Irony is a bitch.  Only in TrumpWorld would movie theaters around the country celebrate Valentine’s Day with the premiere of 50 Shades Freed, the thankfully final installment of the rocky adventures of Anastasia (Ana) Steele and Christian Grey.  The Wikipedia plot summary includes the following:

Ana learns she is pregnant. Christian angrily accuses her of getting pregnant on purpose and leaves. He returns early the next morning drunk, claiming Ana will choose a baby boy over him. Ana says it could be a girl, though Christian refuses to accept that due to his sexist and chauvinistic nature. Ana becomes furious when she discovers a text message on Christian’s phone from Elena Lincoln, the woman who seduced him when he was fifteen and introduced him to the BDSM lifestyle. The message indicates they met for a drink.

The next two mornings, Anastasia and Christian barely speak to each other: Christian is angry over the unplanned pregnancy; Anastasia is upset about his late-night encounter with Elena, though Christian insists their relationship is long-since over.

Las Vegas odds-makers are saying the smart money is on this cinematic whatever not being screened in the White House private theater this evening.  Might I suggest the narcissist-in-residence request a highlight film of his first year in the Oval Office appropriately titled 45’s Shades of Grey.  The name is based on the fact that when it comes to morals and character, nothing in this White House is black and white.  Consider the following examples:

• Careless handling of classified information is an employment deal breaker unless it involves family members and/or staffers who have pledged their loyalty to the emperor.
• Individuals accused of misdeeds or crimes are entitled to due process unless you are Hillary Clinton, Al Franken or the Central Park Five.
• Black athletes dishonor the flag when they  protest police brutality but nothing is said when a White athlete (snowboarder Shaun) drags the flag through the snow at the Winter Olympics.
•  Immigrants take American jobs unless they are needed to cater to the wealthy at Mar-a-Lago.
• Trashed the Clintons for taking money FOR CHARITABLE PURPOSES from entities which interacted with the federal government when Hillary was Secretary of State.  Yet, Forbes reports the government owned Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, located on the 20th floor of Trump Tower, pays over $2.0 million in rent annually, although there are no public photos of the office and visitors are not welcome.  Forbes created a list of 164 Trump property tenants that interact with the federal government who pay an estimated $175 million in rent each year.  (Source: “Trump’s Biggest Potential Conflict of Interest Is Hiding in Plain Sight,” Forbes.com, February 13, 2018.)
• Protests against the government of Iran are encouraged yet Trump says nothing when Vladimir Putin jails the leader of the opposition movement in Russia.
• Claimed the Obama administration was derelict for not enforcing existing immigration laws yet Trump refuses to impose sanctions against the Kremlin passed by a bi-partisan, veto-proof majority of both houses of Congress in response to Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.
• Berated his predecessors for their weakness yet, when face-to-face with foreign leaders, declines to push his “America First” agenda (e.g., Mexico paying for the wall, Chinese currency manipulation, Russian cyber-attacks).
• Describes Michelle Obama’s suggestion that children eat healthy foods as the “nanny state” yet proposes the food stamp program be replaced with “Blue Apron” type prescribed meals.
• And of course, accuses everyone of spreading “fake news” while promoting “real fake news” (an oxymoron?) such as Obama’s origin of birth and Ted Cruz’s father’s role in JFK’s assassination.

The only remaining question this February 14th is, “What did Donald give Melania for Valentine’s Day and how much did Michael Cohen pay for it from his own pocket?”

UPDATE

The White House press office just announced tonight’s film will be Three Billboards Outside Washington, D.C.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

No one loves the pageantry of a parade more than I do.  Whether it be a national event like the Rose Bowl spectacle or a local celebration such as the annual Watermelon Thump Parade in Luling, Texas.  But, I join with the 89 percent of Americans who question the value of seeing tanks and missile launchers rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue.  Or Robert J. O’Neill, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama Ben Ladin and Tweeted, “A military parade is third world bullshit.”

