What studies of altitude sickness on Everest can tell us about saving people in ICUs

The New Neo Posted on by

The extreme conditions of climbing Mt. Everest, and the risks involved, hardly seem worth it to us regular folks who can’t even imagine voluntarily subjecting oneself to such an ordeal:

Just ahead of them, a man from another party was in trouble, staggering around and gasping for air. His body had became hypoxic and his oxygen-starved brain began to swell. His team buzzed their doctor at a camp below on a two-way radio, who reassured them that he would be OK. Grocott, an expert in high-altitude sickness, had a different opinion: it was clear to him that the man was dying. “It often happens,” says Grocott. “If you’re a doctor on a mountain, you expect to be called on to help people.”

As the light began to fade and the temperature dropped, the man’s condition worsened. Vijay Ahuja, a medical student in Grocott’s team, insisted they get involved. The stricken man’s colleagues conceded there was a problem, but it was now too dark to take him down to safety. Recognising the seriousness of the situation, one of the doctors on Grocott’s team, Dan Martin, began treatment. Martin worked through the night, managing to keep the seriously ill climber alive until dawn, when the patient’s team were able to transport him down the mountain.

But doctors are studying what’s going on here, and it can be helpful to people who would never think of ascending anything other than a small hill. That’s because there’s something about altitude sickness that’s very mysterious—it doesn’t just strike those in bad condition. In fact, it appears to strike rather randomly:

Health and fitness have no bearing on human oxygen efficiency: Xtreme Everest has taken 70-year-old civilians up the mountain with no problems, but fit, young military personnel have had to turn back. The issue is genetic, and for the last ten years Xtreme Everest has been trying to identify the specific genes concerned, which in turn might allow scientists to develop drugs that would mimic oxygen-efficient physiology. About 325,000 people are treated in ICUs in the UK each year, and Britons have a one in five chance of ending up in one at some point. Around 80,000 British people die from oxygen-related problems in ICUs every year.

In 2007, the following experiment was conducted. It was quite elaborate:

Sixty scientists, medics and researchers were recruited; 198 members of the public would trek to Base Camp, making themselves hypoxic in the process, and be tested. There would be 60-odd tests on most members of the party, with 15 climbing on to the 8,850-metre-high summit, where they would set up a lab and take the highest-altitude, lowest-oxygen blood samples in history. The simple aim: to discover the key difference between the bodies of the people who coped with the drop in oxygen and those who did not.

Results of the experiment indicated the difference was in the mitochondria. Later studies (published in 2017) of Sherpas—the people who guide expeditions, live in the area, and whose bodies have evolved over time to cope with the altitude—found something astounding:

The Sherpas were not only using oxygen to make ATP more efficiently than lowlanders, but also while the energy levels in the muscles of lowlanders drop at altitude as oxygen becomes scarcer, the energy levels in Sherpa muscles increases. “It is an extraordinary finding,” says Murray. “They need oxygen like we do, but in that low-oxygen environment, they produce not just more energy than us lowlanders, but they themselves have more energy than they do at sea level. In other words, as they climb upwards into the environment where they have adapted for thousands of years, they become healthier.

This can guide researchers who are attempting to produce drugs to help ICU patients and others with hypoxia.

On the Gina Haspel torture story: fake, but inaccurate

The New Neo Posted on by

In still another example of the sad and sorry and downright dangerous state of journalism today, the tale of Gina Haspel’s (Trump’s new pick to head the CIA) involvement in overseeing the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah in Afghanistan in 2002, published in February of 2017 by ProPublica, is now being retracted as false.

The Democrats’ response to Haspel’s nomination was to accuse her of being a torturer overseer on the basis of these stories.

Similar accusations also had been raised on a story in the NY Times in Feburary of 2017:

The New York Times reported that in 2002 Haspel oversaw the torture of terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and her name was on the cable ordering the destruction of the videotapes of their interrogations, although the CIA stated that it was Haspel’s boss at the time, Jose Rodriguez, who was the head of the CIA’s clandestine service, who ordered the tapes destroyed.

