Smoking Guns

What did Russia get? What is it still getting? from Trump campaign and administration?

• Softened RNC plank on arming Ukraine
• Trump Tower Meeting: Reconsidering the Magnitsky law
• Not implementing the new Russian sanctions that Trumped signed into law August 2, 2017

And this doesn't count the more macro (but less attributable directly to Trump) like softening the NATO alliance or an angry, bitter, divided American electorate.

United we stand; divided we fall. E pluribus unum.

Gun Safety

I drafted one my posts, collecting information and analysis on gun control, and then read Kristof's oped in today's NYT, How to Reduce Shootings. A great summary. I'm going ahead and publishing this post, even though it is a work in progress, because Kristof's piece is thorough and a great starting place. He frames the issue as a public health issue, like automobile safety, and tries to avoid the  moralistic and inflammatory rhetoric of liberals and conservative--the left and the right.

His oped is comprehensive. And near his conclusion he writes:

If you’re wondering how we managed to crank out all these charts and data in the immediate aftermath of the Texas shooting, here’s the secret: We didn’t. We spent weeks gathering the information and preparing the charts, because we knew that there would be a tragedy like this one to make it all relevant.

In October, 538's Julia Azari also summarizes the current data on gun violence, and advises us not to focus on mass killings to drive policy. She includes a good data visualization of gun deaths:

• suicide vs homicide vs accident
• men vs women
• age
• ethnicity

Different solutions are required for different causes. (I'm waiting to see another domain added to the visualization: type of gun (handgun, rifle, assault rifle ...)

Everytown For Gun Safety reports that 54 per cent of mass shootings involve domestic or family violence:

But there’s a loophole in the federal system. Federal law only requires background checks for gun sales at licensed dealers—a gap referred to as the unlicensed sale loophole. Nineteen states and Washington, DC have acted to close this dangerous loophole by requiring background checks on all handgun sales.13 There is strong evidence that closing this loophole saves lives. In states that have done so, 47 percent fewer women are shot to death by their intimate partners, 53 percent fewer law enforcement officers are killed with guns, and there is 48 percent less gun trafficking in cities.14

Only 10 per cent of mass shootings took place in gun-free zones:

Take, for example, the October 1, 2015 mass shooting in which Christopher Harper-Mercer fatally shot nine people in an attack at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR. At the time of the shooting, there were several students carrying concealed handguns on campus. But they recognized that an attempt to provide help may have confused law enforcement and decided not to intervene. As one student, a military veteran who was carrying a concealed gun at the time, explained: “Luckily, we made the choice not to get involved…not knowing where SWAT was on their response time, they wouldn’t know who we were, and if we had our guns ready to shoot, they’d think we were the bad guys.”15

Everytown For Gun Safety is backed, in part, by independent and former NYC mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg's Independence USA PAC is also active on gun control.

Good summary of NRA vs Bloomberg's PAC campaign spending in 2016 election.

A 2014 report, by Propublica, on Myth vs Fact: Violence and Mental Health. I hadn't seen this concept before of a "gun violence restraining order"--this seems like a tool the judicial system should have access to.

Smoking Gun

If today's reporting from Reznik and Meyer of Bloomberg is true, this is the quid pro quo: Trump's campaign wanted evidence of Clinton campaign getting donations from off-shore, tax-evaded accounts in exchange for reconsidering the Magnitsky law.

Yes the source is the Russian attorney, Veselnitskaya, who met Donald Trump Jr, Kushner, Manafort in June 2016 Trump tower--and must be taken with a grain of salt.

Who is Rick Gates?

In this post, I'll keep ongoing notes on Rick Gates, whose indictment by the Mueller investigation was unsealed today.

Monday afternoon, Allegra Kirkland of Talking Points Memo gave us an introduction:

Manafort’s business partner [Rick Gates] remained a key player in Trumpworld long after Manafort himself was forced out of the campaign over concerns about his work abroad. Gates coordinated behind-the-scenes preparations for Trump’s inauguration and served on a pro-Trump super PAC in the early months of 2017.