I might feel differently if our troops were unrecognized or under-appreciated.  But that is not the case.  I have not attended a sporting event for the last 17 years in which our active military and veterans have not been honored.  The contribution and sacrifice of our troops are also documented continuously in books, on television and in the movies.

But His Orangeness is right when he says we need a parade, one not with military hardware, but traditional floats which honor those who are less recognized.  Let me suggest the following themes for a few of these decorated, mobile platforms.

The Silence Breakers/Honoring the brave women and men who have risked their careers and reputations by shedding light on the infliction of sexual harassment and abuse.

The Survivors/Paying homage to the Gold Star Families, “those left behind” who must relive the sacrifice of their forever absent loved ones every day.

The Invisibles/A float with no riders, recognizing the men and women in the intelligence community who cannot be publicly cited for keeping us safe.

The Odds Beaters/Single parents who raised their children in the projects and instilled in their off-spring the will and confidence to succeed in life.

The Dreamers/A generation of young Americans who, except for the pedigree, share the same values and loyalty to the United States as the “dreamers” who arrived on the Mayflower.

The Charitable/Business executives, entertainers, athletes and ordinary citizens who have committed a substantial portion of their wealth to helping others.

The Rest of Us/A tribute to the diversity which has always been the foundation of American greatness, populated with representatives of every demographic cohort except white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian heterosexuals.

The Un-Deterred/Celebrating those determined individuals who stand in line for hours or brave atrocious weather conditions to vote despite the continuous barriers, such as stricter ID requirements, fewer polling places and shorter early voting periods, placed in their path.

Instead of participating in the parade, I would hope our armed forces could have the day off to attend and enjoy this event.  And each of these floats would  include a message to our active military and veterans, thanking them for their role to ensure the parade participants can continue to contribute to the spirit of America, if not its defense.  Military might is not about defeating others, but preservation of the values and ideals which have always made America great.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

Sounds good, right?  But once you take a minute to think about what this really means, you soon realize it is totally dependent on trial and error.  Take an extreme example.  You ask a computer if the U.S. should make a preemptive military strike to disrupt North Korea’s nuclear program.  If the computer is programmed to “believe” depriving Kim Jung Un of nuclear weapons is the “prime directive,” its first response is “yes.”  If Kim Jung Un does not respond to the attack and gives up his nuclear arsenal and development program, the computer will make the same recommendation in the next instance.  But what if North Korea launches a response resulting in 100,000 South Korean casualties?  Based on that experience, the computer might “learn” from its unfortunate recommendation and come to a different conclusion the next time (though it is a little late).

Which distinguishes machine learning from “deep thinking,” a form of artificial intelligence dependent on a massive neural network which approximates that of the human brain.  Humans do not have to wait to learn from experience.  They can anticipate outcomes and raise questions, such as, “Is the potential loss of live worth the outcome?”

As a student of political science, I would argue military policy since the nation’s founding has been an exercise in machine learning.  From the Revolutionary War up until Korea, experience suggested America could achieve its national and international goals through armed conflict.  We won our independence in 1783.  We preserved that independence in 1812.  We liberated Texas in 1836.  We avenged the “attack on the USS Maine” in 1898.  We joined with allies twice to win the “War to End All Wars” in 1918 and to defeat the Axis Powers in 1945.  The underlying algorithm, simply stated, “We fight!  We win!” Machine learning ended with Korea.  A computer, absent any ideological bias, would have responded, “Wait!  Experience tells me we don’t always win.  Sometimes we end up in stalemate.”  The Vietnam experience would force the computer to further challenge the “we always win” algorithm.

The one instance in the past quarter century when we should have heeded machine learning, the first and second Gulf Wars, we failed to listen.  In 1991, we should have learned the United States is on solid ground when it asks other nations to join us in deterring one global player (Iraq) from attacking another sovereign nation (Kuwait).  But that algorithm did not hold water during the second Gulf War when the United States became the aggressor.