Here’s an excerpt from ProPublica’s retraction of its own 2017 story:

On Feb. 22, 2017, ProPublica published a story that inaccurately described Gina Haspel’s role in the treatment of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaida leader who was imprisoned by the CIA at a secret “black site” in Thailand in 2002.

The story said that Haspel, a career CIA officer who President Trump has nominated to be the next director of central intelligence, oversaw the clandestine base where Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding and other coercive interrogation methods that are widely seen as torture. The story also said she mocked the prisoner’s suffering in a private conversation. Neither of these assertions is correct and we retract them. It is now clear that Haspel did not take charge of the base until after the interrogation of Zubaydah ended.

Extraordinary. Or maybe the most extraordinary thing about it is that it was ultimately retracted, because such errors (if they are errors rather than deliberate falsifications) are not unusual. How did these intrepid journalists get it wrong? As they tell the story in their retraction article:

Our account of Haspel’s actions was drawn in part from declassified agency cables and CIA-reviewed books which referred to the official overseeing Zubaydah’s interrogation at a secret prison in Thailand as “chief of base.” The books and cables redacted the name of the official, as is routinely done in declassified documents referring to covert operations.

The Trump administration named Haspel to the CIA’s No. 2 job in early February 2017. Soon after, three former government officials told ProPublica that Haspel was chief of base in Thailand at the time of Zubaydah’s waterboarding.

We also found an online posting by John Kiriakou, a former CIA counter-terrorism officer, who wrote that “It was Haspel who oversaw the staff” at the Thai prison, including two psychologists who “designed the torture techniques and who actually carried out torture on the prisoners.”

So the original claim seems to have been based on the reports of some people who weren’t necessarily there and who remain unnamed and whose positions are unspecified. And fact-checking the most simple fact—when was Haspel posted to the Thai prison and did it coincide with the timeline of the waterboardings—seems to have been beyond the capacity of the Times or ProPublica.

That’s the way reporting goes these days; lots of mistakes. However, have you ever noticed that the errors seem to mostly go in one direction only, the direction that favors the left’s “narrative”? How can that be, since we all know reporters are oh-so-objective?

I don’t think most reporters outright lie knowing they are lying, although I have little doubt that some do. I think that stories like this one are mostly a case of the expression “too good to fact-check.” If you want something to be true it is easy to fail to doubt it sufficiently, and if you haven’t been rigorously trained in the idea that it is in that sort of situation that you must fact-check the most carefully of all, then you’ve set yourself up for errors like this one.

In addition, there are ordinarily no bad consequences for your mistake. Hey, you got a ton of clicks, didn’t you? The story is out there, isn’t it? And most people will believe it and therefore it does its ideological task rather well, even if later debunked. And you’ve covered yourself by printing the disclaimer. Win, win, win…

I’m not familiar with ProPublica, so I don’t know whether they generally do good work or not. But I found this description of their self-described goals on their “about” page:

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. We dig deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust ”” and we stick with those issues as long as it takes to hold power to account.

With a team of more than 75 dedicated journalists, ProPublica covers a range of topics including government and politics, business, criminal justice, the environment, education, health care, immigration, and technology. We focus on stories with the potential to spur real-world impact. Among other positive changes, our reporting has contributed to the passage of new laws; reversals of harmful policies and practices; and accountability for leaders at local, state and national levels.

So they are engaged in uncovering abuses of power with the goal of sparking change. Those are the first two paragraphs, and it’s clear that that is their main goal. If I were to guess, I would wager that the vast majority of them are to the left of center.

Only later, towards the end of paragraph three (and towards the end of the description) do they get around to saying, “We are committed to uncovering the truth, no matter how long it takes or how much it costs…” To me this indicates that “truth” is subordinate to the reformist agenda, and therein lies the problem.

In its retraction, ProPublica also wrote this concerning its original 2017 article and the research they did for it:

…[W]e approached the CIA’s press office with an extensive list of questions about the cables and Haspel’s role in running the Thai prison, particularly her dealings with Zubaydah.

