesn’t make that much sense.
Both Trey Gowdy and Lindsey Graham have been saying there is evidence of collusion between Hillary and DOJ. Looks like this fake intel story is an attempt to distract from that.
If Kushner was trying to set up a secret back channel with Russia in December, then how did they collude the previous two years?
MikeN,
Don’t try to add deductive and inductive reasoning to the Russian probe. Just throw out any Russian link that can be found without comment and let people assume it is nefarious.
.
When I heard about Kushner I immediately thought of “back channel”. That the DC media couldn’t even throw that out as a innocent possibility when first reported exposes their partisan framing.
.
In the fun game of “they did it too” it turns out that Obama opened a back channel to Iran that was used for multiple purposes. The IC didn’t see fit to leak it immediately and the media didn’t assume it was traitorous in nature.
.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/prisoner-swap-obamas-secret-second-channel-to-iran
.
Since Obama was a Muslim he was clearly aligning with Iran, coupled with him intentionally creating the Sunni self destructive force of ISIS it allowed Iran to become the new regional power in the ME just as they planned all along (sarcasm). Prove it didn’t happen. See how easy it is to play that game?
.
I don’t know about back then, but now it is perfectly obvious why one would setup a secret communications channel given that our IC and administration immediately leak everything they can get their hands on and frame it it in the most destructive way possible. I’m having a hard time convincing myself the IC is on Team America lately.
The Obama administration admits it lied about secret communications with Iran, doctors video to help cover it up.
.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/01/politics/state-department-edited-iran-video/
.
“After it was revealed in December 2013 that secret talks between the U.S. and Iran actually had taken place, then-spokeswoman Jen Psaki admitted the administration lied in order to protect the secret negotiations.
Earlier this month Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes acknowledged to The New York Times that the administration was deceptive about the talks, creating a “narrative” that they did not take place.”
.
“Because such rules weren’t previously in place, Kirby said he found “no reason” to press forward with a more formal investigation.”
.
For the record I don’t have a problem with this. Trying to negotiate with an adversary in public is nearly impossible. The only point here is how the media believes one is a treacherous conspiracy and the other is diplomacy in action.