We Pay More Attention To Stories We Connect With - The Ethiopian Max 8 Plane Crash

The crash of the Ethiopian Airlines plane taking off from Addis Ababa for Nairobi first caught my attention because long ago, I flew from Addis to Nairobi on an Ethiopian Airlines plane.  It was part of flight from New Delhi that eventually got me to Kampala, Uganda.  (I was taking the long way home from Peace Corps Thailand to visit a friend who was teaching in Uganda.)

And my son-in-law just got back from a trip to Nairobi - though not through Addis.

And I've been thinking about how that long ago adventure caused my brain and body to linger on this story.  Human minds steer  us in so many strange ways.

But later I started wondering about whether Alaska Airlines flies 737 MAX planes.

Alaska Airlines website has a page listing all their aircraft.  They say they have 162 Boeing 737 aircraft, but the pictures they have up of 737s are of 737-900ER, 737-900, 737-800, and 737-700 models only.  No 737 MAX planes.


However, according to Airways Magazine in a Feb 19, 2019 article:

As revealed by RoutesOnline, Alaska Airlines has outlined the start of its Boeing 737 MAX 9 network operations, scheduled to begin in July 2019. . .
The carrier converted 15 of its 737 MAX 8s it had on order to the larger MAX 9 variant back in May 2018, bringing the total commitment to 32.
Deliveries are to commence this year through to 2023, according to Boeing and Alaska Airlines.

So if I've got this right, they have some 737 MAX models scheduled to come on line in July this year.  And they changed all their 737 MAX 8 orders to MAX 9s.

So, what's the difference between MAX 8 and MAX 9?

This discussion from Motley Fool - Feb 2018 really focuses on the business aspects - the bigger ones are selling better:

The 737 MAX 7 attracted little interest from airlines, as its relatively small size means unit costs are higher. Boeing eventually changed the MAX 7's specifications to add 12 more seats, while increasing its commonalities with the 737 MAX 8 to reduce development costs.
Demand for the 737 MAX 9 was a little better, but still underwhelming. Boeing doesn't provide an official breakdown of its 737 MAX orders by variant, but one third-party analysis pegged the number of MAX 9 orders at approximately 410 as of a year ago. For comparison, Airbus currently has 1,920 orders for its competing (but somewhat larger) A321neo.
Stuck in the middle
At last year's Paris Air Show, Boeing launched the 737 MAX 10, a model that can fit 12 more seats than the MAX 9. The MAX 10 has roughly the same capacity as Airbus' A321neo, and will likely have similar unit costs.
Not surprisingly, airlines and aircraft leasing companies responded much more positively to the 737 MAX 10 than to the MAX 9. Boeing garnered 361 orders and commitments for the 737 MAX 10 in the span of a week during the air show.

Boeing has specs for all four varieties here. 

But we're still early on here.  We don't know for certain whether the crash in Addis Ababa was due to the same reason as the earlier crash in Indonesia.

From The Points Guy on a post today about flying on a 737Max :

"These two incidents have many passengers and crew asking whether the 737 MAX is safe to fly. A Miami-based flight attendant who wished to remain anonymous told TPG that she “no longer feels safe on the 737 MAX” and that she no longer “trusts” the aircraft. The Chinese and Indonesian governments have ordered their airlines to ground 737 MAXs, and Ethiopian Airlines, Royal Air Maroc and Cayman Airways have also suspended 737 MAX operations.
It’s important to note that the 737 MAX represents a small subset of the overall 737 family. Since the first Boeing 737 was delivered to Lufthansa in 1967, Boeing has delivered more than 10,000 737 aircraft and has approximately 5,000 more orders on the books. Of these, only 350 (or 3.5% of all deliveries) are of the 737 MAX variant. Still, if you’re trying to avoid traveling on a 737 MAX until an investigation into the Ethiopian crash is complete, here’s how you can identify on which 737 variant you’re flying."

Image from The Points Guy

 You should go to the site because he has lots of pictures, but two key things you can see on the Max planes are:

1. The engine casing is visibly serrated
2. The wing tips split (though Alaska Airlines shows 737-800s and 900s with split wing tips too.)

He also shows how to figure out what kind of plane you'll fly on when you're booking a flight.  