An agency spokesman declined to answer any of those questions but released a statement that was quoted in the article, asserting that “nearly every piece of reporting that you are seeking comment on is incorrect in whole or in part.”

The CIA did not comment further on the story after its publication and we were not aware of any further questions about its accuracy until this week.

Wasn’t that response question enough to motivate the reporters to make absolutely sure they were fact-checking this story with great vigor? And if not, why not? In their defense, they did include that quote from the CIA spokesman in their original article (the article is reproduced in the story retracting it). But it didn’t seem to stop them from blazing ahead with those inaccuracies.

The Ides

The New Neo Posted on by

I just noticed that today is the Ides of March:

Shakespeare (in “Julius Caesar”—“Beware the Ides of March”) may be the reason why the line is famous today, but the Ides of March — a date on the Roman calendar that coincides with March 15 — has been significant long before Shakespeare’s early 1600s play…

…[T]he phrase actually means “middle of the month,” which falls on the 15th day of the month in March, May, July and October and the 13th day of the other months…

In the olden days, the Roman calendar was divided into three parts — the “Calends,” “Nones” and “Ides” — to identify special lunar events.

The “Calends” signified the “start of the new moon cycle” on the first day of the month, according to online calendar Time and Date. “Nones” came next, about a week into a new month, to mark the half moon. Lastly, “Ides” marked the full moon.

It really seems to have no significance anymore, except as a saying.

Prediction about the 2018 election

The New Neo Posted on by

No, I’m not predicting what the results will be.

I’m predicting what the Democratic tactic will be. Let’s call it the Lamb Approach.

Here’s how I imagine it will go. In vulnerable Republican-held districts, find a pleasant, articulate Democrat who’s willing to espouse somewhat conservative principles and to say that he or she will stick to them if elected.

Make sure that Conor Lamb follows through on his conservative-leaning promises, right up till Election Day in 2018. After all, in terms of consequences it doesn’t matter how he votes till then, because the Republicans are in control right now and will be able to pass legislation in the House whether he votes with them or against them.

During the 2018 campaigns for these contested seats, point to Lamb as an example of what the newly-independent Democrats will do once in office. Secure a majority in the House for the next Congress, which shouldn’t be too difficult (the Senate is a lot harder—this year, anyway). Once that House majority is sworn in, follow the usual playbook of marching in lockstep as a Democratic group.

Many people have indicated they think that if the Democrats get a majority they will impeach Donald Trump. Since it only takes a simple majority, that is definitely a possibility. But they will face some difficulty in convicting him, just as occurred with the impeachment of Bill Clinton. It takes a whole lot of senators to convict a president: 2/3 (that’s 67), and unless one party has that number, it requires a fair number of crossover votes.

When President Nixon was forced to resign, the Democrats controlled the House and Senate by a large margin (see this). But they still lacked the requisite 67 votes in the Senate and needed help from Republicans, help that was ultimately provided.

This was the situation during July of 1974:

Republican leaders in Congress were also estimating vote counts: during a July 29 private meeting between House Minority Leader John Rhodes and Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, Rhodes estimated that impeachment in the House would get as many as 300 votes, well more than the majority of 218 it needed, and Scott felt that there were 60 votes for conviction in the Senate, a little short of the two-thirds of 100 it needed. Both felt that the situation was deteriorating for the president.

What changed? In August, as a result of a SCOTUS decision, Nixon was forced to release what became known as the “smoking gun” tape, which established his complicity in some of the Watergate aftermath, and as a result it became clear that Nixon had lost the support of most Republicans as well:

During the late afternoon of August 7, 1974, Senators Goldwater and Scott and Representative Rhodes met with Nixon in the Oval Office and told him that his support in Congress had all but disappeared. Rhodes told Nixon that he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House. Goldwater and Scott told the president that there were not only enough votes in the Senate to convict him, but that no more than 15 or so Senators were willing to vote for acquittal ”“ far fewer than the 34 he needed to avoid removal from office. They did not pressure Nixon to resign, but simply made the realities of the situation clear. Goldwater later wrote that as a result of the meeting, Nixon “knew beyond any doubt that one way or another his presidency was finished.”

