zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — hat and flag, insecurity clearances, quantum physics and what it tells us about truth and spin, paris, city of lovers, sex, scandal naturellement, and would you believe it, treason? ]
.

Brexit. Her Majesty’s hat draws a clear parallel, but is it a metaphor?

That was the hat HM wore for the 2017 Queen’s Speech to the joint Houses of Parliament — and we have no reason to suppose her opinion has changed since then. Visual DoubleQuote courtesy of Federica Cocco

And then…

I mean, what a nightmare…

**

But then, you can’t always trust the facts:

I mean, news these daze:

Spin corresponds to fact, like the hands of a stopped clock, twice a day.. (thanks, Wolfram)

Here’s some detail from the Ars Technical piece:

You, however, are in a box and cannot report your measurements to me. Instead, I have to measure your state to discover the result of your measurement.

So what we have here, if I might say so, is a case of Matryoshka measurements..

That means you are in a superposition state of having measured a vertical or horizontal photon, even after you have made the measurement. I can measure your state, and we end up with two sensible outcomes: you measure horizontal, and I measure you to have measured horizontal; you measure vertical and I measure you to have measured vertical.

But there are two more possibilities: you measure horizontal, but I measure you to have measured vertical, and you measure vertical, but I measure you to have measured horizontal. If the second measurement is governed by quantum mechanics, those two are just as likely to occur as the sensible outcomes. So half the time, the measurement result you obtain contradicts my measurement of your measurement.

Got it?

If not read, the whole article, then read it again. Frown. You’ll get it.

There is nothing wrong with either measurement, and there is no calculation that we can perform to resolve the contradiction.**

**

Reading an account of the Al Franken affair, focused on the questions of piling on (scapegoating?)nand equal justice for accuser and accused — two sports metaphors:

Fellow Democratic senators quickly entered the scrum as they fought to be next in line to proclaim outrage and demand he should go.

One of the most disturbing aspects of #MeToo is that watching someone get destroyed in real time has become something of a sport.

In the course of reading in and around that article, I ran across this brilliant visual DoubleQuoting of the Christine Blasey Ford / Brett Kavanaugh matter:

On such balance we may project each our suppositions: but to have achieved such balance!

**
And so to my dialysis viewing:

Hardball, 3/29/2019:

Julia Ainsley:

He [Barr] doesn’t have blinders on, he knows the public criticism here..

David Corn:

It doesn’t look like he’s playing Even Stephen here..

Zerlina Maxwell [on Barr making decisions ahead of release of Mueller report]: I look at this situation almost like the track and field runner that’s running down the hoe stretch, and they put their arms over their head, and then they’re crossed at the finish line..

.. this feels like a premature victory lap

Chris M:Well, David, Zerlina caught me .. with that visual of the President of the United States, this particular one, running a hundred yard dash. I don’t think that would be his event. I think riding a golf cart would be his event.

.. that must be the sound of a bus going over you ..

Chris M [ourob]:

How can a white person [ie Hillary Clinton] bea racist agfainst white people?

[ but cf “self-hating Jews”]

With anyb luck, I’ll get access to a complete Hardball video for 3/29/2019 and be able to find the chyrons “DeVos grilled’ (42); Trump “overriding” (43); and “Trump questioned” (50)

I have a note, “that’s the inverse of what’s true” which is a superb example of reverse (pos-neg) symmetry, cf the spy vs spy image in a recent post).. There was also a ref to David Ignatius, How the mysteries of Khashoggi’s murder have rocked the U.S.-Saudi partnership

**

Then there was the Green New Deal, with Chris Hayes:

Seb Gorka: They want to take away your hamburgers. This is what Stalin dreamed of and never achieved.

AOC: I expected a little more nuance..

It’s surreal ..

No more disposable people, no more disposable places ..

Ref:

A Green New Deal Is Technologically Possible. Its Political Prospects Are Another Question.

