Just Deserts

Every time I respond to complaints about government by reminding the complainer of the phrase “government of the people, by the people,” and that voters are governed by the people whom they knowingly elect, I get rejoinders to the effect of, “but, but, but…” and excuses why voters are not really at fault.

Dianne Feinstein wonderfully makes my point for me. There is every reason in the world why she should have no chance whatever for reelection in this “summer of discontent” with opinions of Congress running at 85% disapproval, hatred of “the rich” at an all time high, and overwhelming disgust with the governmental “establishment.”

Feinstein has been in the Senate for 25 years, is presently 85 years old and would therefor be 92 by the time she finished an upcoming Senate term and, being worth upwards of $100 million and married to a man who is worth billions, is very much a member of the despised “one percent.”

Her voting record is very clear, voting in favor of spying on the American public, extension of the Patriot Act, continuation of FISA and immunity for the telecom industry, and always voting against any curtailment of military spending. She has voted against all forms of strong encryption in electronic communication, opposed single payer health care, and has supported multi-billion dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia. She has consistently voted in favor of legislation that has funneled billions of dollars into her husband’s businesses.

By every standard that the vast majority of California voters claim are important to them, Dianne Feinstein should be getting overwhelmingly defeated in the US Senate primary, but the opposite is happening. By all polls at this point, she is receiving 42% to 50% of the vote. Another Dem, Kevin de Leon, is receiving 16% to 24% (roughly half of her leavings), and no one else is receiving enough of the vote to be of any significance.

For those who don't know it, California has an open primary so all voters, Democrat, Republican and miscellaneous, vote in the one primary election.

Clearly, what the voters say they want from their legislators has nothing whatever to do with how they vote and/or they are utterly uninformed as to who they are voting for. In either case, the American voter is getting precisely the government it deserves.

In Transition

The United States is in transition between forms of government at this point, and has been since Nixon really, from a country governed by the Congress to one governed by an Imperial President. Obama made the largest incremental step in that transition when he made the statement that, "if Congress does not act then I will," and began issuing executive orders which directly contradicted laws passed and/or rejected by Congress.

Congress is finally waking up to the fact that it gave away more power than it meant to give to an Imperial Presidency and is trying to stage a coup against the current President by using the media, for the most part, and by distracting the public with domestic social issues. So, while the branches of government wage war with each other for control of government, a war which the Judicial branch has now illogically joined, the country is essentially ungovernable.

This results externally in an inability to make agreements with other nations and an equally ineffective military posture, and internally with ever increasingly open warfare between classes, ethnicities and genders, stoked by liberals in the guise of "social policy." We may be lucky enough to emerge from this without another civil war, but not if Democrats win control of Congress and impeach the sitting President as is their current plan.

Danica Does Not Disapoint

Danica started seventh in the Indianapolis 500 today and, while running 17th on lap 168, crashed while running by herself. Bestwick said that it would, "in no way detract from her legacy as a race driver." Indeed. Advancing to the rear and crashing unassisted are what she did best.

In all fairness, these cars are a handful, and quite a few other drivers crashed without assistance, including Bourdais, Castroneves and Kanaan, all of whom have won the Indy 500 one or more times. That didn't detract from my enjoyment in watching her do it.

Vehicles Searched?

From Google news feed today.

The headline doesn't say whom they expect to have no regrets.

And it turns out the vehicles which may be searched are those driven by fans entering the race grounds on race day, but that is not the image that popped into my feverish little mind.  I imagined TSA putting on rubber gloves and searching the race cars in front of a grandstand filled with 300,000 impatient fans. Imagine the reaction.

538 Ways To Blow It

An organization calling themselves “FiveThirtyEight” has been considered to be the holy grail of political thinking by liberals ever since they quite accurately predicted victory by Obama in the election of 2004. Their track record since then has been a bit sketchy, but they are still considered to be the font of all wisdom and, for reasons known only to the liberal mind, their reputation suffered not at all when their advance announcement of a Clinton landslide in the election of 2016 went so badly.

I mean, they didn’t even phrase that one as a prediction, they published it as a statement of known fact, and we all know how it turned out. They then came out with a whole host of reasons which “nobody could have known” why they had missed the call, all of which were bought by the powers that be, and which preserved their reputation.