His resignation followed on August 9.

What was on that all-important “smoking gun” tape? This:

In that tape, Nixon agrees that administration officials should approach Richard Helms, Director of the CIA, and Vernon A. Walters, Deputy Director, and ask them to request L. Patrick Gray, Acting Director of the FBI, to halt the Bureau’s investigation into the Watergate break-in on the grounds that it was a national security matter. The special prosecutor felt that Nixon, in so agreeing, had entered into a criminal conspiracy whose goal was the obstruction of justice.

There is no question in my mind that it is the current hope of Democrats (and probably some Republican Never-Trumpers) to have a repeat of this scenario or something very much like it. The leading possibility in their minds at the moment is that Mueller makes a case that Trump obstructed justice, the Republicans turn on him, and he’s out.

I’m not saying that all or any of this will actually happen. I just think it’s the general plan and/or hope of Democrats, and that it is not completely far-fetched. I also wonder whether anyone in Conor Lamb’s district who voted for Trump in 2016 and still supports him, and yet voted for Lamb last Tuesday, understands that such a vote helps to lay the foundation for Trump’s removal.

Nixon’s resignation had many repercussions, but one of them was that the overwhelming Democratic dominance of Congress—which had begun in the 1960s—went on for twenty more years (with the exception of a small Republican Senate majority during some of Reagan’s tenure). We also got President Ford (the only president who had never won a national election, even as VP) and the Carter administration.

[NOTE: Sorry to sound so gloomy.]

Skin color and violence, Down syndrome and “cheerfulness”

The New Neo Posted on by

Every now and then there’s a side discussion in the comments section where I respond to someone at such great length, and with so much research involved, that I figure it makes sense to turn my comment into a post. So here we go.

This particular post is based on a discussion I had with commenter “Frog,” in which he’d asked the following question:

Is it racist to suppose, just for a moment, that the skin-color gene is linked to a trait for violence, just like trisomy 21 is linked to a trait for smiling cheeriness? Or is that merely coincidental?

No, it’s not racist to ask a question about such a possible linkage. However, it is racist to assume such a linkage unless and until there is proof of it.

What’s more, even the commonly-observed linkage between the trait of “cheerfulness” and Down syndrome (trisomy 21) is not necessarily quite as clear and/or clearly biologically (genetically) based as one might think. Take a look at this article, for example. Here’s an excerpt:

Many areas of the Down syndrome behavioral phenotype have been well researched…

For decades, researchers and practitioners have attempted to describe commonalities in personality style among individuals with Down syndrome, with some arguing for a stereotype involving a pleasant, affectionate, and passive personality style (Gibbs & Thorpe, 1983; Rodgers, 1987). This stereotype has been supported by studies of parent perception of children with Down syndrome, where in one study, over 50% of 11 year old children with Down syndrome were described as “affectionate”, “lovable,” “nice,” and “getting on well with other people,”…

However, a more nuanced exploration of personality-motivation in Down syndrome reveals great complexity in personality development and motivational style over time. In addition to these positive perceptions of personality in individuals with Down syndrome, other research reports have described individuals with Down syndrome as showing a specific motivational orientation involving lower levels of task persistence and higher levels of off-task social behaviors (Kasari & Freeman, 2001; Landry & Chapieski, 1990; Pitcairn & Wishart, 1994; Ruskin, Kasari, Mundy & Sigman, 1994; Vlachou & Farrell, 2000). This lowered persistence is sometimes complemented by a stubborn or strong willed personality streak, also described in studies of temperament in Down syndrome (Carr, 1995; Gibson, 1978).

Though they have not received the same amount of attention from researchers as more positive personality dimensions…

…[I]n those instances when children with Down syndrome are not able to generate new [cognitive] strategies that can serve as a means to an end, it may be that what comes most naturally to them is to recruit their strengths in social skills. As a result, they may develop a style that involves responding to challenging situations with charming or socially engaging behaviors that, ultimately, take them (and their social partner) off task. Or, they may rely on another social strategy, such as recruiting help from a social partner in order to help them complete a task, which has also been demonstrated in several laboratory studies (Fidler, Hepburn, Mankin & Rogers, 2005; Kasari & Freeman, 2001). In either case, the coupling of poor strategic thinking and strengths in social relatedness is hypothesised to lead to the less persistent and overly social personality-motivational orientation observed in this population.

