Category Archives: View

Monday, January 23, 2017

John Glenn must surely have wondered, as all the astronauts weathered into geezers, how a great nation grew so impoverished in spirit.

Our heroes are old and stooped and wizened, but they are the only giants we have. Today, when we talk about Americans boldly going where no man has gone before, we mean the ladies’ bathroom. Progress.

Mark Steyn

If Republicans want to force through massive tax cuts, we will fight them tooth and nail.

Senator Elizabeth Warren

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

“Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Immigration without assimilation is invasion.

Tomorrow I have a routine maintenance appointment out at Kaiser, and I’m going to drive myself. I’ll leave early enough that no hurry will be involved, and take large unobstructed streets. I drive fine and my glasses are good enough, and I feel up to it, and I think it is as well to be reasonably independent, so I didn’t arrange for a driver. I still won’t drive at night or on a freeway, although I have done both since the stroke, with no incidents; or rather, once when taking Roberta to the emergency room, at night, we encountered a street party requiring me to thread through crowds of revelers in the street, and I managed that nicely.

CBS, Paramount Settle Lawsuit Over ‘Star Trek’ Fan Film

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/cbs-paramount-settle-lawsuit-star-trek-fan-film-966433

 

 

 

 

Alas, the settlement doesn’t tell us much about “fair use”, but it sure created work for lawyers, which probably helped the LA economy.

Mr. Trump had a busy weekend and a busier Monday. His visit to the CIA went well, but then he wandered off track into talking about the crowds at his inauguration and various other ambiguous subjects; it’s hard to tell precisely what, because the traditional media are very selective in what they are reporting, and most of the so-called information comes from columnists who mix their contempt for Trump in with their factual reporting. The media score it as a Trump blunder, but then they score most things he does as silly, unwise, blustering, megalomaniac, or worse, so that it’s again impossible – for me anyway – to tease out what really happened. I approach the subject this way: Trump has often in the past shown he is crazy like a Fox. From the first day coming down that escalator and announcing he was a candidate, through the elimination one by one of 17 pretty well qualified Republican candidates, to his highly improbable nomination, and on to his impossible election as President; he has shown that he knows what he’s doing. I start with the view that he’s more in control of his actions than the media give him credit for. He also likes the win, even if it’s over trivial matters; but he’s what we used to call a good winner, usually, once that particular game is over.

Anyway, he is President, and his style is not in question any longer; it is what it is. He is not a professional politician, and didn’t run as one. One his first day he overturned a number of regulations, and froze non-defense hiring. That latter he had to do: the National Debt doubled in the last eight years; his predecessor spent more money than the 44 Presidents preceding him combined. (Yes, he had no control over some of that spending, but he made no real effort to stop it either.) The first thing is to stop the bleeding: if you are in a hole, stop digging. If government is too big, stop making it bigger. That he seems to be trying to do.

Now we’ll see if he can eliminate Bunny Inspectors. I doubt he has ever heard of them, but I hope he has someone looking for federal civil servants doing jobs that the federal government ought not be doing at all (even if they are done well; the government workers may be very competent at their jobs). One such job is federal licenses for stage magician rabbits, and pet rabbits sold as pets by kids in their back yards. I doubt these activities need regulating at all, but if they do surely it is a state matter, not the business of the Department of Agriculture of the United States of America, to send Federal agents to magic shows to see if the magician uses a rabbit and to inspect the licenses of the magician if he does.

We’ve had our discussions of Free Trade here; Trump’s actions in that regard are ambiguous; the trade deals he has got us out of are huge and complex, not free trade whatever they are, and I for one have far more confidence in Trump’s ability to make a deal that I ever had in Kerry or Mrs. Clinton. They do seem to know how to marry well, but that is not an international deal with American jobs at stake. If there are deals to be made, I’d rather Trump were in charge of them than Mr. Obama.

I don’t know what to make of the open war with the press, but it is, after all, only a recognition of an existing condition that prevails when the Democrats are not in the White House. Recall the lady reporter/columnist saying of one Republican President “I don’t see how he won at all. I don’t know a single person who voted for him.” She meant it, too. Literally.

So much for the first days.

I remain dependent on patron and platinum subscriptions to maintain this place, because I must have enough income to have someone pretty well full time to help me look after Roberta; since the stroke I am simply not confident in my ability to do it.  That works, but it is an expense; it is time consuming to hustle for journalism income, which would mean neglecting this place. I can do it if I have to; and of course I have an income from my backlist, and I am working on three books. I’m not in danger of poverty, nor of neglecting my fiction. That goes slowly because minor interruptions take much longer to recover from when I am doing fiction as opposed to non-fiction.  

This remains a Public Site, free to all, without annoying advertisements, but it is supported by your patronage, which I greatly appreciate. If you have not subscribed, or cannot remember when last you did, this would be a good time. I don’t bug you often, but this IS pledge week…

 

The large crowds of women marching in protest confuses me. With few exceptions, they were orderly – one observation is that they threw their trash in trash cans, not on the ground as many protest marches do. And they were certainly angry enough. But I couldn’t figure out what they want. Leave out Madonna’s dream of blowing up the White House; what do they actually want? Opinions vary. Some want someone else to pay for their contraceptives and abortions, but surely not all of them are in danger of unwanted pregnancy, and some are actually, if quietly, pro-life. Some want Trump to resign, but surely they don’t expect that result? And there are a lot of them, not all from areas won by Mrs. Clinton. And they put the trash in trashcans.

The next few days should be interesting.

For other speculation from the libertarian view, see https://accordingtohoyt.com/2017/01/23/surviving-the-cult/

Most Watched Inauguration in History?

Jerry,

I do not find it hard to believe the claims by the President’s Press Office that the recent Inauguration was the most watched in History.

Why do I say this?

First, we know that the Media has severe bias against Trump and it appears that any means will be used to undermine his Presidency.

Second, viewing habits have changed significantly since 2009. The use of TV ratings to measure the size of the actual viewing audience will grossly understate the size of the audience due to the wide spread use of streaming for viewing events in real time. One possible way to adjust for changes in the use of TV for viewing might be to look at the potential size of the TV audience and then calculate the percentage of viewers watching the event. I do not know what results this would produce, but it might actually support the “Alternate Facts” put forward by the President’s Press Office.

As long as Americans are severely divided we will fall short of our potential. The Media, were it unbiased, could play an important part in promoting Adult Behavior on both sides of the divide and, ultimately, assist in promoting cooperative steps to improving the lot of All Americans.

Bob Holmes

It is a question of fact and definition: who is present? The crowd? TV audience? Internet viewers? It was raining in Washington and no place for small children. I have no way to resolve the question, although I would not be shocked to find either side “won” the count if there were any way of making one. I do wonder why Mr. Trump cares – or appears to care – so much, but I suspect it is part of his distrust of the media.

From Mr. Flynn, whose study of the classics is more complete than mine.

Rights, alienable or not?

Jerry
Justice was anciently defined as “the habit whereby a man renders to each one his due…” Since a virtue is defined by the good act proper to it, and a good act is in turn defined by its proper object, “jus” or “what is due to each man” has logical priority over the virtue of justice. Hence, “jus” is something much like the Enlightenment “right,” except for its vector. A “right” is something that I demand for myself; “jus” is what I owe to another. However, the former is rooted in the older meaning.
A right is something the defense of which is seen as natural, i.e., belongs to one’s nature. It is not something that you are guaranteed by an authority. Aristotle wrote that all pursue the good as they understand the good. All living things will, in the common course of nature, struggle to maintain their existence. To exist is a good, and the struggle to maintain existence is central to the theory of natural selection. Hence, the desire or impulse to defend one’s own life is both natural and primary, since without it, no other rights attach.
This does not mean that life is guaranteed, nor that it cannot be taken or surrendered in pursuit of a higher good, such as the well-being of society. But even the criminal is seen as legitimate in defending his life against a capital charge. Nor does one suppose that an enemy soldier is doing wrong by shooting back, although we may rather wish he didn’t.
Aquinas argued that human law ought not forbid every vice nor compel every virtue, citing Augustine’s dictum that if harlots were removed, the world would explode with lust. He noted that the death penalty might not be imposed even when justified when an unacceptable evil might result (e.g., killing the hostages along with the bandits) or when the adherents of the criminal are so numerous or well-armed as to incite insurrection by doing so. It would be in any case a last resort to a clear and present danger, precisely because taking a life is a deprivation of a natural good.
Aquinas grounded this in the fact that God permitted some evils for similar reasons, and this allowance for the freedom of the will lies at the root of the right to liberty. Aquinas uses the example of a judge depriving a robber of his liberty against allowing him his liberty to feed his family as the paradigm case of choosing the lesser of two evils.
The third such right, mentioned by William of Ockham, is the right to property. Again, a man defending his own property is seen as justified in doing so, even when the king’s tax collectors have the power to seize it.
And so on. Natural rights are those rooted in human nature. It is the right that is not alienable, not the thing itself. Life and liberty may easily be taken away, but the right to them cannot be taken away. Even a man “chained in prisons dark” may remain “in heart and conscience” free; and a man drowning in the ocean will nonetheless struggle to the end against his doom.