Politics is a very weird business. You can, for instance, accept dirty campaign money so long as you give it back when you get caught. If you don’t get caught you can keep it, so there is upside but no downside to taking bribes. Similarly, you can make really bad predictions, and as long as you have good excuses for why you did so, all of your future predictions will continue to be relied upon as being accurate.

At any rate, FiveThirtyEight published a treatise last week comparing the Mueller investigation on “Russiagate” with the last three great special farces investigations of Watergate, Iran-Contra and Whitewater. They take great glee in pointing out that Mueller has “racked up five guilty pleas and 14 indictments of individuals,” more than any special prosecution other than Watergate.

For some reason, the author is not mentioning the indictments against corporations, one of which did not even exist at the time the alleged offense occurred. We’ll pass on that for the moment. To hell with it, we’ll just pass.

The author also does not mention that of all the indictments and pleas obtained, not one of them involves the combination of the Trump campaign, the 2016 election, and anyone in Russia. Most of his indictments are for things like tax fraud and lying to the FBI.

Mueller does have handful of indictments which contain two of the three elements which are the purported subject of his investigation; indictments having to do with Russians and the 2016 election but not even pretending to have anything to do with Trump’s election campaign. Even those indictments are evaporating like an ice cube on a hot sidewalk as Muller pleads for a delayed trial because his evidence is not ready.

And yet FiveThirtyEight wants us to believe that the Mueller investigation is the most valid and productive “special investigation” ever in the history of the process.

Dean Baker Has An Accident

What is the saying about what even a blind pig does once in a while? I believe Dean Baker actually said something rather profound yesterday, but it's okay because I'm pretty sure he was unaware of the meaning of what he said.

Economists are baffled by the failure of something called the Phillips Curve in today's labor market. Phillips was an economist, of course, who drew a curve which showed that as unemployment decreased wages increased, and posited cause and effect. Today, however, unemployment is plummeting and wages are essentially flat and people like Dean Baker are tearing their hair out trying to figure out where Philips went wrong why. (Philips, of course, could not have gone wrong because he was an economist. Economists never go wrong, so there must be something wrong in today's labor market.)

Baker actually touched on part of the answer in yesterday's column when he referenced the low participation rate, which reflects a high number of people who are not working but are also not looking for work and are therefor not counted as unemployed. That means the actual unemployment rate is much higher than what is being reported, which plays hell with the Phillips Curve (even if the Philips Curve did make any kind of sense, which it does not), but the participation rate does not suit a number of Baker's other pet arguments and so he is forced to disregard it here.

Then he starts in on "quit rates," which is another of his pet theories having to do with when more people are quitting jobs wages go higher. I think he has it backward; that people quit as a result of higher wages, rather than people quitting being a cause of higher wages. Fred quits working for my company, so I'm going to hire Tom and pay him and Sam a higher wage. I don't think so.

Then he says that, "Fewer people are now employed in sectors with few quits, like manufacturing, and relatively more people are employed in sectors with frequent quits like retail trade and restaurants."

I recall many years ago, when there was much talk about the nation "transitioning to a service economy," something which Dean Baker seems to acknowledge has been fully accomplished, my father made the dry comment that, "Hell, we can't all make a living selling each other hamburgers."

I think Dean Baker has pointed out that Dad had it completely right.

Eating A Little Crow

Danica Patrick qualified seventh at Indianapolis yesterday. She is, admittedly, driving a car furnished by one of the best two builders in the business, and her teammate qualified on the pole. Nonetheless, the best car on the track is not worth a bucket of warm spit if it is not well driven, and she was impressive as hell. She was very smooth and accurate both days, especially on "pole day" yesterday, when she improved her position from ninth to seventh.

Only in NASCAR

I'm not sure that any organization in the world other than NASCAR could produce the following statement. Perhaps the US government, or some branch of the military, but probably not. Probably only NASCAR.

"NASCAR implemented changes for the All-Star Race to help drivers pass each other more frequently. The cars will have restrictor plates in the engines to slow down top speed and acceleration."

