Did Trump Watch "West Wing"?

I ask because Comey quotes him as referring to "that thing".  For me at least, that evokes the West Wing, though when I search this post says it's long been established as a thing, but the Joe Harley comment confirms my memory.

The answer to the question is obviously "no"--if he had he'd understand a bit about how the government operates.

Good and Bad for USDA--ARS

Politico has a piece entitled: "A tour of the government's 'nerd labs': The cutting-edge (and sometimes secret) labs where Washington tries to hatch the future.  ARS (Ag Research Service) is number on the list, after NIST and before DARPA.  That's complimentary.  What isn't so good is the date given for the establishment: 1953.

That's ridiculous; USDA was doing this work back in the 19th century, arguably even before USDA was established.  What they mean, of course, is that the agency was formed under its current name in 1953, but still.

Representing Acres, Not People

President Trump famously passes out maps of the US showing the counties he won and those Clinton won, the result being a very red US. Liberals like me carp that the map represents acres, not the people.  He also is proposing to change the air traffic control system to a nonprofit corporation.   That idea has run into the reservations of senators representing many of the acres shown on his map.  The problem being that the more sparsely settled areas of the country are also more dependent on air traffic (Alaska is perhaps the biggest for small planes).  So the senators fear the impact of this possible change.  And the senators are mostly Republican.

A case of principle (smaller government) conflicting with the real world, IMHO.

The Virtues of Hypocrisy

"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue"  wrote La Rochefoucauld  (learned something from the bio, I had him pegged as late 18th century, wrong by 100+years).

As shown by its presence as a label, I've written fairly often on hypocrisy.  The political parties are liable to it, as their positions on some issues, particularly procedural and legal, flip-flop with the election results.

There's also hypocrisy in issues like global warming and the Paris Accord.  Both Trump and his critics pretend the accord is more powerful and more binding than it actually is. In a way they've a de facto agreement to misrepresent it.  By portraying it as very important, they can rally their backers to greater and greater efforts to defeat it/defend it as the case may be.

See this Keith Hennessey post for a somewhat similar perspective on Paris:

A surprising dynamic often surrounds QTIPS policy changes—the most passionate supporters and opponents have a common interest in arguing that this particular policy change is enormously important, while downplaying the reality that its direct impact is barely measurable. These mortal opponents have a shared goal of hyping the issue and the battle.

 The key point I'm getting at, and Hennessey also does, is the two sides agree on the same thing.  

How We Discriminate, Maybe

NYTimes has a piece on research into how primates/humans recognize faces:

"These dimensions create a mental “face space” in which an infinite number of faces can be recognized. There is probably an average face, or something like it, at the origin, and the brain measures the deviation from this base.

A newly encountered face might lie five units away from the average face in one dimension, seven units in another, and so forth. Each face cell reads the combined vector of about six of these dimensions. The signals from 200 face cells altogether serve to uniquely identify a face."

 I don't understand this fully, not in the sense I understand "2+2 = 4", and the article doesn't go into the idea of an "average face". At least the first page of the Cell report doesn't go into an "average face" either, so I'm sticking my neck out when I write the rest of this post. 

Assume there is an "average face" stored in our memories which serves as the baseline against which the coding of a new face takes place (like the Greenwich Meridian, serving as the starting point). I'd guess there's some innate biology we're born with, but the pump is primed by our early childhood experiences.  So maybe by 1 week, 1 month, or 1 year we have an "average face" pretty well constructed.

Note the implications: we'll find faces more similar to our average face easier to recognize and likely more attractive. ( (It'd be a neat experience to test adults on facial recognition to see if they recognize faces similar to their mothers faster or as more pleasing than others.)   That would account for the common idea that "all X's (insert race or ethnicity of your choice) look alike". 

Now those implications aren't supported by the article or report--there's no implication that there's learning involved in recognizing faces.  The way the biologists did the experiment they weren't likely to see it.  

Cracks in the Facade?

ThinkProgress reports that Kellyanne Conway's husband tweeted in reaction to DJT's morning burst, saying that Trump's tweets might make some people feel better, they won't help with the Supreme Court.

One wonders about his state of mind--why withdraw from a nomination to the Justice Department, then openly criticize your wife's thin-skinned boss?

Jumping the Line

Seems to me that cutting into line is one thing which arouses  a lot of anger. It does with me.  Even in traffice, where I understand the theory of the "zipper merge" leading to smoother flows, I get mad when someone zooms up the right lane and cuts in in front of me.

So guess my reaction to this weak statement:

"“I feel badly that I have the means to jump the line,” he said. “But when you have kids, you jump the line. You just do. If you have the money, would you not spend it for that?”"

That's from a NYTimes article, part of a series on the "velvet rope" economy, by which the writer means a growing tendency for those with wealth to be able to buy advantages. In this case it's on concierge medicine; for fat yearly fees a medical practice will provide on-call service and cover all medical needs, except hospitalization.

I suppose the two cases aren't that comparable.  In the one the guy is gaining a bit of time, and costing me and others behind me a bit.  In the other the injury to the rest of us is harder to see, presumably slightly higher costs and/or long wait times to see a doctor, although a free marketer might argue that the high fees the jumpers pay will eventually lure more people into medicine.

The fact the injury is vague and possibly debatable means a standard test of morality is less obviously applicable.  I mean the Golden Rule--in this case the line jumper sees no "other" to consider.  This leaves me in a confused and peavish mood, lacking a clear villain to oppose, but not satisfied with the outcome.

Balz: Everyone Knew the DNC Sucked

Now he tells us. 

Strikes me as a big failure of journalism.

Balz starts:
"Of all the reasons Hillary Clinton thinks she lost the 2016 election to President Trump, the least among them was the state of the Democratic National Committee. That it was a mess long before she became a candidate was well known."

I don't remember any Post articles describing the mess.  Yes, from reading the Post you'd know that Obama wasn't doing much with the DNC, and in 2016 there were stories on the chairwoman.  But in 2016 I was sitting fat and happy, knowing that the DNC had a better operation than the RNC.  Not so, despite my regular donations to the DNC.

Aging means the loss of illusions.

Why the Democrats Should Follow the Beatles

This is the 50th anniversary of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which is getting attention in the media.  Listening to the radio I heard the announcer say that three of the Beatles weren't that enthusiastic about it; Paul was the one who liked it.

Why my title?  The lesson here for the Democrats is that you go along to get along, and while the Beatles didn't agree on the record, they reached a consensus decision to go ahead with it.  That sort of give and take is important for any organization, and will be important as the Democrats go forward.

A Gem from the National Review

"It is not unconstitutional to be a fool"

from NR