I usually sprinkle my science posts across Saturdays, but I saved this one for Sunday morning because I thought you would like it. In the latest Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, a team from the Geisinger Health System and New York City Lab looked at a serious problem for those trying to solve social, health, and economic problems—people are really, really against scientific testing. That is, you can put forward almost any proposal, from “medicare for all” to “medicare for none,” and that proposal will have a certain number of adherents. But if you suggest “let’s conduct an experiment in which half the people get A and half the people get B to determine which is best” … everyone hates it.
For example, an education company came under attack for “experimenting on children” when it was learned there were different versions of the software it was distributing to schools. The only difference in the software was the level of encouraging feedback given to the students after they correctly solved a problem. The old version of the software gave no encouraging feedback. The company was trying to make things better by finding out what kind of response kept students engaged. Instead, they simply dropped it after a public outcry.
That was just one example. It doesn’t matter if it was Facebook giving some people different sets of recommendation tools, or medical residency programs trying to determine what range of working hours generated the best results—people hate to be “experimented on.” They hate it so much, that they would rather live with bad policy than participate in trials to make it better.
What Mueller genuinely did say was that the rules—and we don’t know if this was his personal interpretation of the rules, or the rules as he was instructed to read them by Rod Rosenstein—didn’t allow him to indict Trump. Those rules didn’t even allow him to say if he believed that Trump was guilty. But nothing in the rules stopped him from saying that he did not find Trump innocent. That’s a man who has worked hard to get around a Gordian knot of regulations.
Excuse me, the political apocalypse came in 2016. We already live in a post-apocalyptic political hellscape in which rains of fire and brimstone come daily. Someone hasn’t been paying attention.
I won’t spoil the ending if you want to read it. But if you’ve been watching Good Omens, kind of like that. But with less humor. Tomasky continues to be one of those who argues that, sure, Trump deserves impeachment, but we should hold off because it might help him get reelected. Which has been, is, and ever shall be, a stupid argument.
Yes. “Rot” does seem to be the right term.
It is hard to convey how far over the edge Barr has gone without reading the entire interview, which lasted an hour. But a few key comments illustrate the depth of his investment in Trump’s perspective. …
As far as Barr is concerned, Trump has done nothing wrong, and all the shredding of norms has been done against him, not by him. Trump’s calls to jail all his opponents, his non-stop lies, his demands to punish independent media and satirists, his open conviction that law enforcement should operate at his personal command and follow him loyally, not to mention the repeated obstruction of justice detailed by Mueller — none of it concerns Barr even slightly.
Here’s something I haven’t said all that often … or maybe never. Go read the rest of Chait’s column.
Hamid Dabashi on ugly Americans, uglier Americans, and John Bolton.
al Jazeera
The Ugly American was a work of fiction but based on facts. Sarkhan, the fictional country where the novel is set, is the allegorical name of anyone's homeland at the receiving end of the arrogance and ignorance of "Ugly Americans". Sarkhan was Vietnam. Sarkhan was Guatemala. Sarkhan was and remains Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine. Sarkhan was and remains Iran.
It is now for the second time in my lifetime that yet another "Ugly American" is plotting against the course of history in my homeland. I spent much of my adult life thinking of the name Kermit Roosevelt as the epitome of pernicious evil. Today, the degenerate character of John Bolton overshadows the memory of Kermit Roosevelt.
The history lesson Dabashi is about to deliver is a handy reference for those who wonder just why Iran seems to host people saying such mean things about America.
Kermit Roosevelt Jr (1916 -2000), a grandson of US president Theodore Roosevelt, was a career intelligence officer who engineered the CIA-MI6 overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, in August 1953.
I was a two-year-old toddler when that fateful coup altered the course of history in my homeland. It undermined the democratic movement and allowed the Pahlavi regime to consolidate power. A decade later, Ayatollah Khomeini launched his first militant Shia putsch against the Pahlavis and recast the Iranian political culture in decidedly Islamist terms, the consequences of which we still live with.
For Iranians, that vicious, vulgar, rude, and loutish interference in their democratic aspirations remained the most traumatic event of the 20th century.
Imagine if some other country came into the United States and upset a democratic election, throwing the country into turmoil and handing the government to an autocratic … hey, wait a minute.
Laurie Roberts on how Trump’s Mexico sanctions are upsetting some of his biggest fans.