I cannot comment. That just leaves me speechless.

Media Goes Nuttier on Russia

According to CBS Evening News on Tuesday, a Russian oligarch paid $500,000 to Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s lawyer, and some of that money may have been used to pay the infamous porn star to keep quiet about her affair with Trump. According to CBS, Robert Mueller is investigating this Russian payment. Of course he is.

The facts, according to the New York Times, which is no paragon of truth telling itself, so we’ll have to take this for what it’s worth, is that Cohen "received payments last year of about $500,000 from Columbus Nova, an investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch,” and that Columbus Nova “described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Mr. Vekselberg.”

So we go from “was paid by a Russian oligarch” to “was paid by an American firm who has a Russian oligarch as a customer” with no evidence that the payment was in any way related to the Russian oligarch. Not to mention the time travel aspect of Mr. Cohen using money he received in 2017 to pay off a blackmailing porn star in 2015.

CNN is freaked out over Cohen “having dealings with Russians who are under US sanctions,” but admits that Mr. Vekselberg was not under US sanctions if and when he paid unknown sums of money to Mr. Cohen Columbus Nova, nor was he under US sanctions when when Colombus Nova paid $500,000 to Mr. Cohen to represent Mr. Vekselberg some unknown client of Columbus Nova.

Furthermore, CBS News tells us that back in 2015 the same Russian government hackers that stole Hillary Clinton’s emails and gave them to Wikileaks (which is, of course, an entirely bogus claim) also sent death threats to military spouses purporting to be from ISIS. They interviewed one military wife who said that as long as she thought the threat was from ISIS she was able to shrug it off, but now that she knows it came from the Russian government, she is really upset about it.

She is not, apparently, afraid of ISIS but is afraid of the Russian government, which means the media is doing only half of its job with respect to at least one military wife.

Their “computer expert” said that the Russian government has a good reason to be “really mad at the US,” blaming us for the downfall of the Soviet Union.

Really? What part of today’s Russian government is upset about the downfall of the Soviet Union?

It Depends on What You Say

People in government who reveal secret matters which the government does not want the public to know about are called "leakers" and/or "traitors," and are pursued relentlessly by law enforcement so that they may be brought to court and punished to the fullest extent of the law.

People in government who reveal secret matters which the government does want the public to know about are called "officials who demanded anonymity because they are not authorized to speak on the matter," and are rigorously protected by the media and by government.

Comedy Devolves Into Farce

“Fire, aim,” in the wrong order and just omit the “ready” part altogether. The Mueller investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election has devolved from farcical into slapstick comedy.

Mueller, you may recall, filed indictments against several Russian persons and corporations several months ago, basically over alleged Facebook posting which, oddly enough, included posts favoring Clinton and Sanders as well as Trump. The Clinton and Sanders posts are alleged to have been mere camouflage, although evidence of that is not offered in the indictment.

It was widely regarded as symbolic, since Russia was certainly not going to extradite anyone. But, since corporations cannot be thrown in prison, lo and behold a Russian corporation showed up in court to answer charges, and Mueller and company does not know whether to shit or go blind.

First they claim that the corporation cannot be in court offering a defense because they cannot prove that they have been properly served. The court responds that it is a prosecution problem for having sent service to the Russian government instead of the corporation and in any case the corporation, served or not, is here answering the charge. Lack of service might be a cause for the defense to delay, but not for the prosecution to do so. Next motion please.

Then the prosecution asks for a delay in providing “discovery,” which is the provision for the defense to have the evidence against them presented to them by the prosecution. It is fairly routine for the defense to ask for this kind of delay, but it is unprecedented for the prosecution to do so and is tantamount to admitting that they have filed an indictment without having any evidence. So the judge calls bullshit on them, and does not grant the delay.

So at this point the case is in limbo, although not yet thrown out, with Mueller and company standing with egg all over its collective face.

This is Gender Equality?

The Boy Scouts are no more. The new policy of allowing girls to join the club rendered the name obsolete, and so now they are just "Scouts of America."

So, we now have the "Scouts of America" which boys and girls can join, and the "Girl Scouts of America" which only girls can join. It's probably better that I do not express any opinion on this.

