Thursday’s Forum

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Tevye (Chaim Topol) has died. RIP.

    6
  2. Franklin says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Did he die a rich man?

    4
  3. Jen says:

    An update on the “NH hotel destroyed the passports of UK skiing group” story:

    On Feb. 19, a member of the Kancamagus Lodge’s management team was cleaning the back office and put a number of items to be disposed of into a dumpster. Among the items was a box of the students’ passports, which managers said was inadvertently placed there.

    “Our scheduled, contracted garbage disposal company emptied the dumpster and promptly destroyed all contents,” managers said.

    When one of the students’ chaperones asked to add a passport to the box, the management team came to the realization that the passports had been accidentally destroyed.

    So, while it was an accident, it was totally the hotel’s fault. I’m not even going to get into what a dumbass move it was to have travel documents that function as proof of identity sitting unsecured anywhere, let alone in some random box. JFC.

    I will reiterate: the hotel should reimburse every single one of those guests for the added expenses they had while waiting for replacement documents.

    8
  4. Kylopod says:

    @Franklin: I imagine he did.

    Fun fact: In the original Yiddish story collection the play was adapted from, the segment that inspired the song was called “If I Were a Rothschild.” That’s also how the song goes in its Hebrew version (which Topol played in before he was cast in the Broadway version): Lu hayiti rotshild.

    4
  5. CSK says:

    @Jen:

    So ironic, given that one of the reasons hotels take student group passports is for safekeeping, you know, because kids always lose things…

    2
  6. Mu Yixiao says:

    @Jen:

    So the “safe deposit box” was…. cardboard in a back room somewhere? Jeeez!

    3
  7. MarkedMan says:

    @Jen: I have to admit I was skeptical when this story came out, but if this is the final word then, yes, the hotel is completely at fault. You have to wonder if this is related to the relentless drive to reduce costs. For years I’ve checked into hotels late at night where the “manager” is a 21 year old and whose “staff” consists of a phone number for a handyman and a night maid shared between five hotels.

    2
  8. Kathy says:

    @Jen:

    You’d think a hotel that, per earlier reports, regularly keeps passports from groups, would have a protocol to keep them safe. Like, say, putting them in a lockbox inside a locked cabinet, or even inside a safe if there is one.

    The students would have been better off stashing them under a mattress.

    1
  9. daryl and his brother darryl says:

    Not a top-ten list to be proud of.
    Jenna Ellis, former Trump lawyer, has been censured for lying about the 2020 election being stolen.
    https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1633819935217426440

    1
  10. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Franklin: Better than that, he died loved all around the world.

    4
  11. Michael Reynolds says:

    Kancamagus Lodge is not exactly the Four Seasons. It looks to be a bare-bones, family-run operation. I doubt they’ve got the funds to compensate the group. Reviews feature the words, ‘quaint,’ and, ‘cozy,’ which are euphemisms for, ‘seedy,’ and ‘cramped.’

    3
  12. daryl and his brother darryl says:

    @daryl and his brother darryl:
    MAGA – Making Attorneys Get Attorneys

    2
  13. MarkedMan says:

    I’ve been deep into the tech world for a half century, and so when people start debating whether some company has an unassailable position, my automatic reaction is skepticism. Overwhelming market leaders fall to pieces all the time, and usually quickly. IBM PC’s. MapQuest. CompuServe. AOL. MySpace. Compaq PC’s. Motorola mobile phones. Then Nokia. Then Palm.

    I’m not predicting anything, but I just saw this headline which talks about the sudden popularity of Microsoft’s Bing search engine since integrating ChatGPI into it. A few months ago one of the late night talk show hosts did a bit where they compared something to Bing and it got an odd laugh because, I suspect, a good portion of the audience didn’t remember what it was.

    Like I said, I’m not predicting anything. But given ten minutes I bet I could come up with a 100 examples of companies that were overwhelmingly dominant in their fields and then just a few years later were also-rans, sold off for pennies on the dollar. The tech world is merciless, combining both the relentless grinder of real advances in technology with the fickleness of shiny-new-thing attention spans.

