Open Thread - 14 February 2017

pl

Comments

[Willybilly]

Mike Flynn was sacrificed/scuttled by Kushner ahead of the planned meeting between Trump & Netanyahu, Hence it's Kushner who should be punished re the Logan act.... and put in the klink.

[spkoc]

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jowei/florida.pdf

A brief 2013 research paper on gerrymandering, focused on Florida. It's conclusion is that intentional gerrymandering is NOT the cause of the GOP's advantage at the state/congress level(they don't really study presidential elections though I'd imagine a similar process is in play there).

Money factoid about the 2000 election: "First, Democrats are far more clustered within homogeneous precincts than are Republicans. For example, while Bush received over 80% of the vote in only 80 precincts, Gore received over 80% in almost 800 precincts."

The paper also studies randomised districting in Florida and finds that the GOP has a significant advantage almost every time. In fact, they speculate that no reasonably geographically contiguous districting would allow the Dems to win at the state level, due to how concentrated blue voters are(this despite roughly equal numbers of D and R voters in the state as a whole).

My own thoughts beyond the paper: This situation can get very weird indeed. The GOP could start to lose the popular vote and still win state level and in congress by fairly strong margins for quite some time.

While the US elections are not strictly population based, my feeling is that the popular vote usually, historically has matched the winners. Yay/nay? Regardless, I think the efforts to delegitimize the GOP based on the popular vote at various levels are only going to get louder. Also wouldn't be surprised if the next midterms are fairly solid for them regardless of Trump doing well or badly.

Disclaimer: Dirty Euro with no real horse in the race ideologically.

[Jus'Thinkin]

What do you think are the five best books on the theory of warfare?

[Valissa]

Trump Expects Putin To "Return" Crimea To Ukraine http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-14/trump-expects-putin-return-crimea-ukraine
With every passing day, it appears that many of the anticipated foreign policy changes under the new administration may end up being nothing but smoke and mirrors. First, it was the middle east, where despite campaign promises of pulling back US troops, Trump is instead considering adding to US deployments to reinforce what he plans to be Syrian "safe zones."

Then, during today's Sean Spicer press conference, the White House spokesman had that President Trump has been "tough" on Russia and expects Moscow to “return” the Crimea peninsula to Ukraine, the White House spokesman told reporters.

... "President Trump has made it very clear that he expects the Russian government to de-escalate violence in the Ukraine and return Crimea," Spicer said at a daily news briefing. "At the same time, he fully expects to and wants to get along with Russia."
--------

The opening gambit of a negotiation? Or another sign that Trump is in the process of being assimilated into the Borg.

[Cold War Zoomie]

Flynn must understand how SIGINT collection works, right? This is weird.

[walrus]

Is President Trump going off with no coherent strategy or is it just the MSM portraying him as a loose cannon?

[Valissa]

The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-02-14/the-political-assassination-of-michael-flynn

America's spies anonymously took down Michael Flynn. That is deeply worrying. http://theweek.com/articles/680068/americas-spies-anonymously-took-down-michael-flynn-that-deeply-worrying

[BabelFish]

The web site Information Dissemination is back up for those interested in naval affairs.

A few current posts show a debate regarding stepping back the size of carriers, to a smaller size (CVL) and another discussing a report on a 'hollow' US Navy that has an eye popping 50+% of naval aircraft as inoperable for spares and delayed maintenance.

http://www.informationdissemination.net/2017/02/question-of-week-february-13-february.html
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2017/02/the-fleet-in-being-strategy.html

[bks]

Noam Chomsky debates William F. Buckley about Viet Nam on _Firing Line_ 1969:
https://youtu.be/0k9aTeoDBxw?list=PL899398E3C3D47FB0

[YT]

http://journal-neo.org/2017/02/10/governor-of-jakarta-get-re-elected-or-die/

André Vltchek gives us his perspective of the political wayang kulit that is indonesia.

[Bill Herschel]

Please forgive the fact that this comes from the saker's blog. I could not find it independently. I think it is worth posting.

http://thesaker.is/kucinich-pins-flynn-leak-on-intel-community-warns-of-another-cold-war/

I am surprised that it made it on to Fox. I wonder how that happened.

[fanto]

all,
on topic of Gen Flynn´s resignation intersting interview on Fox Business - Maria Bartiromo and Rep. Kusinich

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j_ZfKmcnSk

[Bill Herschel]

And here's what's really going on:

http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-questionable-account-of-what-michael-flynn-told-the-white-house

The Flynn thing is the first step toward impeachment for lying to the American people.