**

Rachel Maddow 3/29/3019:

Rachel re Barr:

It was kind of him free-styling, this was him showing off his dance moves ..

Now, tonight, it appears there’s a little bit of panic in the disco, because now William Barr has released yet another unexpected, taken it upon himself, ad lib, figuring it out as he goes along letter ..

**

Let’s close with this stunning image by Stephane De Sakutin / AFP / Getty:

A mold of the Genie de la Patrie damaged during a “yellow vest” protest at the Arc de Triomphe in December is seen during its renovation by the French restorer Agnes Le Boudec in Paris on March 25, 2019.

[ by Charles Cameron — Oxford the memory, Edward Said the music critic, WB Yeats and his Tom O’Roughley, Townes Van Zandt in the song of David Broza.. Barr and Aaliyah — four-page letters, kisses .. plus FaallBack, & Wiz Khalifa on my watch [!!] ]

Minefield, yes —

— but also two sides on one stage, so two virtues in the music of ideas:

polyphony — many voices, and

counterpoint, the juxtaposition, clash and resolution of contrary points of view

For war and peace as symphonic, see Edward Said:

When you think about it, when you think about Jew and Palestinian not separately, but as part of a symphony, there is something magnificently imposing about it. A very rich, also very tragic, also in many ways desperate history of extremes – opposites in the Hegelian sense – that is yet to receive its due. So what you are faced with is a kind of sublime grandeur of a series of tragedies, of losses, of sacrifices, of pain that would take the brain of a Bach to figure out. It would require the imagination of someone like Edmund Burke to fathom.

Just a snippet — the first paragraph from the Guardian piece:

Lou Armour is a special needs teacher, an introspective man with a walking stick. If you passed him on the street you probably wouldn’t notice anything about him beyond his limp. But 35 years ago he yomped across the Falkland Islands and ran through a minefield under artillery fire on Mount Harriet. His section killed several Argentinians in a bloody battle and Armour found himself attending to a fatally wounded Argentinian soldier who spoke to him in English about visiting Oxford. He watched as the young man died.

Ah, Oxford.

That’s I’d say, is a very good start for this post.

**

Okay, back into the mire:

Defense One, The US Military Is Creating the Future of Employee Monitoring

Uh oh, just what we need!

As I said to Ali Minai, my view is that of WB Yeats in his poem Tom O’Roughley:

‘Though logic choppers rule the town,
And every man and maid and boy
Has marked a distant object down,
An aimless joy is a pure joy,’
Or so did Tom O’Roughley say
That saw the surges running by,
‘And wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey.

‘If little planned is little sinned
But little need the grave distres.
What’s dying but a second wind?
How but in zigzag wantonness
Could trumpeter Michael be so brave?’
Or something of that sort he said,
‘And if my dearest friend were dead
I’d dance a measure on his grave.’

**

Back to the Mueller probe according to President Trump

:Many, many people were badly hurt by this scam, but more importantly, our country was hurt. Our country was hurt. And they are on artificial respirators right now. They are getting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

— and back to “little pencil-neck Adam Schiff” aka “Adam Schitt”:

He’s got the smallest, thinnest neck I’ve ever seen. He is not a long-ball hitter, but I saw him today, ‘Well we don’t really know, there still could have been some Russia collusion.’

Sick, sick.. these are sick people and there has to be accountability because it is all lies and they know it’s lies ..

Well then:

That’s an unexpected and welcome follow-up ..

**

And so to Trump:

Wildcard*****, a nice, slightly paradoxical example..

**

I’m watching Hanna (Amazon), starring the skilled and lovely Esme Creed-Miles:

Life, she is full of variety, no?

**

elshi & Ruhle:

**

MTP 3/29/2019:

Again, trump, trump, trump..

Rep Jamie Raskin, his way with words:

Attorney General Barr writes letters like Agatha Christie novels, there are more and more mysteries built into each one ..

[Impeachment] it’s the people’s defense against a president who’s acting like a king ..

