A week or so ago, the Department of Defense, under Donald Trump’s acting Secretary, decided not to renew the contract for the Jasons.
The Jasons are about 40 scientists who can be tasked with various questions about science and national security. Recently, they’ve been asked how long the plutonium pits in nuclear weapons are likely to remain usable (answer: about a century). They were also asked, a while back about a hafnium bomb, which I still see, like Red Mercury, on the internets. (Answer: No, it wouldn’t work.)
The Jasons have security clearances, so they can be asked classified questions. The group has existed for almost sixty years.
The Department of Defense gave no reason for not renewing the contract, so I’ll take a guess. Donald Trump has a very good brain. His uncle was a professor in nuclear physics at MIT, and he had a very good brain. So we no longer need those university and national laboratory slackers when Trump is the only one who can solve the problems.
Here’s a nice summary, with all the relevant links, from the Washington Post.
And does anyone know if Trump’s uncle actually was an MIT professor? Tom?
Open thread.
Spanky
Per Wikipedia:
schrodingers_cat
@Spanky: The brains seems to have skipped the succeeding generations.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Of course. Nobody knows more than he does. He has the best brain. He went to the best school…
Shit. I’ve always found that people who truly are worth a shit don’t have to spend all their time going around telling everybody about it. Only Trump is a very stable genius, so I guess he knows things all the rest of us don’t…
Martin
Yeah, his uncle is legit. Did some seriously good work.
chopper
bogus, but nuclear isomers are still fascinating materials that deserve more study.
NobodySpecial
That contract is gonna be filled….”In house”, natch.
Droppy
MY uncle was a world-class chef, so I am going to fire all the cooks at my restaurant and make the food myself even though I eat only McDonalds and have never managed any skilled employees doing any kind of work of any trade. But great chef genes run in my family, so that is all I need for great chefiness to appear. Amen.
Sloane Ranger
Clearly Uncle and perhaps to a lesser extent Sis the Judge, took the entire allocation of brain cells intended for the Trump family for at least 2 generations.
Bill Arnold
The unclassified report list is akin to a candy store.
JASON Defense Advisory Panel Reports
I’m already tempted to read this:
Perspectives on Research in Artificial Intelligence and Artificial General Intelligence Relevant to DoD (2017)
Major Major Major Major
Who needs their decisions made by experts anyway?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Folk that are really smart don’t tell you how smart they are, folk that are really rich don’t tell you how rich they are.
Tom Levenson
Yeah. His uncle really was an MIT professor — electrical engineering. This after he and Fred (the shitgibbon’s racist dad) fell out as partners in a home building business.
And also yeah…getting rid of the Jasons is another unforced surrender to our adversaries. Our national security just got dicier as DoD got dumber.
TenguPhule
Pretty soon Trump is going to start selling off America’s nuclear arsenal to the highest bidder.
Sab
Even if he was the sweetest, most decent man in the world, we should impeach him for sheer incompetence.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t think Trump is stupid, per se, or at least he wasn’t stupid before he went into cognitive decline. He strikes me as somebody who was reasonably smart but also lazy and incurious. When he felt the need to know something, he was capable of learning it well and thoroughly. But at some point his thinking calcified. He had learned everything he thought he needed to know, so he gave up bothering to learn anything. That’s why so much of his worldview is stuck in the 1980s; that’s when he stopped bothering to learn anything new.
MattF
Probably, some highly classified Jason report concluded that a Trumpian concept was physically impossible.
Mike G
Trump doesn’t need advisors, he already knows everything.
I’ve known a few people with this mentality in my life and what a coincidence, they were all Republicans.
JPL
@TenguPhule: Are we sure he hasn’t already?
rikyrah
Sigh
Another thing to worry about ??
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
I know, I can’t take it any more.
Cheryl Rofer
Thanks for the reminders about Trump’s Uncle John. I actually read that at one time, but obviously it didn’t come up to the proper priority for my brain to retain it.
Or it just seemed so discordant that anyone in Trump’s family could be an MIT professor.
Mike in NC
Just another skirmish in the Republican War on Science.
Adam L Silverman
@Tom Levenson: The question is going to be how long the Office of Net Assessment holds out. If that goes too, then we’ve got an even bigger problem.
karen marie
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Trump is so smart, he’s protecting all us stupid not-rich people from the brilliance of his secondary school and college records – to such an extent, they’ve been hidden in a filing cabinet, in the basement — to which the stairs are broken — guarded by a leopard. Oh, yes, don’t forget your flashlight – the lights are broken.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Adam L Silverman:
We don’t need that, I know the best people and they tell me the nets are fine. Some of them are very tall.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Well, Andy Marshall isn’t there any more to protect it, so…
trollhattan
@Sab:
That would have been a good move in Reagan’s second term, to be sure.
chopper
@Mike in NC:
Just another skirmish in the Republican War on
Scienceeverything.Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: I honestly couldn’t even tell you how you even apply for a job there. But if it goes that would be very, very, very bad.