Here's a bit more from The Points Guy post about the 737 Max planes, that gets into why some suspect - from the fact that both the Indonesia and Ethiopia flights crashed right after take-off - this is related to the 737 MAX:  

While we don’t yet know the cause of the Ethiopian crash, and the Lion Air one is still being investigated as well, there’s an important distinction from a safety perspective. Only the MAX models have the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), software that automatically pitches down the nose of the plane to prevent a stall, which likely played a part in the Lion Air accident. [emphasis added]

Again, from today's Gizmodo article:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has not ordered anyone to stop using the Boeing 737 Max-8, but customers are understandably concerned. Some people are even taking to social media to tell Southwest and American that they’ll be cancelling their flights because they want to avoid that particular aircraft.

From what I can tell Southwest and American are the two airlines that are currently flying the 737-MAX-8.

But if all the MAX models use MCAS software, it would seem (but then nothing is what it seems) that it wouldn't matter if it was a 737 MAX -8, -9, of -10.

Note:  This is not an area I know much about.  I'm relying on what others have written, so look at this as notes to use as a starting point.  Verify anything that is important.  

 

Misleading Headlines - Some Examples, Some Newspaper History

Appeals court tosses murder conviction in 2010 Anchorage mall shooting.

Before you read any further, stop and articulate what that headline means.

That headline had me thinking that a person convicted of murder was about to be set free.  Or would have to have another trial.  Last November an Anchorage judge was voted out of office because of a debate over a no-jail time sentence for someone convicted of sexual assault.  So maybe that was my context.  Not again??!!

Actually, if you read far enough (10th paragraph of an 11 paragraph story) into the article, you'll find this:

"The court wrote in its opinion that prosecutors can either decide to retry Gray on the original second degree murder charge or have the Superior Court enter an alternative connection [conviction] for manslaughter, which is the crime Gray would have been convicted on if the jury had decided in his favor on the 'heat of passion' defense."

So, he's still been convicted of manslaughter.  He's not walking.  Was this headline just written too quickly?  Was it intentionally written this way to get people to read about yet another outrage from the courts? (I guess I should make it clear I'm being ironic in my use of 'outrage'.)


Here's another one:



Manafort sentenced to nearly four years in prison

Again, I want you to pause and reflect on what this means.  (I'm sort of testing - maybe I'm all wrong here.)   OK, now go below the image for my thoughts.

Here my beef is with the word 'nearly'.  It means 'almost, but not quite.'  I regularly see headlines that talk about 'almost ten years' or 'more than ten years' or 'for the first time in two years.'  All these phrases imply that something is a lot, or not very much, or a big deal.  When in actuality, who cares if this is the warmest temperature in two years, or the biggest stock market drop in three months?  Twenty years might be meaningful, but I usually fail to understand why things are worded this way, except to make it sound more important than it is.

Manafort's sentence was seen by most legal experts to be surprisingly short.  Yet 'nearly four years' to someone who doesn't know anything about the Manafort case makes it sound like he got a long sentence.  It was, my goodness, nearly four years!  Yes, "nearly four years" is factually correct (it was 47 months), but so is 'less than four years."  But the one  implies the sentence is a long one and the other that it's not that long.  The Anchorage Daily News, it would appear, simply copied the headline on a story it got from the Washington Post, and if you google 'nearly four years' today, you'll get a bunch of papers that copied the same headline.

Why not just say 47 months?  It uses almost half* the characters, which is always good in a headline.  Are they worried that people don't know that 48 months equals four years?  (Probably not a bad assumption, I'm afraid.)
*Yes, here my point was to emphasize that it's significantly less to write 47 months.

Listen to broadcasters - including NPR - and watch headlines and think about how the media use words around numbers to make them seem too high or too low.  Some of this is accurate and useful, some, I'm sure, is just mindless - they aren't paying attention to the innuendo.  Some of it is probably intentional to make something sound better or worse than it is, or to generate clicks.

Sensational and/or misleading headlines have been used to sell papers in the US from the beginning.  Or so I thought.  But a piece on early newspapers says they didn't have headlines.   Lurid headlines came later.   This comes from an article that offers some historical context at Gizmo:  A History of Clickbait:  The First Hundred Years.

