Month: September 2018

The Trump Books

by Dave

I’m still waiting on my copy of  Fear, by Bob Woodward.  I also have bought Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury.   I like Wolff’s book, and I believe he captured well the dynamics within the White House.    But, these two books, are hated by the White House.   Trump finds equally offensive Comey’s book, A Higher Loyalty, Truth and Lies,  which is  a biographical account of his time as a prosecutor, a defense of his actions taken during the Clinton email investigation and a scathing critique of Trump based on his interactions with the President. One quote from the book:

“It is also wrong to stand idly by, or worse, to stay silent when you know better, while a president brazenly seeks to undermine public confidence in law enforcement institutions that were established to keep our leaders in check.”

Comey’s book has been criticized because he makes a connection between the traits of mob organizations and the Trump White House.  Understandably, critics were upset, but I don’t feel it was far off the mark.  Two key passages:

“The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.”

“This President is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values. His leadership is transactional, ego driven and about personal loyalty.”

I should add that Comey is a Republican, who worked at FBI Director under the Obama and Trump administrations.  Trump’s recent attacks on Department of Justice, and the FBI,  particularly the recent  comment on the “lingering stench” in these organizations tells me, Comey was right.

There are a lot of recent books out critical of the Trump administration, including:

“Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House” by Omarosa Manigault Newman,  August 2018

The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game by Kessler, April 2018

Everything Trump Touches Dies by Rick Wilson, August 2018

Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of the Trump White House, by Ryan,  September 2018

The Threat: On how the FBI Protects America in the age of Terror and Trump,  to be published in December 2018.

House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia,  by Unger, August 2018

I guess the title I like most, is Rick Wilson’s  – Everything Trump Touches Dies.

I would add, that many people who voted for him, like his brazen, off the cuff, approach. They consider him an “anti-politician.”    There are a lot of books supporting him personally and laying blame on Democrats and the media. More recent publications are:

“Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy” by Judge Jeanine Pirro

 The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography,  by Brody and Lamb, Feb 2018

“Killing the Deep State: The Fight to Save President Trump” by Jerome Corsi, March 2018

“The Capitalist Comeback: The Trump Boom and the Left’s Plot to Stop It” by Andrew Puzder, April 2018

“The Russia Hoax: The Illicit Scheme to Clear Hillary Clinton and Frame Donald Trump” by Gregg Jarrett,  July 2018

The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda,  by Jason Chaffetz,  September 2018.

Why We Fight: Defeating America’s Enemies – With No Apologies,  Sebastian Gorka, October 2018

Trump’s America: The Truth about Our Nation’s Great Comeback, Newt Gringrich,  June 2018

The Briefing by Sean Spicer,  July 2018

There are less political books, focusing more on specific issues,  for instance,  Alan Dershowitz:

 The Case Against Impeaching Trump,  Alan Dershowitz, July 2018

This book has the blessing of Donald Trump.   Given Professor Dershowitz credentials as a long time educator at Harvard Law School, it is probably my next Amazon purchase. In an impeachment process, the legislature overrides the choice of the electorate and diminishes the voting rights of the populace.     Alan Dershowitz is a strong supporter of civil liberties. ‘

OK,  I’ve listed out 9 “Anti-Trump”  books and 9 “Pro-Trump” books,  and I think  Alan Dershowitz book in its own category.   I think his book will have lasting value, particularly if someday,  Republicans decide to impeach a Democrat president.

I don’t claim this list to be all inclusive.  I know Steven Colbert has just  announced a children’s book making fun of Trump’s  visit to the hurricane stricken areas called “My Boat.”   I pretty much dismiss any author which claims to have written the only book, giving Americans the “true facts.”   Every single one of the books, listed above, has a unique perspective and a lot of commentary along with facts.   I would suggest anyone buying any of these books, first check the author’s biography, usually available on Wikipedia.   The biography presented in Amazon are written by the author and always complimentary.  If you see a book had 4 to 5 star rating,  you should know that this is done by counting clicks, and every book listed above has about the same ratings.    It’s really pretty worthless.

