He Knows Better

Lefty Ed Kilgore thinks he knows why former Alabama Chief Justice and leading GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore on Sunday stated

Now we have blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting. What’s going to unite us? What’s going to bring us back together? A president? A Congress? No. It’s going to be God.

As perhaps the vast majority of adults in Alabama understood immediately, Moore was alluding, consciously or unconsciously, to this timeworn children’s song:

Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight / Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Like most pre-civil-rights racial references, the terms “red and yellow, black and white” aren’t considered appropriate or even acceptable today. But for many millions of people, the song, mostly remembered from the Vacation Bible Schools that most Evangelical and many mainline Christians of every race send their children to each summer, is a paean to racial unity and the opposite of “insensitive.” There’s little doubt that if righteous secular fire from Yankeeland rains down on ol’ Roy for alluding to “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” it will win him many votes.





Kilgore is afforded credibility on this subject because of his childhood in Georgia, but even an inveterate Yankee realizes that an Alabama politician will only gain votes when he's criticized for being racially insensitive.

But Kilgore is letting Moore off easily.  Moore is no longer a child who does not understand that this is mostly is a feel good hymn, hardly a serious commentary on Christian precepts.  He knows, further, that there is a racial divide in this country that the election of Barack Obama did not eliminate, much as conservatives claimed it should have done.

As a 70-year-old, Roy Moore probably was taught, formally or informally, as a child that American Indians are "red" and Asians are "yellow." However, having lived well beyond childhood, Moore should realize that American Indians are not red and Asians are not white, whatever he heard in church or elsewhere. His statement was subjectively insensitive. But it was objectively inaccurate.

Framing such problems as ones of "sensitivity" can backfire when people believe, as in this instance, that they are behaving sensitively. In the other cases, it is an easy target for conservative critics of "p.c.," many of whom now view the subjects of their derision as "snowflakes."

More than 50 years after his childhood ended, Moore probably knows- and at least should know- that we do not have red and yellow people walking amongst us.  As a son of the south, Kilgore ought not to let Moore off the hook by engaging in the bigotry of low expectations.

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If Roy Moore Wants To Look For Satan

Some say "even a stopped clock is right twice a day." Unfortunately, far too many people say it.

Still, in my last post I suggested something analogous for the otherwise hideous Education Secretary Betsy DeVos who- depending upon how she alters the Obama Administration's guidelines pertaining to sexual assault- may prove to be right once or twice a year.

Similarly, Roy Moore- yes, that Roy Moore- may prove to be right once. Roy Moore is the former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who faces incumbent Luther Strange in the GOP runoff primary for US Senate.  In a speech Sunday

“We were torn apart in the Civil War — brother against brother, North against South, party against party. What changed?” Moore asked in footage provided to The Hill by a Republican monitoring the race.

“Now we have blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting. What’s going to unite us? What’s going to bring us back together? A president? A Congress? No. It’s going to be God.”





If only God can "bring us back together," it may be Satan who has driven us apart. At the very least, Moore needs to be asked who or what is responsible for disunity in the land.

Fortunately, a study by Gregory J. Martin and Ali Yurukoglu recently published in the American Economic Review evaluates one factor driving the lack of political unity. In their report, "Bias in Cable News: Persuasion and Polarization," they explain

The tastes for news channels are partly determined by the closeness of the news channels’ estimated ideology to the individuals. Individual ideology evolves toward the estimated ideologies of the news channels that a consumer watches. We use the estimated model to characterize the degree of polarization that one can attribute to slanted cable news consumption, to measure effects of cable news on elections, and to assess the positioning strategies of the cable news channels. 

Although the research focused on presidential elections, Republicans such as Moore probably have an even greater chance of winning statewide general elections because of a factor discovered by the researchers. Moore/Yurukoglu conclude

Our estimates imply increasing effects of FNC on the Republican vote share in presidential elections over time, from 0.46 points in 2000 to 6.34 points in 2008. Furthermore, we estimate that cable news can increase polarization and explain about two-thirds of the increase among the public in the United States, and that this increase depends on both a persuasive effect of cable news and the existence of tastes for like-minded news.

Is Fox News probably (barely) Satan in disguise.  However, that makes more sense than most of what Roy Moore says.

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Due Process

An Assistant Professor of the University of San Francisco School of Law wants us to cool our jets, step on the brakes, and hold our horses before condemning the Secretary of the Department of Education..

Oddly for someone defending Betsy DeVos, she is right.