Yellow journalism came of age during the period when William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal was competing for circulation numbers with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Things got so heated in their war for eyeballs that both papers would take any opportunity to turn the boring daily news into sensational, Earth-shattering events. That's one way that the sinking of the U.S. vessel Maine [1898] in a Cuban harbor went from an accidental explosion to a possible attack by Spain.

From the Colonial Williamsburg site (same one that said there were no headlines in the early papers):

As the century [1700] began, the fledgling colonial press tested its wings. A bolder journalism opened on the eve of the Revolution. And, as the century closed with the birth of the United States, a rancorously partisan and rambunctious press emerged. 

The eras can be traced in the history of the family of Benjamin Franklin—the preeminent journalist of his time. But it best begins with another Boston newspaperman, postmaster John Campbell. In 1704, Campbell served up The Boston News-Letter, the nation's second paper. It was a publication the powers-that-be could stomach. The News-Letter lasted seventy-two years, succeeding in an increasingly competitive industry, supported by the growth of communication and of commerce. 

Campbell's fellow postmasters often became newspaper publishers, too; they had ready access to information to put on their pages. Through their offices came letters, government documents, and newspapers from Europe. Gazettes were also started by printers, who had paper, ink, and presses at hand. Franklin was a postmaster and a printer.  [emphasis added]

The article goes on to say that much of what they printed was extracted from other sources - like newspapers from Europe.  Not unlike much of social media and even mainstream media today.  And while one motivation may have been to do good, money was a key goal.

"Julie K. Williams, a history instructor at Alabama's Samford University, said publishers had such altruistic motives as improving communication and educating the public, but profit was their primary purpose. Maurine Beasley, a University of Maryland journalism professor, puts it plainly. The purpose of newspapers was 'to make money.'" 

Getting a daily paper out everyday is no easy task.  Making sure everything is spelled right and headlines reflect what's in each story is a constant challenge.  But typos that don't change the meaning are one thing.  Headlines that are misleading are another altogether.  Lots of readers don't read beyond the headline.  So headline writers need to be particularly careful.

Thank You Dermot Cole For Keeping The Heat Of Facts On The Gov

Dermot Cole was one of the writers let go by the Alaska Dispatch News when the Binkley's took over the paper.

Well he's blogging like crazy now - fact checking everything the governor and his minions say.

Today there's a list of quotes from Dunleavy on the campaign.  It's in answer to Paul Jenkins' attempt to convince people we should have expected this because Dunleavy is doing what he said he'd do.

People who ousted Dunleavy from Kotzebue and people who carefully watched the hearings Dunleavy chaired on Erin's Law expected the worst.  But not based on what he said, but what he did.

And Cole points out all the things Dunleavy said either explicitly or implicitly about not cutting the ferry system, the university, schools, etc.

It's worth a read.  Find Dermot Cole's Blog Here.    Here's the beginning:

"Paul Jenkins, who has been pontificating about Alaska for nearly as long as I have, wrote a column in the Anchorage Daily News saying that the giant budget cuts proposed by Gov. Mike Dunleavy are in keeping with the Dunleavy campaign promises.
That’s what people who didn’t pay attention to Dunleavy’s promises are now claiming."

Once Again, Lisa Murkowski Shows Fellow Republicans What Principled Courage Looks Like - This Time On Climate Change

No one with an open mind who learns the basics of climate change, can have any doubt it's real, it's human caused, and it's going to mess with our planet big time.  The sooner we take serious action to slow it down, the fewer the climate caused disruptions in the future.  Action to slow down climate change will have more long-term impact on humanity than any other issue.

You have to have a reason to oppose action to slow climate change - a big financial interest in burning carbons, or pressure from important friends who have such an interest.  Friends who have banned the words 'climate change' from Republican lips, and won't be your friend if they somehow slip out of them.  Some of these people are so committed to their party that they stay willfully ignorant.  Others know there is a conflict between their party position and reality and it probably eats them inside when they think about their inaction.  (So the more they hear about this from their constituents, the sooner they will take action.  So contact your Republican Senators.)