Heavy, heavy shit.

[J]

My question is, why didn't Trump simply show his support for Flynn, tell a little white lie and say he told Flynn to do whatever, that would shut up the mutts in the IC, the Media, and Congress that are trying to bring the Trump administration down.

Trump IMO really needs to give a stern how the land lays to the rebel elements in the IC, that they need to remember their place.

Colonel,

Case in point where Trump needs to lay down the hammer on the IC:

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/us-spies-withholding-intel-from-white-house-because-they-know-russia-is-listening-report/

[J]

My question is, why didn't Trump simply show his support for Flynn, tell a little white lie and say he told Flynn to do whatever, that would shut up the mutts in the IC, the Media, and Congress that are trying to bring the Trump administration down.

Trump IMO really needs to give a stern how the land lays to the rebel elements in the IC, that they need to remember their place.

Colonel,

Case in point where Trump needs to lay down the hammer on the IC:

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/02/us-spies-withholding-intel-from-white-house-because-they-know-russia-is-listening-report/

[robt willmann]

"My Funny Valentine". Music written originally by Richard Rodgers. Done here by Stan Kenton--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxP9ASjbwxU

And, of course, "Isn't She Lovely". Performed by Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band of the Johnny Carson Show. One of the best bands, with great arrangers: Bill Holman, Tommy Newsom, John Bambridge, et. al.--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLhEGovVj2c

[YT]

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/368525/let-malaysia-wiggle-itself-out-of-bad-karma

First the troubles in its eastern half, then the subsequent tragedies of MH370 & MH17.

Now, the assasination of that half-brother of nork leader.

A string of great misfortunes involving the malay cesspool across media.

The 'heretic' 13th.-century Nip monk Nichiren once conveyed to his followers that when the politicos of a country are corrupt & evil, disaster will not fail to manifest...

[EEngineer]

So who put the knife in Flynn?

[mike]

Trump's new CIA Director Mike Pompeo honors Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz for efforts against terrorism.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/gulf/2017/02/10/CIA-awards-Saudi-Crown-Prince-for-efforts-against-terrorism-.html

Is this a signal for more support of the Saudi adventure in Yemen? Or is it apple polishing because Muhammad seems is first in line to inherit the throne of 81-year-old King Salman? Maybe both?

[Doug Tunnell]

Any reax ?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

[Cee]

All,

Who was spying on whom? I'm waiting for THAT investigation of the sore lose brigade

https://theintercept.com/2017/02/14/the-leakers-who-exposed-gen-flynns-lie-committed-serious-and-wholly-justified-felonies/

Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates … or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes … any classified information … obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

That Flynn lied about what he said to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak was first revealed by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who has built his career on repeating what his CIA sources tell him. In his January 12 column, Ignatius wrote: “According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking.”

[Cee]

The real traitors

http://theweek.com/articles/680068/americas-spies-anonymously-took-down-michael-flynn-that-deeply-worrying

[Sam Peralta]

It is easy to arm chair quarterback.

Having said that, I think Trump should have backed Flynn. If he wanted to get rid of him he should have done that when the hysteria was on something else. The fact that he appears to have caved to the hysteria over Flynn's phone call and not being totally forthcoming now provides fuel for the NeverTrumpers & the MSM to amp up their attacks with even more hysteria.

Trump needs to recognize that he is in a war. No different than during the campaign when the stories were running rampant about a campaign organization in disarray, the violence at the rallies, the polls showing how he could never win, and the behavior and statements of candidate Trump spun to evoke fear & loathing. He went to war with the media and the establishment of both parties and prevailed by defeating the Borg Queen and winning big. Now he's gonna have to be at war with the same media & the NeverTrumpers but in addition the fifth column buried deep in the bureaucracy, especially the intelligence & forever war groupies.

[Tidewater]

Tidewater says to All,

It's late and I know what comes on the morrow--which is today--but I don't want to let this Valentine's day go without saying something. It has been an unusual one for me, a little bittersweet. Anyway, earlier today I was reading about Calhoun, who once sent a love poem to his wife. Each line of it began, "Whereas."

Now, I think that might be quite witty, but the biographer, Gerald M. Capers, thought not. He found some of Calhoun's letters "stilted, even for a day of conventional formality." Calhoun himself wrote about his emotions as he gradually found himself falling in love with his sixteen year old bride to be.(He regarded her young mother as his own mother. Lot of family tragedy in his life, just like Jackson's.) "I formerly thought that it would be impossible for me to be strongly agitated in an affair of this kind; but that opinion now to me seems wholly unfounded, since, as it were in the very commencement, it can produce such effects."