Katy Tur:

**

The Beat, Ari Melber:

First, a stream of chyrons..

Aisha:

I’m dropping this four-page letter and enclosing it with a kiss..

Aside: the things we learn!!

Howard Fineman:

I think he’s part of the team..

Let me use a basketball analogy if you don’t mind.. You know how, at the end of a game when one team thinks it’s ahead and they spread the floor and start tossing the ball around to keep from getting fouled to stop the clock, that’s my interpretation [of Barr’s actions] here..

.. dozens of years of Yale Law School education, and we end at the freak-show tent ..

A pair:

Then there’s a quote from Obama’s Selma Bridge speech:

We are the people Langston Hughes wrote of who “build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how.” We are the people Emerson wrote of, “who for truth and honor’s sake stand fast and suffer long;” who are “never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”

That’s what America is. Not stock photos or airbrushed history, or feeble attempts to define some of us as more American than others.

Fallback, which I generally don’t like too much, but here —

— hunting and shooting a sleeping lion —

If you’re hunting to eat, that’s one thing ..

You want to impress me — go fight that lion with your bare hands, knuckles, teeth — and then come back and talk to me..

[cf past Maasai hunting traditions.. ]

— and which, further into the Fallback episode, brings us more music — Stay in ur lane:

**

So here I’ll take a break..

[ by Charles Cameron — including an intermezzo with Bach’s links with Mendelssohn — as usual, quite a diverse haul ]
.

Nicolle:

There are cracks in the frenzied spin from the White House around the Barr summary of the as-yet-unreleased Mueller report. As the President tracks down axes to grind, consensus is building around Robert Mueller’s refused to exonerate the President in the obstruction of justice investigation ..

Joyce Vance:

We’ve seen all these dots out in the pubic domain, indications of obstruction, and apparently Mueller wasn’t able to connect them, and the question is, Why?

Ari:

You just can’t write a book-report for a book you haven’t read ..

Disclosure: You can. I have.

Here’s a weird sequence..

And if that isn’t weird enough..

Okay, a twinning once I get the transcript: chyrons “Dem grills” / “bip[artisan rebuke”

**

A move I want to watch, and you may too: Hotel Mumbai:

Well, you know, ads intervene in even the best paid programming of mice and men .. and, you know, trailers are ads..

And BTW, the Roger Ebert reviewer wrote:

I watched and wrestled with Anthony Maras’ searing, startlingly confident debut “Hotel Mumbai,” where every fatal bullet fired out of the ruthless terrorists’ semi-automatic weapons hit me at my core.

That’s screen-to-viewer violence, as when the heaalights of a car sweeping up thr movie drive suddenly swerve and blind you..

Back to Hardball:

Regarding his work as a speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, Chris Matthews describes

The most honest and moral man, who honored the call of the prophet

Matthews opening clip:

Jumping over the Barr — let’splay Hardball

Comey:

Chris Matthews, quoting him:

.. all the smoke, if you will, of a deal between the President’s people and the Russians, all the interactions between them, he said — imagine if Obama, in a parallel universe, had those kinds of relationships with the Iranians, would you think they might have investigated it?

Pause.

Trump, a brief essay in turning the other cheek hitting back:

One of the things you should do in terms of success: If somebody hits you, you’ve got to hit ’em back five times harder than they ever thought possible. You’ve got to get even. Get even. And the reason, the reason you do, is so important…The reason you do, you have to do it, because if they do that to you, you have to leave a telltale sign that they just can’t take advantage of you. It’s not so much for the person, which does make you feel good, to be honest with you, I’ve done it many times. But other people watch and you know they say, “Well, let’s leave Trump alone,” or “Let’s leave this one,” or “Doris, let’s leave her alone. They fight too hard.” I say it, and it’s so important. You have to, you have to hit back. You have to hit back.

Times two:

Get even with people. If they screw you, screw them back 10 times as hard. I really believe it.

As a motto:

My motto is: Always get even. When somebody screws you, screw them back in spades.