Leto
The war on science/education continues, unabated. I’m sure this will be outsourced to some Bircher society think tank. I’m sure free market solutions are the best way. Or some bullshit in that vein.
p.a.
Getting the redirect to: correctly answer these questions and win… here on BJ (1st time for me here)
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: According to my sixth grade English teacher, one who knows not and knows that he knows not is a fool. T fits that description to the T. In Marathi we call such a person अति शहाणा.
ETA: A person who thinks he is too smart but is really a fool because he has no humility to figure out what he doesn’t know.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: I’ve been a bit of an Office of Net Assessment skeptic. OTOH, I was trained up in somewhat similar methods, afaict. I don’t know much about them either.
The bottom line is that Trump, and the Republican Congress, since Newt destroyed the Office of Technical Assessment, have been trying to get rid of independent scientific advice so that they can push their hype on EMP and probably hafnium bombs and red mercury as well.
Sab
@Cheryl Rofer: Well at least there was some point in letting anyone from that family in. I am pretty much pro immigration, but that bunch had shaken my faith.
Sister Golden Bear
In addition to the SCOTUS yesterday taking up the question of whether LGBT people have protection from job discrimination
[Narrator voice: This is a bad sign, and likely means the court will legalize anti-LGBT discrimination]
the
PenceTrump administration is poised to roll back transgender health protections (as well as for women who have had abortions). Which is bad enough in itself — it means that a doctor or other healthcare would be able to refuse to treat me because I’m trans*.On paper they might claim that it’s only trans-specific health care, but in the real world, thanks to “trans broken arm syndrome” — when “healthcare providers assume that all medical issues are a result of a person being trans. Everything – from mental health problems to, yes, broken arms.” — it would have huge ramifications.
But worse yet, the HHS may also use it as any opportunity to apply the “sex is assigned at birth and cannot be changed” rule that they’ve been trying to persuade other agencies to adopt, which essentially define trans people out of existence — and since trans people wouldn’t legally exist ipso facto there can’t be any anti-trans discrimination that requires protection from.
*As in the case where EMTs let a trans woman bleed to death in the street while mocking her for being trans.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@TenguPhule:
Well, yeah. It’s his arsenal, after all. It’s his government. His country. We only work here.
Cheryl Rofer
@Sister Golden Bear: Yes, all that, and today the Trumpies insisted on changing a UN resolution so that sexual and reproductive health measures can be denied to women who have been raped in war.
The cruelty is the point, particularly to anyone who is not a cis white man.
zhena gogolia
@Sister Golden Bear:
I haven’t had time to watch the Town Halls, but this just caught my eye:
Kamala Harris
Verified account
debbie
ODG, we will never hear the end of this:
zhena gogolia
@debbie:
How did the whole world get so horrible? Why?
The Dangerman
I’m guessing that Obama said something nice about the Jasons once so, of course, it had to go.
I’m sure there are many Chinese/Korean/Russian members at Mar-A-Larceny that can handle these tasks (with Jared and Ivanka supervising, of course)…
…although I haven’t heard a word about Don Jr. in a while (I consider myself fortunate). What crimes is he up to these days? He can handle nuke stuff, I’m sure. Hannity told me so.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Between this and Biden announcing, I just want to put my head through the wall. If only it weren’t solid masonry.
trollhattan
@debbie:
Bigass Helvetica Extra Bold Hebrew font–does it exist?
“I want it BIG. I want it GOLD! Do you hear me, Bibi?”
They could make it a candy brand name and just tell him it says Trump.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
I guess I would say that intelligence/stupidity, knowledge/ignorance, and wisdom/foolishness are separate things*. Knowledge is information you know about the world. Intelligence is the ability to gain knowledge through education. Wisdom is the ability to apply what you’ve learned outside of the narrow domain where you learned it. Trump is (or was- I think his intellect has declined with age) a reasonably smart man, which means he was able to learn when it suited him. He was also a surprisingly ignorant one because he was foolish enough to believe he already knew it all and didn’t need to learn anything new.
ETA:*Though they obviously aren’t completely orthogonal. A really stupid person will almost always be ignorant as well, because they have trouble learning.
