Monthly Archives: April 2017

04.07.17
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Update: Syria Responds With Another Bombing

From The Guardian:

A warplane on Friday bombed the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun, where a chemical attack killed scores of people this week and prompted US missile strikes, a witness in the rebel-held area and a war monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based organisation that monitors the war, said a Syrian government or Russian warplane hit Khan Sheikhun, in rebel-held Idlib province, before noon local time.

This is what happens when you “send a message”: people want to know just what it meant. Either the Assad government or the Russians (which you can’t 100% seperate) have decided to test whether the US is actually interested in involving themselves in the fight against Assad, or just wanted to send a very limited and ultimately ineffective message. Because the people killed in this strike are no less dead than those killed by chemical weapons.

So, again, are we just saying there is one line that can’t be crossed, and otherwise essentially stepping away from the battlefield? Or are we going to continue to degrade Assad and involve ourselves in Syria’s future? To be honest, I don’t know what is the better course. But nor does Trump.

04.07.17
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The US Is Not At War With Syria: Making Sense of the Strikes And The Trump Foreign Policy

An aerial view of the al-Shayrat Airfield near Homs, Syria, 07 October 2016

The airfield targeted by US missiles. You can already tell the press is on War Footing, which is extremely dangerous.

Despite (or, probably, because of) yesterday’s grim swirl of news, we turned on Colbert last night, partly because I wanted to see if he’d pay tribute to the late, great Don Rickles. He did, but only briefly. I guess they didn’t really know each other. But the interesting thing was that, as the show started, CBS ran a little graphic at the bottom that said the show was taped before the US strikes in Syria started.

At first, I thought, well that makes sense. They don’t want people wondering why he isn’t addressing the elephant in the room. But then I wondered if it was something worse. Colbert spent most of the monologue (if not all of it) pointing out the absurdity and horrors of the Trump administration. So, maybe, they were running it because they wanted to shield themselves from criticism that Colbert was making fun of the Commander in Chief while America was at war.

That, I think, is a good way to illustrate the dangers of what is happening, and the questions around the attack. Are we at war with Syria? Are we just “sending a message?” Are we willing to take ownership over what comes next? What does it even mean to be at war with Syria? What does war mean in the age of Trump, and will this be normalized? And what will happen next?

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04.06.17
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With Mitch McConnell, You Can Never Be Cynical Enough

Image result for mitch mcconnell

We haven’t had much to say about the grinding inevitability of Neil Gorsuch, other than to argue that the doomed filibuster was the right thing to do. We should never forget that Mitch&co (especially the sanctimonious Orrin Hatch), nullified the 2012 election while speaking self-righteously about preserving voter rights to determine a Supreme Court justice. It was nauseating, and could be seen as a death-blow to democracy.

The Gorsuch hearings have been an exercise in craven cynicism, with Republicans outraged that Dems even dare question Neil Gorsuch, as if he floated down from Judicial Heaven, untouched be petty partisan politics, and not been someone involved in the far-right since he was born. And they were even more cynically outraged that the Democrats might dare try to question Presidential prerogative. It was as if they all knew that they had no case, but if they shouted loudly enough with enough constitutional offense warbling their vocal cords we would forget how laughable it was.

This wasn’t hard to predict. In fact, right after the election, the Times ran a ludicrous story titled “Hard Choice For Mitch McConnell: End the Filibuster or Preserve Tradition”.

We said then:

Let me answer that for you: he’s going to end the filibuster.

The Times describes him as someone who believes strongly in traditions, somehow managing to reconcile that with his immediately blocking the President’s right to choose a Supreme Court justice, and also the completely unprecedented obstruction of Barack Obama’s entire Presidency. It also talks about how he was dismayed at Reid dismantling the judicial filibuster after their (again) unprecedented obstructions, as if it was a matter of principle, and not, say, petulance at not being able to continue their (again) unprecedented obstruction of the President’s rights.