Chris M:

He [DJT] goes after Adam Schiff .. says, He couldn’t hit a drive 50 yards..

I’m not sure, but today’s [3/29] DJT quote, “he’s not a long ball hitter” may belong here as a second shoe dropping? — or is it a different aport and different target?

Matthews, on healthcare:

Trump is walking right into that Gatling gun***** of defeat — why is he doing this?

**

Okay game of glass beads players, HipBone-style — here’s the Bach-Mendelssohn graph for your consideration:

And –I’m missing one name, which may be in the video — Bach, Mendelssohn and the Saint Matthew Passion:

— a direct line, as I understand it, of teachers and pupils from Bach to Mendelssohn..

Fox inserts:

Matthews:

My morning doppelgänger Joe Scarborough ..

**

Ok, a few loose quotes. I’m looking for Elizabeth Warren using the phrase “war of ideas” but the closest I could find was:

This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected. It won’t be easy. But united by our values, we can make big, structural change. We can raise our voices together until this fight is won.

Fight of our lives is as strong as fight metaphors get without adding details — Queensbury Rules boxing, Mixed Martial Arts in the Hexagon, a Jagger-style street-fighting man?

This one has been quoted often enough to fade into the woodwork:

The budget is a moral document.

A missing chyron — when people post videos of MSNBC shows, and probably other news channels too, they often leave off the last 5 minutes [sad face] — Green New Deal ignites firestorm ..

O’Donnell 3/28/2019:

.. the suspended animation as we wait for the actual Mueller report ..

Good one: suspended animation*****.

Unknown, 3/28 at 10.17:

Go to present day baseball, stay on the sidelines, stay out of it ..

**

This is an oldie, but I saw it today and it’s a matter of concern for me as I deal with pain from amputations & neuropathy:

Patrick Radden Keefe, The Family That Built an Empire of Pain

**

I’ll close with this tweet —

Congressman Adam Schiff, who spent two years knowingly and unlawfully lying and leaking, should be forced to resign from Congress!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2019

— and this speech in response to DJT’s attack by Adam Schiff —

— plus this in commentary, from Lawrence O’Donnell:

This is just Kabuki theater, they have no power to remove Adam Schiff from his position ..

Oiut.

[ by Charles Cameron — including being mind blind, a flourish or two of Shakespearean trumpets, spawn and other hardball terms, the new Democratic reality.. a spin on the roulette wheel.. more ..]
.

Quick, from Rachel tonight 26 March:

Barbara McQuade: The analogy I have made is, it’s as if you are the New England Patriots, and Tom Brady has been your quarterback all season and throughout the Super Bowl, and for the very last drive of the game, coach Bill Belichick puts himself in as quarterback instead. What on earth is that — I thought we had a game plan here. And to change it up into something so significant at the last minute like that, is not only strange, I think it is contrary to the purpose of the Special Counsel rule, which is to bring in someone who is independent, outside the chain of command in the executive branch, so that the public can have confidence in the decision, that it was free from political considerations. By stepping in, I think Bar has defeated that purpose here.

Rachel: You now have me imagining William Barr in an oversize sweatshirt with the sleeves cut like cap sleeves and a big frown on his face – he does actually kind of look like Bill Belichick, which might be why you came up with that analogy, which would attest further to your brilliance.

We do love our sports analogies, don’t we?

Barbara McQuade: I don’t know whether he anticipated that William Barr would take the ball and run with it this way, or that Barr snatched it from him, so that he could, to continue our football analogy, even if Congress does want to look at this later for possible impeachment, he has now prejudged the evidence and put it out there in the public domain, that this is the decision, and so as football, for instant replay, to change the call on the field requires clear and convincing evidence, a much higher standard — because now the presumption is, that he’s been cleared, and so for Congress to come up with a contrary opinion, would appear to be a very politically motivated, unfair overturning of the original call.,

**

Well, there’s a start.