  14. CSK says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    Well, it’s not a dump. It looks like a typical New England ski lodge. Not Claridge’s, but far from a Motel 6.

    1
  15. Jen says:

    @MarkedMan: I honestly thought it was going to be something like “the floor safe got flooded” or something along those lines–sort of a confluence of unfortunate factors, but everyone still well within the boundaries of proper protocol. Mostly, I thought this because none of the British parents interviewed seemed that put out or angry. Turns out they were just being taciturn/stereotypical reserved Brits.

    Leaving passports in a box, unsecured, is problematic. Relentless drive to reduce costs is potentially one factor, the inability to properly staff is probably another. You’ve got a handful of employees enduring the workload of far more, and it can lead to mistakes like this.

    @CSK: I know!

    1
  16. Flat Earth Luddite says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    That is true wealth. His memory is a blessing. RIP.

    3
  17. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Revealed: the 10 worst places to live in US for air pollution

    10. Central areas in Birmingham, Alabama
    9. A semi-circle of neighborhoods in central Atlanta
    8. Semi-rural areas in central Pennsylvania
    7. A swath of the St Louis Metro Area
    6. A large portion of Houston
    5. A central swath of Indianapolis, Indiana
    4. North-west Indiana industrial zones
    3. Chicago’s South and West Sides
    2. South Los Angeles
    1. Bakersfield area, California

    No real surprises here, but that map of Bakersfield is a bit terrifying.

    2
  18. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    It’s a ski bum’s hangout in a town full of ski bum hangouts and Lincoln isn’t Aspen. For that type of experience you need to go over the notch (pass to you westerners) to North Conway.

    2
  19. CSK says:

    Oh, joy. Donald Trump is producing yet another book, titled Letters to Trump. It will be available this coming April for the low, low price of $99 and $399 (autographed). It consists of a collection of letters Trump received from various famous people. If he didn’t get permission from each of his correspondents, there may be a violation of copyright laws here.

    The publisher is Winning Team Books, quite coincidentally co-founded by Donald Trump Junior, the outfit that published Trump’s coffe table book of photos. not taken by him.

    You can read all about it here:
    http://www.axios.com/2023/03/09/trump-book-oprah-private-letters-celebrities

    1
  20. MarkedMan says:

    @Jen: It continues to astound me that we still rely on passports. When I was doing my heavy duty world travel I had a passport with two extra sets of pages (rather than get a new passport if you are running out of room, you can much more quickly get extra pages inserted. Two extra sets is the limit and that sucker is thick). I went to a lot of countries that needed a visa (and lived in one) and I often thought about those 18th century diary entries from ambassadors where they commented that they had pasted their travel papers into their “pocketbook”. We still do the exact same thing! Given the number of stamps I had in my passport and the arcane decision making as to which page any given customs agent uses for the entry visa, I’ve stood there for up to ten minutes while an agent searched for my entrance stamp before giving me the exit one. All the while he had all of my information up on the screen behind the counter, popped up a second after they had scanned the passport. Why did they need the paper!?

    1
  21. senyordave says:

    @Jen: Since the hotel did not act maliciously, the expenses should be covered by insurance assuming they had a standard commercial multi-peril policy.

    3
  22. Kathy says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Some airlines are experimenting using biometrics to replace boarding passes. The same could be done for passports.

    But then, I’d rather someone steal my pasport than my thumb.

    3
  23. MarkedMan says:

    @MarkedMan: Oh, and a helpful tip for Americans who travel frequently to countries that require an entry visa: you can legally get two passports. I learned this too late, and had the experience of having a countries consulate holding onto my passport for multiple weeks (curse you, India!) in order to paste in a visa, while the clock ticked away for the next time I had to travel and use my passport. If I had only known I could have had another one!