Arizona Republic
Late Thursday, President Donald Trump sprung his latest genius plan to combat illegal immigration. Rather than the usual sycophantic standing O from Arizona’s junior senator, he got raspberries.
“Mexico is Arizona’s number one trading partner, accounting for over $16 billion in 2018 alone,” [Republican Martha McSally] said, in statement on Friday morning. “While I support the president’s intention of stopping illegal immigration, I do not support these types of tariffs, which will harm our economy and be passed onto Arizona small businesses and families,”
Before you say, well duh, that’s a no-brainer reaction. Consider the fact that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey jumped up to support Trump’s plan.
"Everyone knows I am opposed to tariffs and deeply value Arizona’s relationship with Mexico,” Ducey tweeted on Thursday. “I prioritize national security and a solution to our humanitarian crisis at the border above commerce."
I’m pretty certain that the whole idea of the sanctions against Mexico didn’t exist until Trump found himself screaming on the White House lawn and lost his place in his attacks on Mueller. What was he saying? Uhh … big announcement! That’s it. There’s going to be a big announcement on … immigration! Yeah. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe today. Big announcement.
Meanwhile, Mark Kelly, McSally's likely Democratic opponent in 2020, called Trump's tariff "an outright attack on Arizona’s economy."
The idea that Mark Kelly could replace Martha McSally is one of the best thoughts of the cycle.
Art Cullen’s view this week just may be swayed by geography.
Storm Lake Times
Our view is that the road to the White House leads through the Midwest, starting in Iowa. Another hard lesson for Democrats is that you must compete in small towns and rural areas, and the template can be developed here for Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, at least. That story is about organization and outreach that does not get told so often in horse-race, poll-based journalism.
That’s something of a convenient view for someone who happens to be sitting in small town in Iowa. But his take on how the campaigns are doing in his state is interesting.
Elizabeth Warren, John Delaney and Beto O’Rourke have spent the most time in Iowa and New Hampshire, and have done the most events (along with Andrew Yang), according to the political data website fivethirtyeight.com. Warren and Delaney have the most built-out campaign organizations, and O’Rourke has also attracted top caucus organizing staff. Warren launched her campaign from western Iowa in January, with a stop in Storm Lake, and returned for the Heartland Forum that we sponsored in March. Delaney has been here four times, matched only by Julian Castro. O’Rourke’s first visit to Iowa took him through battered regional manufacturing towns like Keokuk, and what used to be Pacific Junction before it washed away.
John Delaney? Really? I genuinely had to look him up to remember where he is from. But once I did, his policies and past work look genuinely interesting. Every election needs a dark horse.
Will Bunch on China’s concentration camps for Muslims, and the Jews who are taking action.
Philadelphia Inquirer
It’s been more than three decades since Gulbahar Mamut and her husband left the remote corner of Earth that her Uighur people call East Turkestan and the ruling Chinese government calls Xinjiang for Southern California, where they attended universities and stayed to raise their two sons. But Mamut always went back every few years to visit her six brothers and sisters and her large extended family that’s stayed behind in the mostly Muslim region, despite increasing persecution.
The last time she went was 2015, and she could see how China’s totalitarian surveillance state was becoming increasingly intolerable. … Two years later, in early 2017, she stopped hearing from her relatives altogether. The popular Chinese messaging app, WeChat, no longer worked. Mamut tried calling her sister and the phone cut off after a few seconds. So she called her older brother’s phone and his wife picked up to say she was at a police checkpoint and would call back.
That was her final contact.
This isn’t the kind of problem that would bother Donald Trump. After all, he’s praised Chairman Xi even more frequently than Chairman Kim—they ate the best chocolate cake together! They played golf!
The U.S. government hasn’t minced words in calling out the mass detention centers as “concentration camps," with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying the facilities “are reminiscent of the 1930s.” But the Trump administration’s deeds haven’t been nearly as tough as its language. President Trump decided against bringing up the plight of China’s Muslims in his talks seeking a massive trade deal with his counterpart President Xi Jinping, and aides deep-sixed suggestions for economic sanctions against officials involved in the concentration camps.
But people who experienced those earlier concentration camps first hand are working to get the plight of the Uighur the attention it deserves. We have only a few years left in which there will be living memories of those events in Europe. Please, while they are still with us, can we make “never again” mean, at the very least, “not this time?”