Deep thinking, drawing on the cognitive powers of a complex neural network, would have appreciated the difference between conventional warfare and insurgencies.  Between fighting nations and fighting dispersed, borderless extremist movements.  But as Arlo Guthrie once said, “That’s not what I came here to talk about.”  Because understanding whether a White House is steeped in machine thinking instead of deep thinking tells us a lot about how it will respond to a crisis with potentially catastrophic consequences.

Which brings us to the behavior by Donald Trump and his staff over the past two months.  This White House exhibits a tendency to stick to machine thinking when deep thinking would serve it much better.  And the best evidence is how it handles the continuing departure of executive staff.  I am not suggesting that firings and resignations are equivalent to declaring war or deporting Dreamers.  I am only pointing out a decision making process which bodes ill for good policy and problem solving.

On December 13, 2017, former Apprentice contestant and White House staffer Omarosa was fired and forcibly removed from the West Wing.  She is now in a verbal war with the Trump White House following negative comments she shared about her time in Washington on her latest reality television appearance (CBS’ Celebrity Big Brother).  Fortunately for Trump, to this day nobody knows what Omarosa did for the administration and it is highly unlikely she had access to any discussions or documents which might be of interest to Robert Mueller.

But the machine thinking mechanism in the White House processed the input and came up with the following conclusion.  “Treating a former employee badly will cause them to turn against you.”  So if we’re going to fire someone, we better be nice to them,  especially if they have had access to sensitive information.

Enter Rob Porter, a serial spouse abuser.  The computer says, “Better be nice to him.”  And Trump was. Enter Hope Hicks.  Trump’s initial, and for once correct, reaction is she had acted improperly by drafting a defense of the object of her latest office romance.  But the computer said, “Remember, Omarosa showed us hell STILL has no wrath like a woman scorned.”  And of course, Hicks was on board Air Force One when Trump drafted the cover-up press release concerning Junior’s and Jared’s June, 2016 meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower.  “Better be nice to her.”  Within hours, Trump called Hicks, “…absolutely fantastic…smart, very talented and respected by all.”

So add Porter and Hicks to the list including Vladimir Putin and Stormy Daniels who reinforce a machine thinking algorithm which predicts “blackmail works.”  We always knew Trump and his posse were driven by “artificial intelligence,” we just didn’t know which kind.  Now we do.  Instead of state of the art “deep thinking” which is so desperately needed in a era of complex problems and nuanced opportunity, Trump is dependent on 20th century technology to go along with his 19th century vision of America.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

In the previous post, I referred to two executive orders related to ethics requirements imposed on the Obama and Trump White House staffs and suggested that one–Executive Order 13490 signed by President Barack Obama on January 21, 2001–tightened rules regarding conflicts of interest.  The other–Executive Order 13770 signed by Donald Trump on January 28, 2017–draws heavily on the Obama order with one major difference, provisions for waiving the restrictions on past and future lobbying.

Below are the waiver provisions of the respective executive orders.

Section 3, Waiver in Obama’s executive order reads as follows:

(a)  The Director of the Office of Management and Budget, or his or her designee, in consultation with the Counsel to the President or his or her designee, may grant to any current or former appointee a written waiver of any restrictions contained in the pledge signed by such appointee if, and to the extent that, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, or his or her designee, certifies in writing (i) that the literal application of the restriction is inconsistent with the purposes of the restriction, or (ii) that it is in the public interest to grant the waiver. A waiver shall take effect when the certification is signed by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget or his or her designee.

(b)  The public interest shall include, but not be limited to, exigent circumstances relating to national security or to the economy. De minimis contact with an executive agency shall be cause for a waiver of the restrictions contained in paragraph 3 of the pledge.

Section 3, Waiver of Trump’s executive order reads as follows:

(a) The President or his designee may grant to any person a waiver of any restrictions contained in the pledge signed by such person.

(b) A waiver shall take effect when the certification is signed by the President or his designee.