And now we have two US Senators from CO2 producing states - a Democrat, Joe Manchin, from the coal country of West Virginia and the other from my oil rich home state of Alaska, Republican Lisa - writing an opinion piece in the Washington Post - Lisa Murkowski and Joe Manchin: It’s time to act on climate change — responsibly.  A short excerpt:

The two of us have more in common than might meet the eye. We come from different parties, but we are both avid outdoorsmen and represent states that take great pride in the resources we provide to the nation and to friends and allies around the world. Alaska and West Virginia know that resource development and environmental stewardship must move in tandem, which is why we are committed to putting forward bipartisan solutions to help address climate change.
There is no question that climate change is real or that human activities are driving much of it. We are seeing the impacts in our home states. Scientists tell us that the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. Rising temperatures and diminishing sea ice on Alaska’s shores are affecting our fisheries and forcing some remote communities to seek partial or total relocation. In summer 2016, West Virginia experienced unprecedented flooding that killed 23 residents and inflicted tremendous damage across the state.

This is big.  In the cases of both Senators, CO2 production is important, and politicians cross the producers at their own risk.  Manchin just won reelection, so he has six years for his constituents to forget this, or for them to come to appreciate his leadership on the issue in their state.  Murkowski has four more years to her next election.

And Murkowski and Manchin are the Chair and Ranking Member* of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee respectively.

The fact that this is big highlights a lot of what's wrong about politics in the US - big anonymous money supporting or attacking politicians because of their stance on a particular issue.  [Note:  Alaska Common Ground and others are hosting a talk by Jeff Clements, author of Corporations Are Not People, March 21 at 49th Street Brewing at 6pm with a live feed.]

If you think about political parties as religious denominations, it's easier to understand the difficulty for someone like Lisa Murkowski.  She's grown up Republican.  Much of her family and many of her close friends are Republicans.  And it's a tightly controlled church - particularly for elected Republican officials.  They want you to toe the party line.  Every step over that line is seen as a betrayal of your religion and all your family and friends who believe.  And during this administration, there's an added pressure - a vindictive president who punishes people who disagree with him.

On the other hand, Lisa Murkowski, while seen by Democrats as making the right decisions on some key policies, is, after all, a Republican who takes the wrong stand from their perspective, on a lot of issues - like drilling in ANWR.  She and Manchin can argue they are the people in the middle who better reflect what Americans want.  Except that the middle has moved so far to the right on many issues that the middle is far to the right of someone like Richard Nixon.  (And conservatives will, correctly, look at some social issues - like LGBTQ rights - as examples of leftward movement.)

But Murkowski was abandoned by the Republican party in 2010 when Joe Miller beat her in the primary.  She ran as a write-in candidate and, with the help of Alaska Native organizations and many Democrats, was reelected in the regular election.  After ditching her, the Republicans took her back in the fold, though only very reluctantly for many.

So it's important for Alaskans to let her know we've got her back.  (Do we?  We'll see what kind of primary opposition Murkowski gets and whom the Democrats will nominate, I guess.)  At the very least, people should send her a note, an email, or call her office  ((907) 271-3735) and thank her for taking this stand on climate change.  And ask two friends to do the same.

And West Virginians you can email Joe Manchin and thank him.

And the rest of you can let them know you appreciate their taking a principled stand on climate change.  And if you have another Republican Senator, let them know they should take the Climate Change Plunge as well.



*Ranking Member is the most senior member of the committee of the minority party.

Call From 424 277 2647 - The Dead? Time Travel Message? Momo?

We've been watching The Umbrella Academy on Netflix.  It's entertaining in a bizarre way involving time travel, special powers, and a weird rich family.  It also features time traveling assassins whose job it is to keep people from messing with the space-time continuum.  We had just watched a scene where many (all?) of the people killed by these two assassins were in the room with a current torture victim (and the two assassins, who can't see or hear the ghosts) telling the torture victim - in many different languages - how they had been tortured and killed.

Not long after that scene our phone rang.  It was late and we don't answer the land line anyway if we don't know who it is.  They don't usually leave a message but this time there were two.  As I was listening to the first message, a a third call came in.

My immediate reaction while listening to the messages was - it's from one of the assassins' victims.  Or maybe someone from a different time is leaving a message for a time traveler.  Here, you can listen yourself:




I looked up the number - 424 - 277 2647 - but didn't find much about it online.

Screen Shot from Who Called Me?

It's hard to read, but the first comment is:  "this is momo number"

I looked that up.  It's probably even creepier than my theory.  You can look up momo here.

