Summer: The new normal of fire and smoke

Tipping points. A little difference has a big effect.

Summers in Southern Oregon used to be my favorite time. It is different now. Smoke.

Table Rock, one mile away

View on a clear day

I used to think that a two to four degree rise in world temperatures would simply be an up-shift of the temperature gradients. Americans could think of a town 100 to 150 miles south and imagine living there. I misunderstood tipping points.

Hurricane Ida that bashed New Orleans is in the news. Hurricanes happen when the water is 80 degrees or higher, when the humidity is high, and when there is limited "wind shear" in the  column of air to interrupt the vertical flow of moist air. Rising moist air creates a giant cyclone. 

When the temperature is 79 we don't get hurricanes, but at 80 we do. When the water is 82, the velocity of the moist evaporating air is much faster than at 80, and the hurricanes are monsters. At 85 degrees, the hurricanes are giant monsters. In New Orleans those degrees are the difference between a lazy, sultry summer afternoon and roofs being blown off houses. 

Southern Oregon's summers are experiencing our own climate monster. The smoke isn't an event. Now it is chronic. 

Air at my farm is hazardous--worse than Kabul.

The dominant weather feature has changed, from temperature to smoke. Most days this summer have had chokingly bad air, with the AQI--the Air Quality Index--somewhere between Unhealthy and Hazardous, from 100 to 400 by the numbers, with 10 to 30 times the fine particulates the health authorities say is healthy.  An AQI of 150+ is like being downwind from a campfire. 

The hotter temperatures are resulting in lower precipitation from the storms coming off the Pacific in the wet winter months--meaning less water in the reservoirs. More critically, it means that the months of spring precipitation, when normally the grass stays bright green, are becoming rain-free, like always-dry July and August. Now we have dried-out vegetation combined with the hot temperatures of mid-summer. This changes everything about wildfires here.

The primary result of warmer climate is not experienced by me as pleasant shirtsleeve weather in March. It is experienced as choking smoke from July until the rains start in November. It is our version of the roofs blowing off.

There is plenty of finger-pointing politically. One school of thought is that if we just harvested more trees for lumber production we would have less fuel in the forest to burn. That is the voice of Republicans generally.  Another school of thought is that if we just did a better job of managing and thinning forests of non-commercial brush there would be less to burn--the voice of Democrats generally. 

I have a different observation, drawn in part from the fire last year that burned up over 2,000 homes along an urban strip of land next to a creekside wild area--the Greenway. It wasn't managed or mis-managed federal timberland. It was a park, backed right up to urban developments, inside some city limits. It is the same as the natural areas on my farm. Much of it is bone dry--by June.

The problem is only partially forest management. Everyone agrees we could do more and better. The nature of our land and climate here is that there will be forestland. Winter rains will grow trees, and if not conifers then broadleaf, and if not big trees then brush. If the vegetation is dry by June, with the hottest days still to come, we will have fires. Monster fires.  Careless people or lightning will ignite them.

There is political consensus in Southern Oregon that the smoke is intolerable. Politicians must do something!  There is no consensus on what to do nor is there consensus on why the spring rains aren't coming. There isn't consensus on whether the planet is really warmer than it was before, nor is there consensus on whether humans are causing the temperature to rise. Most of my readers think it is obviously human-caused, but there are doubters and deniers, and they represent about half of the American population, and they vote.

Little additions to the temperature can be the tipping point for life-changing consequences via hurricanes in New Orleans or forest fires here. That is how climate change shows up. 

Humans will be slow to admit we are causing it. Creative people--artist, poets, writers--put ideas into the cultural environment that allow citizens to accept as plausible something we resist because it requires change and sacrifice. It may take centuries. In 1818 Mary Shelley created a fictional monster we call Frankenstein. A doctor was experimenting with something with consequences far greater than he understood. We give the name Frankenstein to the monster, but he was the creation of Doctor Frankenstein, a human.

Vaccination Porn: Anti-vaxxers die of COVID.

 "Ha! You have it coming."

I delete blog comments that appear to take satisfaction out of the deaths of anti-vaxxers. 

It is unlovely. It is disrespectful. It is politically counterproductive.

The media has a genre I call "vaccination porn." It is the semi-joyful story of comeuppance, in the form of a report on the COVID death of someone who publicly opposed vaccinations and tried to convince others not to be vaccinated. 

I understand the emotion of joyful justice, but I try not to give into it, nor do I let this blog be a venue for expressing it. Life is unfair. Sad, unlucky, painful things happen to people, both guilty and innocent, bad and good. Rain falls on the just and unjust, so I try not to let myself think that someone else's misery is deserved.