Dan B
@Leto: Pence could outsource science to the Kuwaiti Prophetic Science Institute. A “Dr.” there has found a cure for homosexuality. Because people of the 3rd and 4th genders (gay and lesbian) are oversexed she has perfected suppossitories that contain “sp@rm eating an@l worms”. It’s from the Quran, because of course. The formula is the same for gays and lesbians but she’s color coded them. It’s based upon bitter herbs because (natch) they increase masculinity.
We have some questions, mostly related to how to implant a suppository in an angry dyke. Or butch leather guy who dreams of more hair on his back. And a few others – source of sperm in lesbian a$$es, etc.
And is there a televangelist that can bring these miracle a$$ worms to desperate americans? Suggestions?
km
@Cheryl Rofer: “so that they can push their hype on EMP and probably hafnium bombs and red mercury as well.”
Why do they want to do this though? That’s what I don’t get. Is there some way they make money or what?
VeniceRiley
@Cheryl Rofer: Is it wrong that I have a revulsion just to seeing Samantha Power’s name? She was the OG “Killary!1!!11!!!” in 2008 and I still haven’t forgiven her. I think of her as a redhead Bernie Sanders.
I wonder if getting rid of The Jasons was a goal of Vlad The Destroyer?
Balms Away
The more this administration rids our government of intelligent, diplomatic people, the more obvious the fact our government has become a superfluous drain of no use. We should revert to state’s rights and do away with the elitist empty monster WA DC has become.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): “Shit. I’ve always found that people who truly are worth a shit don’t have to spend all their time going around telling everybody about it. Only Trump is a very stable genius, so I guess he knows things all the rest of us don’t…”
Only the most stable geniuses preemptively threaten to sue every school they’ve ever attended from releasing their grades. That is SOP in the MSGC (most stable geniuses club), I hear.
John D. Thullen
So, instead of the Jasons giving expert counsel, we now hand over the nuclear arsenal and nuclear holocaust to Jason himself.
There will be blood.
Leto
@Adam L Silverman: OT, but JFC…
Navy SEALs Were Warned Against Reporting Their Chief for War Crimes
Ask me how surprised I am.
Baud
@debbie:
“And the town symbol shall be a golden calf.”
Ohio Mom
@zhena gogolia: The whole world is not horrible, there are good things happening everywhere. Just not in the halls of power.
Here is one small example of a good thing, on the subject of one of the topics on this thread: my local children’s hospital has a new transgender clinic for children ages 5-24 to provide medical and psychosocial support to these children and their families.
There are many forward-thinking efforts all over to draw hope from.
And one day, the halls of power will be righted too. We will get there.
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
I like it. Baud! 2020!: Righteous Power!
Cheryl Rofer
@km: It’s hard to say. Some of them seem to get off on the fantasies. The business about EMP is pure scare stuff: Look at this terrible thing that someone could do to us with practically no investment.” The corollary is that we have to spend more, particularly on missile defense, so that’s a motivation. I saw a suggestion that it’s survivalist porn – they like to think about how they would be the only ones who would survive in the blasted land.
And there’s the ever-popular owning the libs, who believe that sciency stuff. And the Jasons are all those perfesser types.
Jay
@km:
They can now contract out for less than eithical research,
Get curated results back,
And used bad science to push bad policy and bad projects.
MomSense
This is one of those days when I want to buy a farm in nowhere, Maine and live off the grid and away from the rest of the world.
Dan B
@zhena gogolia: Thanks for posting this crystal clear statement from Sen. Harris. I posted that Harris was criticized for her CNN Town Hall statement about the “gay panic defense” when she talked about trans murder trials. The criticism seemed like hair splitters or russian bots.
We need a rapid response team for these half truth smears. They’ll be confusing and epic.
boatboy_srq
At this rate the GOTea won’t be able to drown Gummint in a bathtub because Lord Dampnut will have fired all the plumbers.
Baud
@MomSense:
So about a 15 minute drive?
(I hope tomorrow is better.)
MomSense
@Baud:
Heh. The dog rolled in something disgusting in the woods and is terribly pleased with herself.
Dan B
@Baud: Noooooo! You cannot have Devin Nunes cow! That is a sacrilege most fowl!!!
How about a Goldrn Lion? No, Jr. and Eric would shoot it.
Golden Lamb? Trumpf would grab it.
Hmmm?
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: I don’t think he was ever smart, though he does seem to be getting worse right in front of our eyes. His wealth has shielded from the consequences of his stupid actions.
cmorenc
Trump probably had the group cancelled because he and his Admin cronies don’t like having experts around who might give them answers they don’t like to questions they don’t want to be inconvenienced considering. Trump doesn’t listen to the experts in his own state department, intelligence services, or military brass, so why would he want to listen to a bunch of egg-headed scientists who might tell him the schemes Trump is cooking up in his excellent brain are disasters in the making because of [facts[.