The Trend is Down

Watching the NASCAR race last weekend at Talladega, television showed the stands as mostly filled, which turns out to have been mostly use of clever camera angles. An article in the sports section in Forbes, Sports Money, tells us that the race “was run before grandstands that were mostly filled, but empty enough that the word ‘TALLADEGA’ in unused seats at each end was visible.”

Even more deceptive was that the announcers, which included two former drivers, told us that the infield was “sold out” more than two weeks before the race and repeatedly made reference to the “packed stands.” Views from the overhead blimp, however, showed vast expanses of empty green grass in the infield, and confirmed Forbes’ suggestion of less than capacity crowds in the grandstand. “Packed stands,” forsooth.

Forbes tells us, in fact, that while NASCAR no longer publishes attendance figures at races, the race drew an 18% drop television ratings and a 20% drop in viewers than the same race last year. That would seem to contradict the announcers’ claims about how much more exciting the sport has become since the addition of “stage racing” and with annual changes to the aerodynamic configuration of the cars.

Picking The Winner

NASCAR is racing at Talledega this week. All of the "experts" are reminding us that the superspeedway race is totally unpredictable because the cars run in snarling, 200mph packs of twenty to thirty cars packed inches apart, and that wrecks involving as many as twenty cars are common and expected. They then go on to tell us who they think will win the race.

Subron 8: Inland Sea Cruise

Another in the ongoing "Subron 8 Sea Stories" series.

One time, for reasons us whitehats were never told, Diablo took what was called the “inland sea cruise.” I think we were the first submarine ever to do it, in part because armed warships are prohibited in the Great Lakes by treaty with Canada, and submarines are difficult to disarm. Unloading all those torpedoes is a major chore, and the loss of weight does ugly things to our trim. Then, sooner or later, we have to put them all back in. We did keep a dozen or so practice fish, which had dummy warheads.

The cruise is up the Saint Lawrence Seaway, through all the Great Lakes, then down the Mississippi River. The Navy was not thinking clearly when they sent us on this journey because even rigged for surface we draw almost thirty feet, and you’ve probably read stories of what the Mississippi River is like. Right. Sandbars and such, and much of it no more than six feet deep. So at Chicago we turned around and went out the way we came in.

We didn’t, in those days, make a habit of colliding with everything in sight the way Navy ships do today, but that doesn’t mean my Navy was a paragon of clear thinking. Remind me to tell you about the refueling at sea experiment.

On the way we made port at lots of cities where the citizenry were all very excited about seeing a real live submarine. They came aboard in tour groups, gaped at all the machinery and asked a lot of rather silly questions, to which they got a lot of equally silly answers which embarrassed and frustrated the officers who overheard us giving them. They would chime in with a patient, “No ma’am, that isn’t what that does. What it really does…” and deliver an ugly look at the sailor involved.

The officers were, of course, totally unable to prevent us from having quite a good time conducting tours, entertaining guests in various ways which the Navy had not planned for, and getting phone numbers for when we went on liberty. On shore we were quite a novelty since many of the cities, Detroit for instance, hadn’t seen the Navy much, and we didn’t have to pay for our own drinks very often. So all in all, we enjoyed the cruise.

There were a few pitfalls to sailing a submarine in fresh water, though.

Like, for instance, how to deal with puddles of water on the deck. The air in submarines is normally very humid, and is compressed frequently which adds to condensation being a frequent issue. So when we see a puddle of water, we taste it. If it’s fresh then we know it’s condensation and can be ignored. Or cleaned up if an officer or chief petty officer notices you tasting it. If it’s salty, then it’s seawater, and you have a leak and had better do something about it. Leaks, in a submarine, are not good.

But when you are in the Great Lakes, any water leaking from outside the ship is not salty. Now what?

Yes, Diablo had leaks. She was built in 1941 for God’s sake. We maintained that our most critical piece of equipment was the bilge pump, because if it ever crapped out the leaks would sink us in eight hours.

The periscope gland leaked and the captain got wet every time he looked through the scope. The weird thing was that it leaked even when we were on the surface and the gland was 24 feet above the waterline, so the captain always got wet when he looked through the scope. Needless to say, he was not happy about it, and that gland was one of many things that made me glad I was an Electrician and not a Machinist’s Mate.