###
I have to disagree on the end of the Roman Republic. It was not a melting pot overwhelmed by an excess of Celts. The Republic collapsed well before citizenship was extended much beyond Rome itself and her close Latin allies. What brought the Public Thing low was the violence and chaos that overtook politics. They were trying to run a de facto Empire using a city council and the structure just couldn’t support it. Different politicians hired street gangs like those of Milo and Clodius to harass their opponents. There were assassinations and proscriptions; consuls and praetors leaving office were repeatedly hit with lawsuits over their conduct in office (making not-leaving-office a primary goal). Civil wars and coups d’etat. All this stoked demand for a strongman who would set things aright: Marius or Sulla, Pompey or Caesar, Antony or Octavian.
Mike

I must agree with your disagreement; I made a remark about the Republic that belongs better said about the later Empire. I defer to your analysis.

The Romans were unusual in that they tended to take their Latin conquests into the Republic rather than simply to rule over them; this was of great value in the Pyrrhus invasion when cities other than Rome remained loyal to Rome. I had this in mind, perhaps. The Romans, by their legends, descended from Trojan heroes; Troy came from a part of Asia Minor where Empires of diverse people were more common than nation-tribe-states, folkish people like the Israelites. The Hittites were an Empire, not a nation state. Etc. But that’s for another discussion.

The Rights Debate

I see the fundamental divide between Progressives and Conservatives/Libertarians as how they view rights. There are. broadly speaking, two types of rights: negative and positive. Here are examples from the US Constitution.
Negative rights are things that can’t be done: searches without a warrant, censoring speech and the press, involuntary servitude, compelling testimony against oneself, taking away arms, quartering troops in peacetime, etc.
Positive rights are things that must be provided: a court system, defense counsel if you are indigent, jury trials, a republican form of government in your state, etc.
The progressives want to expand the positive rights to include health care, food, housing, education, internet access, and a lot more. Conservatives say no. The case against positive rights is simple: if the government must provide them, they can compel them with all the force of government. For example, if there are people without health care because it is too expensive, then tax some to pay for others to get it. If it continues to be too expensive, the government could set prices, set wages, compel doctors to work longer hours or come out of retirement, force doctors to move to “underserved” areas, etc. In short, government could treat health care like we did the armed forces in wartime. And this could be expanded to any of these other positive rights.

Edmund Hack

These are the sorts of questions that used to be discussed in 8^th Grade Civics class, but now are not always given in Political Science 101; which is not to belittle the subject, but the schools and teachers.

‘. . . Together with our Russian brothers, negotiate an honored but subordinate position for China and all other sub-civilizations and nations, forming the unified Empire of Man before going on to conquer the stars.’

<http://www.socialmatter.net/2017/01/23/crash-course-reactionary-geopolitics/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

An interesting, if long, analysis. Roland cautions that you need to read the whole thing. You will almost certainly disagree with parts of it; but it is a way of thinking about reality that is often sadly lacking.

Obama staffers get permanent federal jobs

https://federalsoup.com/articles/2017/01/20/agg-obama-staffers-get-permanent-federal-jobs.aspx?s=FD_230117

During his last days in office, former president Barack Obama made over 100 appointments before the new transition took over.

• By FederalSoup Staff
• Jan 20, 2017

During his last days in office, former president Barack Obama made over 100 appointments before the new transition took over, the New York Times reports.

President Donald Trump will retain 50 essential State Department and national security officials from the Obama administration, according to the report.

The Trump administration has named only 29 of his 660 executive department appointments, the report notes.

 

Trump’s Nominees Face ‘Unprecedented’ Democrat Obstructionism

http://dailysignal.com/2017/01/22/trumps-nominees-face-unprecedented-democrat-obstructionism/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTldRM05XVXhNMlE1TUdFeiIsInQiOiI2MUFrQWM4

Nk1mU3lwcTZieDZOcXJLU01DMFg0WDNvdzcwVmV1RFp4MWhCZGI4bEFWUGVpQ2hDNStyMEhhcnpcL2lQOGphQnJpQ2dJTjF4NUIwZX

dQS3NORkUwNXZaekpwZkZpVU9rSHMwaWp6amFkQVY3SkdldkxVWk9cL2JrT1wvQyJ9

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Earth breaks heat record

Wednesday January 18, 2017 09:47 PM

 

 

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

It’s official: 2016 was the hottest year on record since scientists began tracking Earth’s temperature more than 100 years ago, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

 

The 1.69-degree jump over the 20th century average, according to NOAA, marks the third year in a row that global temperatures have reached record-shattering levels. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration added that the global average temperature for 2016 was 1.78 degrees higher than a baseline period between 1951 and 1980.

Both agencies noted that Earth’s average global temperature — which NOAA pegged at 57 degrees — was higher in 2016 than in any year since scientists began tracking it in 1880.

“For the first time in recorded history, we have now had three consecutive record-warm years,” said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was not involved in the findings. “The likelihood of this having happened in the absence of human-caused global warming is minimal.”

http://www.readingeagle.com/ap/article/earth-breaks-heat-record

Frightening, isn’t it? It’s what I saw when I opened the LA Times (after removing the annoying advertising wrap that obscured the front page).

But then I started reading the fine print, and it’s not so scary. That hockey stick wavy red line shows a temperature rise over the last century all right: one and a half degrees. That assumes we have, accurate to a tenth of a degree, an actual measurement of the temperature of the last century. It also takes not the actual average (as if we actually knew that) but the adjusted temperature. And I trust you noticed that “The National Aeronautics and Space Administration added that the global average temperature for 2016 was 1.78 degrees higher than a baseline period between 1951 and 1980.’

What it doesn’t mention is that the scientific community was in a tizzy about the coming Ice Age in the baseline period between 1951 and 1980. I attended most of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meetings from about 1968 to the end of the Century, and up into the 1890’s the AAAS was in a panic about Global Cooling. Some of you may recall Stephen Schneider’s book “The Genesis Strategy”, which has a picture of Schneider and Margaret Meade on the dust jacket. I took that picture (as a favor to them; I didn’t ask for or expect credit). Dealing with the coming ice was a major concern then; indeed, one of the arguments against made by President Carter’s science advisors was that nuclear waste had to be protected from glaciers in the future, thus raising the cost of nuclear energy. I even got into that debate.

Further:

http://www.climatedepot.com/2017/01/18/load-of-bollocks-2016-allegedly-hottest-year-by-immeasurable-1100-of-a-degree-while-satellites-show-pause-continues/

Load of bollocks: 2016 allegedly ‘hottest year’ by immeasurable amount degree – While satellites show ‘pause’ continues

Two satellite datasets agree: The Temperature Pause lives on: ‘No warming for the last 18 years’

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen on 2016 being called the ‘hottest year’: ‘The hysteria over this issue is truly bizarre’ – Warns of return ‘back to the dark ages’

Dr. David Whitehouse noted the ‘temperature pause never went away‘: ‘According to NOAA 2016 was 0.07°F warmer than 2015, which is 0.04°C. Considering the error in the annual temperature is +/- 0.1°C this makes 2016 statistically indistinguishable from 2015, making any claim of a record using NOAA data specious.’

Dr. Lindzen also ridiculed previous ‘hottest year’ claims. “The uncertainty here is tenths of a degree. When someone points to this and says this is the warmest temperature on record, what are they talking about? It’s just nonsense. This is a very tiny change period,” Lindzen said. “If you can adjust temperatures to 2/10ths of a degree, it means it wasn’t certain to 2/10ths of a degree.”
[snip]

Death Of Global Temperature ‘Pause’ Greatly Exaggerated – 2016 Not Statistically Warmer Than 1998

 

2016 Not Statistically Warmer Than 1998, Satellites Data Shows

Dr David Whitehouse: ‘Any estimate of temperature trends that have their endpoint on the uptick of the El Nino curve will give a misleadingly high trend. It is obvious that a better trend will be obtained after the natural El Nino has ended. Likewise care must be taken if the start point is near the La Nina years of 1999-2000. The temperature trends of the oceans estimated by the new paper fall into this trap.’

You can find a great deal more if you look for it, but you’ll have to look hard; the “consensus” data get most of the ink; those who ask questions generally get short shrift. But it’s there if you want. What you need to keep in mind is that the global temperature has been rising about 2 degrees per century since the Little Ice Age, and it certainly is not as warm now as it was when Leif Ericson founded the dairy farms in Greenland, some of which are still under the ice. The Earth has been warmer in historical times; and of course we’re still technically in an Ice Age. It would be well to have the means to control earth’s temperature; but that will require a lot of power. It will almost undoubtedly requite nuclear, which emits no pollutants, and generates power that energy that did not fall on the Earth. Space Solar Power, power satellites, generate energy from sunlight that would have hit the earth anyway, but they can also be used to bring down power that would not in case we need that.

I have said this many times before, but it bears repeating: we do not have a pollution problem. We do not have a fresh water problem. With sufficient energy, pollutants can be taken apart into their constituent elements, and used water can be purified and pumped up into the mountains to refill the natural aquifers. The cleanest running stream in California is the outfalls of the maximum purification elements of the Hyperion sewage disposal plat; at the moment we pump it out to sea, but if we had the energy we could pump it up to the top of the San Gabriel’s and let it run down the natural watercourses. Los Angeles is in an arid area and we’d need some outside water; but is we recycle we wouldn’t need anywhere near as much as we take from Mono Lake and the Bay Area. All we need is the power.