I could go on quoting, but the point is that we really lack a good understanding of what the “cheerfulness” of Down syndrome children is about, and what causes it. Is it some sort of linkage with having trisomy 21? Or is this “cheerfulness” the reaction of many Down syndrome children to the combination of cognitive and developmental deficits they experience, combined with their relative lack of social deficits? Does that combination encourage them to focus on and use their social strengths more and more to distract from and to deal with (in the social sense) their cognitive deficits?

Researchers don’t seem to know.

Trisomy 21 is a very discrete and clear either/or thing—a person either has it or he/she doesn’t have it, although there is still variation in how Down syndrome people function and at what level. Race—and skin color—is a very very very different thing.

For example, there is no “skin-color gene.” Skin color inheritance is far more complex than that:

Both the amount and type of melanin produced is controlled by a number of genes that operate under incomplete dominance. One copy of each of the various genes is inherited from each parent. Each gene can come in several alleles, resulting in the great variety of human skin tones.

We still don’t know for certain the number of genes involved in skin color inheritance, but research indicates there are at least three, plus alleles, and it is possible that there are more (and this article says that half a dozen have been identified).

Also:

It is important to remember here that in polygenic inheritance, alleles do not display dominance over others, rather, each contributing allele gives an additive effect rather than a masking effect, and so the way that the alleles interact is different to those in Mendelian genetics. The additive effect means that each contributing allele produces one unit of color.

The article then goes on to give a hypothetical in which three genes (plus alleles) for skin color could generate, from 2 parents, 64 different color possibilities. It is very complex, and some simple linkage with “violence” (also a very complex trait) is certainly something a person is free to speculate about, but it is sheer imaginative speculation at this point, and I see no reason to believe it accurately describes reality.

In addition, skin color is not race. It is one of very many traits connected with race, race being a set of convenient categories each of which represents a collection of many traits that vary over geography. “Skin color” ranges in all races, with some Southern Indian people (for example; there are other examples) exhibiting very dark skin color.

We all bring a lot of assumptions to the table. But I think it’s important to examine those assumptions in the light of what we know (not all that much) and what we don’t know (a lot), and be very careful in what we conclude.

Pennsylvania special election for House seat

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a squeaker, just as the polls predicted, although so far it seems to be squeaking in Democrat Conor Lamb’s direction. He’s declared victory, although the fat lady hasn’t quite sung yet.

How do we interpret this? It’s certainly not good news for the right, in a district Donald Trump won handily.

I hadn’t followed the race at all closely, but one thing that struck me a couple of days ago when I saw a clip of each candidate speaking briefly (and by “briefly” I really mean briefly; just a sentence or two from each) is that the Democrat Lamb was a much more attractive candidate than Saccone. By “attractive” I’m not speaking of anything physical. I’m talking about demeanor, voice, whatever it is that makes people decide (often within four seconds of being exposed to someone) whether they are drawn to that person or not.

And likeability is very very important in elections.

Apparently, Lamb also ran as a conservative Democrat in what is a rather conservative district. I’m always surprised when that ploy works with voters, because by now they should realize that a vote for Conor Lamb is a vote for Pelosi and for handing the House back to the Democrats in 2018.

Here’s the way it seems to have happened:

[Lamb] struck a decidedly independent tone throughout the campaign, making headlines when he said he would not support House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi as the Democratic leader if a blue wave swept the House in 2018, echoing his support for the Second Amendment, and telling voters he personally doesn’t believe in abortion (though he supports Roe v. Wade as the law of the land).

“He’s got local ties; he’s a local guy,” Tim Waters, the political director for the United Steelworkers Political Action Committee, told Vox. “He’s a young guy with a lot of energy … right down the line on issues that affect workers in this district.”