Then there was our stop at Bay City, MI, which was a bit weird. For one thing, the town is misnamed. It should be “Cove City.”

The “bay” into which we arrive is barely bigger than the length of our boat, and there is no pier other than one about eight feet long and situated in water about two feet deep. This was early in my service and I am still on the forward line handling party, so I’m on the foredeck looking around and wondering if the Skipper has gotten us lost.

We come to a stop about halfway into this cove, and I look up onto the bridge where some arm pointing and conversation is going on. The crowd on shore seems to be expecting us, though, so I figure we’re in the right place, that everything is under control and when it’s time for us to do something they will let us know.

Then I hear the vents pop under my feet and feel the deck settling and angling a bit, and I realize we’re flooding down forward. Not a lot, maybe a few feet, but it’s odd. Then the engines ramp up and we begin moving forward, toward shore. That’s definitely odd, and we’re all looking at each other like maybe the captain has gone off his nut. The bow rises very slightly, quite gently actually, the ship stops, and I realize than I’m on a ship that has run aground.

Apparently on purpose, because everyone on the bridge seems quite happy with the situation. So we’re all standing around on the foredeck with our teeth in our pockets and our hands in our mouths, until the captain finally leans over the bridge coaming and yells down, “Get a line over.”

We look around and wonder how the fuck we are supposed to do that. Not only are there no bollards, there is not even a pier. Not to mention, no personnel on shore to receive the line when we throw it. Ridley, who’s in charge, yells up at the bridge, “Get a line over to what, sir?” The query may have contained a faint note of sarcasm. Maybe more than a faint note.

If so, the captain missed it. “I don’t know,” he calls back, “That fire hydrant over there looks pretty good. Tie up to that.”

Tie up to a fire hydrant. Right. So after some yelling and arm waving we get a couple of volunteers on shore and we manage to get a five inch line to the fire hydrant in question. As soon as it is made fast, we shift the flag but leave one engine running to provide power since there is no shore power connection available for us to hook up to.

One guy is concerned as whether the fire hydrant will hold a 1800-ton submarine when the tide changes. Ridley puts his arm around the guy and assures him that of course the hydrant will not even come close to holding the ship, but that it’s okay because there are no tides in the Great Lakes.

When we were ready to leave, we just blew the forward ballast tanks, which picked the bow up off the bottom and allowed us to back smoothly out of the bay. The fire hydrant survived entirely intact. The same could not be said for some of the taverns, but no real harm was done.

Odd Ruling

Some Democrats and many Republicans were of the opinion that Obama's policy of "If Congress won't act then I will" was not only unconstitutional, but was weakened by the fact that what one president could create by executive order, another president could rescind by executive order.

According to a DC judge, apparently that's not the case. He ruled that Omama's executive order creating the DACA program, written after Congress specifically rejected passage of the exact same law, could not be ended by a Trump executive order. It is unclear whether the judge ruled that a Democratic president has more power than a Republican one, or a black president has more power than a white one, or a president elected by Americans has more power than one elected by Russians, or...

Democratic Platform

A liberal commenter waxes poetic about the excitement of the upcoming Democratic landslide in the 2018 midterm elections.

Instantly, the House would be converted into a hive of investigatory bodies. In a Democratic House, the grand Washington battle will no longer be Trump versus Mueller. It will be Trump versus 21 subpoena-wielding House committee chairmen, played out in public on a 24-hour televised loop…

Although Facebook has categorized me as a “liberal,” based on pretty much nothing since I don’t discuss politics on Facebook, I perceive this idiot’s wet dream as an overwhelming reason to hope for the retention of a Republican majority in both houses. The idea that the Democratic Party would abandon all pretence of governance in pursuit of a single-minded witch hunt against Trump utterly appalls me.

Actually, the Democrats have made very little pretence at governance since they ran on the platform of stopping the war in Iraq in 2006 and gave us “the surge” after taking control of Congress in 2007. They have been, in fact, a party of “against” and little else.