DeVos has made it clear that she will replace the guidelines of the Obama Adminstration pertaining to campus sexual assault. Lara Bazelon maintains

... the Obama guidelines created a new class of victims: students expelled and branded sexual assailants based on a disciplinary process that deprive themof crucial rights. Without those basic rights- to some form of cross examination, to see the witness statements against hem, to a standard of proof higher than a preponderance of t he evidence (meaning a finding against them was required if there was a  50.01 percent chance that the charges were true, rather than by clear and convincing evidence or betond a reasonable doubt)- these students lacked the tools to expose the substantial questions that exist in some of these cases, particularly he-said, she-said encounters where one or both parties was under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Let's stipulate: there are cases of abuse of the Obama regulations (one such described by Bazelon, another to which she links) and the majority- probably vast majority- of accusations are legitimate (justified requiring a higher standard).

Bazelon recommends

The standard of proof should be raised from a preponderance of the evidence to clear and convincing evidence to protect against findings that often seem like a coin toss. The accused should be entitled to a hearing at which both sides can present evidence and before that hearing, to see the statements of everyone interviewed in connection with the complaint. At the hearing, the accused should be entitled to an advocate who can pose questions to the witnesses against the accused, subject to reasonable limitations. The school officials assigned to handle these complaints should be required to undergo training so that they treat survivors and accused offenders with sensitivity and fairness. There should be an appellate process that is independent and thorough, rather than the rubber stamp that exists at too many colleges and universities today.





Hopefully, no one would disagree that considerable training for officials assigned to handle complaints is good and that rubber stamps are bad. That leaves three substantive, controversial proposals: a) raising the standard of proof to "clear and convincing evidence;" b) permitting the accused a hearing and discovery; c) allowing the accused an "advocate" who can question the accuser at the hearing.

The individual (hereafter "he") should not be entitled to a lower standard of proof than the preponderance of evidence currently required.  This is not a court of law in which guilt beyond a reasonable doubt must be demonstrated and the accused, if found guilty, will face incarcerationor a period of supervision (usually probation, which can end in incarceration). It is often difficult to determine whether an alleged case of sexual assault took place; we must go where a majority of the evidence takes us.

But cards should be placed on the table.  The individual charged deserves a hearing. He deserves to be shown the evidence against him. And it is not too much to expect someone making a serious charge with significant and possibly life-changing ramifications to have to answer questions.  With properly trained investigators and hearing officers, that can be done professionally, discreetly, and sensitively.

There is injustice when an individual can be severely penalized without seeing the evidence against him or in which he is unable to have a qualified representative, within established guidelines and in a proper setting, question the accuser. No one should be expelled from a college under cover of darkness with transparency assiduously avoided.  It is a faux feminism when the rights of a woman are seen as obtainable only if basic rights are denied to another.

That makes the USF professor mostly right and in this case, two out of three ain't bad.





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4.5, At Least

The people at fivethirtyeight analyzed factors which may have contributed to Hillary Clinton's defeat. They include: Russian intervention; the Comey letter; media obsession with emails; hostility toward cultural change: never-ending coverage of Trump; resentment inspired by Fox News; sexism/misogyny; Clinton fatigue; Bernie Sanders; Clinton's Midwest strategy.

There was one more. As described in a snarky,lengthy tweet by an anti-Clinton Washington Examiner reporter, "the problem started with history. It was exceedingly difficult for either party to hold onto the White House for more than eight years in a row."

Nate Silver, who on fivethirtyeight's 1 to 5 scale assessed this at 4.5, remarked

It’s not clear to me whether a party is actually at a disadvantage after holding the White House for two straight terms. But it’s certainly not at an advantage either, and Gore lost in 2000 under highly similar circumstances to Clinton.

The parallels go beyond Clinton and Gore both winning the national popular vote while losing in the electoral college, and both being decidely more qualified and clearly less charismatic than their opponents.

Coal: On November 5, 2000 The New York Times quoted a West Virginia logger, alienated by Al Gore's emphasis on environmentalism, remarking of a possible Democratic victory: "'There'd be a lot more new laws, All the guys who work up on the mountain think he'd be bad.''  Strip mining did not fit into Al Gores' prescription for climate change, and he narrowly lost both West Virginia and Ohio.

President Obama was responsible for (as the industry termed it) "a wave of environmental rgulations" which, according to Politico "conservatives contend is the reason 40,000 coal miners have lost their jobs"  and which they absurdly termed "the war on coal." Candidate Clinton did not help herself in West Virginia and Kentucky (where she was shellacked), in Ohio, or in Pennsylvania (where she lost narrowly) when she backed this approach by seemingly accepting the loss of thousands of additional jobs.









