to reify the wave, you break the sea and ask each part to make sense on its own as if it's somehow possible to be an insular phenomenon, alone a language conjures objects up by name imposing bound'ries on our mental maps but why two minds should divvy it the same one must fall back on faith to fill the gaps
emergent qualities defy Descartes and chief among them is this thing called "mind" that isn't found in any smaller part (some argue that there is no "thing" to find)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Fri, Dec 23, 2016 at 8:30 AM Subject: re: Delayed U.N. Vote to Condemn Israeli Settlements Is Reset for Friday To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
The U.S. stands firmly with Israel. The U.S. condemns Israel's illegal settlement activity. That Danny Danon, and the Likud government for whom he speaks cannot see the line between the two is the problem.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 11:21 AM Subject: re: Donald Trump: The Russian Poodle To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
What the CIA alleges is nothing less than an attack on America. What no one of us has seen is the evidence. Our CIA has a long record of swaying elections through campaigns of disinformation. Our Electoral College needs to see the evidence before voting. To vote without knowing the issues at stake would be a farce.
In 1972, President Richard Nixon’s White House dispatched burglars to bug Democratic Party offices. That Watergate burglary and related “dirty tricks,” such as releasing mice at a Democratic press conference and paying a woman to strip naked and shout her love for a Democratic candidate, nauseated Americans — and impelled some of us kids at the time to pursue journalism.
Now in 2016 we have a political scandal that in some respects is even more staggering. Russian agents apparently broke into the Democrats’ digital offices and tried to change the election outcome. President Obama on Friday suggested that this was probably directed by Russia’s president, saying, “Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin.”
In Watergate, the break-in didn’t affect the outcome of the election. In 2016, we don’t know for sure. There were other factors, but it’s possible that Russia’s theft and release of the emails provided the margin for Donald Trump’s victory.
The C.I.A. says it has “high confidence” that Russia was trying to get Trump elected, and, according to The Washington Post, the directors of the F.B.I. and national intelligence agree with that conclusion.
Both Nixon and Trump responded badly to the revelations, Nixon by ordering a cover-up and Trump by denouncing the C.I.A. and, incredibly, defending Russia from the charges that it tried to subvert our election. I never thought I would see a dispute between America’s intelligence community and a murderous foreign dictator in which an American leader sided with the dictator.
Let’s be clear: This was an attack on America, less lethal than a missile but still profoundly damaging to our system. It’s not that Trump and Putin were colluding to steal an election. But if the C.I.A. is right, Russia apparently was trying to elect a president who would be not a puppet exactly but perhaps something of a lap dog — a Russian poodle.
In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair was widely (and unfairly) mocked as President George W. Bush’s poodle, following him loyally into the Iraq war. The fear is that this time Putin may have interfered to acquire an ally who likewise will roll over for him.
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Frankly, it’s mystifying that Trump continues to defend Russia and Putin, even as he excoriates everyone else, from C.I.A. officials to a local union leader in Indiana.
Now we come to the most reckless step of all: This Russian poodle is acting in character by giving important government posts to friends of Moscow, in effect rewarding it for its attack on the United States.
Rex Tillerson, Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, is a smart and capable manager. Yet it’s notable that he is particularly close to Putin, who had decorated Tillerson with Russia’s “Order of Friendship.”
Whatever our personal politics, how can we possibly want to respond to Russia’s interference in our election by putting American foreign policy in the hands of a Putin friend?
Tillerson’s closeness to Putin is especially troubling because of Trump’s other Russia links. The incoming national security adviser, Michael Flynn, accepted Russian money to attend a dinner in Moscow and sat near Putin. A ledger shows $12.7 million in secret payments by a pro-Russia party in Ukraine to Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort. And the Trump family itself has business connections with Russia.
It’s true that there will be counterbalances, including Gen. James Mattis, the former Marine commander who has no illusions about Moscow and is expected to be confirmed as defense secretary. But over all it looks as if the Trump administration will be remarkably pro-Putin — astonishing considering Putin’s Russia has killed journalists, committed war crimes in Ukraine and Syria and threatened the peaceful order in Europe.