It's probably a fairly mundane message in some language I can't identify or understand.  Maybe she's just saying numbers.  If anyone knows the language, please leave a comment explaining what is being said.

Playing With Bread (And Photoshop)

I started here.  Well that's not exactly true.  I started with the sourdough starter to make the bread.

But photographically, I started with this picture.  I took it to photoshop.

I went into filters.  I wasn't sure what I could do with this picture, but I thought I'd see where it would take me.


I went into filters and tried several and they weren't exciting me.  But Paint Daubs had possibilities.

But only if I got closer and played some more.  So first I got closer.

That's more interesting, but not really as compelling as I want.

So let's try curves.  That's a feature in Photoshop where you play with a curve to change colors and light.  It doesn't have precise settings like Filters.  You just have to play until you get what you want.


That eventually got me here.  Much better.




 It's got some Hundertwasser echoes.

The rest was pretty easy.  I just copied this image and went into edit/transform/distort until I got what looked like a flap.  Then I copied it and flipped it vertically so I had the two flaps. I put a gray edge on the flaps because the colors blended too much to see the edges.   And put in a background color and cropped it.  

The final product:  

I guess I could call it bread and nobody but you and me would know why.  The real benefit of this is to experiment and see what I can do.  And I confess, these are all techniques I've used before.  I should just look up Photoshop tricks online to figure out tools I don't know how to use yet.  And my brain needed something other than politics or even just words today.  

"The legislature now has a balanced budget before them THEY now can decide priorities of the budget. My administration is agnostic on this."

A short one today, I hope.  Some reactions to the governor's letter to the university community.

"The previous administration burned through nearly every dollar in the state's savings account."

Actually, he wanted to increase revenues with appropriate taxes but the Republican controlled Senate banned the word taxes.  And he did cut the budget each year.  But rather than destroying the state, the way your budget will, he got some money from the PFD account (lowering the checks) and from savings accounts.  You, governor, also refuse to consider increasing revenues.  That's a serious problem.

 "While some wish to ignore Alaskans and propose billion-dollar taxes and PFD grabs, I've made clear that this is out of line with the core beliefs of most Alaskans."

Whether it's out of line with people's core beliefs, I can't say. If that's true, you're saying the core beliefs of most Alaskans are:  we want our services and our free oil money, but we refuse to pay for any of it.   Taxes are certainly NOT against the core beliefs of most educated Alaskans who understand the numbers and the impacts these proposed cuts will have and who understand that there are some things - like roads, police, schools, public health - that are a much better bargain for a society if the public pools their money (as in taxes) to buy collectively.  Yeah, some with lots of money can buy private security guards and send their kids to private schools, but society as a whole needs everyone to get a decent education.  Only con artists benefit from an uneducated public.

And those who believed Dunleavy's campaign promises that he'd balance the budget and pay out the old PFD cuts and keep the state running - they desperately need  good education and mental health systems.

"The legislature now has a balanced budget before them  THEY now can decide priorities of the budget.  My administration is agnostic on this."  

As strategy, I guess this is a good move on the governor's part.  He's basically saying, I've balanced the budget and the legislature can decide on where to cut.  They'll get the blame, he hopes.  But really, to tell the university they can work out with the legislature where to cut is like telling your kids, "Hey, here's 50 cents, go buy yourself dinner.  I'm agnostic about what you eat, but just keep it within our budget."  You can't buy dinner for 50 cents and you can't run a university on 40% of last year's budget.  It's a disaster for years to come.   (Dermot Cole has already addressed the governor's claim that it's only 17%.)

I don't know who's helping the governor do all this.  Well aside from Donna Arduin.  Or if he really thinks - "the sky won't fall" because government is bloated.  This is like not believing in gravity.

I once asked my students - as we discussed ontology - if the University was real?  They all agreed it was.  I argued it was just something that people made up. And they could make it up into something entirely different.   That the state could decide to sell all the buildings to some company and they could call it whatever they wanted and the university simply wouldn't exist any more.

But that was a philosophical argument to make a point about the nature of reality.  It seems our governor is trying to prove my point.   Some people will die.  Others will suffer needlessly because of the cuts this budget requires.  Even if the legislature restores half the cuts.