All of these books are sold on Amazon.  Most are available in Kindle versions.   Many are advertised as “#1 on the best seller list”  but this is misleading because there are many “best seller” lists and a huge number of  categories.   For example, Omarosa’s book ranks high on a few select categories on Amazon,  but her overall rank is #864.   The best seller rank will tend to decline over time.   Comey’s book has a rank of #1140 and was published in April 2018.    Obviously, television appearances help advance the book.

I hope to update this blog as more books are published.  Anyone can suggest adding to the list, as long as it has been published in 2018.

Stay tuned,

Dave

Confirmation on Judge Brett Kavanaugh

by Dave

Sorry folks, I’m on the side of Republicans.  I think  all the last minute scrambling to discredit Judge Kavanaugh is dumb.  The assault claim seems to  lack supporting evidence.   The incident occurred 35 years ago.  I believe it is likely that his accuser, Dr. Christine Ford, was sexually assaulted while she was in High School.   She has submitted notes from a therapist,  in a couples counseling session in 2012,  which supported her claim of assault.  The notes do not name Brett Kavanaugh as the attacker.   Now, 35 years later, she may have the wrong student. Nobody else seems to back up her story.

Yale Professor Akhil Amar’s made some excellent points when he was asked to testify in the Senate Committee.  He told the Committee the best way to evaluate a candidate is by their written opinions as a judge and not from emails and other communications.   Opinions must be reviewed by legal scholars who have real understanding of the issues.  Amar considers Kavanaugh to be the best qualified of the 25 judges on the list of candidates.   He told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the confirmation process is badly flawed, and should be fixed.  I agree.   He told Democrats, “be careful what you wish for.”   Rejecting Kavanaugh will likely result in a less qualified candidate.

I am hoping some of the Democrats break free of the politics, and vote for Brett Kavanaugh.   What goes around, comes around, and there will be Democrat nominations to the Supreme Court.   Would Democrats like it if their nominee got the same treatment?

How would I change the system?  Getting rid of partisan politics is hard.   The FBI must conduct a background check.   I would not allow each senator on the committee to ask questions.  I would have one counsel  representing the Republicans and one counsel representing the Democrats  ask their questions of the nominee in an open session.   The questioning would be limited to one day.  They would be able to present questions in written format.  One day with a panel of experts testifying for and against the nominee would be held.   Individual senators would not be able to make speeches.  I found it most disturbing when senators would cut off Kavanaugh as he was answering a question.   I found it very disrespectful.

Stay tuned,

Fave

 

 

 

 

Carla

by Dave

No I am not talking about the next hurricane. It really wouldn’t make sense because they go in alphabetical order.  I an talking about the avocado named Carla.  Oh gee, that Carla.  And it hasn’t got a thing to do about the movie, “Fish called Wanda”, starring John Cleese (wrote the screenplay), Jaime Lee Curtis, and Kevin Kline.   I’ll  add, as a completely unnecessary politically charged aside,  Cleese described Donald Trump in 2016 as, “a narcissist, with no attention span, who doesn’t have clear ideas about anything and makes it all up as he goes along” for the sole purpose of gaining some attention to the topic of avocados.  I suspect this sums up just about everything said about Trump in a slew of books including Woodward’s Fear,  Omarosa’s Unhinged, and Johnston’s It’s worse than you think, none of which I’ve read.

Now, after that bizarre tangent,  I return to the topic,  avocado named Carla.  Big,  light green smooth skin avocado are grown in Florida.  They are sold in the US and around the world.   Carla is one variety.   The avocados grown in California, are Hass varieties,  and are smaller, bumpy  dark green skinned ones.   Rudolf Hass patented this variety and the original tree that produced the Hass variety still stands in La Habra Heights, California.