So yeah, I think there is going to be one filibuster of bill or maybe when Trump nominates Michele Bachmann for the Supreme Court, and Mitch will appear on TV, and say that it with sadness that he has to do this, but the Democrats have no respect for Presidential prerogative, and are ignoring “President Trump’s overwhelming victory, and the will of the American people” (never mind that Trump lost that metric). And then the filibuster will be gone, and the media will say “well, the Democrats should have reached across the aisle!”

And again: all this was easy to predict, which is what makes it even more depressing. Still, I was wrong about one thing. I thought Mitch would do fake sadness, and not fake anger. I wasn’t cynical enough. Here’s what he actually said.

“This is the latest escalation in the left’s never-ending judicial war, the most audacious yet,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said after describing Democratic opposition in the past to Judge Robert H. Bork and Justice Clarence Thomas. “And it cannot and it will not stand. There cannot be two sets of standards: one for the nominees of the Democratic president and another for the nominee of a Republican president.”

What are you supposed to do? How do you respond to that? It’s impossible. You’re left sputtering, and somehow you look like you’re on an equal level of childishness. It’s insane, and it is what is running the country.

Although I admit I may have misspoke when I said that he was faking anger. I think their cognitive dissonance is so fine-tuned that they actually believe that a foredoomed filibuster is somehow an escalation over not even meeting with the nominee, much less giving him a hearing. Like the kid on The Simpson’s who doesn’t know if he is being sarcastic anymore, they don’t know if they are legitmately angry or just a mobious strip o cynicism.

04.06.17
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Trump’s National Security “Policies” As Muddled as he is Ignorant

This might just be the permanent clip for Trump-era foreign policy

So, let’s sum up the last few days. Steve Bannon is out at the NSC, a victory for McMasters, but maybe a meaningless one, since he still hasn’t been able to put in his own people, for the most part.  Still, it’s a start, because as the NYTimes put it, it’s the removal of a “political advisor”.

in Syria, the administration first said that it was “silly” to talk about removing Asad, only to sort of reverse course. “Only days after the White House declared it would be ‘silly’ to persist in trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Mr. Trump said, ‘My attitude toward Syria and Assad has changed very much.'” Nikki Haley is threatening unilateral action, and seems genuinely emotional following the chemical attack on civilians in Idlib (understandably and genuinely, I think).

And, of course, this is against the backdrop of SecDef Mattis being given far more leeway to fight ISIS and AQAP, loosening restrictions on field commanders and broadening what is considered an “area of active hostilities“. While this will increase civilian casualties, it will also almost certainly hurt ISIS more on the battlefield.

So, overall…are these good things? I think, in a vacuum, you could make a case for each one. Certainly, the demotion of the vile Steve Bannon is a good thing, because it might signal that he has displeased the Fake King. Certainly, Trump’s string of failures is eating at him, and when he lashes out, who knows who will take the fall? But it’s also true that Bannon isn’t merely a “political adviser.” He’s Trump’s worldview shaper, and probably the best person at helping trump find enemies to take the blame for his own personal failures. So we’ll see if Bannon is actually on the outs (which is possible) or if this is just a temporary ego-assuaging for Trump.

Syria is interesting, except that it is clear that Trump has no real plans. He goes entirely on however he feels at the moment. Deciding to get more involved against the Asad government means taking certain responsibility for Syria, not to mention tangling with Russia. Does Trump actually mean this? Or was it just a tough-sounding gesture. It’s possible to see a world where the US bombs Syrian airstrips and planes, and maybe munitions dumps, but that would entail a broader national/regional strategy, as well as a coherent Russian one.

And that’s the main problem here: there is no strategy. Even the devolution of power to Mattis and field commanders, something that sounds sensible, is a product of not having any real foreign policy other than “beating our enemies” (and, in the case of Bannon, creating them in order to forge some civilizational conflict). It is all well and good to be, as Mattis is, a warrior. It might be true that the Obama administration micromanaged too much. But that (arguably) overabundance of caution came from the constant asking of “what’s next? What happens after we ‘win’? How does the world look then?”