This is Thursday and I will be off to LASFS shortly; I’ll post this before I go. Tomorrow is Inauguration Day, and the sick joke on the left is that if they can assassinate both Trump and Pence they can keep Obama. I think that is not true – the Speaker would become President. Of course if they can get him and the President pro temp of the Senate, we’d have Kerry, not Mr. Obama.

Assembling Notes on Brain Cancer

Great notion, to assemble and edit your notes on your health experiences. Ever since reading “The Noonday Daemon”, I’ve thought that every intense, chronic major health condition deserves that kind of aware first-person account. (I’ve been retaining notes regarding my own stroke, as potential fodder for just such a project. You’ll do it better.)
In all this, best wishes, best regards, and thanks for all the work to date – as a fan, it’s a bargain at twice the price.

James Bullock

I will work on that, and add recovering from a stroke as well. It is not likely to be quickly done.

Comment stimulated by Alan Johnson’s letter…

Dear Jerry,

(I just re-subscribed today… long overdue: S-7WX21496FD374312K)

‘The Last Man To Walk on the Moon has Died.’  I, too, am deeply concerned about the long term decline of the nation. I think Jared Diamond’s Collapse likely covers the main causes: When governments become too large and too distance from grass roots problems they start making decisions which seem reasonable high up on Mount Olympus (given their priorities), but back on earth the decisions are wasteful and even destructive. I am personally horrified at the late 1990s de-engineering of our country, as if the talent and skills that built it are no longer of any value. Millions of man-years of real world engineering expertise have been discarded in the name of two decades of quick profits. Have we purchased the ropes from which we now hang?
Alan Johnson’s letters today were stimulating ( https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/last-man-on-the-moon-dies-health-care-discussion-new-work-coming-who-hacked-what-the-ancient-foreign-policy-and-other-matters/ )…

We must always remember that we live in a thoroughly-armed and quickly-armed society, and throwing any slice of any bell curve ‘to the wolves’ may have the most unexpectedly catastrophic consequences. Consider this simple example: A majority wishing to stop all food stamps using an over-simplistic ‘work or starve’ philosophy might result in a million armed starving people! Not good! There is an ancient saying, “Every society is just nine meals from anarchy.” Anarchy is a distributed phenomena, you can’t ‘call out’ the National Guard!
Likewise, if we begin to deny medical care to large swaths of a population (‘pay or perish’) we may increase black market medicine and treatments (as in the 3rd world, to the harm of all), home burglaries, and armed robberies by a factor of 100 or 1000. Also Not Good!
In Glory Road Heinlein used the interrelationship of rats, pigs, and dragons to illustrate the need for extreme care in tampering with natural balances. I would suggest that the ‘natural balance’ (the rules of society) of the USA is a thousand times more complex still. Rational social design isn’t impossible, it’s just really, really difficult!

But rational design assumes that people in power actually care about society vs what they can extract from society for themselves and their family/tribe/mafia of supporters… and there appears to be an enormous mass of anecdotal evidence to suggest that they Do Not and Will Never, in which case rational discussion is moot.

So how do you make a government that has evolved via natural social forces over decades into dysfunctionality toward its own society, suddenly care about this self-same dysfunctionality? They will answer that they are well fed and their paychecks are coming in regularly, so what’s the problem? Historically, the society has to collapse to a significant degree. We may be stumbling in a ‘fog of war’ along the edge of the precipice.

Which model below best approximates our society? I think it depends on the circumstances and the timing. I’ve read Tverberg’s postings for years (https://ourfiniteworld.com) and often find her thought-provoking, although I think that she underestimates the sheer mass of world economies and thus the time it will take for them to devolve. I’ve only just discovered Mr. John Michael Greer and haven’t read his work yet.

From: http://permaliv.blogspot.com/2015/01/gail-tverberg-vs-john-michael-greer.html

(Left: Tverberg’s talking points model. Right: Greer’s model)

 

 

 

 

You and your readers might enjoy this video on the elemental forces of governance. It’s entertaining, instructive, and worth watching. 19 minutes:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

Regards,

-John Gibbs Hackett

Thank you, and thanks for the subscription renewal. It’s time for a pledge drive. And if anyone can’t remember when they last subscribed. I suggest that now would be a good time. http://www.jerrypournelle.com/paying.html

I’ll comment another time; thanks again.

“Rights”

I risk sounding pedantic, but here goes:

Mr. Allan E. Johnson said, “For that matter, I’m not sure ‘justice’ and ‘rights’ . . .”

“Rights” can certainly be defined very crisply:

A right is a thing that a person may do — and action that a person may take — without first obtaining permission from another. In other words, the term “right” pertains to a verb, not a noun. I have the right to do something, not to have unrestricted access to something just because I want (or “deserve”) it.

This is my own definition, but I discovered that it agrees very well with the dictionary definition.

Saying that a person has a “right” to adequate housing, a decent job, education, etc. is a misuse of the term. While technically true, it avoids the important, nay crucial, fact that these are not actions, but goods, and someone must pay for them in some manner. I may not be arbitrarily denied access to some good thing, but I may not obligate another to provide it to me.

Richard White

Del Valle, Texas

I used to teach Constitutional Law, and one of my lectures was on the nature of rights. The concept din not used to mean “entitlements”, and I am not sure the change in meaning is beneficial. It would take a longer essay to deal with this and I haven’t time. But do the undeserving have rights? Of course. Should they get free goodies? More debatable. And who decides who deserves what?

Obamacare v Defense

(1) In January 17th’s View, contributor John Thomas wrote, “I suspect that most taxpayers, given the option, would far rather their tax dollars went to creating universal health care for all citizens of the â€greatest country in the history of the world€ rather than to spend trillions in pursuit of never-ending military actions which further no real national benefit but which do much to enrich the bottom lines of multi-national corporations and co-laterally the war chests of the political parties.”
I contest his conclusion concerning defense spending, but will answer to his point about taxpayers opting for healthcare over defense.
The most healthy body in the land will not stop a bullet to the heart.
What good is health without liberty?
Given the choice? I’ll take defense. I can always see a doctor about my cough and pay for it myself, but I’ll have a hard time defending myself against strategic bombers from China or Russia or the Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
I have no problem with his point about the UN or NATO allies sharing properly in the cost of defending them. After all, it is because of our covering their defense that they were able to grow from the ashes of World War II and become economic powerhouses, since they didn’t have to pay near as much to defend against the USSR. But the bottom line is that Obamacare – or ANY federal healthcare, for that matter – is unconstitutional. It is irrelevant what its quality or efficiency may be, that brings it no closer to the Constitution.
If there is any need for healthcare to be provided to citizens, it is up to the States to provide it, not the feds. So states the Tenth Amendment.
(2) Later on, you wrote, “‘If you want peace, be prepared for war’ has been relevant advice since Appius Claudius the Blind said it to the Senate of Rome.”
I have my own version of that; “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”
Cam Kirmser

If you would have peace, be prepared for war. All but the impoverished have known that for long time.

Trump is amusing me. This negotiation style is effective, no matter what you do you move yourself closer to the goals:

<.>

Trump’s team had discussed moving news conferences out of the small West Wing briefing room to the Old Executive Office Building, which is part of the White House complex, incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said Sunday on ABC.

“The press went crazy, so I said, ‘Let’s not move it.’ But some people in the press will not be able to get in,” Trump told “Fox & Friends”

in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.

“We have so many people that want to go in so we’ll have to just have to pick the people to go into the room – I’m sure other people will be thrilled about that,” he said. “But we offered a much larger room because we need a much larger room and we offered to do that, but they went crazy.”

“And they’ll be begging for a much larger room very soon, you watch.”

</>

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-media-idUSKBN1521OD?il=0

In other words, be happy with what you’ve got or you’ll learn that words can be interpreted to mean almost anything and you’ll, eventually, be seen as unreasonable, outspoken, and childish…. Did you see CNN’s Accosta? And the pressed tried to act like Trump was a volcanic bully when the CNN reporter kept trying to direct Trump’s attention away from the person he indicated had the floor.

This stuff is so childish that they’re not only making Trump resistant to any real scandal he might actually get into, but they’re creating dangers to their own job security.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

‘But is it really surprising that Trump officials would view their longtime detractors with suspicion?’

<http://nationalinterest.org/feature/never-trump-hits-the-unemployment-line-19088?page=show>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

‘Guess what? I won…”

Subject: Moe Berg article errors

Dear Doctor Pournelle,

The story about Moe Berg is one of those fascinating sidebars to the secret wars fought by both sides in World War Two. However, the article needs a couple of minor corrections to errors I spotted, and since I am no expert on all the details, I suspect there were others I could not spot.