Now, Carla is a patented variety, and the allegation is another grower is illegally making copies of this variety:

Agroindustria Ocoeña, the Dominican company that holds a U.S. patent for the Carla, is suing a Miami produce distributor, Fresh Directions International, claiming that it is illegally selling Carlas in South Florida from another grower. They aren’t knock-off avocados either, the lawsuit argues. DNA tests show they are virtual Carla clones, which the suit suggests can mean only a grifted graft — somebody pruned and pilfered Carla tree branches to recreate their own orchard.

Growers routinely graft. It means growing one variety to provide the roots and initial trunk of the tree (rootstock) and then taking a cutting from another variety (scion wood) and attaching (grafting) it on to create a nearly identical plant.   It is both a science and art, which has been in practice for at least 4,000 years in China.  See last link.    Avocados can be easily grown from seed, but to obtain consistent trees, with high yields, and disease resistance,  only grafted plants are sold from nurseries, at least in Florida.

The single tree that produced the first Carla avocados was discovered by Carlos Antonio Castillo Pimentel in 1994 in his orchard in the Ocoa River Valley. The Miami Herald article then goes on to say that they don’t know why it is called “Carla”  yet I think if it was pure marketing,  as a tasty Carla is better than a tasty Carlos.  Is this sexist?

Now, just looking at a tree, it would be really tough to know what variety was used as the scion wood.   But the crux of the Miami case against Fresh Directions, will be that DNA testing of the fruit can prove that they are growing the Carla variety.    Of course, the lawyers in Miami had to go into the supermarkets and buy a lot of avocados for testing.   And afterwards I guess you don’t have to preserve the evidence except a small sample, as the Miami Herald article quotes one of them as saying, “We ended up eating a lot of guacamole.”

I think the Carla’s will continued to be sold, whether they are legal or illegal from the perspective of the patent owner.  I think it’s all about collecting royalties, which the courts will decide.  It may be tough to collect if the company is headquartered in the Dominican Republic.  The patent was filed in 2006 and is for 15 years.   For everyone’s benefit, an out of court agreement might be best.

Avocados are super foods.   They make terrific smoothies,  particularly with bananas and mango juice.   See recipe at end.

Stay tuned,

Dave

Links:

Is your avocado an illegal clone? Grower sues Miami competitor over trendy hot-seller

M&S launches the giant ‘Carla’ avocado that is FIVE times bigger and weighs 1kg

Hass or Haas Avocados 

Grafting and Budding Nursery Crop Plants

https://food52.com/recipes/22704-green-smoothie-with-avocado

 

Hurricanes. climate change and human health

by Dave

The old slogan, “If it bleeds it leads” seems to be playing out.  The second one, is “the closer to home the better.”   Tragic losses due to Florence aren’t here yet, but they’re coming.  But the singular focus on Florence kind of makes all the newspapers look about the same.

But, there are the few exceptions, thank God.  You can find them by googling “global warming” and  “hurricanes” and then check News.   Worsening hurricanes is only one horrible affects of global warming.  The more extreme weather events are real, with cyclones in Hawaii and the South Pacific and prolong droughts in Africa. Lives are being lost.

In the prior blog,   I stated the EPA is doing nothing to curb carbon emissions.   Unfortunately, this is a bit of an understatement.   The Trump administration is making things worse- as they  are attempting to eliminate regulations in place, under the Obama administration to reduce our carbon emission.  As reported by the New York Times:

The Trump administration, taking its third major step this year to roll back federal efforts to fight climate change, is preparing to make it significantly easier for energy companies to release methane into the atmosphere.

Methane, which is among the most powerful greenhouse gases, routinely leaks from oil and gas wells, and energy companies have long said that the rules requiring them to test for emissions were costly and burdensome.

The Environmental Protection Agency, perhaps as soon as this week, plans to make public a proposal to weaken an Obama-era requirement that companies monitor and repair methane leaks, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. In a related move, the Interior Department is also expected in coming days to release its final version of a draft rule, proposed in February, that essentially repeals a restriction on the intentional venting and “flaring,” or burning, of methane from drilling operations.