In a letter to the editor the other day, someone wrote this was simply the governor's opening gambit of a chess game.  There is no opening gambit in chess that compares to this.  Well, there's one - knocking over the board and all the pieces.

What the governor does have going for him is that his letter is in good English, it's polite, and if you don't know anything about the situation, it might sound reasonable.

Can Cures For Brazilian Domestic Violence Perpetrators Work With Trump Supporters Too?

An LA Times article reports that a group therapy program for men who beat their wives has been extremely successful.  Here's a short excerpt:

"For Fabio Alberto Alves, discussing feelings was something only women did.But the judge had sentenced the 53-year-old machinist to group therapy for men convicted of domestic violence, so he didn’t have much choice. It was either that or prison.During the first two of 20 weekly sessions, he didn’t say a word. He shouldn’t even be here, he thought. His wife of 25 years had blown the situation out of proportion. He was drunk when he grabbed her and caused a scene at her church. The cops should have never been involved. Then, on his third night as part of the group, he opened up.“Being here for me now is like being with family,” he said. “I realized that what I did was wrong, but that no one is here to judge me. When I’m here, I feel like I can talk, express myself.”The shift in attitude — from indignant and detached to temperate and open — is what groups like the one Alves participates in are after. As Brazil continues to register startling rates of domestic violence and femicide, therapists, prosecutors, judges and women’s right activists all agree on one thing: If saving women from becoming victims is the goal, working on men is the answer."

The article reports that recidivism rates drop to zero!  But even if it was as high as 20%, that would be huge.  It also notes that most resources go to victims, but as that last sentence in the quote points out, if anything is going to change, the men have to be involved.  (Just as whites have to be become more aware of the  their own involvement and the magnitude of the problem, if racism is going to end.)

Any kind of serious change like this has to go on in the heads of perpetrators.  Their self-serving narratives have to be challenged and they have to be offered alternative ways to think about the world and their position in it.   That's what good education is about.  Getting people to articulate their models of how the world works and then having them compare their own models to experts' models.  (And I'm not blindly siding with experts here.  Sometimes the students' models are better.)

The Brazilian article got me to wondering whether group therapy might be helpful for Trump supporters.   After all, these are people who believe crazy conspiracy theories and are clearly deciding emotionally, not rationally.  (Yes, I realize that's pretty strong, but not enough Germans confronted people who supported Hitler's lies and racism.  Though in Germany such confrontation could quickly lead to death.  In the US we don't have that threat - yet.  And if you are offended by Hitler analogies, there's Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Pinochet, Idi Amin, etc.)

And then I found this study - Men with Fragile Masculinity Vote for Trump - today that suggests my idea isn't that far-fetched.

I'd note that it appears this study has not been published in a peer reviewed journal - just the Washington Post.  And the authors themselves caution:

"Our data suggests that fragile masculinity is a critical feature of our current politics. Nonetheless, points of caution are in order.
First, the research reported here is correlational. We can’t be entirely sure that fragile masculinity is causing people to vote in a certain way. However, given that experimental work has identified a causal connection between masculinity concerns and political beliefs, we think the correlations we’ve identified are important.
Second, it remains to be seen whether any link between fragile masculinity and voting will persist after Trump exits the national stage. We suspect, however, that Trump’s re-engineering of the GOP as a party inextricably tied to many Americans’ identity concerns — whether based on race, religion or gender — will ensure that fragile masculinity remains a force in politics."

(Can you imagine a Trump supporter cautioning that his data is only correlational and hasn't been proven to be causal?)

Assuming the study has merit, then I'd argue that if the therapy works with macho Brazilians, why not with the men of the MAGA crowd?  But then, Brazilians who beat their wives have an incentive to attend such therapy.  It keeps them out of prison.  We can't offer Trump supporters therapy as an alternative to prison, unless, of course, they are convicted of a crime.

And if the study is wrong, well, I still believe that changing how one sees the world is the most likely way to permanently change their behavior.  This is another reason why good public schools that teach critical thinking skills are important.

So, it's time for people to start organizing discussion groups and finding skilled facilitators to bring our country back together again.  It won't work for everyone, but if 10% of Trump supporters are cured of their delusions, that would make a huge difference.  (And I'd note there are people whose dedication to Clinton was just as emotionally based, and who would have voted for her against a truly enlightened, experienced, and science oriented Republican.  (Yeah, I'm trying to figure out who that might have been.  Abe Lincoln?)