And as the Miami Herald reported Monday, a domestic entity listed in the indictment as one of the corporations Manafort and Gates used to hide foreign earnings even accepted a total of $70,000 from the Republican National Committee for “political strategy services” it provided in coordination with the Trump campaign, suggesting the line between Gates’ work for the campaign and his illicit dealings wasn’t quite so bright.

Greed giving us a nice paper trail.

Andrew Sullivan on the Trump Abyss

Late Friday, while the Astros were beating the Dodgers in Game 2, CNN first reported that an indictment had been made, but was sealed, by the Mueller team. We don't know who was indicted, or for what.

Andrew Sullivan, a Republican many democrats are happy to read, wrote earlier Friday in the New York Magazine on the Trump Abyss.

After spending many paragraphs reminding us just how grim things are, and how rock solid his 35 %-base support is, Sullivan offers these potential ways out:

1. a recession? this adheres to the "it's the economy, stupid" Clinton/Carville rules, but the responsibility for a recession is vague and diffuse
2. a catastrophe, like nuclear conflict with North Korea. no silver lining there.
3. a "massive and impregnable" revelation from Mueller's investigation
4. "massive mobilization of the anti-Trump majority at the polls next year"

The 2018 mid-term election offers the best hope.

We have to turn the mid-terms into a presidential election. Sane Republicans need to vote for the Democrat. Leftists have to put aside their divisive identity politics. Liberals need to coalesce around a simple strategy - not impeaching but checking Trump decisively.
We have close to 60 percent of the country with us. We have to mobilize every single one. Or the abyss will open wider.

By the way, Let's Go, Astros!

Take care of your goldfish

In the October 16 NYT Trilobites blog, we learned, what some of us have long suspected, fish get depressed. "The trigger for most domestic fish depression is likely lack of stimulation," reported Heather Murphy. Fish are naturally curious, Murphy quotes Dr. Victoria Braithwaite who recommends adding new objects to your fish tank, or moving them around.

Since at least in 2008, it has been common knowledge that low levels of anti-depressants are making their way out of our bodies, through the waste stream, and into the ocean (and back into our supply of drinking water). Fairly contained bodies of water, like Puget Sound, don't get flushed thoroughly. Here's a recent summary from 2016 on Vice (and abstract for the underlying research.)

For my Bay Area friends: Drugs in Water.

Here's a poem from five years ago about barnacles and the gasping ssri sea.

If you recall Darwin made his name in barnacles before publishing On the Origin of Species. His friend and mentor, Joseph Hooker, told Darwin that he and his fellow scientists would have little confidence in any speculation about the possibility of species evolving if it came from someone who had not done the real, nitty-gritty taxonomic work of describing some group in detail. Darwin replied to Hooker: “How painfully (to me) true is your remark.” He chose barnacles; he'd collected many in his travels. (Source: Naming Nature.)

In 1854, after 8 years of studying barnacles, Darwin wrote, "I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a sailor in a slow moving ship."

Just do what you can do. Take care of your goldfish.

Unadulterated

Unadulterated

Outside the Krol hearing

a witness sits

in a holding room,
the door cracked open

so he could breathe.

A paper cup

stained red by worried lips

desiccates under fluorescent light.

White hair buzzing, she flares

gray over me.

You have no place here

so help me god!

As if god or some judge
could ever stop her.

The maroon smeared across the linoleum
must be coffee.

This is a rewrite of Periodic Evaluation. The previous title didn't do much, and I've referenced Krol hearing directly,which while more arcane, is google-able and precise. The new title is also probably too cryptic, but I like the word. There are 4 ways in which the "she" is unadulterated:
1. No lipstick, no hair color ... her natural self
2. Yes, institutionalized, she is taking her meds, but they aren't really changing anything.
3. Allusion to adultery.
4. Like meds, neither god nor the judge is changing anything.

I've tried to clarify the pronouns, and that it was the "she" talking. There are 2 things I worry about in this rewrite: have a lost any immediacy or surprise or velocity? And can the reader see her barging in--the shock, the surprise of her entering the supposedly safe conference room. I've tried many ways to make this more clear, but haven't found one I like.