Let’s go back, and pick up where we left off, with Chris Matthews and Hardball, 3/25/2019:

vs:

Okay. That’s the basic ping-pong, if I may use a sports metaphor myself..

Onwards:

Spawns is a great word..

Chris Matthews:

Why did Robert Mueller not decide? Why did he play Pontius Pilate here? Why did he pass the buck?

Mimi Rocah:

To quote my former boss, Preet Bharara, I think Mueller was punting the ball to Congress, and Barr swooped in and intercepted it and took it out to the bleachers.

I don’t really have much in the way of mental imaging, I’m what’s technically (and recently) termed aphantasic — but those words brought a flash of football to me, utterly momentary, then gone..

Mind blind.

Chris Matthews:

Spy vs Spy — let me picture it for me!

Ah, yes, treasonous — a wonder word that exaggerates furiously, but doesn’t actually assert treason, the noun, the death-penalty offence.

These six lied about their Russian contacts.

Shannon Pettypiece:

It [his spasm of fifty-odd tweets] has kept him in the spotlight, it has kept him out there, able to counter-punch, being able to stir up his base. If he doesn’t have that microphone..

Co-equal. That sounds so Trinitarian, I wonder how the Constitution would have handled the executive, legislative and judicial “branches” of government if the conceot of tghe Trinity hadn’t been hard-wired into the mainstream mind by centuries of credal recitation..

Rep Hakeem Jeffries:

That’s not the House Democratic Caucus playbook, that’s the James Madison playbook, and so we’re well within our rights ..

and

Okay:

Hardball’s the name Chris Matthews chose, meaning (implying) that he intends to play hardball with his guests, so this is a nice one where the implication is made explicit, and the ball is on the other foot — can I say that? — and it’s his guest who’s playing hardball with him.

And Woodward’s a neat choice of guest, with an implied Nixon / Trump parallelism, as so often around the Mueller probe.

Woodward, describing what DJT’s attorneys told him:

You make things up. You lie. You’ll end up in a jump-suit if you testify

>>>>>

All of which leads to, sennet or tucket, ta-rah!!

Chris Hayes, All In:

Ah, yes, McConnell bars, Barrs, the release of the Mueller report:

and Mueller punts:

Neil Katyal, The Many Problems With the Barr Letter

Ahem, Katyal authored the Special Counsel formulation.

A too obvious pun, or excellent?

A nice Russian Roulette instance:

David Corn:

We havbe this tossed ball on obstruction ..

It’s very unusual for Robert Mueller, or a Special Counsel, to end upm in a tie..

**

Vaarious oddments:

There’s a chyron somewhere:

Trump allies celebrate end of Mueller probe, slam opponent5s

Have I used that? Can I find it? It’s a good one..

Okay..

This one’s a useful quote on the prosecutorial process, the source maybe Hardball, with Barb perhaps speaking and Chris responding —

We direct them at bigger targets. It takes a minnow to catch a barracuda, a barracuda to catch a shark. It’s a metaphor.

I don’t fish..

Not sure where this one came from, either — AMJoy 3/26/2019?

While the President should be relieved, he’s still not ..

I think it’s a bit early for a victory lap ..

And now…

Rachel, 3/26/2019, which is where we started:

Rachel:

If Trump now gets his way.. 21 million AMericans will lose all health insurance just like that..

another 133 million, that’s half the country under the age of 65 wiloll get to take a spin on the roulette wheel ..

Rachel

:We got rid of that roulette wheel nine yers ago in this country with the Affordable Care Act..

If Trump gets his way..

**

One final quote from Chuck Rosenberg, again, source unknown, but a treasure:

These statutes, sometimes in their interpretation, are more art than science ..