It’s clear these aren’t questions Trump is asking, and certainly ones he doesn’t have the patience to see. While McMasters and Mattis are strategists, they are so in a narrow sense, as we discussed earlier.  And all of the Trump team’s plans (including creating “safe zones” for refugees to return) all seem geared toward short-term solutions that have zero interest in the long term, and zero interest in how they balance against other strategies. (Like, for instance, if you have “safe zones”, how do you protect them? What happens if they are attacked by Russia? What happens when they want to return to ruined villages?)

This starts from the top. Trump has no real vision, no real foreign policy. He’s the guy who reads the paper and says “we can do better, I know how!” This is literally true: it’s all he says.

So maybe you can have competent people. Maybe you can get some grownups on board. And maybe certain tactics, like letting loose the military on ISIS, can produce results. It almost certainly will. But when you are a flailing, know-nothing impatient ignoramus, the whole of your administration and policy will reflect that. It’s wrong to ask what Trump’s strategy is. It’s clear there is no method at all.

 

04.05.17
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In Privatizing Prison Nurses, Bruce Rauner Shows Depth of GOP Ideology

 

Image result for old prison

“Why should the lucky ducks who work here get all the breaks?” -Bruce Rauner

 

 

Sometimes, it’s the big and obvious stories (like, say, delegating your son-in-law to handle Iraq, because “the kid had a globe as a child”) that reveal the whole ballgame. Sometimes it is obvious. But most of the time, the real roots of an ideology are hidden at the margins, small-seeming and usually state-level decisions that are page 8 stuff, legislative battles in sleepy capital cities. That’s where decisions that impact people’s lives are made, and far from the spotlight, that’s where the worst of Republican “governance” flails its tentacles.

That’s the case in Illinois, where Bruce Rauner is sort-of-unwittingly showing exactly what “no government” looks like. To sum up broadly, in case you haven’t been paying attention: Rauner wants to turn Illinois in Walker’s Wisconsin by starving the government, imposing austerity, and cutting off any social programs so that the rich can have tax cuts. It’s sheer Ryanism; it looks like Trump’s budget. The Dems, led by boss Mike Madigan, haven’t wanted to let him do this, for reasons both noble and political. Namely, Rauner wants to destroy unions, which is a huge Democratic base of power in Illinois, one of the few states that still has strong public and private sector unions.

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04.04.17
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Jared Kushner Is The Whole Absurdity

 

Pictured: Take Your Boss’s Daughter’s Husband to a War Zone Day.

 

It’s sometimes hard to really put your finger on what is the most absurd and nonsensical part of the Trump Administration, but then you hear about how Jared Kushner flew to Iraq, and you realize: this is it. The flgarant third-world absurdity, the little petty crime family nonsense, the reliance on pseudo-toughguy “loyalty” over even the most basic competence: it’s everything that’s cheap and flim-flammy about Trumpism in a skinny well-married package.

(Note: this isn’t about what’s cruel and evil in the Administration; that’s virtually everything else. The two are intertwined, but we’re just focusing on absurdity right now.)

This isn’t to say that Kushner isn’t, like, smart. He’s not the dopey son who is suddenly made Lord High General of the People’s Glorious Armed Forces. But, relative to the insane position he’s been given, it isn’t too far off. Kushner, as Daniel Drezner points out, is in charge of:

  • Relations with Mexico, which are a diplomatic minefield, considering his boss/father-in-law based his entire campaign around demonizing Mexico and saying he’d make them pay for his idiot wall.
  • Relations with Canada, which, ok.
  • Peace in the Middle East. This means Israel/Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and the whole Sunni v Shia thing. It’s pretty complex!
  • Solving the opioid crisis, because I’m sure he really gets the white working class. He’s relatable.
  • Fixing the VA. I don’t know, maybe a good businessman can do something good. I doubt that he has the chops for it, but I’ll cut him some slack.
  • Improving the way the government works, which means turning it into a business, which: stupid, and not innovative. People have been saying that for centuries.