First, Berg did not undertake the 1934 Tokyo spying as a member of, or under the aegis of, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), for the simple reason that the OSS was not created until the nineteen-forties, either shortly before or shortly after the entry of the USA into the war. The wartime mission to surveill and possibly/allegedly attempt the assassination of WernerHeisenberg was done after Berg had joined the wartime OSS, so he did later have official status with the OSS.

The other niggling error(s) was that the heavy water plant in Norway was neither secret (it was owned by the Nrsk Hydro Company, and had been opened before the war, when Norway was a neutral, independent state), nor was it destroyed by the RAF after being reconned by Berg. The RAF attempted to destroy the plant from the air, but this was not feasible due to the terrain. The Norsk Gydro electrolytic cells that produced heavy water were eventually destroyed in a raid by a team of British trained Norwegian commando’s.

Niggling matters, but I know you like accuracy, so now the record is corrected.

Best regards,

Petronius

Yes. OSS was put together from Skull & Bones people and wasn’t formed until after the war started. State department had an intelligence service. FBI wanted to be one, and there were other candidates. And of course everyone knows about the Commando raid that got the heavy water. Berg’s pictures made the RAF raid possible, but their bombing was awful.

Cold War Blues

According to Thomas Donnelly of the The Weekly Standard, “The ‘unipolar moment’ is gone: It’s now the POST Posta€“Cold War era. As President Obama leaves the Oval Office, so too will the Posta€“Cold War era exit the scene. Another Lost Ark, it may wind up in an endless, dusty warehouse, a torrent locked in a raw wood crate. What was the post–Cold War era — a time first and forever defined by what it was not? Was it even a fleeting Pax Americana, this unipolar moment? Or were such pronouncements merely hubris, the pride that inevitably comes before a fall? We’ve seen a long parade of Big Ideas, none of which seemed to last more than a season or two.”
I last commented that “I’ve been trying to suss the state of the ‘cold war’”. . . Despite your wisdom on the subject of escalation dominance, I still share, perhaps, with President-elect Trump, the inability to identify present-day Russia and its leader with as an enemy equal to the despots that we all lived with in the past. The discomfort that EU leaders are expressing with the presumed loss of Uncle Sugar’s NATO largess is instructive. Is it possible that the Cold War is over?

Darryl Hannon

In my judgment, Mr. Putin is neither a chiliastic communist nor a typical despot; he certainly does not see himself that way, and I do not think Mr. Trump regards him as such. Russia has natural interests that do not conflict with ours, and not all that many that conflict with our friends’ interests. There are some that do conflict. Read the Art of the Deal.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

John Glenn must surely have wondered, as all the astronauts weathered into geezers, how a great nation grew so impoverished in spirit.

Our heroes are old and stooped and wizened, but they are the only giants we have. Today, when we talk about Americans boldly going where no man has gone before, we mean the ladies’ bathroom. Progress.

Mark Steyn on the death of John Glenn

[expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted] [expletive redacted]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/nation-now/2017/01/16/last-moonwalker-dies/96641846/

Gene Cernan, last man to walk on moon, dies http://www.usatoday.com Retired astronaut Eugene “Gene” Cernan died Monday at age 82.

~Stephanie Osborn, “The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

I always knew I would live to see the first man on the moon. I never thought I would outlive the last one.

The farce continues, with professional politicians explaining that Mr. Trump won the election only because the Russians interfered. They did not hack the voting machines; they influenced the voters, not by telling lies, but by revealing information that the voters should not have, although it was not asserted that the information was false.. When that was finally recognized as absurd the stories changed again. I’ve stopped listening to them.

My Surface Pro automatically updated, and now when I open Outlook it asks me if I want to open a mail account. It has forgotten that it has quite a large one. The outlook files all appear to be there, but if so, the latest version of Outlook doesn’t seem to be able to open them; the program acts as if Outlook has never been installed. I haven’t time to fool with it today, but my advice to users is DO NOT be part of the experimental program on a Surface Pro unless you are prepared to use a lot of time restoring things. None of my desktop machines including this one have problems. I love the Microsoft Surface Pro when it works properly, but my experience has been that it doesn’t work properly a significant part of the time.

I remember I once took my HP Compaq tablet/desktop to Comdex, or maybe CES, and although I also had another full laptop, I was able to get through everything including filing daily reports, with the tablet. Indeed, I found myself stuck in a motel without high speed Internet and was able to connect to Peterborough by modem, and thus to file my daily show report. I don’t think the Surface Pro would have lasted that long. Of course it has no modem, but nowadays you don’t need one. Of course the Press Room always has high speed Internet, and nowadays most all motels do.

The HP Compaq tablet was wonderful, but it could be fussy, and slow compared to modern equipment like the Surface Pro; but the software was far more reliable. You could get work done with it without fearing that an automatic update would cripple a vital program and leave you helpless. I do wish Microsoft would get its mud together.

 

I’ve got the back and jip problems under control although it does take about half an hour of stretching exercises in the morning, and repeated stretches (short, a few seconds) every time I stand up.

Lindy Sisk has extracted all the relevant entries on my brain cancer experience in 2008; there’s about 15,000 words which I will flesh out with introduction and comments, add how far I had come in December, 2014 when I had the stroke, and bring it all up to the present. I did not make anything like the detailed daily commentary in 2015 as I did back in 2008, but I think it is worth publishing; I’m not sure how. It will be about 20,000 words, probably more, and I think there are some good observations of interest to anyone over 70 on how to deal with major disabling events. I’ll be working in this for a couple of months; it should have been published earlier.

I’ve got the hip problems under control with the Anderson Stretching exercises, so I’m back to work, and I’m about over my cold so I have the energy to get some work done, Deo Gratria.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Stretching-30th-Anniversary-Bob-Anderson/dp/0936070463

NSA Hacked DNC? & Obama Intel Thoughts

Jerry,

Congressman Peter King, House Intel Committee, is now saying that the CIA has never said a word to the Committee about Russia favoring one candidate over the other.

Given last week’s leak of that alleged CIA position to the Washington Post, and this week’s extraordinary CIA refusal to brief the Intel Committee on the matter, he goes on to say

“It’s almost as if people in the intelligence community are carrying out a disinformation campaign against the President-elect of the United States.”

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/12/14/rep_peter_king_almost_like_cia_is_carrying_out_a_disinformation_campaign_against_donald_trump.html

It begins to sound very much like I’m right that it’s Hillaryite bitter-enders at CIA behind this story. (I speculate that current CIA management isn’t quite ready either to repudiate or to publicly back this claim, and thus refused this short-notice Intel Committee briefing to buy time to get their story sorted out.)

I’ve mentioned privately to you more than once that, if he wants to get anything useful done, Trump will first need to go through the bureaucracies with fire and sword to root out the many burrowed-in militant progs.

Between this and the recent DOE refusal to answer Trump transition-team questions (I won’t even mention DOJ or the IRS) it sounds to me as if the politicized bureaucrats are doing their unintentional best to get Congress to back the new President in that.

More on the DOE matter, including the actual quite reasonable list of questions asked, over at

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/10/the-doe-vs-ugly-reality/

Porkypine

health care

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
I found your comments on health care very much worth reading, and I’d like to continue the discussion. Not with any notion that I have an answer; but there are some things I’d like to probe.
I’d begin with your comment “speculation on what’s fair begs the main question: how did my health concerns become your problem? “

That’s a legitimate question; but I don’t see much likelihood of an a priori answer. “Fair” is, in any event, a shaky word: it often means only “the biggest piece of cake is MINE!” For that matter, I’m not sure “justice” and “rights” can be defined without some reference to absolutes, such as the will of God. (It relates, I think, to the earlier question “do all people value the same things?”)
For example: we assert an inalienable right to life and liberty; and I affirm that, and would defend it. But on what basis are these rights “inalienable?” We do not, in fact, act as if they are; they can be, and are, suspended by the judgment of a jury of our peers. So this claim seems to me to be not so much a provable conclusion from first principles, but an assertion about the sort of society we want to live in.
Moving closer to health care: it’s my understanding that under the Roman Republic, while the courts would pass judgment on a civil suit, it was entirely the plaintiff’s responsibility to enforce that judgment. Modern “law enforcement” is a very recent, and historically idiosyncratic, development. One might ask: how did your loss of property become my problem? The only answer I see a way to defend is: it becomes my problem, and I will support a police force with my taxes, because that’s the sort of society we want to live in.

Which leads to the question: who is “we”? The last few years have made it clear that not every community in the United States is convinced the police are there to protect them; and yet we are all of us taxed to support law enforcement. Our position seems to be: we claim the right, as a society, both to maintain a law enforcement system and to insist that everybody has a duty to help pay for it. Societies could be managed differently; I wouldn’t want to live in them.