I cannot help but think of Patsy Cline. ('I fall to pieces.')

I am surrounded by books of Irish poetry. Lots of Seamus Heaney. There was what I remembered as an ancient Irish ballad, or song, which has been on my mind for a long time. I just liked it. It began: "Blanaid loves roses..."

Surely it would be easy enough to find it. So I began an internet search. It didn't work. Then I thought about where I might have read it. Finally, I guessed it might have been in a slim little Oxford book of Irish Poetry that I remembered as being quite handsomely bound and with a blue cover. I searched, as on Amazon. Still no result.

So then I got serious. Out with the Nixon yellow legal pad. Known knowns etc. Possibles. Oxford book of, say, ballads? Verse? I made more than one order on Amazon. And very soon in came an older Book of Irish Verse, that seemed to be from another perhaps more distant corner of the Internet, looking just like the one that seems to have disappeared from my shelves. I thumbed through it and there it was. "Blanaid's Song." By Joseph Campbell. What, the famous mythologist who wrote 'The Hero With A Thousand Faces' was also a poet?

Further search. Wrong. It was another Joseph Campbell. Never heard of him. Today his little volume "The Mountainy Singer" (1909) arrived. By Seosamh MacCathmhaoil. That's the Gaelic. Doesn't matter, but it doesn't have Blanaid.

He was a tough customer. He fought in the war for Irish independence and then in the Irish civil war as a Republican, against any division of Ireland. (Crazy.) He was captured and held in prison for a year or so. His wife left him. He went to New York. I think he had a tough time of it. But he wrote the lyrics to ballads like "My Lagan Love" which are sung by several different well known Irish singers. (These are on Youtube.) It's all news to me. He was held in a prison where the Free Staters executed Republicans such as he. They shot more of their own than the British. I wonder if he was in the prison where they put Erskine Childers in front of a firing squad. Childers wrote the one book that all New Englander yachtsmen once and probably still today read before they put their boats back in the water in the spring when the sailing season begins: "The Riddle of the Sands". He also took six hundred Mausers and sixty thousand rounds of black powder ammunition into Howth on board his yacht Asgard (now preserved in a museum. Asgard was built by Colin Archer, the famous Norwegian designer and boatbuilder who also built Nansen's Fram. I've been on board Fram. It's at Bygdoy, outside of Oslo.) It's all typically Irish. He gives them the Easter Rising. They shoot him. Then they honor him. Now I almost don't feel like putting the dear little lost pome out there. It seems so frail...

Blanaid's Song

Blanaid loves roses;
And Lugh who disposes
All beautiful things,
Gave her
Roses.

All heavenly things,
Dreambegot, fairyborn,
All natural things
Of colour and savour:
(Shawls of old kings,
Ripeness of corn,
Butterfly wings,
Veined chestnut leaves,
Dark summer eves,
Moons at high morn).
He searched for a favour,
And, pondering, gave her
Roses.

Blanaid's black head
Wears a barret of red
From Lugh's gardenlands;
Her breasts and her hands
Are burthened with
Roses.
--So her song closes!

Where, I cannot help but wonder, did he get "shawls of old kings" from?

There is another poem that I think our MacCathmhaoil wrote in prison.

Chesspieces

It was a time of trouble--executions,
Dearth, searches, nightly firing, balked escapes--
And I sat silent, while my cellmate figured
Ruy Lopez'Gambit from the 'Praxis.' Silence
Best fitted with our mood: we seldom spoke.
'I have a thought,' he said, tilting his stool.
'We prisoners are so many pieces taken,
Swept from the board, only used again
When a new game is started.' 'There's that hope,'
I said,'the hope of being used again.
Some day of strength, when ploughs are out in March,
The Dogs of Fionn will slip their iron chains,
And, heedless of torn wounds and failing wind,
Will run the old grey Wolf to death at last.'
He smiled, 'I like the image. My fat Kings
And painted Queens, and purple-cassocked Bishops
Are tame, indeed, beside your angry Dogs!"

I am ready for an unpleasant news day. I think it would be kind of funny if, as the day progresses, heads began to roll in the CIA and at other major intelligence agencies. It's time.

[Tidewater]

Tidewater to Tidewater,

The thought on the stair. "The St.Valentine's Day massacre?"