Virginia Heffernan on the town hall meeting of Justin Amash.
Los Angeles Times
Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who advocates the impeachment of President Trump, held a rousing town hall in his home district Tuesday.
He spoke about Trump’s many breaches of public trust. He described the constitutional obligation of Congress to check abuses of power by a president who has shamelessly violated his oath of office.
“I want to salute your courage,” said a self-identified Vietnam War veteran. At this, applause erupted in the hall. A standing ovation.
I’m still trying to get past how The New York Times sent a reporter to this event, then wrote the article around statements from a MAGA-hat wearing woman who talked about Hillary Clinton’s “coup.” Except the Times edited that part out, in fact, edited the woman’s words down to one reasonable-sounding sentence fragment, and made that into an example of how Amash had received a “mixed reception.” That … was first class journalistic malpractice. Heffernan brings up the same woman, though it would be hard to recognize her from The New York Times article if you hadn’t watched the video of the event.
“If you want to go along with the violating the public trust, how far does that go?” she asked Amash. Her syntax was faulty but her point was clear: What about accountability for “the Democrats, who have done the same thing”? Then came the telltale earworms that mark American minds lost to reason: “deep state,” Hillary Clinton’s “silent coup.”
Uh huh.
For her to pick up political earworms right off the pop charts suggested a certain cognitive vulnerability. This vulnerability is definitely not confined to town hall audience members. A prominent case is Atty. Gen. William Barr, who echoes Fox News and Russian botnets when he alludes to “spying” by the Obama administration and Uranium One, a farrago that makes as much sense as leprechaun stories.
Go forth and read, because I canna paste no more, captain. The engines, or the copyright laws, won’t take it.
Charles Pierce thinks very little of Ro Khanna’s “censor Trump” plan.
Esquire
Rep. Ro Khanna disappointed me the other night. He floated the idea of censuring the president* as opposed to opening an impeachment inquiry. This, of course, was the notion that the Republicans laughed at in 1998—MoveOn.org began in those days as "Censure and Move On"—because their goal was to overturn the 1992 and 1996 elections by any means necessary. This alternative is even more lame in our current circumstances.
This is a president* and an administration* that does not take congressional subpoenas seriously, and that respects the constitutional order even less than it understands it. A censure would do absolutely less than nothing. One of the ways you can tell it's a terrible idea is that Peggy Noonan has raised her glass to it. She believes that impeaching El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago would be too "divisive." And this from someone who once pondered in print whether Fidel Castro had blackmailed Bill Clinton into sending Elian Gonzales back to live with his father in Cuba, memorably wandering off the trolley with the immortal phrase, "Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to."
For a censure to be effective, it has to mean something to someone. It would mean nothing to Trump. It would mean nothing to Trump’s supporters. It would certainly not remove the smirk from Mitch McConnell’s beak. It’s a bad idea.
Anne Applebaum wonders why Trump is bringing his circus to a Britain in mid-crisis.
Washington Post
Britain is in the grip of an unprecedented political meltdown, a crisis on a scale that was unthinkable even six months ago. The prime minister has resigned and is leaving office within days. Support for the two historic political parties, Labour and Conservative, is at an all-time low. In hastily planned European Parliament elections last week, the brand new Brexit Party came in first, while two anti-Brexit parties, the tiny Liberal Democrats and the even tinier Greens, came in second and fourth. The ruling Tory party finished a distant fifth.
Allow me to pause long enough to think about two or three upstart parties coming in ahead of a fifth place Republican Party in 2020. It’s not going to happen. I just want to think about it for a moment.
In total, votes for anti-Brexit parties outstripped votes for the Brexit Party, though the country remains committed to withdrawal from the European Union. Some polls show that if parliamentary elections were held tomorrow, the Liberal Democrats would be the overall winners. More than a dozen people are running open campaigns for the Conservative Party leadership, members of the Labour Party are openly fighting with one another, and the government has ceased to make decisions of any kind.
And, next week, President Trump is arriving. Why?
Because … no, honestly, I don’t know the answer to this one. So he can complain about Christopher Steele? So he can insult Theresa May while she still has to stand stiffly next to him? So he can get tips on hair products from Boris Johnson? I’m going with all of the above.