Madame Secretary

Having recorded it on Sunday, we watched the latest episode yesterday, in which the President, Chief of Staff and Secretary of State are in the Oval Office discussing to what extent, and on behalf of which candidate, this country should interfere in the Nicaguaran presidential election. There was no even momentary thought given to us staying out of it. I rather enjoyed the irony.

Bathwater and Bad Pot?

Dean Baker lives in a state where marijuana is not legal, so he may be getting some of the illegal bad quality stuff which is doing weird things to his brain. Either that or he’s using way too much of the good stuff.

On the 19th, critical of the stand taken by the Washington Post against tax cuts, he said that, “we have already paid an enormous price for having deficits that are too small. We have needlessly kept the unemployment rate higher than necessary, with a cost to our children of a permanently smaller economy, to the tune of $1 trillion to $2 trillion annually.”

So spending at a rate which has led our debt to grow from $5.7 trillion in 2000 to $18.2 trillion in 2015, a 219% increase, is “deficits that are too small.”

He then goes on to argue for higher deficit spending and makes the claim that our debt level of more than 100% of GDP is not problematic by saying that, “Japan has a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 200 percent, over twice the US ratio. Until recently, investors were paying the Japanese government to lend it money, as its long-term interest rate was negative in nominal terms.” Etc.

He notes that Japan has maintained low inflation while accumulating that debt, but he doesn’t address Japan’s economic growth during that time, and it is economic growth that he claims has been harmed by insufficient deficit spending in this nation. In fact, Japan's economic growth has been so paltry during those years during those years of deficit spending that the population refers to those years as “The Lost Decades.”

So deficit spending didn’t grow Japan’s economy, but apparently he thinks it would grow ours. He does not explain why.

Then on the 20th he goes on another of his rants about the evils of patents and copyrights. It’s not that he doesn’t make some valid points regarding pharmaceutical companies, but he throws the baby out with the bathwater. Since Big Pharma is abusing the copyright/patent process, the entire process is evil and a person who writes a book should not be allowed to profit from having done so.

And, as usual, the ability to engage in logical thought completely escapes him.

“Suppose the government were to spend $400 billion this year on biomedical and other research and creative work,” he says. “This means that the deficit and debt would be $400 billion larger because it paid out money to corporations and individuals for this work.”

Then the train leaves the tracks. “Now suppose it grants patents and copyrights this year that will add an average of $50 billion a year over the next decade to the price of prescription drugs, software, and other protected items. Ignoring interest and discounting, how is that different from adding $500 billion to the debt?”

Actually, it adds nothing to the debt and $500 billion to the GDP, thereby reducing the debt to GDP ratio that, while utterly meaningless, is something that economists other than Dean Baker constantly worry about. Baker used to care, until doing otherwise suited his narrative better.

Baker does not see it that way, however, he sees that “we are requiring taxpayers to pay more money to drug companies and software makers,” which he says is, “in effect a privately collected tax.” Well, since it goes to corporations and not to the government, no, it is not a tax. Look up the definition of “tax” in the dictionary.

He then strays farther and farther into Paul Krugman territory. “Perhaps people feel better about being taxed by Pfizer and Microsoft than by the government,” he says, but given complaints about drug prices, clearly such is not the case.

He then discusses having an excise tax on drugs as opposed to the higher price and says that with respect to the difference, “No one would say that changes the debt story at all.” That borders on delusional, since the excise tax would reduce the deficit and the higher price does not.

He finishes with, “Anyhow, any deficit/debt monger who doesn't talk about the cost of patent and copyright monopolies is just being a political hack. They are not making serious economic arguments.” Well, we know who isn’t making serious economic arguments.

War Birds Have Bird Brains

Friday night I was really concerned, fearing that WW3 had begun, but by the next morning what I saw was a lot of yelling, fulminating, chest thumping and almost certainly a lot of lying by everyone involved. The whole thing is now beginning to resemble a comedy, except that we may not have seen the final chapter of it yet.

Actually, barring further escalation, the whole thing is mostly rather embarrassing at this point. My present conclusion is that we made an enormous production out of blowing up several empty buildings to “punish” Assad for a chemical weapons attack that not only did he not perpetrate, but which almost certainly never actually happened at all.