The media stories about the COVID deaths of anti-vaxers are an iteration of a classic trope in slapstick comedy, the quick reversal of fortune. Here, Charlie Chaplin, at second-40 tosses a banana peel onto the sidewalk. At second-46 he slips on it. 

Ha! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvMVwh-4aLM

The comedy is richest when a person is injured by the very mechanism that he uses to injure another, like Hamlet's two schoolfellows who carried letters that would have had Hamlet killed. Hamlet says, 

For ’tis the sport to have the engineer
Hoist with his own petard; and ’t shall go hard
But I will delve one yard below their mines
And blow them at the moon. O, ’tis most sweet

"Hoist on his own petard" is a memorable phrase, for good reason. It reflects a human emotion.

I call the stories "porn" because there is an element of furtiveness in the media accounts. They don't say aloud the "Ha!" part, but it is there hiding in the shadows, like pornography before the 1970s when fig leaves were removed and it became full-frontal everything. For most of the 20th century pornography was illegal, so there had been an element of tease. There were accidentally-on-purpose flashes of breast. There was a veil semi-hiding the good stuff. 

COVID death news stories look like this:

The "Ha!" is a silent letter, present but unpronounced.

A COVID-conscientious person is continually confronted in public by people who have removed their masks or who wear them under their chins--about 10% of people yesterday in Costco. One can ascribe a hostile attitude to them; darned if they care if you catch something from them. It creates a moment of animosity. Wearing a mask is an inconvenience done for the benefit of others. Vaccinations were originally understood to be primarily about protecting oneself, but now they, too, are a public health matter. Vaccinated people are less likely to spread the disease, less likely to incubate a new variant, and less likely to clog up the hospitals. In the minds of the COVID conscientious, anti-vaxxers and mask removers are like litterbugs, drunk drivers, or people who would smoke a cigar in an elevator. One could delight if the cigar turned out to explode.

Best not. The politics of gloating over comeuppance requires the COVID-vaccinated to invite their better angels. Gloating backfires politically. Anti-vaxxers do not perceive themselves as scofflaw cigar-smokers stinking up someone else's air. They perceive themselves as cautious about the risks of a vaccine, realistic in the perception that COVID "cures" are worse than the disease, and courageous in their defense of all-American freedom. 

Some people will enjoy the karma-justice of the anti-vaxxer hoist on his own petard, but it must be a guilty pleasure, not a proud one. It is guilty. We know how random and unfair misfortune can be. Misfortune happens to everyone. Best to keep that sad reality--not Hamlet's "most sweet"--in mind. If other emotions come unbidden, keep silent.

The unvaccinated have their reasons. Deaths may persuade them to change. Contempt will not.

Abundance and Poverty

Upscale grocery stores are beautiful.

The food is beautiful. The displays are beautiful. The stores are immaculate.

This is a rich country.  Anyone can shop here.

There have always been fancy food stores and up-scale butchers in America, but something new has emerged to service the needs of the "mass affluent." Whole Foods Market is the nationally-known chain. It presents itself as selling "natural" food, organic food, supposedly-minimally-processed foods, responsibly-sourced foods. It is more expensive than general supermarkets like Safeway, but customers in America's vast middle class shop there when they have particular tastes and a bit of discretionary money to indulge them.

There are local versions of the same kind of store. Market of Choice is an example of it in Medford, Oregon, and no doubt similar stores exist nationwide in moderately upscale urban and suburban zip codes. Simple, unprocessed food is cheap in America, a small part of the budget of middle-income customers. The markups are in processed and branded food. Part of the appeal of these stores is gigantic variety in certain categories where there is niche branding, now including beer. In the display shelf below, each beer can has six cans stacked behind it, so that each brand had its own one-can face. I counted 450 different brands in this photo.

There is also a refrigerated section of approximately the same size.

I took photos of the display because it amazed me. I was reminded of that scene in The Great Gatsby, a book commonly assigned to Americans in their high school English class, so part of the national canon. "I have a man in England who buys me clothes," Gatsby said, as he grabbed folded shirts out of his closet and threw them down to Daisy who became covered by them. The wealth. The excess. Look at what Gatsby has, and his freedom to unfold beautiful shirts and toss them. She was led to tears.

From the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby

I am writing about grocery stores, yet the focus of this blog is politics. Let me explain. 

I observe political messages, some of which are made in the obvious places, including political speeches, and others are made wordlessly, in tone, demeanor, biography, and actions by political actors. This blog calls it body language. Sometimes an object or event is a political message. I see the beer displays as body language, like the language of Jay Gatsby throwing his shirts. 