Another parallel, from the ’60s; I don’t remember that people who believed the Vietnam War was immoral and refused to support it with their taxes had much success with the argument.
Now, bring this round to health care. I don’t think I could defend an a priori right to, or entitlement to, health care. And, for that matter, as medicine becomes both more effective and more expensive I don’t think any society can in practice provide all the care that would be desirable. Neither private wealth, private insurance, nor public health care will change that. We hit limits.
But that leaves the question: what sort of society do I want to live in? And do enough of us agree with me that we can make a community decision?
I’d be prepared to defend public health care as a public policy decision. Consider reports that drug-resistant tuberculosis is breeding in inner city slums. That does NONE of us any favors. Nor is it helpful to leave uninsured people with no recourse but expensive emergency rooms. But that’s a different set of arguments. The question I’d propose at this point is: is it in fact useful to pose this as a question either of fairness or entitlement? I’m not convinced it is. But I would argue that a society which finds ways to offer at least basic health care to all its citizens has much the same values as a society which supports a community police force. We could rely on private guards. I don’t want to.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

But we never debate on those terms, and the Constitution does not precisely do so. In guarantees the states a republican form of government and forbids titles of nobility, but doesn’t say much more. Given that and the amendment that says all powers not granted to the Federal government remain with the states would suggest that it is a matter for the states; meaning that California cannot compel Iowa to pay for health care for aged California immigrants…

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
It occurs to me that much of my approach to health care (as well as other issues) may come from spending much of my life in Midwestern farm country. It isn’t what it was; the days of communal barn-raisings are long gone, and co-ops drift toward behaving like ordinary businesses. But it is still assumed that if a farmer falls sick during planting or harvest, the neighbors WILL pitch in. And if someone in the community suffers catastrophic illness, there WILL be fundraisers. These are communities which have assumed that I am indeed my brother’s keeper.
That’s not government. It’s probably something rather better. But it’s also not “I am responsible for myself, and that’s it.”
From this perspective, much of the last half century seems to me like a story of slow corruption. Co-ops turn into businesses, small operations are bought out by “bottom line” conglomerates, religious and community hospitals are bought up by for-profit organizations which insist that doctors see an ever-increasing number of patients per hour, religious fraternal organizations mutate into garden variety insurance companies… Grump. So speaks the curmudgeon.
Is turning things over to government my first choice? Hardly. But in this century, that seems to be how we organize community enterprises. That, or let corporate oligarchs run riot.
So: how does this relate to health care? An assumption that we OUGHT to be on our own, and that the community we live in has no involvement, is simply not the America I thought I knew. Working in the church, I’ve spent rather a lot of time over the last decades trying to encourage community. As a culture, we seem to be drifting away from that. Not business-like enough, I suppose. Well, if government involvement is the way in which we choose to accept responsibility for each other, then that may be the best we are able to do just now.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

= = =

Dear Mr. Pournelle,
It occurs to me that much of my approach to health care (as well as other issues) may come from spending much of my life in Midwestern farm country. It isn’t what it was; the days of communal barn-raisings are long gone, and co-ops drift toward behaving like ordinary businesses. But it is still assumed that if a farmer falls sick during planting or harvest, the neighbors WILL pitch in. And if someone in the community suffers catastrophic illness, there WILL be fundraisers. These are communities which have assumed that I am indeed my brother’s keeper.
That’s not government. It’s probably something rather better. But it’s also not “I am responsible for myself, and that’s it.”
From this perspective, much of the last half century seems to me like a story of slow corruption. Co-ops turn into businesses, small operations are bought out by “bottom line” conglomerates, religious and community hospitals are bought up by for-profit organizations which insist that doctors see an ever-increasing number of patients per hour, religious fraternal organizations mutate into garden variety insurance companies… Grump. So speaks the curmudgeon.
Is turning things over to government my first choice? Hardly. But in this century, that seems to be how we organize community enterprises. That, or let corporate oligarchs run riot.
So: how does this relate to health care? An assumption that we OUGHT to be on our own, and that the community we live in has no involvement, is simply not the America I thought I knew. Working in the church, I’ve spent rather a lot of time over the last decades trying to encourage community. As a culture, we seem to be drifting away from that. Not business-like enough, I suppose. Well, if government involvement is the way in which we choose to accept responsibility for each other, then that may be the best we are able to do just now.
Yours,
Allan E. Johnson

You address the real problem; we must decide such things. But the Constitution may give the States the power to make the people in general responsible for paying for the needs of each citizen, but I find nowhere in my studies of the Philadelphia Convention any notion of positive entitlements from Congress; quite the opposite. The Constitution limited what Congress – i.e. the Feds – could do. If California wants to bankrupt itself paying for health care – as the state of Washington once did adopting the Townsend Plan – then let it do so; and let it negotiate what it san save from the wreckage. At least it will have bankrupted only itself… I may well have a moral obligation to be charitable, but I have no armed agents to require you to be so; nor should I have.

 

Health Care

Dr. Pournelle,
I read with interest your examination of ObamaCare and/or its possible replacements (1/15/17). I agree with most of your analysis; however I think you are missing something in your discussion of the obligation of entitlements. Yes, entitlements confer a disproportionate power to the recipients and a corresponding burden upon the taxpayers. But this argument is to place far too specific a lens over the issue of health care at the cost of ignoring involuntary support of a multitude of adventures of dubious value to the country at large.
I suspect that most taxpayers, given the option, would far rather their tax dollars went to creating universal health care for all citizens of the “greatest country in the history of the world” rather than to spend trillions in pursuit of never-ending military actions which further no real national benefit but which do much to enrich the bottom lines of multi-national corporations and co-laterally the war chests of the political parties.
Anecdotes follow: Both I and my wife owe our lives to the combination of Medicare and Tricare for Life. Medicare we have as an earned benefit of 50+ years in the workforce. Tricare for Life (a Medicare supplement) was accrued as a by-product of spending the cold-war years in a missile system on mountainsides in Germany with freezing rain running down my neck. Those were the years when my peers were getting degrees, building careers, buying homes¦ the opportunity costs of serving my country were high. Now at this point in our lives I worry that political whim could pull the rug out from under us. Would we then be undeserving of medical care? I played by the rules and I expect the rules to pay off for us¦ but I can appreciate that they could change. What then?
Give me the option and I will bring all the troops home, terminate the United Nations, demand that all NATO signatories pay their fair share and see our tax dollars spent on Americans first and foremost. Obama Care is an abomination, but that doesn’t mean it is the only one the taxpayers are saddled with.
Thanks,
John Thomas

It is obvious we have created obligations that must be met; I do not think the coming President doubts that for a moment.

 

 

The Ancient Foreign Policy

http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/the-ancient-foreign-policy/

Victor Davis Hanson

Nations are collections of human beings, and human nature has not changed, despite Obama’s pleadings.

For the last eight years, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, and Susan Rice have sought to rewrite the traditional approach to foreign policy. In various ways, they have warned us about the dangers that a reactionary Trump presidency would pose, on the assumption that their new world order now operates more along the lines of an Ivy League conference than according to the machinations and self-interests of the dog-eat-dog Manhattan real-estate cosmos.

It would be nice if the international order had safe spaces, prohibitions against micro-aggressions, and trigger warnings that warn of hurtful speech, but is the world really one big Harvard or Stanford that runs on loud assertions of sensitivity, guilt, apologies, or even the cynical progressive pieties found in WikiLeaks? [snip]

This is how Professor Hanson begins an essay on modern foreign policy. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the matter. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it…

It is full of wise observations. Here are a few:

[Snip] Ancient American foreign policy that got us from the ruin of World War II to the most prosperous age in the history of civilization was once guided by an appreciation of human nature’s constancy across time and space. Diplomacy hinged on seeing foreign leaders as roughly predictable — guided as much by Thucydidean emotions such as honor, fear, and perceived self-interest as by cold reason. In other words, sometimes nations did things that seemed to be stupid; in retrospect their actions looked irrational, but at the time, they served the needs of national honor or assuaged fears.

Vladimir Putin, for example, in his effort to restore Russian power and regional hegemony, is guided by his desire to recapture the glories of the Soviet Union, not just its Stalinist authoritarianism or geographical expanse. He also seeks to restore the respect that long ago greeted Russian diplomats, generals, and leaders when sent abroad as proud emissaries of a world-class power.

In that context, talking down to a Putin serves no purpose other than to humiliate a proud leader whose guiding principle is that he will never allow himself to be publicly shamed. But Obama did exactly that when he scolded Putin to “cut it out” with the cyber attacks (as if, presto, Putin would follow his orders), and when he suggested that Putin’s tough-guy antics were sort of a macho shtick intended only to please Russians, and when he mocked a sullen Putin as a veritable class cut-up at photo-ops (as if the magisterial Obama had to discipline an unruly adolescent).

Worse still, when such gratuitous humiliations are not backed by the presence of overwhelming power, deft statecraft, and national will, opportunists such as Putin are only emboldened to become irritants to the U.S. and its former so-called global order. We should not discount the idea that leaders become hostile as much out of spite as out of conflicting national interests.[Snip]

[Snip] From Vegetius’s Si vis pacem, para bellum to Ronald Reagan’s “peace through strength,” the common wisdom was to be ready for war and thereby, and only by that way, avoid war, not to talk bellicosely and to act pacifistically. Our rewrite, Si vis bellum, para pacem (“if you want a war, then prepare for peace”), is not leading to a calm world.

[snip]

“If you want peace, be prepared for war” has been relevant advice since Appius Claudius the Blind said it to the Senate of Rome.

There is more, and you should read it. If Mr. Trump has not, you may be sure that many of his advisors have.