This whole thing is madness. Even if he is smart, there’s no way one person could do any of this, much less all of it. Especially because he hasn’t been able to build a staff, mostly because Trump doesn’t want too many people involved. It’s a family business.

And that’s the heart of how malignantly stupid this administration is. The thinking here literally boiled down to “Hey, that kid who married my daughter is bright, and he’s stuck by me. He can probably fix the world by himself.”

Politico on Saturday ran a long piece about how resentful senior White House staff are of Kushner, equal parts annoyance and jealousy. He’s prone to popping into every meeting, acting as Trump’s eyes and ear and hatchet man, and running things like…well, like Trump would. But one wants to ask these staffers: what did you expect? It’s a White House run by Donald Trump, reality show idiot.

But not all is well, as these amazing parts demonstrate.

Kushner’s boosters see him as “a visionary” who is bringing to government a disruptive Silicon Valley mindset that helped him succeed in the technology and real estate industries, as well as on Trump’s unconventional presidential campaign.

It’s always important to remember that “disruptive Silicon Valley mindset” is what dumb people say when they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Others are more concerned about what Kushner hasn’t done. One pro-Israel operative who works with the administration said “there were high hopes” that Kushner — an Orthodox Jew and the grandson of Holocaust survivors, whose only picture in his office is of his grandparents — “was a guy who really understood our community” when Trump tapped him as a point person on the Middle East.

What? Why would you think that? Because he’s Jewish? Maybe he “understands your community”, but so do tens of thousands of people, very few of whom have any capability at running a government or, you know, bringing peace to the Middle East.

But, the operative said, those hopes mostly have been supplanted by “deep concern that Jared is not the person we thought he was — that this guy who is supposed to be good at everything is totally out of his depth.”

Why was he supposed to be good at everything? Because he was born rich and got richer? Who are these people?

But if you really want the straight hit on how gross and stupid these people are, get a load of these two paragraphs.

Influential Jewish Republicans including the mega-donor casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson lobbied Kushner to convince Trump to appoint prominent neoconservative foreign policy hand Elliott Abrams as the No. 2 official in Foggy Bottom and to remove Michael Ratney, a State Department official who previously served as U.S. consul in Jerusalem under Obama, from his role handling Middle East affairs.

Kushner was non-committal about Ratney, according to two sources familiar with the lobbying. But Kushner did go to bat for Abrams, only to have Trump veto the appointment because Abrams had criticized Trump during the campaign and was opposed by Bannon. Nonetheless, Adelson, who has spoken repeatedly by phone with Kushner, was disappointed with Kushner’s inability or unwillingness to deliver on the personnel recommendations, as well as the stasis on the embassy, said three Jewish Republicans active in Israel causes.

This is amazing and beautiful and perfect. A terrible, terrible person tried to get Kushner to install a horrible war criminal in State, but was stopped by a bitter white supranationalist on the grounds that the war criminal wasn’t loyal enough. Does anything demonstrate the twisted web of America’s worst people any better?

Well, maybe: Diamond Mark Perrone tipped me off to a long piece on Jeff Zucker, which included this perfect morsel.

Zucker had breakfast with Kushner a few weeks later in Manhattan. Kushner wanted to know why CNN still hadn’t fired anti-Trump commentators like (Van) Jones and Ana Navarro, who said on CNN in October that every Republican would have to answer the question of what they did the day they saw a tape of “this man boasting about grabbing a woman’s pussy.”… Zucker tried to explain that even though Trump won, the network still needed what he described as “a diversity of opinion.”

So enough of the “Kushner is the moderate” or “Kushner is the voice of reason”. He’s a very small cosseted rich dude who married into an even richer family and rode a tide of white nationalism into power. He uses that to try to silence “enemies”, because he thinks that some wealthy simulacrum of omerta is proof of character. They are playacting as a competent administration, playacting as tough guys, and playacting at solving problems.