Evil Paul
@Cheryl Rofer: Red mercury…I vaguely remember that being a thing back in the 90s. Wasn’t there a story about Bill Clinton reading about red mercury and getting really worried and asking some scientific experts to investigate it or something? As I recall, it got played for laughs in the news. But when you think about it, that’s the right response: ‘Wow. That sounds scary! Is it real? I better check with someone who knows!’
mrmoshpotato
I AM LUXURIOUS AND CLASSY AND TREMENDOUS BIGLY AT THE NUCLEAR WITH MY VERY GOOD BRAIN!
-D.J. Dump
rikyrah
Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) Tweeted:
Put another way: the reason Bernie fans mostly haven’t migrated to Warren is because the distinguishing feature of Bernie fans is not leftist policy views per se but that they (figuratively) want to blow up the system, including the Democratic Party. https://t.co/RJkhkPzvwp https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1120806730793988096?s=17
Baud
@rikyrah:
Duly filed under No Shit.
Aleta
I’m going to guess (no surprise) they were supplying answers that opposed what he wants to do. He may have interpreted this as not obeying his orders. And then there’s his paranoia about people who know too much and can’t be controlled. I wonder if the Jasons can/will speak about this.
What little I know of the Office of Net Assessment from my sis is that it’s secretive and not at all independent of the DoD in its research. So are the research managers and scientists likely to stand up to pressure from Trump’s servants, or just keep their heads down and focus on what the DoD has directed? Scientists who would disagree with something serious might just quit instead.
Loss of the Jasons is very serious.
Ladyraxterinok
@Leto: Again sounds like some in military and some on police force think their position is a license to run amok/kill.
And–or maybe in adition–they think they are living in a violent video game. One in which the targets are stick figures with no reality–no families, etc
trollhattan
@Baud:
That’s when your reactor core contains Jesus and Buddha, armwrestling.
Cheryl Rofer
@Evil Paul: Yes, that’s the right response and why the Jasons were formed.
Red mercury is still a thing. I get occasional questions on it, and some people believe that it can be extracted from land mines. That frequently ends badly.
Here’s the ultimate article on red mercury.
Baud
@trollhattan:
?
Barney
Just yesterday, I listened to the BBC Radio 4 serialization of ‘Losing Earth’ – which pointed out that ‘Jason’ Gordon MacDonald was one of the first scientists with access to policymakers to raise concerns about global warming. Here’s People magazine reporting on him, in 1979 (not bad for a ‘fluff’ publication): https://people.com/archive/co2-could-change-our-climate-and-flood-the-earth-up-to-here-vol-12-no-15/ .
Get rid of the Jasons, and you get rid of those annoying scientists telling you you’re dooming the Earth for that fossil fuel lobby you’ve worked for for 2 decades and still do, despite your position at the Dept of Interior.
Evil Paul
@Cheryl Rofer: Ooooooh! C.J. Chivers! Thanks!
Baud
https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/23/politics/voter-turnout-2018-census/index.html
tobie
Washington Post editorial board has posted an editorial on Warren’s debt forgiveness and free college plan. Is Fred Hiatt still editor for the editorial page? Is this the first time this season they’ve spoken out against a primary candidate? The editorial notes that 85% of student debt holders are actually current on their repayments; the 15% that are not seem to belong to the following group:
Leto
@Ladyraxterinok: not so much video game, but not recognizing that the person at the end of their barrel is also human. Refusing to see them as human. Dehumanizing the enemy is part of military training, but this went beyond that. Idk about cops, but if you read the article that’s part of what was happening with the seal being accused of murder (and other assorted crimes). The bigger thing is that, per the reporting, that the immediate command was trying to cover this up, threatening retaliation against the men bringing this to their attention. Thin blue line doesn’t have shit on the special warfare community.
Yet again, something else to help our enemies with propaganda/recruitment efforts.
Baud
@tobie:
I don’t understand why they equate being current on loans with not being under financial stress.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: @Baud:
JustRuss
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Terrific, I’ll bet they look like they came straight from Central Casting!
NotMax
Science? We don’t no es-stinkin’ science.
Oops, excuse me. Time to go feed the home cold fusion unit.
@MomSense
Maine? Can do that (even sans the farm) in Maui!