The new rules follow two regulatory rollbacks this year that, taken together, represent the foundation of the United States’ effort to rein in global warming. In July, the E.P.A. proposed weakening a rule on carbon dioxide pollution from vehicle tailpipes. And in August, the agency proposed replacing the rule on carbon dioxide pollution from coal-fired power plants with a weaker one that would allow far more global-warming emissions to flow unchecked from the nation’s smokestacks.

The New York Times article is provided in the links below.   The article does not mention that methane is not only a greenhouse gas contributor, in a big way, but also acts to deplete the ozone layer, allowing for more harmful UV sun rays to pass through the upper atmosphere..   Increases in incidences in skin canker can occur.

Unlike EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, I don’t expect Andrew Wheeler to be making public  appearances following hurricane Florence as he follows in Pruitt’s steps of industry friendly policies.

It is crazy to think of carbon emissions and air pollution as a state issue as  some Republicans want to do.   Global warming awareness needs to shift from a focus on political ideology/affiliation or economics, to  real health issues.

Stay tuned,

Dave

Links:

Trump Administration Wants to Make It Easier to Release Methane Into Air

NASA (2005):  Methane’s Impacts on Climate Change May Be Twice Previous Estimates

USA Today: Why hurricanes are doing more damage: It’s not the storms. It’s us.

The last article is at least, asking the right questions.    More expensive homes along the shore is a contributing factor.   The article concludes, as I did, that global warming doesn’t increase the number of hurricanes, but makes them more devastating in terms of rainfall.   There is research showing that they are more likely to intensify when there is warming water.

 

 

 

Florence and Climate Change

by Dave

Florence appears to be a very powerful hurricane.  South Carolina residents on the coastal areas are taking the evacuation orders seriously.   This is very good.   The best way to survive a hurricane is to leave.

I wrote about the relationship between hurricanes and climate change in a prior blog.   It isn’t cause and effect sort of thing.   Warm water makes hurricanes wetter.   Winds can intensify if the hurricane movement slows over warm weather.  But the relationships become pretty complex.

One group of scientists,  the GFDL (Geophysics Fluid Dynamics Laboratory) has studied the history of hurricanes and relationships using computer modeling.   They are apart of the NOAA, responsible for weather research at the federal level.  Their conclusion is the number of hurricanes in the future is not likely to go up due to global warming.  But they will be stronger and more devastating.  Bad news.  Here is their conclusion:

A review of existing studies, including the ones cited above, lead us to conclude that: it is likely that greenhouse warming will cause hurricanes in the coming century to be more intense globally and have higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes.

I’ve seen what a force 5 hurricane can do – totally destroy houses, cars and boats.   And it kills people as tears through an area.   More die from flooding,  electrocution and lack of medical facilities, after the hurricane.  Wet hurricanes, like Maria and Katrina caused drownings.

It was a hot topic after  Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and Hurricane Irma destroyed homes on both east and west coasts of South Florida.   Irma was a monster, and I have friends still haggling with insurance companies and trying to rebuild.

The reaction from the former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt was unbelievable, when asked about the contribution of global warming after Hurricane Maria.  He shot back saying the question was “insensitive” to the suffering of Puerto Ricans.   The EPA was not involved in  recovery efforts.   The  hurricane season going from June to November  is exactly the right time to bring up the fact that we are doing nothing on climate change, except pretend it doesn’t exist.  I think January to December are all good months to address global warming and hurricanes.

Al Gore referred to the consequences of global warming, 12 years ago as the  “inconvenient truth.”

I honestly feel very sorry for the residents of South Carolina.  I hope they get the hell away from the coastal areas, ASAP.    But, global warming is here, and global warming catastrophes are real and deadly.

Stay tuned,

Dave

Links:

Note –  Global warming is no longer part of EPA’s vocabulary.  They are the ones that should be working to curb carbon emissions.  NOAA can only make predictions, not change policy.

NOAA GFDL Website:   Global Warming and Hurricanes

Sun Sentinel:  Now is the right time to talk about climate change