Cuba:  The Clinton Justice Department approved a raid, extremely unpopular with Cuban-Americans, in which on April 22, 2000 young refugee Elian Gonzalez was seized.  Candidate Gore fumbled the issue, which could only have hurt him anyway, and he lost the election by narrowly losing Florida.

In both cases, the approach of the Democratic president was good policy but bad politics for his would-be successor.

Of course, Al Gore did not have to deal with a propaganda campaign directed by Russia to undermine a presidential election.  By late September 2016, President Obama was aware of  the Kremlin campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton. But the President wanted a buy-in from GOP congressional leaders- which he didn't get, Donald Trump was claiming the election was rigged, and the President who had spent 7+ years being intimidated by Republicans wasn't about to change course abruptly.

Nor did Al Gore have to explain away health plan premium increases averaging 25 percent announced the month before the election and an increasing number of health insurers dropping out of exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act, ridiculed as "Obamacare."

In July, 2013 a wise Megan McArdle estimated that, given the Democrats would be asking in 2016 for a third term, the 2016 GOP presidential nominee would have a 75% chance of being elected.  In September 2016 an "ex-Obama aide" unironically slammed Mrs. Clinton's book as "the Hillary Show, 100 percent. A lot of us are scratching our heads and wondering what she’s trying to do. It’s certainly not helpful.”

They are loathe to point their finger at an individual who was elected twice to the White House. However, McArdle, Silver, and some others have a sense that the last eight years played a major role in the victory of a guy who irresponsibly and ridiculously- but brilliantly- called President Obama "a racist" who "has done a terrible job" and "will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States."








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The Media Effect

Oh, no! Not another word cloud!

I've said the same, but an understanding of what happened- and of What Happened- is impossible without it.  It's not sufficient- but it is necessary.

And the reviews of Hillary Clinton's "What Happened" have been very negative from people who didn't read it, and especially prior to its availability. One Democratic US Representative commented "it is difficult for some of us, even like myself who’ve supported her, to play out all these media cycles about the blame game, and the excuses.” And he was reportedly a Clinton supporter.

 "A top Democratic donor" remarked "I think she should just zip it, but she’s not going to."  A "Clinton critic" charged “She’s doing harm to all of us because of her own selfishness. Honestly, I wish she’d just shut the f**k up and go away.”

Because, presumably, if she would simply stifle herself, all discussion of the 2016 election would simply vanish. Donald Trump would stop reminding us and the media would go on to do investigative reports about tax and regulatory policy, infrastructure needs and the nuclear triad.

Conveniently, contributors to FiveThirtyEight recently chatted among themselves about the media reaction to Clinton's campaign memoir, as well as the factors she pointed to in her defeat.

Although the group noted that the percentage of negative to positive news was identical for the two major candidates, Nate Silver observed

.... the fact that the media spent so much time focusing on Trump made it hard for anyone to focus on any one aspect of Trump’s behavior.

As you can see from the Gallup charts I posted earlier, people had lots of different feelings about Trump and heard lots of different negative stories about him. But none of them as persistently as Clinton and trust and emails.

One of those was Gallup's word cloud of what people said and/or heard about from 7/11/16-0/18/16:

Even though most reports about Trump (as well as Clinton) were negative, the coverage was skewed against the Democrat. Perry Bacon explained

my suspicion is that a lot of the bad coverage came from a desire to find a way to balance the sharp coverage of Trump with coverage that was negative about Clinton. The both-sides model of political journalism left you with 15 Trump scandals and 1 Clinton scandal, so you have to pump up the Clinton scandal/controversy/whatever to make up for that big gap since all of these outlets are obsessed with attacks from the right.

Although the four participants disagreed on how much weight they'd ascribe to each of the causes, they conceded "most of these were real factors in Trump winning and Clinton losing. That is a lesson likely to get lost when, as Christina Cauterucci wrote, "Early reviews take issue with the book’s right to exist as much as the quality of its contents. "










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Trend Beginning To Emerge

There's something happening here; what it is ain't exactly clear, wrote Stephen Stills 51 years ago.

What is happening now isn't clear yet but it's becoming a little less blurry. In May, Newsweek reported

The number of complaints from servicemen and -women in the Army, Air Force, Marines and other service branches to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has doubled in number since November 2016, according to lawyer Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, a former Air Force officer who founded the organization.

Many of the recent charges are coming from members of minority religions, including Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims, and from atheists. Among the complaints: military family and marital therapy programs are being infused with Protestant Christianity, which would violate the U.S. Constitution; open anti-Semitism; anti-LGBT statements, posters, symbols and bullying; openly anti-Muslim teachers and Islamophobic attacks; a rise in on-base evangelizing; and increased pressure on recruits or lower-level personnel and service members to convert to fundamentalist Christianity.