The US, Britain and France fired over 100 cruise missiles from airplanes and ships, which Russia said they would retaliate against but so far have not, other than with words like “violation of sovereignty.” I have no idea why they think such a charge would give this nation any cause for concern. The US violates the sovereignty of other nations on a frequent basis; it’s what we do best.

Russia pretty much said that since we didn’t kill anyone, only injured three Syrians, and didn’t destroy anything that anyone cared about, other than one civilian research lab which was unoccupied at the time, they are going to take a pass on this one.

Trump said the missile strikes would continue until Assad’s use of chemical weapons stopped, which was a bit odd since even he had not claimed Assad was currently employing chemical weapons as of the day of said missile strike. Which means they had already stopped. Logic, however, is not Mr. Trump’s strong point, so let’s move on.

Mattis, who is being referred to as “General” and as Secretary of Defense, says that this was a one time strike which will not be ongoing, so there is a communication problem here. One of them is obvious and the other is within the media and is with respect to his title, since military officers cannot serve in the civilian government. He is either an Army general or he is Secretary of Defense, but he can’t be both. The media needs to make up their minds.

Yes, general officers continue in rank after retirement, but using his rank while he is serving in government makes us sound like a nation with a military government such as, say, Egypt. You may recall that the military took over the government of Egypt by means of a coup. The population supported the coup because they trusted the military more than they did the civilian government. Does that sound familiar? When a US citizen meets a soldier today he says, “thank you for your service,” but when he meets a politician he says, “fuck you.” Anyway, back to the US war with Syria.

We say that we have dealt Syria a cruel blow and have destroyed their ability to use chemical weapons in the future, an ability which Syria, Russia and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says they did not have prior to our missile strike.

It’s also in conflict with Trump’s statement about the strikes continuing until Assad stops using chemical weapons. If we have destroyed his ability to use them, then by definition he isn’t going to continue using them. Right? Assuming, that is, that he ever used them in the first place. (“Yes or no, have you stopped beating your wife, Mr. Jones?”) Consistency, however is another thing that Trump is not known for so, again, let’s move on.

Syria says that they shot down, or otherwise disabled, 71 of the 103 missiles which were fired in the strike. The US, of course, says that not one single missile failed to strike the target, which is the same thing we claimed back in April of last year. Pictures of the target back then, however, showed only 23 impact craters after we fired 60 missiles, so the truth about shoot downs this time is probably closer to the Syrian claim of 71 than it is to our claim of zero.

CBS Evening News is still claiming that last April, after a single missile failed into the sea near the ship which was firing it, all of the other 59 missiles hit the airfield which was the target. Somehow, however, they only left 23 craters, and the pieces of metal littering the ground dozens of miles away from the target which look like missile parts are actually, um, er, uh… something else.

If we anticipated a 100% hit rate, why did we need to fire 103 missiles, each with 450 pounds of very powerful explosive, to destroy three buildings?

As to those buildings we destroyed, according to a correspondent with our military who served in Syria prior to their civil war, those facilities are not recent intelligence discoveries, but were known to us and disclosed to the Israelis 25 years ago. They were emptied of chemical weapons in 2013 under a program initiated by Russia and overseen by the US military and have been monitored since then by the OPCW, an international watchdog agency who does for chemical weapons what the IAEA does for nuclear weapons. The most recent inspection, in which they were pronounced clear of any weapons, was November 22, 2017.

According to a Syrian interviewed by a CBS News reporter who worked at the research center in Damascus, which was hit by our missiles and destroyed, the facility did research on food chemicals and he did not have a security clearance. They were standing in the rubble of the destroyed research center as they spoke, and were not wearing anything in the way of protective clothing or breathing gear. Does that sound like a chemical weapons research center?

That same “news agency” is now walking the story back a bit, saying repeatedly last evening that the missile strike was “in response to suspected use of chemical weapons by Assad.” I find such a statement astonishing. Bit like a judge saying, “I sentence you to death for suspected first degree murder.”

Of course, we have been sentencing people to death by Hellfire missile for being “suspected militants” since the beginning of the Obama administration, so I don’t know why I should be surprised by this latest.