Kushner is no different. His portfolio is the biggest joke of all. He’s as bad as his odious father-in-law, thinking that being born rich means you can do anything. It’s the idea that if you just leave it to us, it’ll be solved. That’s our government right now. Whatever isn’t truly evil and cruel about is absurd. That the absurdity has real consequences for people who aren’t them only sharpens the cruelty.

 

04.03.17
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A Couple of Rainy Day Thoughts on How We’ve Altered the Landscape

Image result for chicago rain

It’s been a gloomy rainy sort of day here in Chicago. The White Sox opener has been postponed, which is fine. I don’t mind delaying this 95-loss season another day. It’s not spring yet, anyway.  It’s the sort of April rain that feels like the lingering of March, the whole month of which felt gray and wet, a Smarchian sort of slog.

You look out the windows and see the dull and lumpy sky wrinkle itself in a thousand plinging puddles, and watch the puddles grow and slink off toward the sewer, and its hard to remember that it’s only been a few hundred years that rain has been allowed to land that way. It used to fall on the ground, and slowly make its way across whatever basin it found itself in, if it weren’t used up or simply evaporated, reimagining its particles into invisibility so it could fall again.

But that’s not the way it is, anymore. It’s a profound change, and the short-term effects have been, in some ways, disastrous. To build our cities, we’ve altered to way water has distributed itself around the world. We’ve paved over floodplains and changed rivers. We’ve manipulated drainage.

Look at a very minor example, the North Branch of the Chicago River. Patti Welti of DNA Info has the story.

A total of 1.67 inches fell, a record for March 30.

It wasn’t enough to push the North Branch of the Chicago River to flood, but the water did rise more than two feet during the morning and early afternoon.

How does less than two inches translate into more than two feet?

Before the Chicago area was extensively settled, the river meandered across a marsh-like geography, dispersing water over a greater space. Precipitation was absorbed by vegetation and stored in the ground, wetlands and flood plains, according to the report.

As the area became more urban, green space was paved over, wetlands were drained and the river was straightened to better collect runoff that would have previously seeped into the ground. The result is a watershed with very little stormwater capacity, the report explains.

So much of urban history has been about how to drain marshes and swamps. There were enormous struggles in England in draining The Fens, which led to political upheaval, revolutions, and other intrigues. These were enormous marshes, the “sink of thirteen counties”, as Daniel Defoe described them. But the English managed to straighten the rivers and turn the Fens into farmland.

 

Or one could look at the Great Black Swamp that used to cover much of Northeast Ohio, a terrible oozy wasteland that slowed down water flowing into Lake Erie. This was a swamp that was nearly impassable by anyone who didn’t know exactly how to transverse its deep sludgy waters, and was frequently a refuge for natives, who could get through it faster than European-Americans could get around it. Draining it was an enormous accomplishment that led to the creation of cities like Toldeo, not to mention millions of acres of farmland.

Funny thing, though. It turns out the swamp helped keep Lake Erie clean, serving as a natural filter for whatever came through the basin’s rivers. The enormous runoff that resulted, combined with chemicals from the regions farms (which the swamp would have filtered) is one of the main reasons why Lake Erie has died several times. The swamp helped keep away the algae blooms that have decimated the lake.

So we don’t know. We don’t know how these experiments will end. The Chicago River was slow and windy, often more marsh than river. It wasn’t meant to be a straight channel. Maybe straightening it was the price of the city. Maybe paving over its wetlands is how we were built. And maybe it will be fine.

But a rapidly rising and fast moving Chicago River, devoid of any drainage, is, in a very literal sense, unnatural. The short-term effects of how completely we’ve altered our landscape are only beginning to show. The long-term effects are unknown. But, with the rushing clarity of a springtime flood, we know one thing: water always wins.