Surely the merchant intends no political point. It is just a sales display and the denoted unsaid message is simply "Here is beer for sale." But there is a subtext of limitless choice and opportunity to indulge one's finest distinctions of preference. Look at all this! This is a message of vast abundance.

Market of Choice is advertising right now for new employees, to be paid $14-$18 an hour, which is enough income to allow the employee to shop at this store. There are people who disapprove of such excess as shown in this beer display. What waste, what flagrant commercialism! Wasn't that one of the messages of The Great Gatsby, the shallowness and pointlessness of wasteful luxury?  After all, it didn't make Gatsby or Daisy happy. 

If beer-drinkers have enough abundance to indulge their particular tastes, I say, why not? I am fussy about my melons, so I don't judge harshly people who are fussy about beer. I like abundance. I want everyone to have access to it. 

Something isn't working right. I have written about the un-housed people so visible in Portland. Those people on the sidewalks are a wordless political message, too, one as vivid as the beer display that caught my eye. It is a message of the failure of abundance to trickle down. 

Portland sidewalk

This country's version of global capitalism is an incredible engine for creating material wealth, but it has not been successful in its wide distribution. Some people are left behind, the struggling working class. Some people are left even further behind, and they live in tents on sidewalks. They create a colorful display of their own, their own body language message.

This is a rich country. There is enough. We could eliminate poverty if we chose to.

Afghanistan: A long history of blunder

     "Victory has a thousand fathers. Defeat is an orphan."

          John F. Kennedy, 1961, following the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion

President Biden is getting the blame. Trump handed him a mess. Trump got a mess from Obama. Obama got one from George W. Bush.

This defeat has a thousand fathers, starting with errors made by George W. Bush.

The details of a 20-year war fade into a blur, partly because of time and partly because Afghanistan was never really on the public radar. The fighting was far away, the geography unfamiliar, and an all-volunteer army meant there were no giant anti-war rallies to sharpen controversy. Leaders in both political parties, with presidents, senators and most voices on the serious Sunday morning TV shows all agreeing we needed to do something there. And so we did.

Jeffrey Laurenti, in Tunisia 

Jeffrey Lauranti has written Guest Posts here this month putting Afghanistan into perspective. This time he looks at the early years of the war, when the wheels of future disaster were put into motion. He is a college classmate who went on to study public policy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He directed The Century Foundation's international task force on multilateral avenues for ending Afghanistan's decades-long conflict, after serving as director of policy studies at the United Nations Association of the United States.

Guest Post by Jeffrey Lauranti

My sense is that in 2009 the "surge" was all about the generals. In Bush's second term the Taliban had reassembled their guerrilla presence in the countryside and begun adopting a tactic alien to Afghanistan that was proving devastatingly effective for the resistance in Iraq: suicide bombings. In his last months in the White House, Bush ordered a stop-gap increase in U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan -- but also left behind a story line in the national security "community" in Washington that his and General Petraeus's "surge" in Iraq had "succeeded" in "stabilizing" (ephemerally!) that shattered country. I was shocked, in January 2009, to find that all the Respectable People in Washington think-tanks were abuzz about the latest military fashion, "counterinsurgency," and busy seeking foundation and government grant money for projects demonstrating its efficacy. (I would point out that "COIN," as it was now rechristened, was being resurrected from the graveyard of Vietnam; never mind.)

As the security situation in Afghanistan continued that year to deteriorate, the generals, the holdover secretary of defense, Petraeus from his new perch as CIA director, and tellingly Hillary Clinton (stifling her own "Af-Pak" envoy and would-have-been secretary of state, Dick Holbrooke) pressed on Obama the urgency of an escalation of force levels in Afghanistan to reverse the decline. (Obama is quite direct in his memoir, *Promised Land*, about the political and media campaign orchestrated through the Pentagon to force his hand.) He agreed on a two-year surge coupled with a political opening to negotiations with the Taliban, setting an "artificial" timetable for drawing down the force levels that was adamantly not "conditions based," as national-security orthodoxy demanded. Interestingly, early in the 2012 presidential campaign, Romney attacked Obama's draw-down when the war wasn't "won" -- but with polls showing that public support for soldiering on had evaporated, by the fall debates Romney was saying his position was identical to Obama's. After reelection Obama announced jointly with the other NATO partners in 2014 an end to foreign military operations, with a "residual" force of 10,000 for training and "support" (the latter a somewhat elastic term).

Laurenti, left, in Mauritania

Having mentioned the NATO security assistance force, let me note the other fateful policy choices of the Bush regime that set the Afghanistan mission on its track to failure. Of course, the original sin was barring any negotiations with or political participation by the Taliban.

1. After the rapid collapse of the Taliban regime, there was much discussion in international circles of the need for an international security force to hold the country together in the short run which -- given most Afghans' deeply held attachments to their religious traditions -- should be largely composed of contingents from Muslim countries -- Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Egypt were volunteered as the possible core of a U.N. peacekeeping force. Team Bush made clear a U.N. peacekeeping force was not acceptable. It insisted on a "robust" NATO-led military force (NATO, of course, being firmly under U.S. control).

2. This alien security force would be highly "kinetic" (a euphemism for readily using violent force), and exempt from any meddling by the Afghan government. This exclusion of Afghan oversight of deadly force on Afghan territory would prove critical, and not only because it made a mockery of the government's claim to sovereignty over the national territory; both Karzai and U.N. mission staff would ever more insistently call for a halt to the midnight raids and dubiously "intelligence"-driven airstrikes whose high civilian casualties were fueling Taliban recruitment. Obama, in contrast, did heed these voices and sharply restricted the aggressive tactics; Trump promptly reversed Obama's restrictions and "unshackled" the military, despite the U.S. supposedly no longer doing combat operations. (This was while Trump was listening to his generals, at least at the start.)

Would I be gratuitously flogging Bush's dead horse were I to mention the dragnets that would sweep thousands of Afghans into the secretive detention facilities of the "global war on terror," with Guantanamo graduating a number of the most resolute opponents of the U.S. who have risen to leading ranks of the Taliban today?

Doubters made much at the time of the refocusing of the Bush regime's wandering eye on Iraq. That was, of course, an even more colossal blunder, one that outraged much of that same international community that had rallied to the cause in Afghanistan and outraged much of the American public as well. But even if Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld had not been seduced by their easy (initial!!) success in Afghanistan into a war of blatant aggression against Iraq, even if they had "kept their eye on the ball" in Afghanistan, the policy choices they had already made there had set the course to last week's termination date of the experiment.

COVID Hotspot Update

 Medford is Number One.

Our local hospital catchment area shows the country's single highest increase in COVID hospitalizations. 

A lot of my fellow citizens don't want to be vaccinated. They have their reasons.

Our hospitals are full-up. Patients are in the hallways. The ICU has no space. Just over half of local adults are vaccinated against COVID. People are catching and spreading it. New vaccinations are still slow.

In hindsight, I should not have gotten a haircut yesterday. My hair was tickling my ears and it bothered me. Everyone is back to masking indoors, but I just didn't think very hard about whether my barber would be exhaling infected air. I kept a mask on for the haircut. Noelle, who cut my hair at a franchise hair cutting place, kept hers on, too. She is in her 50s, I would guess. As the haircut ended our conversation turned to vaccinations.

"I believe in doing my own research. I believe in freedom," she said.

At that point I knew where this was going.

"I have heard that lots of people get sick from the vaccination. They get headaches. They feel punky for a day. I heard people die from it all the time, but the media covers it up. Two people died right here in Medford--from the vaccination. Nobody heard about it. 

I did my research. There is lots of unknown stuff in the vaccines. It hasn't really been tested. I am really careful about what I put into my body. Do your research, you'll see. The vaccines are super dangerous."

A friend sent me this comic:

I am not in the right loops, but I know there is widespread social media talk about the dangers of the vaccines and enthusiasm about medicines that treat COVID. Ivermectin works to treat parasites in humans, and is prescribed for that. It can be purchased without a prescription if one uses preparations designed for veterinary use, for sale in farm and pet stores. It is an effective treatment for parasites, including heart-worm.

Social media gives people an easy way to bypass the medical-industrial complex. A tweet:

People wishing to buy the human-approved version of the drug, without the hassles and cautions and refusals by their regular physician, can order it on-line from a doctor and associated pharmacy. No problem. They ask which prescription one prefers, ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.

Do ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine work?  Possibly so. Maybe not. A pre-print--an early release of an academic study-- appeared to show that ivermectin reduced COVID death rates by 90%. This circulated widely. Why fuss with masks and get vaccinated if a drug that has been around for decades will cure you if you get a bad case of COVID?  Shortly after publication, problems with the study emerged and the pre-print server pulled the study on ethical grounds. 

The idea was out there. Ivermectin works, but the authorities don't want you to hear about it. That is a message with powerful appeal. People are rushing to buy it while it is still available, and they are taking it, both as a preventative and cure. The FDA is warning that they are seeing an upsurge in cases of ivermectin overdoses. The amount suitable for a horse is too much for a human.

People oriented toward believing the FDA and established medical authorities need to be careful not to project unjustified certitude. People skeptical about the FDA presume that being critical of something the FDA didn't recommend is exactly what the FDA would say, because they want control. Possibly hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in fact do some good. It is possible.

Skepticism of do-it-yourself remedies projects contempt, which backfires. Real data on drug efficacy is slow and complicated--just like real data on the efficacy of masks and the origin of the virus in Wuhan. Anecdotes happen quickly. Most people who get COVID do not die from it. Some of those people who got sick, then survived, will have taken a social media home cure like ivermectin, thereby creating a persuasive story. A Facebook friend gets COVID, takes hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or something else, gets well after a few days, then tells friends. That is a clear, simple story that people understand and share. 

Some people understand and calculate statistics, and think rationally about them, but statistics do not motivate very many of us. Stories motivate us. People hear things and sometimes they ring true. Donald Trump sold an idea that rings true to a lot of people, that COVID was no big deal, that bad people manufactured the disease and hide that fact, and then other bad people profit by the efforts to mitigate the disease. His message includes the idea that the media is in on the con, partly to protect Democrats and to hurt Trump, so the media censor the views of the independent thinkers. People hear things from friends and acquaintances who have no apparent reason to lie. They have more credibility than corrupt authorities. Believe them. They have a better, more welcome story.

 

Afghanistan Chess: Pivot to China, Part Two

Afghanistan isn't about Afghanistan. It is about Taiwan and the South China Sea.

     "Peace and stability, freedom on the seas, unimpeded commerce, advancing human rights, a commitment to the international rules-based order and the recognition that our common interests are not zero sum. Our engagement in Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific is not against any one country, nor is it designed to make anyone choose between countries."

        Vice President Kamala Harris.

Kamala Harris is in Singapore. She isn't being sidelined. 

She is on center stage. 

It is hard to notice the future when we are distracted by the present. 

Kamala Harris in Singapore

There is a lot of news. The Afghanistan airlift rescue is underway. Congress is working on an infrastructure bill. A House Select Committee is gathering information on January 6. There are problems at the southern border. New York has a new governor. California's governor may be recalled. One of the people who plotted to kidnap and kill the Michigan governor was sentenced. 

Plus COVID, with all that means regarding schools reopening, mask requirements, vaccination requirements, governors acting and not acting, people getting sick and hospitals overcrowded.

With all this going on, Kamala Harris is in Southeast Asia, talking with the leaders of countries that border the South China Sea. 

As this blog noted two days ago, our withdrawal from Afghanistan is about Southeast Asia, not Afghanistan. Our leaving frees up U.S. resources, good for us. Leaving creates a Taliban-led Muslim country on the border of China's Xinjiang Province, bad for China. It is home of the Uyghur population China is attempting, with great effort and expense, to suppress. Religion, especially militant fundamentalist religion, is a direct assault to the Chinese government, which demands that it be the unitary moral and political authority. When the Taliban were confounding the U.S., China and Russia were happy to encourage and fund them. Now the ungovernable Taliban fighters are their problem. Russia just initiated its own airlift to get their people out of Kabul. China is stuck there by geography. 

China understands that Kamala Harris signifies a shift in our attention and priorities. China sees us showing common interest with countries in opposition to China's goal of expansion into the South China Sea. Harris is signaling. Her presence is part of the signal. One of China's state-run newspapers, the Global Times, published a commentary acknowledging Harris is there to “further strengthen the US’ regional presence … [to turn] Southeast Asia into a frontier against China.”

A frontier against China? Who, us?  Why we just want "a free and open Indo-Pacific that promotes our interest and those of our partners and allies," Harris said.

Harris is doing diplomacy. She is signaling without confronting. While denying hostile intent, she is framing the conflict as one between our team of international good-guys against a coercive bully. She said,

These unlawful claims have been rejected by the 2016 arbitral tribunal decision and Beijing’s actions continue to undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations. We will invest our time and our energy to fortify our key partnerships including with Singapore and Vietnam. . .. We know that Beijing continues to coerce, to intimidate, and to make claims to the vast majority of the South China Sea.

Chinese national interest is in dominating its southern flank, and they are building islands and a navy to to project power seaward. Their control of the South China Sea resolves a vulnerability. The U.S. position that we are preserving an "international" interest is doing exactly what China accuses us of doing--and what we deny doing. We are attempting to solidify a frontier against China.

Some years from now, when the South China Sea is in the daily headlines and top of mind, Americans will wonder how whatever mess we are dealing with got started. How is it we fell into some proxy war to confound China in dominating its region the way that the U.S. insists on dominating its own region?

We didn't notice because it started small, because the U.S. denied it, and because we were distracted by other events.

Oregon 2020 election: No evidence of problem.

Oregon Elections Department reports on 2020 fraud complaints and investigations.

Result: 104 investigations, 99 warning letters, one referral for prosecution.

There is no evidence of widespread fraud in Oregon's 2020 election. One incident in 23,000 ballots cast.

Former President Trump laid the groundwork of citizen distrust of our elections. Prior to the election he said the election would be rigged against him by mail-in ballots. Especially dangerous, he said, were mail-in ballots sent to people unsolicited, as they are in the four states with universal mail-in balloting. Oregon is one of them. We were a potential ground zero for fraud.

The election will be "RIGGED," Trump tweeted. Mail-in ballots are "a whole big scam." He said that mail-in voting will make this the "most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history."  He tweeted “MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES.” 

Trump persuaded about a third of American voters.

What is the truth? The Oregon Secretary of State is able to address that doubt with data and public outreach. What kinds of fraud attempts are there, if any? She gets the complaints. She can count them and evaluate them and educate Oregonians and the country as to what "election fraud" really looks like.

Questionable ballots--ones that are unsigned, have uncertain signatures, or have some other problem--are examined at the county level by the County Clerks and sent to the Secretary of State when misbehavior is suspected. Jackson County's Chris Walker explained the complicated process of ballot bar codes signature reviews and tabulation, which this blog reported on August 6: Click. Jackson County referred 14 incidents. Statewide, County Clerks referred 103 complaints, according to Bob Roberts, an Investigations and Legal Specialist in the Department of Elections in the Oregon Secretary of State office. Ninety-nine of those cases were investigated and closed by the Secretary of State's office, all with the minor sanction of a warning letter. 

What about complaints from concerned citizens? The Election Department says there were five of these complaints, which are each examined to determine if there is any plausibility to them. One of the five met the plausibility test; the Department explained that "reports of election fraud do not necessarily rise to the level of a complaint." That one investigated citizen complaint is still "open," the Elections Department reports. Of the 104 cases referred by County Clerks, only three are still open, and one has been referred to the Oregon Department of Justice, which evaluates cases for possible prosecution.

Although the Secretary of State Shemia Fagan did not provide color or description of the kinds of cases evaluated, the Jackson County Clerk did. These are not truckloads of bamboo-infused fake ballots dumped anonymously into an election drop box, with fake bar codes inventing voters from names taken from graveyards. The descriptions of systematic fraud imagined by Trump did not happen. Instead, there were one-off incidents of dishonesty, typically a person voting the ballot of a deceased family member or one member of a household signing the ballot of another. This is illegal and it has the potential to change election results in a race with a tiny vote margin, but there is no evidence of massive, widespread, or coordinated anything. There were 2,318,000 votes cast in Oregon. There were 107 potential incidents of wrongdoing, 104 investigations, and 99 of them resolved with a warning letter. Investigated incidents are one vote in 23,000.

The 107 total cases reviewed by the Election Department do not constitute an unusual increase in citizen complaints or county referrals. For comparison, in 2018 they report there were 81 referrals by County Clerks, three non-plausible complaints by citizens, and two referrals to the Oregon Department of Justice--a ratio of problems generally in line with the total votes cast. 

Was there widespread voter fraud?  Was the Secretary of State buried by problems to investigate and refer for prosecution? 

No. The data show the opposite.

The Secretary of State has a comment:

Research efforts across the country and here in Oregon have already shown that widespread voter fraud is a myth. While Oregon has fared better than most of the nation, we are not immune to the challenges of misinformation and mistrust in elections. As Oregon’s Secretary of State, I'm working to build trust and ensure voters across the political spectrum once again have confidence in our elections. 

Afghanistan Chess. Pivot to China

Biden is old, but he is wise to the way world power chess is played.

The U.S. is moving a Rook and a Bishop from one side of the board to the other. Smart. The U.S. got stronger. China got weaker.

The western half of the board

The U.S. pullout from Afghanistan helps us strategically. Afghanistan is far away. Any country could house people who plot to blow up our federal buildings and try to overthrow our democracy; Timothy McVey in Oklahoma City and the January 6 insurrection in D.C. prove that. We put Afghanistan onto central stage by deciding that it was a criminal state that harbored the 9-11 terrorists, but we could have identified other countries to target--and did. Iraq. The 9-11 terrorists were Saudis and they harbor and fund Islamic fundamentalist terror. But they have oil. We are semi-aligned with them in opposition to Iran. Our interests in the Middle East are oil and Israel. We can and do live with Muslim extremism.