 

music to your ears

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/17/betsy-devos-steer-clear-common-core-confirmation-opening-statement/

One paragraph:

“I share President-elect Trump’s view that it’s time to shift the debate from what the system thinks is best for kids to what moms and dads want, expect and deserve,” she plans to say, adding that she is “a firm believer that parents should be empowered to choose the learning environment that’s best for their individual children.”

Finally….

Phil

 

more on DeVos

The nominee is also expected to say not all students should pursue a four-year college education.

“President-elect Trump and I agree we need to support all post-secondary avenues, including trade and vocational schools, and community colleges,” she plans to say, adding, “Of course, on every one of these issues, Congress will play a vital role.”

Phil

 

 

and even more on Devos

President-elect Trump and I know it won’t be Washington, D.C. that unlocks our nation’s potential, nor a bigger bureaucracy, tougher mandates or a federal agency. The answer is local control and listening to parents, students and teachers.

—

Phil Tharp

No comment needed.

Aha. Found the JPL news release. (I didn’t find it by hunting on their site, but by clicking on the link in a USAToday report on it. It’s apparently buried deep on the JPL site.)

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4742

I also note that that press release contains NO predictions whatsover. They are using some historic quakes around LA to refine a model of the fault systems and ground movement in the area. 

But that link gave me a link to the actual article in the journal Earth and Space Science. 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015EA000113/full

It’s also worth noting that this article was originally published in September 2015, so it’s hardly new news.
…This…is getting interesting. It…guys, if I’m reading this journal article correctly, they may have ALREADY PREDICTED a couple of quakes. Not in terms of timing; I don’t think that’s where they’re going with this at all. Rather, they seem to be attempting to identify the deformations that lead to quakes, and associate them with the structures causing them.

And here is the predictive paragraph:
“The Gutenberg-Richter relation for a 100 km radius circle around the La Habra earthquake epicenter for events beginning just after the 1994 M6.7 Northridge earthquake shows a deficiency of earthquakes M > 5 (Figure 5), which is consistent with our analysis of the geodetic data. The deficit of earthquakes having ~ M5 and larger can be seen relative to the scaling line. The B value shown here is consistent with B values for Southern California determined by Mori and Abercrombie [1997] for earthquakes > 9 km depth. For the Gutenberg-Richter relation to be completed, this deficit must eventually be filled with large earthquakes, up to M6.2, which is consistent with the above analysis. We assign a probability to these large earthquakes using a Weibull distribution [Weibull, 1951] and the assumption that over long times and large regions the Gutenberg-Richter magnitude-frequency relation is linear [Rundle et al., 2012; Holliday et al., 2014; Rundle et al., 2016]. The calculated probability for a M ≥ 6 earthquake within a circle of radius 100 km, and over the 3 years following 1 April 2015, is 35%. For a M ≥ 5 earthquake within a circle of radius 100 km, and over the 3 years following 1 April 2015, the probability is 99.9%.”

And here is their full conclusion:
“Our results indicate that significant ground deformation and infrastructure damage can occur beyond the epicentral region of a moderate earthquake near Los Angeles. Identifying specific structures most likely to be responsible for future earthquakes is difficult for this intricate network of active faults and presence of weak slip planes. The observed widespread and largely aseismic slip may be because the Puente Hills thrust and related faults are structurally immature [Dolan and Haravitch, 2014]. Geodetic imaging of active structures, however, can be used to identify the full extent of slip and provide a time-independent means of estimating a lower bound of future earthquake potential. In the La Habra and Puente Hills area observed here, the lower bound for a potential earthquake is M6.1–6.3.”

Offhand I see nothing wrong with their methodology, and they just might be on to something. Unfortunately it sounds as if the news media has rather blown things all out of proportion, as they are wont to do. One guy in the USGS seems to be dissing it because he is claiming that he doesn’t see any methodology in the article for arriving at the prediction. However, the methodologies are outlined in the referenced articles.

I’m backing off my earlier criticism, and taking a “wait and see” attitude. After all, that kind of prediction is easy to prove or disprove — if something happens between now and the end of 2018, then they were right. If not, they were wrong. If it happens, but occurs after the end of 2018, then they may need to adjust their model.

Stephanie Osborn

“The Interstellar Woman of Mystery”

Intelligence Operations Against Trump

The intelligence operations against Trump continue. Well, of course, since it’s happening in this country I’m a conspiracy theorist. If it were in Egypt, I’d be a geopolitical analyst. Anyway, here is my

evidence:

1. Continued statistical biases in the corporate media, which acts as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-17/new-abc-wapo-poll-shows-drop-trump-favorabilty-through-aggressive-oversamples

2. Someone is renting protesters at 2,500 per month to agitate during the month of Trump’s inauguration; this rent-a-mob approach is something we do when we overthrow small countries, the unions also did it during that Occupy Wall Street charade. I saw it on video but that’s old news:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/17/ads-two-dozen-cities-offer-protesters-2500-agitate/

It doesn’t really matter who does it; what matters is that it happens and will persist and we must be more clear in our thinking and less accepting in what were told by public people who say we can trust them. What this does is undermine American trust in the media; it undermines national power. Once more the Democrats attack US national power in the name of their misguided, infantile idealism.

Full disclosure: I am an independent voter.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Thursday, January 12, 2017

If Republicans want to force through massive tax cuts, we will fight them tooth and nail.

Senator Elizabeth Warren

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

It has rained bucketsful in the last couple of days, and I have been embroiled in trivia, interspersed with fiction and working on integrating some new plot elements into the book with Niven and Barnes. As well as coming down with a mild but distracting cold.

I say all that, but in fact I’ve also been a bit cloggled by what’s going on in Washington. There are still elements of the Left who hope to stop Mr. Trump’s inauguration; and this is not treated as an act of rebellion. It is one thing to assert one’s right of free speech. It is certainly the right of citizens to say I didn’t vote for him, and I don’t like him. It is another thing to plan disruptions of the inauguration. Preventing the swearing in of the President and asking for support in doing that seems to me an act of actual rebellion.

And blaming it all on Russia – their hacks revealed things about Hillary and the Democratic National Committee that caused people all over the country to change their vote, thus giving Trump the office –therefore this was not a real election — But I can’t go on with this, I believe in rational discussion, but there isn’t any here.

Was it Russian propaganda that turned voters against Hillary? But we have been inundated with foreign propaganda from the earliest days of Independence, and even before. And the Russian hacking – if it was the Russians, since everyone including Boy Scout troops hacked Hillary’s basement server – resulted in revelations to the voters that caused them to change their minds.

Were the revelations untrue? Well, no, not really. So if the Washington Post had hacked Trump’s server and published revelations it would be all right? They might even get a Pulitzer Prize? Well, but this was the Russians! And it was against Hillary! Don’t you see?

I wish I was making that up, but it’s not all that inaccurate as a summary of a dialogue with a reader. Leaving me nonplussed and discouraged.

Republicans now must try to revamp Obamacare into a health care scheme that works. The problem is that there isn’t one for an equalitarian democratic society.

Start from first principles. People get sick, or are born with defects that must be remedied. This cost s money. Most people can afford to pay for most of their health problems, but some problems are simply overwhelming. Insurance was invented for that. Insurance boils down to this: you bet that you will get one or another catastrophic health problem. Insurance companies bet you will not. You win if you get the disease, and the insurer pays. If you don’t get the problem, you lose your bet: what you pay paid is expended, you get nothing for it, and you and the insurance company are quits. If you die from some other cause, they owe you nothing, you owe them nothing, all’s square.

Life insurance is like unto it: you bet you will die before you have paid more in premiums than the policy pays when you die. It’s complicated because if you live long enough, you own the policy and can stop paying, but it still boils down to you bet you die before you’ve paid that much.

When I first went to work for Boeing, the first policy offered to me was insurance against specified “dread diseases”. I don’t recall them all, but they included cancer, leprosy, and other such. The policy was pretty simple: if you got one of those, somebody else paid for it. The insurance didn’t cost much, and I think Boeing paid for part of it. Then came other offers, most of which were variants on co-payment schemes: I paid a premium which was never refunded whether I got sick or not. If I did get sick, I paid a certain maximum amount and above that they paid; there may have been some upper limit on the amount they were liable for, but that depended on the size of the premium. There were other options, but since I was a young guy in good health, the company was liable for most work-place incident problem, and I had no reason to expect disasters. It all looked fine to me.

Over the years, things changed a bit. Health issues that had been invariably fatal were found to be curable or preventable. Sometimes the prevention was difficult. I grew up in a time when smoking was nearly universal – there were cigarettes in the rations issued to the troops – but over time it was shown that smoking really caused health problems. There was a lot of controversy over “freedom to smoke” and the rising costs of health care, but after a while smokers paid a higher premium, and this was probably a great factor in reducing the number of smokers. I quit because the evidence was overwhelming that smoking cost about ten years of productive life, and you can accomplish a lot in ten years. About then I got a chance to join Kaiser health care, and my problems got simpler. Pay Kaiser a reasonable amount every month, and Roberta and I and the four boys were essentially taken care of for a rather nominal per visit fee. End of problem for me.