;)
Baud
Not surprised but I hadn’t seen it confirmed.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Russian Asset # 2 doesn’t want Asset # 1 impeached. No surprise there.
tobie
@Baud: I think the argument was that if the debt burden were crippling, graduates with loans would be behind on their payments. The editorial also asked why, if you’re going to forgive college debt, won’t you forgive other forms of occupational training debt. And regarding free public college the board’s question was why should those who are poor defray the tuition costs of those who have enough means to pay. The editorial didn’t get into what kind of state or federal curricular control would accompany larger state and federal outlays, which is one of my concerns. I frankly think the model of debt free college would address a lot of the problems Warren’s trying to solve without overhauling and possibly upending one of, if not the, greatest asset in the US–the research university.
Gravenstone
@tobie: In other words, let the usury of the masses in pursuit of post high school education continue unimpeded.
mrmoshpotato
@schrodingers_cat:
In other No-shit-Sherlock news, water is wet, and Dump is the Kremlin’s bitch.
TenguPhule
@Balms Away:
Over half of the states are controlled by Republicans.
Sister Golden Bear
@Cheryl Rofer: Oddly enough that also had an anti-trans angle — apparently the Talibaptists objected to a reference to gender because somehow that was supportive of trans rights.
West of the Rockies
@Dan B:
Yes, we need to be vigilant about articles that smack of truthiness. Among stories about our candidates that may be critical and honest, there will be half-truths and out-of-context quotes. They pop up even here occasionally.
We need to winnow the field, but I hope that happens more organically during the debates than via random sniping. YMMV.
schrodingers_cat
deleted wrong thread
TenguPhule
We could save a lot of time and duplicated effort by simply impeaching and arresting every Trump appointee, past and present.
MomSense
@NotMax:
We could have movie nights!
Zinsky
Democrats need to open a new front in the Trump Wars by announcing they are forming a Donald Trump Sex Crimes Commission. There are at least 18 women who would be very willing to publicly testify about this geriatric pervert’s rapist tendencies. Make it a prime time TV series…
catclub
@Cheryl Rofer:
The Democrats did not re-start it when they had a chance in 2010. Or better fund the Congressional research system – as far as I know.
It is a shame that only one side has to be responsible for long term thinking.
Bill Arnold
This is interesting. Another crack in the GOP wall.
The Mueller Report Was My Tipping Point – I was a Trump transition staffer, and I’ve seen enough. It’s time for impeachment. (2019/04/23, J. W. Verret, Professor of law at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School)
Omnes Omnibus
@Bill Arnold: There is a big chunk of me that would really like to tell this dude the variety of ways in which he can go fuck himself. Hell, there is still a part of me that is sometimes tempted to say it recovering Bush voters. I am not a good choice for outreach to wavering Republicans.
Bill Arnold
@Barney: @Barney:
F-in Edward Teller, who was (broadly) correct:
On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming
Bill Arnold
@Omnes Omnibus:
He spends the first half loudly touting his radical conservative bona fides (perhaps armor/insulation against right wing projectiles/shivs/flames), and does not endear himself to liberals.
Ruckus
I often wonder if Trump thinks all this stuff he’s not willing to pay for, he thinks he gets a cut of the taxes collected that isn’t being paid out for necessary things. IOW he doesn’t see the need for something, mainly because he’s an idiot and because he’s said idiot, does he expect to get paid for this?
Jay
@Ruckus:
Naw, somebody told the Moron the whole scam,
Dumping the Jason’s now allows all the “studies” to be farmed out to for profit Astroturf “science” consultants,
These consultants will in turn issue pseudo science reports that support the policy,
Programs to enact the policy can then be farmed out to an assorted batch of connected Corporate grifters.
The Hedge Funders have looted all the assets and value, ( real estate, machinery, pension funds, subsidiaries, cash holdings) out of the Corporations.
Bubble after bubble, churning and high fees have hollowed out the 401K’s,
The Great Recession stole every house that wasn’t strapped down with hurricane ties.
The last place with large cash flows, lax accounting available to loot, is the US Government.
Canadian Shield
At the bottoms of the linked Washington Post article there was a link to an Editorial:
“Trump’s record on science so far is a mixed bag”
That must be a bag filled with 50% shit and 50% vomit…
texasdoc
@tobie: That editorial seems to be missing the point. It’s not that most with student loans are current on payments, but that they are paying for YEARS, when they should be starting their adult lives, perhaps saving for a down payment on a home or starting a family.
prostratedragon
@Barney: I wonder whether Prof. Trump encountered either of the Koch brothers who went to MIT.
W. Kiernan
It’s not hard to see why the Trump administration took this action. Would Vladimir Putin want that contract renewed?
Kayla Rudbek
@km: scamming investors with pseudoscience. There are people out there, at MIT even, who are still trying to patent cold fusion. like this dude.