(c) A copy of the waiver certification shall be furnished to the person covered by the waiver and provided to the head of the agency in which that person is or was appointed to serve.

Even the dummy in Elon Musk’s Mars bound Tesla, much less a rocket scientist, can easily discern the difference.  The Obama order involves a process headed by the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in consultation with the White House legal counsel.  (Just a reminder, the White House legal counsel is not the president’s personal attorney.  He/she takes an oath to defend and protect the Constitution and advises the president of the legal implications of executive actions.)  In his  “Only I can fix this” management style as originally voiced in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump becomes the sole determiner of the appropriateness of an ethics waiver.

So, that’s the legal comparison, but a true understanding of how this actually works begs an important question.  How many times has a waiver been invoked?  In the Obama case, the answer is 34 over eight years.  And how do we know that?  During the Obama years, there was a listing of approved waivers posted on the president’s official website www.whitehouse.gov.  And to ensure transparency, the name of each waived individual was a link to the memorandum from the White House legal counsel to the OMB director explaining the circumstances and justification for the waiver request.

Unfortunately, we have no exact count for the current administration.  Why?  Because the Trump White House has deleted the ethics waiver information from its website and has offered no other means of direct access.  Through Freedom of Information Act filings, several news outlets have tried to compile a list but none have assembled a complete inventory to date.

However, my attempts to gather such information resulted in an even more disturbing discovery.  Section 1.  The Pledge. of the Trump executive order requires:

Every appointee in every executive agency appointed on or after January 20, 2017, shall sign, and upon signing shall be contractually committed to, the following pledge upon becoming an appointee.

Assuming Trump’s first National Security Advisor Michael Flynn signed the pledge, one would expect he received a waiver as was the case with Obama’s National Security Advisor General James L. Jones.  And as we now know, Flynn, without a waiver, would have been in violation of the ethics pledge which requires signatories to recuse themselves for a period of two years from deliberations on issues in which they had a previous contractual relationship with any party subject to the deliberations.  Because of his payment for a speech in Russia or consulting fees from Turkey, Flynn, without the waiver, could not participate in any security discussions involving these two nations.

In March 2017, a month after Flynn resigned as national security advisor, The Daily Beast reported he NEVER signed the ethics pledge.  According to White House spokesperson Price Lloyd, “General Flynn never had the opportunity to sign Trump’s ethics pledge, but he plans to abide by its terms.”  But that issue is now moot.  Thanks to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, it is highly unlikely Flynn will be doing any lobbying for the next five years, the time period provided for in the executive order.

This week there was yet another instance of a disturbing pattern where the Trump White House chooses to look the other way when it comes to the vetting of staff.   White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter was denied a permanent security clearance due to a history of domestic violence.   Likewise, Jared Kushner, a year after his appointment to whatever official position he supposedly holds, still does not have a permanent security clearance due to his failure to disclose foreign contacts on his security application.  Considering revelations about his participation in the June 2016 meeting with Russians and his efforts to create a back channel communications with the Kremlin using the Russian embassy as a conduit, his security status seems unlikely to change in the near future.

According to the website Military.com, “An Interim Security clearance (also known as “Interim Security eligibility”) is based on the completion of minimum investigative requirements and granted on a temporary basis, pending the completion of the full investigative requirements for the final secret clearance.”  Which explains why, during yesterday’s White House press briefing, deputy press secretary Raj Shah continuously referred to the “ongoing security clearance process” in relation to Rob Porter’s interim clearance.  If he had not resigned, Rob Porter would have become ineligible to serve in the highly sensitive job of staff secretary the second the FBI issued a final determination of his security status.  The same is probably true of Jared Kushner and who knows how many other members of the White House staff.

So let me add one more example of American EXCEPT-tionalism to my list.  National security is of paramount concern EXCEPT when it applies to the few remaining people on earth who are willing to work for or pledge loyalty to the Parade King.  It appears Trump appointees are more in need of “extreme vetting” than foreigners seeking visas to enter the United States.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP