Open Thread for Monday, June 5, 2017

21 Replies

one drive

I’m taking a slightly different approach with this one. It’s less like a Virtual Front Page. Some of the most interesting stuff from the last couple of days:

  1. Trump National Security Team Blindsided by NATO Speech — Apparently, none of the grownups were in the room when Trump decided to delete the Article 5 reassurance — after they had worked hard to make sure it was in there. If you don’t understand how pointlessly reckless what Trump did is, you might want to read Charles Krauthammer’s column from Friday.
  2. With his London tweets, Trump embarrasses himself — and America — once again — Excellent piece by Jennifer Rubin, which I retweeted Saturday, saying, “Something he had not done in the past — what? Two or three minutes?” But being Trump, he still managed to explore new areas of crassness.
  3. Donald Trump Poisons the World — Sorry about three Trump items, but after the last few days, dare we look away? This is one of David Brooks’ best columns in awhile, and I didn’t see it until Cindi ran it in the Sunday paper — with the Krauhammer piece mentioned above, as it happens — and if you haven’t yet, I urge you to read it.
  4. Anybody get a threatening email from Microsoft? — Check out the email at the top of this post. I don’t recall ever asking Microsoft for cloud space, much less going over my supposed allowance. Anybody else get a threat like this? I’m not even entirely clear on what “One Drive” is, except that I’ve ignored it whenever it tried to get my attention. Sort of like Cortana. Who needs it?
  5. Have you seen the Wonder Woman movie? — And if so, is it worth my going to see on the big screen? I ask because, while I’ve heard a good bit about it, it’s mostly been cast in What This Means in Feminist Terms (Et tu, Rolling Stone?), and frankly, that’s not what I go to see superhero (or superheroine) movies for. I mean, how does it compare to, say, “Doctor Strange” or “Captain America: Civil War?” Should I just save my money and go see the new Spiderman next month?
  6. Check out this cool simulation — That’s all I have to say. I couldn’t seem to grab the gif itself, so here’s the Tweet in which I saw it:

21 thoughts on “Open Thread for Monday, June 5, 2017”

  1. Bryan Caskey

    Best line from the Politico piece is Mattis’ quote:

    “To quote a British observer of us from some years back, bear with us,” Mattis told the questioner. “Once we have exhausted all possible alternatives, the Americans will do the right thing.”

    Great quote, widely attributed to Churchill, but most likely apocryphal.

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  2. Scout

    My work uses office 365 email. One drive is integrated into it. One drive is like dropbox. It’s cloud storage. Could that be a phishing email? If you aren’t already subscribed to one drive, which I’d think you’d know, I don’t know why you’d get an email like that. If you click one of those links, do they want you to enter a email and password? Maybe just trying to get those?

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    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      No, when I followed the link, it asked me for my Microsoft password — which I had to create for some reason to log into Windows on the laptop I used before this one — and it took me to my One Drive content, which seems to consist of most of the photos I took back in 2015. All of which I have stored elsewhere…

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    1. bud

      There is actually a bit of a cottage industry involved in building WW 1 and 2 replicas. I’m especially impressed with the Me
      262s that were recently build in Washington state. Pretty cool hobby. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more movies featuring the replicas.

      As for the Eindecker, that is probably reason enough to check out the film.

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  5. bud

    Usually when Charles Krauthammer writes something I disagree with it. This no exception. We shouldn’t go to war over Estonia so why say we will? Trump is actually right on NATO. One of the very few things.

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    2. Mark Stewart

      Anyone ever been to Estonia? Would it be more offensive if we just wrote off Finland (again)?

      The way treaties work is that the parties’ uphold the terms of the agreement. Today everyone knows how WWI began – that goes for both sides. So a firm affirmation of Article 5 goes a long way to keeping the peace. Trump is too much Trump to be able to appreciate that.

      The guy is out of his element – everywhere that isn’t rabble-rousing that is.

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      1. bud

        Not sure I follow. Pre-1914 Europe was chock full of alliances, not so different from today’s NATO, that provided guarantees that if one nation in the alliance was attacked all are. That meant that an attack by Austria on Serbia, instigated by the assassination of one man, eventually engulfed Europe and many other nations as well. That single event (an actual conspiracy that nearly failed) cause a huge war that ultimately led to an even bigger war years later. Hence this alliance-prevents-wars meme is based on wishful thinking rather than historic precedent. What really prevented another world war was not NATO v Warsaw Pact but rather fear of an unthinkable nuclear conflagration. There weren’t any big wars, however, many smaller ones ensued.

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        1. Bryan Caskey

          On this 73rd anniversary of D-Day, I was thinking how nice it was to have alliances against evil.

          Alliances don’t necessarily prevent war, but they do make it better when one happens.

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        2. Mark Stewart

          Bud, the only thing keeping Putin from taking more territory is exactly the idea that countries that respect mutual defense agreements WILL go to the mat to protect their members. That’s it. That’s why affirming Article 5 matters. And, yes, in this way WWI is an instructive historical example of the conflagration that can engulf the parties. That’s the deterrence.

          Thermonuclear war is not a deterrent to aggression; everyone knows it would be the end of everything. Nukes are only a deterrent to the offensive use of nuclear weapons. They have no deterrent value within the context of conventional war – except in the case where a nuclear power finds itself on the ropes in a conventional war (and even more especially if it was the initial aggressor).

          Power is amplified the more subtly it is wielded. That’s its secret. Trump has already proven in the Middle East, with Russia and with China that he does not in anyway understand this power principle.

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  6. Scout

    I have a bad habit of relating most everything to Harry Potter, when possible, but I can’t help it here. David Brook’s description of how Trump’s staff “are so savage to one another. Far from being a band of brothers, their world is a vicious arena where staffers compete for advantage” sounds exactly like the Death Eaters vying for Voldemort’s favor. It just does.

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  7. Rose

    The movie is a lot of fun. I loved it (probably biased here – I was a big WW fan as a child) and my 11 year old son loved it. Great to see Wonder Woman on the big screen and done very well. It’s an origin story, like Captain America: the First Avenger (which I also loved). The No-Man’s Land scene is the best and is the place where she really first becomes Wonder Woman the hero. Not a blood-spurting gory war movie and it does not glorify war. It’s a very good superhero movie. Though they apparently had very fast boats.

    Sparked some good conversations with my son on Greek Mythology, WWI, trench warfare and mustard gas.

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      1. Pam Wilkins

        I’ll echo Rose. It was lots of fun, and I don’t much like superhero movies. Went with a friend who wanted to see it–it was worth it!

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  8. Doug Ross

    From Newsweek today:

    Different polling outfits put Trump at varying levels of approval, but the RealClearPolitics average had him at 39.8 percent Tuesday, while the weighted average from FiveThirtyEight had him at exactly 39 percent. Not great numbers, but still better than Clinton. On Day 138 of his presidency, just 37.8 percent of Americans approved of the job he was doing, according to FiveThirtyEight.

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    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      Yeah, Clinton had a rocky start, partly by stepping out on Culture War issues after having run as a Third Way moderate, and also by putting Hillary in charge of the failed health care initiative — which of course was the start of the “Hate Hillary” movement that had its disastrous culmination back in November:

      But Clinton’s first 100 days in 1993 were also marked by a string of political setbacks and public-relations disasters.

      They included his decision to allow gays to serve in the military under a “don’t ask, don’t tell” standard. This meant that the military would no longer ask if its members were homosexual, and individual soldiers wouldn’t be expected to volunteer the information. The decision caused a huge stir, angering people on all sides of the issue, and they turned their ire on President Clinton. Some said he went too far; others argued that he didn’t go far enough. The furor diverted public and media attention away from Clinton’s larger priorities, including health care reform and passing a budget.

      Clinton also ran into trouble in naming an attorney general, over winning congressional approval of an economic stimulus package, and over disorganization at the White House. Perhaps most important, he alienated many legislators by placing his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, in charge of health care reform and not adequately consulting Congress about her proposals. His opponents were able to portray the package as a massive government intervention, and the defeat of Mrs. Clinton’s plan set back the cause of health care reform for years.

      Clinton also got into hot water over new limits on news media access to senior communications aides and over the firing of the White House travel office staffers who were replaced with Clinton friends….

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