“With the advent of Trump as the commander in chief of our armed forces, MRFF has experienced a massive influx of new military and civilian personnel complaints of religion-based prejudice and bigotry, most of them coming from non-fundamentalist Christians being persecuted by their military superiors for not being ‘Christian enough,’” Weinstein tells Newsweek.

When Jamele Hill tweeted that Donald "look at my African American over here" Trump is "unqualified and unfit to be President" and “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists,” presidential press secretary Sarah H. Sanders suggested ESPN fire here. The network issued a statement criticizing Hill and tried unsuccessfully to replace her on Wednesday's broadcast.

The National Association of Black Journalists on Wednesday stated it "supports Hill's First Amendment rights on all matters of discussion, within and outside the world of sports, as they do not impinge on her duties as a host and commentator.​"

Unfortunately, the First Amendment does not apply to a private emplyer, which generally can discipline or fire an individual for what she does as a private citizen on her own time on unrelated matters. Coincidentally, on Friday Donald "I will absolutely apologize sometime in the distant future if I’m ever wrong.” Trump demanded ESPN apologize to him.





The massive Bristol, Connecticut corporation may have the wisdom and fortitude not to bucckle down to our Liar in Chief.  If all goes well. However, the US military may be more susceptible to intimidation (video below from early July), as The Washington Post has found:

U.S. Army recruiters have abruptly canceled enlistment contracts for hundreds of foreign-born military recruits since last week, upending their lives and potentially exposing many to deportation, according to several affected recruits and former military officials familiar with their situation.

Many of these enlistees have waited years to join a troubled recruitment program designed to attract highly skilled immigrants into the service in exchange for fast-track citizenship....

It was not immediately clear whether Pentagon officials have taken hard-line immigration stances from the White House as a signal to ramp down support for its foreign-born recruitment program.





Increased pressure on recruits to convert to evangelical Christianity, pressure on private companies to fire critics of the President, the Pentagon breaking deals with foreign-born recruits. It may be intimidation, bias, government suppression of dissent, or some combination of three. But whatever it is, it begins at the top.

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Crossing The Red Line- Again

The irony is startling, if we would but notice.

On April 4, the Trump Administration issued a statement criticizing its predecessor because

These heinous actions by the Bashar al-Assad regime are a consequence of the past administration’s weakness and irresolution. President Obama said in 2012 that he would establish a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons and then did nothing.

The anti-red line policy evidently applies only to Syria. Four months after blasting Obama for establishing a "red line" against Damascus, President Trump would tell reporters at his golf club (membership $450,000 plus annual dues) in Bedminster, NJ “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Promptly after Trump threatened to act if North Korea issued more threats, Pyongyang threatened to send missiles toward Guam and labeled Grump's remark "a load of nonsense."  Two weeks later, the annual US-South Korea joint military exercise was met with " The US should not forget that their opponent is armed with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles (and) should "wake up from their old way of thinking that their land is safe and the death is an affair of others." A few days later, North Korea launched a missile over northern Japan.

The following week UN ambassador Nikki Haley declared “We have kicked the can down the road long enough, There is no more road left.” With Friday morning's news from Tokyo, the AP reports

Since President Donald Trump threatened the North with "fire and fury" in August, Pyongyang has conducted its most powerful nuclear test, threatened to send missiles into the waters around the U.S. Pacific island territory of Guam and launched two missiles of increasing range over Japan. July saw its first tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles that could strike deep into the U.S. mainland when perfected.

The "detour" and "do not enter" signs have been removed, revealing the road Haley denied existed.  s. The President draws a red line, backs down when North Korea crosses it. Then the "no more road left" official draws a red line.  Rason still stands. Kasong still stands. Pyongyang still stands. So does Kim Jong Un.

The Administration's loose talk is striking. When Trump calls London subway terrorists "losers" (not "threatening" or "evil," but "losers"), he encourages further attacks, possibly intentionally. When he threatens Pyongyang and is called on it, he unintentionally encourages Kim's bellicosity, as has Haley's stupid remark.

President Trump likes to draw red lines, no less bright because (unlike President Obama) he is wise enough not to label them as "red lines." It may fool the media, or the latter may be too intimidated to raise the alarm. Kim Jong Un recognizes it, however. Hopefully, he'll realize that eventually, Donald Trump may actually decide the tough guy act should be the opening act in what would be a catastrophic war on the Korean Peninsula.