Lamb’s independent streak has also made it difficult for Republicans to attack him as a politician in step with Pelosi, although they certainly tried. Republicans and conservative groups have mostly been trying to tie Lamb to the Democratic agenda.

But throughout the campaign, there was not a lot of evidence it was sticking.

Pennsylvania is in a state of flux in terms of how its districts are drawn, however. So this district may cease to exist in a while, although that depends on how the courts decide.

Another day, another blizzard

The New Neo Posted on by

And I just hope the power doesn’t go out.

We’ve had quite a few blizzards lately. And yes, this one isn’t technically a blizzard because the winds haven’t reached 35 mph. Mostly they’re calling it “blizzard-like,” although some headlines do use the “b” word.

I don’t care what you call it; it’s a big big storm. We’re supposed to get well over a foot, and all I have to do is look out the window and it’s easy to see that winds are high because the snowfall is very slanted. I may suit up and step outside for a moment before it gets dark, just to experience it (briefly!), but other than that I hunker down and am grateful for a nice warm cozy insulated place to be.

And electricity. Keep that electricity coming!

Hillary’s newest outburst against the people who didn’t vote for her

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s an odd thing that yesterday I wrote a post comparing Obama’s “bitter clinger” remarks to Hillary’s comments about “deplorables,” and almost immediately after that I I saw that she’d just doubled down on those sort of comments, this time while speaking in India:

…I win the coasts, I win Illinois, Minnesota, places like that. But what the map doesn’t show you is that I won the places that represent two-thirds of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the places that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward, and his whole campaign, Make America Great Again, was looking backwards. “You don’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women getting jobs, you don’t want to see that Indian-American succeeding more than you are, whatever your problem is, I’m going to solve it.”

Clinton didn’t stop there. She also trashed women—white women, that is—in a very odd way:

“Democrats, going back to my husband and even before, but just in recent times going back to Bill and our candidates and then President Obama, have been losing the vote, including white women. We do not do well with white men and we don’t do well with married white women,” Clinton said.

She went on to say that white women face an “ongoing pressure to vote the way that your husband, your boss, your son, whoever, believes you should.”

Clinton said that she was on the way to winning the white women vote until then-FBI Director James Comey sent a letter to leaders in Congress less than two weeks before the election stating that the FBI reopened its investigation into her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

“All of a sudden white women, who were going to vote for me and frankly standing up to the men in their lives and the men in their workplaces, were being told, ”˜She’s going to jail. You don’t want to vote for her. It’s terrible, you can’t vote for that.’ So, it just stopped my momentum and it decreased my vote enough because I was ahead. I was winning, and I thought I had fought my way back in the ten days from that letter until the election. I fell a little bit short,” Clinton said.

That is really quite extraordinary. So this supposed champion of women everywhere, and of their autonomy, sees the married white women who didn’t vote for her as husband-obedient lemmings, just standing by their menfolk (remember this?) and not being able to think for themselves.

What’s going on here, besides Hillary Clinton being Hillary Clinton? Why would she continue an approach that really doesn’t seem like a winning tactic—and one that is especially ironic in a woman who got her start in politics through her association with her own husband?

The first hint is in the manner in which she was introduced at that forum in India, as the “woman who should have been the president of the United States of America.” Can you imagine hearing that at least 20 times a day, every day, from almost everyone you meet? It feeds both her considerable ego as well as her towering defensiveness.

I think that Clinton has never gotten over the shock of losing to Donald Trump. I can only imagine the joy that his nomination engendered in the Clinton camp. Hillary must have felt that now she was practically home free, the dream of a lifetime almost realized. She would be a historical First much like Obama, and she would be able to solidify and extend the huge gains made for the left during his presidency. She could taste it; she could feel it.

The ignominy of losing, and of losing to Trump of all people, must have felt almost Shakespearean in its agony. Why wouldn’t she lash out at anyone she perceived as causing that to happen, and why wouldn’t she grab onto any and all conspiracy theories to explain it? Anything to avoid facing the fact that she lost because Americans just didn’t want her to be president, and they preferred even the likes of Trump to her.