Who All Does Congress Want to Question? Abramson's List With Pics And Brief Bio

Let's just get this straight.  From Wikipedia:

"Ten investigations were conducted into the 2012 Benghazi attack, six of these by Republican-controlled House committees. Problems were identified with security measures at the Benghazi facilities, due to poor decisions made by employees of the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, and specifically its director Eric Boswell, who resigned under pressure in December 2012.[1] Despite numerous allegations against Obama administration officials of scandal, cover-up and lying regarding the Benghazi attack and its aftermath, none of the ten investigations found any evidence to support those allegations.[2][3][4][5]"

At worst, investigators believed that the Obama administration, particularly the State Department, headed by then likely 2016  presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, had used bad judgment and were negligent and then covering up what happened.  That is, that they made mistakes and then hid them..  You can read the various conclusions of the many investigations in the Wikipedia link. (They couldn't substantiate the charges.) The basic reason for all these investigations was not to uncover illegal actions, but to sully the reputation of Hillary Clinton.  (I acknowledge that there may have been those who believed their conspiracy theories, but it's my sense that people like Nunes were just attacking a political opponent because they could.

So when you hear Republicans - starting with Trump - complain about the investigations led by Mueller and now committees in the House of Representatives, recognize that Obama would have been impeached by this point in his administration if he and his campaign had done one tenth of what evidence suggests Trump has done.  We normally don't base whether to prosecute on the status of the alleged perpetrator.  (Actually, this may not be accurate.  The famous and wealthy do have the power to sway prosecutors into not prosecuting, into settlements, or other evasive actions.  See the Jeffrey Epstein story as just one example.  Or consider that Trump and his so-called university scammed tens of millions of dollars from students, yet, unlike a petty thief who steals, say, a fancy bike, were able to settle and avoid criminal charges that would put them in prison.

Seth Abramson has been collecting everything public he could find about allegations against Trump for years now and published a book last November - Proof of Collusion - which puts all his findings into a very detailed book about all of the allegations and people involved.  He knows this as well as anyone not privy to what the Mueller team is finding.  And, of course, everyone knows that despite swindling tens of millions from prospective students, Trump and his so called university were able to settle instead of facing criminal charges and prison.

Today Abramson put up a Tweeter thread with the list of people House investigations want to talk to - 61 total - along with pictures and brief bios of those less well known.  Here it is below.  (I'm not sure I'm embedding the whole thread or just the initial tweet.  So here's a link to the thread if it's not all below.) (A Tweet is a single message and a Thread is a group of Tweets 'threaded' together.)

(THREAD) This thread is a guided tour of the 81 PERSONS from whom the House Judiciary Committee is now seeking documents in contemplation of possible impeachment proceedings down the line. These names tell us much about where Congress is headed. I hope you'll read on and retweet. pic.twitter.com/wsErydjzKQ

— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) March 4, 2019

"No section of the above property shall be sold, conveyed, leased to, or occupied by a person or persons other than of the Caucasian race, except that a domestic servant of persons then residing upon said property shall be allowed hereon in connection with his employment."

I'd first met Karen at the swimming pool a couple of years ago when my granddaughter was having a swimming lesson and Karen was swimming.  We hit it off right away - but I suspect she has this way of charming people.

We met again last year at the Bainbridge Island High School protest.

And now she was speaking at the Bainbridge Library.

She started off talking about finding a water damaged photo album at a gathering of family members after a funeral.  An aunt had been on the couch watching news about a fire on tv.  What she didn't realize until the fire fighters got into her room, that it was her house that was on fire.  And that's how the album got damaged.  Karen took it to someone she knew and they were able to get many of the pictures digitized and printed again.

And that set Karen on a quest to learn more about her family - most of whom were in the Virginia and North Carolina area.

Karen had gotten to the Seattle area with the military and her husband.

When her dad died, she spent time in Connecticut going through his things and doing research to discover how her family got to Connecticut.




And when she finally got back to the Seattle area, she took a class on (I'm not sure exactly whether it was genealogy in general or geared specifically to African-American history).

In any case, she got started researching the African-American history of Kitsap County and Bainbridge Island.