The U.S. shows we support our allies. We fought for 20 years, lost soldiers, and spent a trillion dollars in an effort long understood to have been hopeless and counter-productive. We demonstrated that we will persist for two decades against all reason and self interest. 

China-- not the U.S.--was the big beneficiary of our war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan borders the Xinjiang province of China, home to the Uyghurs, the Turkic ethnic group of Muslim faith. China is struggling and failing to integrate them into their imagined multi-ethnic harmony of Chinese diversity. China has resorted to Plan B: Internal surveillance, religious persecution, prison, family separation, forced abortions, and "re-education." The U.S. kept the Taliban--also Turkic people of Muslim faith--busy fighting us. Our leaving means a chaotic Islamic state on the border adjacent to Xinjiang. That is less than ideal for us but it is a genuine danger for China. 

Eastern Chessboard: China encircled

The Afghanistan move is really about Taiwan. China is an export power whose ports are surrounded by an island chain from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The straits between them are narrow and the U.S. Navy patrols the area. China is vulnerable in the event of serious conflict. Taiwan is officially part of China but in fact shore batteries protect Taiwan from China. It is theirs, but not theirs.

Taiwan is also a rebuke and a contradiction of the central Chinese Communist Party deal with its people, that the CCP is the source of their new prosperity. Taiwan is more prosperous and did it with economic and political freedom. China would invade if they could do it easily, but cannot. Taiwan is well defended, the U.S. Navy is there, and amphibious warfare needs staging and assembly of a landing force, and secrecy is impossible in a world of satellites.

So now we have a chess game of signals. We have freed ourselves up in Central Asia. The U.S. will assure Taiwan that we are committed to the South China Sea by sailing ships there. Taiwan will be grateful. China will understand it to be a provocation. They will respond by selling fighter jets to North Korea or something similar. We will avoid a direct confrontation because our populations are hostage to each others' nuclear bombs.  And besides, we are trading partners.

The chess game only makes sense as a way for world powers to position and re-position themselves while avoiding direct war. No one really wants a war.

Afghanistan Airlift.

Change the reality. Change the story. 

The Berlin Airlift. We did it in 1948. We can do it now.

1948

Humans understand the feeling of being trapped. We don't like it. We experienced it as infants, squirming to get free of a parent's arms, out of a crib. My son's third or fourth word was "Stuck!" Stories coming out of Kabul displayed the adult version of frustration and panic of being stuck. 

Biden has an opportunity, and he is seizing it. Four days ago I wrote that Biden should do what Americans know how to do: Materials logistics. FedEx, Amazon, and the Postal Service do it. The military does it. Fly stuff from one place to another in two days.

CNN 

Moving quickly requires a destination where no governor, zoning official, or NIMBY citizen group could object, i.e. a military base. I suggested Fort Hood in Texas. The Wall Street Journal just reported that a "tent city" is being set up at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. Just as good. 

Biden is making it happen. United Airlines, Delta Airlines, and American Airlines know how to transport passengers in airplanes. There is already a law in place to recruit the planes as part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. Airlines have capacity. They want to do this. American Airlines issued a statement saying the company is "proud to fulfill its duty to help the U.S. military scale this humanitarian and diplomatic rescue mission."

American Airlines is validating Biden's ideal branding and framing: It's a rescue mission. Perfect.

The ascendent GOP message has been opposition to immigration, especially from Muslim countries. Trump described immigrants and refugees as criminals, as benefit-seekers, or as job stealers. He scoffed at their claim of danger back home. He was decisive and cruel; we don't want those people here in our country. A great many people agreed with this framing. Fox's most popular host, Tucker Carlson, has amped up that description of Afghan refugees as mortal threats to America. He says some will be secret terrorists but all of them are a part of a demographic wave to outvote White Americans.

Video this week changes the optics. Stuck Afghans are sympathetic victims. The media loves the story of the Taliban threatening Americans, especially women. It is classic narrative drama: Bad-Man-Puts-Woman-in-Peril. Fox News is on board, too, especially when they can show a White Christian woman in peril, describing the horrors that await her if the Taliban has its way. It is classic Fox. GOP and Fox News are in a muddle. Mitch McConnell is urging Biden to rescue Afghans. So is the corporate side of Fox, if not its on-air hosts. Fox reported on itself: We rescued people, including Muslims.