But that was me. I had a decent income, I could afford the dues or membership fees or whatever you call them. What about those who couldn’t afford it? Who couldn’t afford anything? Who lived off food stamps or begging? Those out of work, some through no fault of their own, some because they couldn’t keep a job no matter how trivial, some because they had more kids than they could raise and no one in the family was making any money; etc. They depended on charity. But in came government and the Great Society. “Don’t you worry, vote for us and we’ll give you your rights. You’re entitled.”

And that’s where we are now. “I’m entitled to any medical care you can have. If there’s a cure, no matter how expensive it is, if you can get it I’m entitled to it too. As to who’s going to pay for it, I don’t know, but I don’t have to care. I’m entitled.”

Actually, not many people would say or think that. It’s more like some intellectual taking about other people. A tenured professor who gets Kaiser or Blue Cross as an employment benefit talking about the chap who shakes a cup outside the campus gate. Or politicians. In any event, the notion of entitlement entered the picture: government exists to protect your right to free stuff, and never you mind who’s to pay for it. You’re entitled.

And that’s where we are now. You are entitled to health care insurance with no restrictions on pre-existing conditions, which means you can wait until you’re diagnosed with lung cancer before you place a bet that you’ll have lung cancer; and you won’t have to pay any more for this insurance than anyone else even though he’s been paying for thirty years.

“I need car insurance. I just had a wreck. Insure my car, and don’t talk to me about pre-existing conditions, I get to pay the same amount as you pay, Mr. Smug Guy. And I can’t afford it anyway, I don’t have a job. So when do I get my check for my wrecked car? It’s just down the street where I hit the telephone pole.”

No one – yet – expects to get car insurance against a collision after the collision. But they do expect Congress to continue providing them with insurance against health problems and to pay no more than anyone else if they have pre-existing conditions. Obamacare gave them that and you Republicans can’t take it away.

And as long as we keep that “entitlement”, we’re going to have a problem. The insurance industry might have absorbed a requirement to let people keep their health insurance after changing employers, even though they had developed a condition at some point. Indeed, you can make a good case for saying that losing one’s job (and therefore employer provided health insurance) should not be a reason for losing the health insurance; you ought to be able to retain it somehow. If you had insurance and developed the conditions, they were not pre-existing: you bet that you’d get something. You got it but didn’t know it. Your employer went out of business: you ought to be able to continue your insurance without a new examination that might discover a condition you didn’t know you had.

But speculation on what’s fair begs the main question: how did my health concerns become your problem? If my kids get sick, why is it your obligation to pay? If I get AIDS, why do you have to pay for the expensive drug cocktail needed to keep me alive? And ironically, that cocktail was discovered through the expenditure of tax money, some of which you paid, and now its discovery lays on you the obligation to buy it for me. Why? Where did you get this obligation to save me? You didn’t have that obligation until you paid for its discovery; now my life depends on it, I can’t pay for it, so you must buy it for me; and if you don’t, well, the tax collector can call armed men, and you better not resist them. Or you could join with others to lay the obligation on the rich; all the same to me so long as I get my drug cocktail.

Of course few AIDS victims think this way and none talk this way, but that’s how entitlements work: you’re obligated to pay for them, and you’ve no choice in the matter. You got the obligation because lawmakers say you have it, and none of this nonsense about religion, either. You have it because we say you have it, and we’ll hire people to make you pay, don’t doubt that.

Obamacare said we’ll take in all the uninsured, regardless of pre-conditions. Insurance companies said that’s madness: who’d insure against something if they could buy it after they get it? If we know they’ve got it, we have to charge at least what it will cost as premium, and if they can afford to pay that, they don’t need the insurance. The Obamacare intellectuals said, “You can’t do that. You can’t charge more just because they had pre-existing conditions.” At which point the insurance companies told them, “We won’t do it. We can’t do it. We’d be broke in no time.”

The Obamacare intellectuals brooded a bit, and said, “Tell you what. We’ll make everyone buy an insurance policy. You set your own prices, but one thing: everyone pays the same price.”

“And what happens if they don’t buy it?”

“We’ll fine them.”

“And if they can’t afford it, or the fines?”

“Oh, we’ll pay them subsidies so that can pay you your blasted premiums. You’ll get your profits, never you fear.”

Now, Obamacare was more complicated than that – immensely more so, thousand pages of complex legalese – but it basically boiled down to that. Everyone paid the same price, existing conditions or not, which was high enough to cover all the medical costs of those enrolled in the various Plans. It was repeatedly pointed out that it would, by its very nature, have to cost more than a plan that excluded pre-existing conditions, or charged those who had them higher crates, but Obamacare passed.

It has certainly reduced the number of persons not covered by any health care insurance. It has done so at a cost that we cannot afford. And while there is waste and fraud in the system – there always is – I’ve seen no evidence of enough to compensate for those costs. Proponents of a “single payer” scheme – socialized medicine, universal government provided health care, whatever you want to call it – love to point this out. You’ve put so many restrictions on the insurance system in order to enforce equality that there’s no way we can afford anything but single payer insurance like Britain, so just give up and go with that.

Meanwhile the tuition costs of college goes up, while we plot to make the new medical school graduates indentured servants working for the government.

And it always adds up the same way: those who make a living working are obligated to pay for those who don’t, at least in health care. Where this obligation came from is never discussed, but it certainly must extend to aiding immigrants, both legal and illegal.

I’m glad I’m not a member of Congress.

Of course nature may take care of the problem for us.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/01/13/nevada-woman-dies-superbug-resistant-to-every-available-antibiotic-in-us.html

Polarization

I was listening to some leftist and my eyes glazed over at two questions:

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Why should people in Africa get the short end of the stick and go without water and a warm meal on a daily basis?

Why should something as free and basic as education be denied to people?

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These questions are asked by many people, even in the media. So these matters have some relevance to the rest of us.

First, this guy has never been to Africa and so has no idea what he is talking about beyond some internalized, elements he gleaned from the mass media and the culture industry.

Second, at what point did I become part of some collective? And at what point did that collective suddenly have responsibility for people in some other collective, somewhere else? Why must I pick up my cross and fight his battles in the Dark Continent? Don’t we have people around us that can’t eat and drink to take care of first? Aren’t the people in this collective he seems to think he’s part of when he wants to complain about something worth his time and effort?

Then the matter of education being “free and basic”. Education is advanced, it requires written and spoken language and those aren’t basic and neither is anything that follows. More importantly, someone has to do the training or the educating. Is that person expected to get up every day out of the kindness of his or her heart to perform these “free and basic” services? Or will the have-nots suddenly have whips to compel them to do what is “good and right for the group”?

History answers this question.

I’m starting to think the left can be seen as the Borg and the right can be seen as the Romulans or the Vulcans — depending on how disciplined they are…… I think you can easily agree with me on Romulans and Vulcans.

The Borg are clearly collectivists. The Borg chase “perfection”

(idealism?). Voltaire commented that behind perfectionism is fear.

Perhaps the Borg Queen fears reality and must achieve perfection by assimilating reality until it conforms with the Will. This is rather like the apparent Christian approach to life, which is corrective.

The Romulans take a similar approach but prefer to accept or reject reality through conquest or destruction, respectively, rather than change reality as the Borg. This is similar with the apparent Shivaist acceptance of life and the apparent Buddhist rejection of it.

The Vulcans do the same but they do not conquer and destroy. They simply protect and isolate themselves, preferring to work through consent and contract while maintaining incredible power to enforce those agreements.

The Vulcans and Romulans are both action and inaction; they are both the eye of the hurricane. The Borg just follow a program….the Borg are the bureaucrats of the universe; they’re they type that always take over the organization and always make the rules under which the organization functions.

Is the universe not trying to avoid Borg invasion as Star Trek progresses? If the left ever become transhumuan… You know, I’m not sure if that would be an anti-utopian novel or a spoof, but it would a funny piece of writing to have a bunch of leftist transhumanists who completely screw everything up and cause the collapse of the entire planet in some ridiculous timeframe like a decade because their technology is great at what it does but the left doesn’t know how to use it — perhaps the Borg don’t know either? This digression seems a good place to end, abruptly.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

It will be all right. Just pay your taxes and work a little harder.

Steve Sailer on Immigration

Dr. Pournelle,
Steve Sailer wrote an interesting article that I saw over at Takimag:
http://takimag.com/article/the_wave_that_wont_break_steve_sailer/print#axzz4VNODTSGT
Money quote: “Mass immigration tends to work politically like a doomsday machine, a juggernaut progressively cutting down the ability to call off immigration due to diminishing marginal returns. As a Western nation imports more individuals from the self-destructive parts of the world, the demands to admit their extended family members grow as well.”
I don’t have a realistic answer that doesn’t involve weapons of mass destruction. I’m getting to the point where I’m willing to consider their use, but I cannot reconcile my faith with what may need to be done. Right now, for me at least, my faith is losing ground…
Regards,
Don Parker

Don’t you want more diversity?

A thank you

Long ago when you had your brain tumor problem and even before that you had been noting that Kaiser Permanente had been very good for you. That led me to suggest Loren latch on to KP when he had a chance. And as soon as I could I latched on.