And to top it all off, Hillary did win the popular vote, and although that’s not the way elections are won in this country it’s certainly another fact that made her defeat especially sharp in the psychological sense.

But aside from the personal and emotional reasons this approach—of dissing those who didn’t vote for her—would appeal to her, I assume that Democrats in general think this approach is the winning one, because it is so very common on that side. All the good people vote for us! All the thinking people vote for us!

This is not new. Remember Adlai Stevenson? He famously said—with a great deal more wit and charm than Hillary Clinton—the following:

A supporter once called out, “Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!” And Adlai Stevenson answered, “That’s not enough. I need a majority.”

He never got that majority. And now Hillary Clinton is in the process of realizing that she never will, either.

Tillerson’s finally fired

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, it’s been rumored almost as long as Rex Tillerson has been Secretary of State, and almost as often as those “chaos in the White House” stories have been published, and now it’s finally happened: Trump has fired Tillerson. And of course there’s no dearth of theories as to why this happened and why it happened now.

So I’ll add my voice, because I probably know as much (that is, as little) as anybody else except Trump, Tillerson, and those closest to them.

The first principle to remember is that Trump loves to fire people. Maybe “love” is the wrong word, but certainly he feels very very comfortable firing people and he created an entire TV persona around that fact.

The second point is that he and Tillerson have apparently been somewhat at odds from the start, and those constant rumors were based on something, although news reports weren’t getting the timing right. Exactly what they were at odds about is not totally clear, but apparently tactics towards North Korea was one of them, and that answers the question of “why now?”.

Trump and Tillerson have had a fraught relationship for many months. Trump told reporters Tuesday that he ultimately decided to fire the secretary because they disagreed over strategy in key areas of foreign policy, such as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the approach to North Korea and the overall tone of U.S. diplomacy.

Tillerson said he received a call from Trump around noon Tuesday, more than three hours after his firing was first reported by The Washington Post and announced in a tweet from the president. His voice quivering, Tillerson thanked career diplomats and the American people for the opportunity to serve but notably did not praise Trump.

That last paragraph makes it sound as though the tweet and the WaPo announcement came simultaneously, but apparently what happened is that the WaPo published the news first, then Trump tweeted, and that’s how Tillerson found out. Had Trump originally planned to tell Tillerson in some different way, and then the WaPo finessed him? We’ll never know.

President Trump’s choice to replace Tillerson is Mike Pompeo, who was head of the CIA and seems to still be well-respected. Pompeo will be replaced by Gina Haspel, who recently became Deputy Director of the CIA and would be the agency’s first female head (not that the opposition will praise Trump much for the breaking of that glass ceiling).

This tweet by WaPo congressional reporter (the oh-so-objective congressional reporter) Erica Werner is typical of Democratic reaction:

https://twitter.com/ericawerner/status/973553009962704896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.powerlineblog.com%2Farchives%2F2018%2F03%2Fhow-the-democrats-will-respond-to-pompeo-and-haspel-nominations.php

If you detect a hint of weariness on my part, you would be correct.

As president, Trump is allowed to fire people he wishes to fire. He’s allowed to appoint people he wishes to appoint—with Senate approval. Trump being Trump, he will probably be firing people at a higher rate than most presidents. That’s probably not just because—as I already stated—he has little reluctance to give people the boot, but also because I would guess he’s not an easy person to work for and a lot of people are reluctant to be publicly associated with him. That last element was operating when he was choosing a vice president, for example (I was surprised at the time that Pence accepted, and I think so far that’s gone very well), and it’s still operating now, although I believe that reluctance has become a bit less powerful over time.

The bitter clinger Trump voters

The New Neo Posted on by

You probably remember something about that fundraiser speech that Obama gave in 2008 in San Francisco, the one that featured his infamous, insulting, condescending, and reductionist “bitter clingers” remark. But looking back on it, it strikes me that Obama’s approach was far more subtle and effective than Hillary Clinton’s when speaking of the same phenomenon.

Here’s the relevant text (and audio) of Obama’s speech. Scroll down for the text:

…[O]ur challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Earlier in the speech he has also done a typical Obamish thing, which is to say this isn’t really racism on their part and then to say it is. Here’s what I mean:

Because everybody just ascribes it to ”˜white working-class don’t wanna work ”” don’t wanna vote for the black guy.’ That’s…there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today – kind of implies that it’s sort of a race thing.

Here’s how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by ”” it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

Cute, isn’t it? Are they racists, or are they not?

Here is Hillary Clinton in 2016 saying much the same thing. She just says it differently:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic””you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

She said the other half of Trump’s supporters “feel that the government has let them down” and are “desperate for change.”

“Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well,” she said.

Both Obama and Clinton were speaking to supporters at fundraisers—he in San Francisco, she in New York, both liberal bastions. They were characterizing the same people as “bitter clingers” and “deplorables.” When Obama was speaking he didn’t call them “Trump supporters” because Trump wasn’t a political force at the time, but he was clearly talking about the same people. Essentially, Obama said they were racists and Clinton said they (half of them, anyway) were racists, but she said it outright and he said it in his usual indirect, ha-ha wink-wink way.

Obama also said they were xenophobic and Islamaphobic and Hillary said the same, except she said it outright and he couched it in phony psychobabble: “it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” They’re not really bad people, says Obama; they’re just the victims of psychological forces beyond their control, forces which he, Obama, understands in the enormity of his wisdom and compassion.

And of course there’s no real or rational or valid reason for these people to be against immigrants. (Note that he doesn’t say “illegal immigrants,” he says “immigrants,” although it’s far more common to be against illegal immigration, or the way immigrants are inadequately vetted, than to be against legal immigration in its entirety).

The difference between Obama and Clinton on this topic was mostly of emphasis and tone, but I believe that difference accounts at least in part for the fact that Obama got elected and Clinton didn’t. Oh, there were other reasons as well, but this tone difference was a big one.

Personally, I prefer the more direct approach of Clinton to the subtle one of Obama. With Clinton, it’s easier to see what you’re getting.

I sometimes think that the most effective thing the Democrats have done politically in recent years is to label their opposition this way: as racist, stupid, emotional haters. Whether it’s done with more subtlety and fake-sincere “understanding,” as Obama did it, or whether it’s done more openly and nastily as Clinton did it, it’s done by Democrats almost constantly.

And there are people on the right who share that view of Trump supporters, as well. I believe that at least some of the conservative Never-Trump fervor has to do with not wanting to get into bed with the deplorable bitter-clinging riffraff.

That doesn’t mean that some supporters of Trump aren’t racist. Some definitely are. But it is a strategic ploy to characterize that group as constituting some huge number/proportion (Hillary cites half), or to say that racist/xenophobic hatred is the most important motive for policy positions such as opposition to illegal immigration. But it’s a strategy that works with a lot of people, who have a horror of being called racists or of casting their lot with people who have been labeled with that term.

[ADDENDUM: And here’s Hillary today with more condemnation of the people who were not smart enough and tolerant enough and productive enough to vote for her.]

Are we close to making fusion power practical?

The New Neo Posted on by

This seems a bit far-fetched (or at least premature) to me, but wouldn’t it be nice?:

The project, a collaboration between scientists at MIT and a private company, will take a radically different approach to other efforts to transform fusion from an expensive science experiment into a viable commercial energy source. The team intend to use a new class of high-temperature superconductors they predict will allow them to create the world’s first fusion reactor that produces more energy than needs to be put in to get the fusion reaction going.

Bob Mumgaard, CEO of the private company Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which has attracted $50 million in support of this effort from the Italian energy company Eni, said: “The aspiration is to have a working power plant in time to combat climate change. We think we have the science, speed and scale to put carbon-free fusion power on the grid in 15 years.”

It’s an appealing prospect, but I am skeptical both of the concept and the time frame.

When Mumgaard says the idea is to have a working plant “in time to combat climate change,” what he’s referring to is the idea that such a plant would be a power source that doesn’t use fossil fuels and doesn’t create greenhouse gases or hazardous waste. And yet:

Decades of disappointment in the field has led to the joke that fusion is the energy of the future ”“ and always will be.