/

[mark safranski / “zen“]

Andrew Marshall a.k.a. ” Yoda”

Famed founder of the Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall passed away today at the age of 97, having retired only in 2015 from the Pentagon job he held continuously since his appointment by President Richard Nixon in 1973. Marshall, affectionately known as “Yoda”,  was nearly the last of a generation of deeply influential of Cold War strategists who shaped American national security, a group including Albert Wohlstetter, Herman Kahn, Fritz G.A. Kraemer, James Schlesinger and Henry Kissinger.

The subject of a recent biography and the occasional academic study, the highly secretive Marshall, over the course of decades sponsored the careers of hundreds of civilian policy makers, academics and military officers, many of whom went on to hold responsible government posts, including some of the highest appointive and elected positions in the United States, the vast bulk of Marshall’s work at the Office of Net Assessment remains classified. Nevertheless, both the Soviet KGB and later China’s military leadership estimated Marshall’s contributions to American defense thinking and posture to be of paramount importance.

RAND, the think tank where Marshall had worked on questions of American nuclear strategy prior to joining the Nixon administration, released this obituary:

Andrew Marshall, RAND Researcher Who Founded Department of Defense’s ‘Internal Think-Tank,’ Dies at 97

The RAND Corporation notes with profound regret the passing of Andrew W. Marshall, 97, a RAND researcher who went on to serve for more than four decades as director of the Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment, which contemplates military strategy decades into the future. He held the position from 1973 to 2015, retiring at age 93.

Andrew Marshall/RAND Corporation photo
After studying economics at the University of Chicago, Marshall joined RAND in 1949 when the nonprofit research organization based in Santa Monica, California, was barely a year old. During his 23-year affiliation with RAND, he researched Soviet military programs, nuclear targeting, organizational behavior theory and strategic-planning, among other concepts.
“Andrew Marshall was one of the nation’s most respected and far-sighted defense experts,” said Michael D. Rich, president and CEO of RAND. “He was a gifted futurist and strategist who had mentored generations of researchers, both at RAND and beyond. His influence will be felt for years to come.”
Marshall was the founding director of the Office of Net Assessment, which is referred to as the Department of Defense’s “internal think-tank.” It provides the secretary of defense with assessments of the military balance in major geographic theaters, with an emphasis on long-term trends, asymmetries, and opportunities to improve the future U.S. position in the continuing military-economic-political competition.
In 2007, the first Andrew Marshall Scholarship was awarded by the Pardee RAND Graduate School, which offers a doctorate in policy analysis and is part of RAND. The scholarship is funded by a $150,000 endowment donated by former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had known Marshall for decades.
Marshall said he was honored by Rumsfeld’s generous gesture and “proud to be associated with a RAND scholarship that will help some of the best and brightest young minds prepare for a career in public service.”

Here is a tribute to Marshall by one of his students, Sinologist Andrew S. Erickson:

Honoring the Many Contributions of Andrew Marshall, An Early Supporter and Sponsor of CMSI

The New York Times obituary of Marshall:

Andrew Marshall, Pentagon’s Threat Expert, Dies at 97

….Mr. Marshall kept the distribution of his assessments extremely limited. Few people have read more than one or two of them. Even secretaries of defense were not allowed to keep copies.
The best of the assessments, according to people who have read them, compared Russian and Chinese strategies against American war plans, finding the weaknesses of the Pentagon’s approach and pushing for improvements. He urged the Pentagon to develop not single war plans but ones that would cover myriad scenarios.
Mr. Marshall began focusing on China in the mid-1990s. He was the first Pentagon official to talk about an emerging great power competition with Beijing, an idea now embraced by Pentagon leadership.
“His view was that because of the sheer size and potential economic weight” of China, it “could become a competitor over time,” General Selva said. “That proved to be a good question to ask, and that has started to play out.”
In 2009, Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary at the time, asked Mr. Marshall to write a classified strategy on China with Gen. Jim Mattis, the future defense secretary.
Mr. Marshall believed that American military planners had little understanding of what Chinese regional or global ambitions were. Deterring conflict in the future would be impossible if strategists were blind to the competition, he maintained.

Indeed.

RIP, Andrew Marshall.