God Bless you for that. They have saved Loren’s life from sleep apnea and more recently a pituitary tumor. And they are making my aging life much easier to handle. They are good folks. And I’m glad I read than on your site.

Thank you.

{^_^}

We still have Kaiser. It hasn’t changed. If you like your health plan you can keep it. Haven’t we that solemn promise? Of course they have to change their membership standards a bit, and take everyone who asks, and can’t charge new members more than they charge anyone else meaning they have to raise prices for everyone, and…

So far they have evaded that, and we’re all safe together.

4chan Claims It Invented the Trump Golden Showers Story

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/10/4chan-claims-they-invented-the-trump-golden-showers-story.html

Rush has been warning the inside crowd won’t go quietly, but this is pretty stupid behavior.

Phil

Stay Tuned.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/china-starts-freight-train-to-london-as-xi-promotes-trade-ties?cmpid=socialflow-facebook-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

Czech government tells its citizens how to fight terrorists: Shoot them yourselves – MSN News

Whether or not EU law overrides member nations’ laws is a point of some contention.

The European Court of Justice came up with a “primacy of EU law” doctrine which says that anything passed by the EU overrides anything conflicting in member states’ laws, including those states’ constitutions. Various national courts, per Wikipedia, “disagree with this extreme interpretation and reserve the right, in principle, to review the constitutionality of European law under national constitutional law.”

I’d take the Post’s reference there as being similar to the usual mainstream media take on the US Constitution’s “supremacy clause.” They report it as “of course, federal law trumps state law,” when the terms of the clause are in fact qualified/constrained.

And of course the Czech Republic has an army (the EU does not) and a somewhat armed citizenry. The Czechs are probably going to do what they damn well please.

Do you think the Wehrmacht can govern a Czech Protectorate? Perhaps EU can appoint a Protector of Bohemia.

Off we go…

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/567957/NASA-s-Voyager-2-sets-course-for-star-Sirius-by-time-it-arrives-human-race-will-be-dead

“Eventually, the Voyagers will pass other stars. In about 40,000 years, Voyager 1 will drift within 1.6 light-years (9.3 trillion miles) of AC+79 3888, a star in the constellation of Camelopardalis which is heading toward the constellation Ophiuchus.  

“In about 296,000 years Voyager 2 will pass 4.3 light-years (25 trillion miles) from Sirius, the brightest star in the sky . The Voyagers are destined—perhaps eternally—to wander the Milky Way.”

“Doomsday scenarios for the human race abound, from climate change to nuclear war, asteroids, and out of control Artificial Intelligence. But what they share in common is a MUCH shorter timeframe than 296,000 years.”

Quite a good brief history and documentation of the Voyagers, including illustrations and videos. 

Charles Brumbelow

Time to Die?

So this is how empires die?

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“We’re broke.” In essence, that’s the message Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work delivered to Defense-Secretary-in-Waiting James Mattis at the December 5 Future Strategy Forum.

Mr. Work admitted that DoD has breathtaking liabilities—as much as $88 billion a year—that ought to be addressed before procuring a single additional plane, ship or tank. Unfortunately, the situation is even worse than that.

<\>

http://www.realcleardefense.com/2017/01/08/america039s_military_has_a_big_problem_it039s_dead_broke_289216.html

I haven’t written lately because everything I see and analyze just confirms certain milder doom and gloom scenarios and I don’t need to be the voice of darkness.  But this article is so chilling that I simply must forward it. 

I have have grave doubts regarding our national security from about 2018 through at least 2030.  It seems to me the third world war could start or started in Syria and articles like this diminish my faith.

I read a Rand Corporation study that said we would likely not be able to defeat the Chinese in what would become a long and protracted war and they likely would not be able to defeat us either until they can expand their naval power.  I see no sense in fighting that war. 

We’ve been in steady decline since World War II and this may be the end of the road. Let all who live though this know, the Boomers did it and when enough of them die that their lobby weakens, I’ll have no sympathy. ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

 

Nuclear Triad?

I’ve been trying to suss the state of the “cold war”, particularly as it is expressed through the philosophy of Mutually Assured Destruction. I’ve made little progress. I think I have a pretty good handle on the desire for world domination that motivated Lenin and Stalin, but particularly in the media frenzy accompanying the run-up to the Trump inauguration, I find myself floundering, trying to come to an understanding of just who “them” is.
What brought this question starkly into focus was an article published by the American Enterprise Institute (http://www.aei.org/publication/navys-deterrence-fund-is-just-another-washington-budget-gimmick/) concerning the perennial scramble for DoD dollars. In light of oh so many things, such as the Air Force’s A-10 future plans and the secrecy surrounding the X-37 program, the question begs to be answered: Just who’s in charge and what is the policy?
Any thoughts?

A long time ago I wrote a paper for the Air Council (USAF) on “Stability”, pointing out that a stabilizing power needs escalation dominance, particularly at the highest conflict levels. Escalation dominance means roughly that the higher the level of conflict, the more dominant you are with respect to this particular opponent. If you are going to impose stability on the world, you need escalation dominance with respect to everyone in the world; if you don’t have that, you had better be careful what conflicts you get into.

MAD – Mutual Assured Destruction – as a strategy gets pretty sticky in a multi-power world. “I can’t kill you but I can make you vulnerable to THEM so give me what I want or we both die – is a scenario with many variants. “If you depose me, we all die.” Is another.

I have no clearances and no particular knowledge of our forces, but I know Obama ordered reductions in the nuclear force, the B-52’s are generally older than their crews and are best described as a bunch of parts flying in close formation, and SAC is no longer the elite force it once was. Certainly Trump knows this and so do any number of the people he has nominated to the cabinet. I also know that restoring top level escalation dominance will be expensive. Of course if you are not trying to impose stability on all parts of the world, there are other options.

Ringling Bros. closing ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ after 146 years

“Attendance has been dropping for 10 years, said Juliette Feld, but when the elephants left, there was a “dramatic drop” in ticket sales. While many said they didn’t want big animals to perform in circuses, many others refused to attend a circus without them.”

I can’t find any relevant old emails, but I’m fairly confident I remember predicting this to at least a couple of people…

Subj: Ringling Bros. closing ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ after 146 years | New York Post

http://nypost.com/2017/01/14/the-greatest-show-on-earth-will-shut-down-after-146-year-run/

I recall a large flurry of messages predicting this result. I got to go backstage at the circus when I was a kid – my father managed WHBQ which is how he afforded that stupid farm I grew up on – and I thought the elephants, who did a lot of the work setting up the circus, enjoyed the parades and the attention although they resented being used as tractors. I know they hated being entirely idle with nothing to do. So do I.

Fascinating Baseball History – WW II History

Largely substantiated by the Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg

The only point of dispute is that, according to Wikipedia, Moe Berg was freelancing during the trip to Japan (though there are some discrepancies in the story that may make the interpretation below more credible, and it’s not otherwise clear why he would have been selected for the trip) when he shot the footage described – but he did show it to the Pentagon after Pearl Harbor.

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Subj: Fascinating Baseball History – WW II History

Really interesting

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When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in baseball-crazy Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe Berg was included. Although he played with five major-league teams from 1923 to 1939, he was a very mediocre ball player. But Moe was regarded as the brainiest ballplayer of all time. In fact Casey Stengel once said: “That is the strangest man ever to play baseball”. When all the baseball stars went to Japan, Moe Berg went with them and many people wondered why he went with “the team” Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy, working undercover with the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of today’s CIA). Moe spoke 15 languages – including Japanese. And he had two loves: baseball and spying. In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an American diplomat being treated in St. Luke’s Hospital – the tallest building in the Japanese capital. He never delivered the flowers. The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc. Eight years later , General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg’s films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo.. His father disapproved and never once watched his son play. In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. Moe read at least 10 newspapers every day. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton – having added Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver. During further studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris , and Columbia Law School, he picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian – 15 languages in all, plus some regional dialects. While playing baseball for Princeton University, Moe Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit. Tito’s Partisans During World War II, Moe was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assess the value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there. He reported back that Marshall Tito’s forces were widely supported by the people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic’s Serbians. The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was more to come in that same year. Berg penetrated German-held Norway, met with members of the underground and located a secret heavy-water plant – part of the Nazis’ effort to build an atomic bomb. His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy that plant. The R.A.F. destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg. There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in the race to build the first Atomic bomb. If the Nazis were successful, they would win the war. Berg (under the code name “Remus”) was sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb. Moe managed to slip past the SS guards at the auditorium, posing as a Swiss graduate student. The spy carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill. If the German indicated the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was to shoot him – and then swallow the cyanide pill. Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to his hotel. Werner Heisenberg – He blocked the Nazis from acquiring an atomic bomb. Moe Berg’s report was distributed to Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team developing the Atomic Bomb. Roosevelt responded: “Give my regards to the catcher.” Most of Germany’s leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States. After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Freedom – America ‘s highest honor for a civilian in wartime. But Berg refused to accept it because he couldn’t tell people about his exploits. After his death, his sister accepted the Medal. It now hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown. Presidential Medal of Freedom: The highest award given to civilians during wartime. Moe Berg’s baseball card is the only card on display at the CIA Headquarters in Washington, DC.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.