I have to admit that I was a bit surprised that there was much African-American history on Bainbridge Island.  One of my problems with Bainbridge is the relative lack of diversity.  But the military brought African-Americans to Kitsap County after WW II.   Joe Louis even fought on Bainbridge Island as part of the opening of the Town and Country Market in 1957.

The event was co-sponsored by the library and the Bainbridge Historical Museum where Karen is doing lots of her research.  So I went by the museum the next day and found her with materials spread all over.

She's also getting into Native American history.  Seems these folks kept moving west and thought they could just build wherever they wanted, regardless of whether people were already using the land.

This chronicle attempts to be fair to the Indians, but it's written by the victors and really doesn't present the Indians' side of the story.

Here are much more detailed accounts.  The first one from someone who was there.  It seems clear that there was plenty of warning before the Indians attacked in what is called the White River Massacre by the whites.  And a number of the settlers left.

http://themossback.tripod.com/indianwar/wrmassacre.htm   These are very extensive and detailed first hand accounts by whites of what they called the White River massacre.

Here's a more general account, but gives more context and attempts to view things from a native perspective.  https://omittedhistory.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/the-puget-sound-war-1855-1856/  Here's a part:

"As a precursor, the Native American tribes of the area consisted of the Nisqually, Muckleshoot, Puyallup, and the Klickitat peoples. The war itself was triggered by The Treaty of Medicine Creek, penned by Washington Territory Governor Isaac Stevens in 1854. The American-favored treaty granted about 2.24 million acres of land to the United States in exchange for the creation of three reservations, cash payments over twenty years, and “recognition” of traditional native fishing and hunting rights. Unfortunately, Nisqually farming land was taken as part of negotiations (Washington State Historical Society)."

Getting into the 20th Century, Karen showed me this lease agreement to buy land in Port Blakely Bay on Bainbridge Island.  She highlighted two parts in yellow.  Restriction 7, I'll just write out here for people who have trouble reading the image:

"No section of the above property shall be sold, conveyed, leased to, or occupied by a person or persons other than of the Caucasian race, except that a domestic servant of persons then residing upon said property shall be allowed hereon in connection with his employment."

This is dated November 1943.

From a 2006 NY Times article about a Virginia case three years earlier where the seller used this sort of language in the deed of his house to deny a sale to an African-American family.  

"The Supreme Court ruled against racially restrictive covenants in 1948, and they were outlawed by the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968. But because so many of them remain in deeds and neighborhood bylaws, some states, including California, have moved to eliminate them. Advocates for their removal reason that the restrictions, even if illegal, provide justification for subtle racism -- or, as in Mr. Matthews's case, outright discrimination. (Mr. Matthews declined to comment.)"

 This kind of discriminatory language still remains in many deeds - even in Anchorage - to this day.  In part because the procedure for changing the deeds is often difficult or impossible.  A key was to make them part of the subdivision, not the individual house.

This is the kind of thing that is meant by white privilege.  In this case whites had the 'privilege' of buying land and people of color did not, even if they had the money.  Here's a post I wrote in 2012 about  Some of My Best Friends Are Black by Tanner Colby who does a really good job of presenting a very readable history of how these covenants got started and helped lead to red-lining.

And while these clauses are no longer enforceable, people have many ways of making life harder for people of color than for whites.  I believe that people who are upset about losing those kinds of privileges make up a good part of Trump's supporters.

And talking about privilege, this week's TED Radio Hour on NPR was about luck.  The first speaker  I heard, Tina Seelig [Starts around 12:30 min in], talked about luck being about your own mental image.  But damn, she taught at Stanford, she must have had some pretty good luck to start with.  But the next ones talked about luck happening before your were born. Amy Hunter who starts around 20 minutes in.  This one is critical.   She relates luck to which zip code you're born into.  The next one was a Canadian, Mark Sutcliffe, who said being born there as a white guy was great luck. Eshauna Smith follows this up by exploring how she got out of her zip code (she didn't say it that way) while most of the other really smart kids there did not.

Well worth listening to while you're cooking, folding laundry, or waiting in line somewhere.   I'd particularly recommend listening to Hunter,   followed by Mark Sutcliffe.  And then Eshauna Smith.

Here's the whole thing.