    1
  24. Kingdaddy says:

    Australia is buying US nuclear submarines, with British construction assistance:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/us/politics/australia-nuclear-submarines-china.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

    Also, US personnel are likely to provide a lot of the crew.

    1
  25. Kathy says:

    In re of yesterday’s Futurama poster:

    You gotta do what you gotta do.

  26. DK says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    I doubt they’ve got the funds to compensate the group.

    It’s a business. It’s what their business insurance is for. Their insurance company should have said funds, hopefully.

    1
  27. Michael Reynolds says:

    This is sweet. You know how we’re wondering whether the truth about Fox News will ever penetrate the MAGA cult? Well, say hello to Newsmax.

    Newsmax host Eric Bolling took a pointed swipe at his former Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night over recent revelations that Carlson privately admitted to hating former President Donald Trump “passionately.”

    After the Trump-boosting Newsmax star said he “just can’t get past this,” MAGA superfan Kari Lake agreed that Carlson’s secret Trump hate “sounds awful” before she expressed hope that the Fox host has since “had a change of heart.”

    2
  28. Jen says:

    Mitch McConnell has apparently suffered a concussion and will be in hospital for “a few days.”

  29. Kathy says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    If, as the old saw has it, no man can be a hero to his valet, imagine how much less heroic anyone seems to his ass kisser.

    2
  30. Gustopher says:

    @Kathy: Very motivational.

    It makes one question what they gotta do, and if they come to the sad realization that they gotta do it, it helps reinforce the need to do it.

    You gotta do what you gotta do, but the rest is optional.

  31. CSK says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    The ardent MAGAs at Lucianne.com are either dismissing the Carlson business as fake news, or claiming that Tucker had an epiphany about Trump and now realize he’s wonderful.

    2
  32. Kathy says:

    @Gustopher:

    In the pilot jobs were assigned by ability, and enforced with career chips implanted on the hand. Fry gets assigned as a delivery boy, which he doesn’t want. Then Leela explains “You gotta do what you gotta do.”

    Later her boss reminds her of it when she wants to let Fry go (“he’s just a kid from the stupid ages”) saying something like “I gotta tell you what to do, whether I want to or not. And I do. Very much!”

    Still later when they seek refuge with Fry’s great-great-great-great-etc nephew, he gives them the career chips from his last crew, who had perished on a mission.

    They dropped the whole career chip thing soon after.

  33. CSK says:

    Lauren Boebert is going to be a grandma at age 36. Her 17-year-old son’s girlfriend is giving birth to a boy.

    1
  34. Jen says:

    @CSK: Um, wow. Ew? Yikes. The whole range…

    How old is the girlfriend?

    Never mind, I really don’t care. At all.

    2
  35. Mu Yixiao says:

    Hot on the heals of Trump and his lawyers getting hit with a $1M fine, former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis gets censured for “misrepresentations” in court.

    Only the best!

    In a statement she posted on Twitter this morning, Ellis complains that “the politically-motivated Left” is “trying to falsely discredit me by saying I admitted I lied.” Not so, she says: “I would NEVER lie. Lying requires INTENTIONALLY making a false statement.” The rule she admitted to violating, she notes, refers to “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit or misrepresentation.”

    According to Ellis, a former Colorado prosecutor and defense attorney who has misrepresented herself as a “professor of constitutional law” and a “constitutional law attorney,” she did not lie after the 2020 election. She just credulously accepted and repeated outlandish claims that she insisted were supported by “overwhelming evidence,” even though that evidence did not exist, as she now concedes.

    If I ever need a lawyer, remind me to find someone mediocre, so I don’t end up on death row for a parking ticket.

  36. CSK says:

    @Jen:

    The girlfriend is 16 now and was 15 at the time of conception.

    This must be a family tradition, since Boebert herself gave birth during high school and had to drop out. She got her diploma at age…34.

    1
  37. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: Still, don’t kid yourself. Motel 6 is far more likely to be able to indemnify a large group than a freestanding solo operator.

  38. CSK says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    I certainly agree that Motel 6s have a lot to be indemnified.

    1
  39. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: Woo hoo! Just what I’ll be needing when my brother’s birthday comes around in July. I can hardly wait! 😐

    1
  40. The Q says:

    At the Nuremberg trials, Ellis said, “I didn’t lie about the Final Solution, I was just distributing and disseminating these outlandish claims since the betrayal by the Jews was well established.”

    3
  41. CSK says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Will it be the autographed edition, just to show your brother how much you love him?

    I’m wondering how Trump will evade the copyright laws on this. The physical copies of the letter belong to him. The actual words belong to the individual author. Trust me on this. You cannot reproduce the contents of a letter in a book without the author of the letter’s permission.

  42. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: @Jen: Welcome to the world that I grew up in (seriously). And no, you don’t want to know the girl’s age if you can avoid it.

    If the Boeberts are the sort of true believers that people claim they are, the next two steps are that the happy couple marry just out of high school and divorce a year or 3 later.

    2
  43. Kathy says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Maybe.

    My understanding is that hotel chains work as franchises making use of a corporate brand and methods, much like fast food joints. This is so even of high end properties like Four Seasons (not the landscaping brand, though) or Hyatt.

    So the local Motel 6 might be a small/medium business owned by a local entrepreneur or a partnership, rather than an outpost of some massive corporation. When it comes to issues of liability, I’m not sure whom they fall on.

    Just like fast food joints.

  44. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: I’ve always found Motel 6 to be suitable to my needs for lodging when I travel. Then again, I AM one of the people Tom Bodett is talking about in the commercials. My eyes are closed probably 90% or the time I’m using the room. (And I stayed in a worse motel the year I went to Ashland for the Shakespeare Festival, but it was the only remaining room in town, and I did like not driving from Medford or Klamath Falls to attend the performances.)

    2
  45. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: No, I’ll have to go with the non-autographed edition out of respect for our father who would not approve of wasting the extra money. My brother will understand, though.

  46. Kathy says:

    @CSK:

    Yup.

    Shortly after Asimov passed away, his brother published some of his correspondence (there was a lot of it). The contents did not include letters he received, nor to whom they were addressed. Be they replies to fans, to editors, to friends and family, etc. The book is called “Yours, Isaac Asimov.”

    The reason was in order not to require permissions from anyone.

    So, if Benito doesn’t have the permissions, and I’m willing to bet he doesn’t, he will get sued.

    Can you imagine Kim testifying at a US courtroom remotely from Pyongyang? I’d pay to see that.

  47. CSK says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Boebert is using the occasion to promote the notion that country girls value human life, unlike evil urban girls who abort. Or use contraception.

  48. CSK says:

    @Kathy:

    Winning Team Publishing is a crackpot operation that was set up solely to be Donald Trump Senior’s vanity press. I’m sure Junior and his partner don’t know about copyright either.

  49. Sleeping Dog says:

    @CSK:

    Palin family 2.0

    2
  50. Kylopod says:

    @CSK: You know, it’s occurred to me that the Christian right’s approach to sex ed is kind of an object-permanence fallacy: if you don’t talk about something, it ceases to exist.

    1
  51. CSK says:

    @Sleeping Dog:

    I was just thinking that about the Palins. They must have been so relieved when Willow presented them with twin in-wedlock grandchildren. A first for them!

  52. CSK says:

    @Kylopod:
    They may not talk about it, but they certainly do it.

  53. DAllenABQ says:
  54. JohnSF says:

    @Kingdaddy:

    Australia is buying US nuclear submarines, with British construction assistance

    I’m paywalled out at the mo’. Will try again with institutional access tomorrow.
    However, this looks a bit off the latest I read on this, from the IISS’s Nick Childs, who is usually pretty reliable. Also same being reported by Shashank Joshi of The Economist, and reporting at Bllomberg, Guardian and Reuters.

    They all converge on it being the UK next generation SSNR design, with a lot of USN systems mounted (presumably perm from weapons system, primary sensors, primary computers, comms gear) but not getting built until late 2030’s/early 2040’s due to need to get first UK boats built and set up construction in Australia, which still wants to do the building.
    Nobody seems quite clear where the reactors will be built, and fueled up.

    That leaves an uncomfortable gap as the Collins class ages out; so consensus is growing on a “bridge” of SSN basing a couple of Virginia class, which might be be used for training RAN with mixed crews. And perhaps UK deploying an early SSNR or late Astute?
    Australia might then buy a couple of end-run Virginia class, in about 2030-ish, once the USN has got the boats it needs.

    1
  55. Kathy says:

    @CSK:

    I bet they know more about copyright than the copyrighters.

  56. CSK says:

    @Kathy:
    Sorry, I don’t follow.

  57. Kathy says:

    @CSK:

    You know, Benito’s usual shtick: I know more about the law than the lawyers!1!!!!!

  58. CSK says:

    @Kathy:

    Ah, of course. And Trump knows more than the doctors, the generals, because he had an uncle who
    taught at MIT.

  59. Kathy says:

    For this week I’m thinking chilaquiles on top of plain chicken milanesas. Plus white rice with snow peas, onions, soybean sprouts, and yellow corn.

    Has anyone ever cooked alfalfa sprouts? I’ve had them raw on top of salads. I think they’d be nice roasted on an open flame, almost burnt. Maybe just dehydrated, too. They have them at the store next to the soybean sprouts, and I sometimes wonder how to incorporate them in dishes other than salad.

    I don’t have a dehydrating gadget, nor a means for cooking them on an open flame. I’m wondering about an air fryer, which I also don’t have.

    Cooked like I’m thinking, they might go well with tomato soup, or on top of other dishes.

    Most likely nothing will come off it.

  60. dazedandconfused says:

    @Kathy:

    Not a big deal for the owner anyway. Business insurance is cheap in general, a bit more for this kind of business but still essentially chump change. Hard to imagine a hotel or motel not having it.

    The average hotel insurance cost for small hotels is about $84 per month or $1,008 per year for a $1 million general liability insurance policy only.

    Hard to imagine a motel trying to save that piddling amount and taking on the risk of somebody hurting themselves on the premises.

  61. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Kathy: Alfalfa seeds can be roasted, I think. They would burn really quickly, tho. In theory, alfalfa sprouts could be stir fried like one does with soy or mung bean sprouts, but it would only take a second or two, so the risk of cooking them down to pulpiness would be high.

  62. charon says:

    https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1633963375053946880

    The Manhattan DA’s office recently signaled to Trump’s lawyers that he could face criminal charges for his role in the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels — the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of Trump.

    2
  63. DrDaveT says:

    @MarkedMan:

    But given ten minutes I bet I could come up with a 100 examples of companies that were overwhelmingly dominant in their fields and then just a few years later were also-rans, sold off for pennies on the dollar.

    During the late 90s tech bubble, I worked for a small consulting firm that did (among other things) telecom network optimization for major long-distance and international carriers. Our biggest clients — all of them giants of the industry — were MCI, Worldcom, Concert (AT&T / British Telecom joint venture), Nextel… Yeah. All long gone. Some (like Worldcom) in disgrace.

    1
  64. Kathy says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    I thought of giving them a few seconds under the broiler. To do that, though, I need to get mine fixed someday.

  65. Richard Gardner says:

    @Kingdaddy: The submarine buy article doesn’t make sense. There are many issues but I’ll guarantee you the Australians will be building as much as they can in Australia (keeping Australian dollars in Australia), under license. They are not simply buying a complete USA or UK sub off the shelf. Many of internal systems will be bought from either the US or UK as it isn’t cost effective to build a production line for the small quantity needed (like photonics masts, periscopes to you). But it will get assembled in Australia.

    A complicating factor is building the infrastructure needed for nuclear reactor operations, both personnel training for operators, and maintenance (and nuclear waste).

    1