Biden has been slow to overrule the size limits on refugees implemented by Trump. Biden's hesitation appears to be his attempt to turn down the heat on the immigration issue. He was bending in the direction of Trump, sensing, accurately I believe, that there is growing un-ease by many Americans over the rate of immigration. The issue worked for Trump. Biden noticed.

We have not seen much of the conditions in Central America that pushed immigrant refugees here, but we see the conditions this week in Afghanistan. They challenge our humanity and our sense of obligation. 

Biden concludes his formal speeches with a signature phrase, "And may God protect our troops."  Biden has an opportunity to prove up. Let Afghans in. They protected our troops. Trump and Tucker Carlson will criticize. Their attack is a gift to Biden because it lets Biden stand firm in the face of attacks. It gives Biden a chance to look strong and resolute. Biden needs that.

Waste, fraud, and abuse.

     "What flourished on our watch? Cronyism, rampant corruption, a Ponzi scheme disguised as a banking system, designed by U.S. finance specialists. . .. A government system where billionaires get to write the rules."

     Sarah Chayes, former NPR reporter in Afghanistan, and advisor to the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Maybe we are to blame.

The word "Afghanistan" now represents failure. Some people blame the mission, wrong from the get-go. Some people blame our decision to leave. Some people blame the generals for telling Biden Afghanistan would remain orderly for 90 days, not collapse in a week. Some people blame Biden for being so naive as to believe them. Trump blames Biden. At a rally yesterday evening in Alabama, Trump said Biden was weak and incompetent, and everything would have gone great if we had just retained him as president.

Possibly "corruption" has been mentioned all along in the news coming out of Afghanistan, but if so, it was in the background and not the main story and I didn't notice. American news focused on the map of Taliban control of what territory, not why the Taliban remained such a viable alternative in the Afghan countryside.

Beginning this week we are hearing about Afghan government corruption. Afghans faced two bad choices--Taliban brutality representing a return to Islam and traditional customs, or a Western government noteworthy for its corruption. "Afghans could not be expected to take risks on behalf of a government that was as hostile to their interests as the Taliban were," Chayes wrote. She observed that the last speaker of the Afghan parliament, Rahman Rahmani is a multimillionaire, "thanks to monopoly contracts to provide fuel and security to U.S. forces at their main base, Bagram."   Click: Chayes

The easy and politically convenient people to blame are Afghan elites. Rachel Maddow pointed that direction in a recent show on MSNBC. That is an incomplete story. The corruption happened under American watch, with our money sloshing around. Americans contractors were getting rich, too. 

Click: Taibbi

Matt Taibbi wrote that nation-building missions "assume bureaucratic lives of their own, and contracting becomes an end in itself." Foreign operations like this one become "boondoggles in large part because they’re so many levels removed from anything like oversight."

He reported that our Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction determined that as they reviewed money spent there that about 30% of the money spent in Afghanistan was lost to "waste, fraud, and abuse."

The $700 billion military budget is already an unguarded trough for contractors like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. Overseas theaters are simply more inaccessible plunder zones within that already impenetrable black box of over-spending,

Chayes, too, points the finger back at Americans.

 I was there. Afghans did not reject us. They looked to us as exemplars of democracy and the rule of law. They thought that’s what we stood for. . .. I hold U.S. civilian leadership, across four administrations, largely responsible for today’s outcome.

Americans may be in no mood for self-reflection, especially on a problem that is as baked into our system as the military-industrial complex. We fight wars with masses of money, not massed armies of American soldiers. There are casualties either way, and in this case, money. We supercharge corruption. The civilian leadership called out by Chayes include presidents and legislators of both parties. Nearly everyone signed onto the original mission. Some piece of every weapon system gets built in nearly every state. There is no one to act as accuser and truth-teller--except an independent media.

Governments learn and change when confronting failures. The public demands something be done. There is potential here for Americans to examine how we waste our tax money and facilitate corruption that undermines our values and subverts our national interest. I don't expect us to recoil from corruption. The trend is the other way. Trump populism moved Americans back toward Jacksonian spoils system ethic.  Americans have become accustomed to politicized, less "professional" departments. The executive branch carries out policies to empower the political and personal interests of its leader, and non-partisan rule-oriented people are "deep state" impediments. State and county election officials who stood by their work get harassed. The Justice Department is politicized.  We have normalized self-dealing and cashing in, whether in Trump hotels or revolving doors to K Street. Corruption is not just is what we tolerate in Afghanistan, but in what we tolerate for ourselves. 

We have changed. Jimmy Carter seems quaint, and Walter Cronkite is dead.