So it’s critical that the Senate, the news media and the public subject Tillerson to intense scrutiny. There are other issues to explore as well, including his role in enabling corruption in Chad, one of the poorest countries in the world. The same is true of his role in complicity with the government of Angola, where oil corruption turned the president’s daughter into a billionaire even as children died of poverty and disease at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world.
Maybe all this from Russia to Angola was just Tillerson trying to maximize his company’s revenue, and he will act differently as secretary of state. Maybe. But I’m skeptical that his ideology would change in fundamental ways.
This is not only about Tillerson just as the 1972 break-in was not only about the Watergate building complex. This is about the integrity of American democracy and whether a foreign dictator should be rewarded for attacking the United States. It is about whether we are led by a president or a poodle.
From: barry levine Date: Thu, Dec 1, 2016 at 7:01 PM Subject: re:James Mattis, Outspoken Ex-Marine, Is Trump’s Choice as Defense Secretary To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
President-elect Trump may not care what the law says, but we have a statute on the books (10 U.S. Code § 113) forbidding anyone from becoming Secretary of Defense within seven years of serving on active duty. Statutorily, gen. James Mattis--whatever his qualifications--is ineligible. Is this law only a law when the Senate and the White House are held by different parties?
James Mattis, Outspoken Ex-Marine, Is Trump’s Choice as Defense Secretary
Photo
James N. Mattis, a retired Marine general, leaving a meeting with President-elect Donald J. Trump in Bedminster, N.J., last month.CreditHilary Swift for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Thursday he had chosen James N. Mattis, a hard-charging retired general who led a Marine division to Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to serve as his secretary of defense.
Mr. Trump made the announcement at a rally in Cincinnati, calling General Mattis “the closest thing we have to Gen. George Patton.”
General Mattis, 66, led the United States Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, from 2010 to 2013. His tour there was cut short by the Obama administration, which believed that he was too hawkish on Iran.
But his insistence that Iran is the greatest threat to peace in the Middle East, as well as his acerbic criticism of the Obama administration’s initial efforts to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, made him an attractive choice for the incoming president, whom he met for the first time after Mr. Trump’s election.
Video
Trump Victory Tour
President-elect Donald J. Trump held a rally in Cincinnati to say thank you to Ohio, and revealed his choice for defense secretary.
By THE NEW YORK TIMES on Publish DateDecember 1, 2016. Photo by Doug Mills/The New York Times.Watch in Times Video »
After retiring from the military, General Mattis told Congress that the administration’s “policy of disengagement in the Middle East” had contributed to the rise of extremism in the region. The United States, he told lawmakers in 2015, needs to “come out from our reactive crouch and take a firm, strategic stance in defense of our values.”
But in some important policy areas, General Mattis differs from Mr. Trump, who has been filling the top ranks of his national security team with hard-liners. General Mattis believes, for instance, that Mr. Trump’s conciliatory statements toward Russia are ill informed. General Mattis views with alarm Moscow’s expansionist or bellicose policies in Syria, Ukraine and the Baltics. And he has told the president-elect that torture does not work.
Despite his tough stance on Iran, General Mattis also thinks that tearing up the Iran nuclear deal would hurt the United States, and he favors working closely with allies to strictly enforce its terms.
General Mattis, whose radio call sign during the invasion of Iraq was Chaos — reflecting the havoc he sought to rain on adversaries — has been involved in some of the United States’ best-known operations. As a one-star general, he led the first Marine force into Afghanistan a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and established Forward Operating Base Rhino near Kandahar.
At times, General Mattis’s salty language has gotten him into trouble. “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys that slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” he said in 2005. “So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.”
But the retired general, a lifelong bachelor who has said that he does not own a television and has often been referred to as a “warrior monk,” is also famous for his extensive collection of books on military history. “Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation,” he wrote a colleague in 2003. “It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.”
General Mattis would be the first former ranking general to assume the post of defense secretary since George Marshall in 1950-51. He would need a special congressional waiver to serve as defense secretary. He retired from the Marines in 2013, and federal law stipulates that the Pentagon chief be out of uniform for seven years.
But General Mattis has strong support in Congress, especially on the part of John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In a recent phone call, Mr. McCain urged Mr. Trump to consider appointing General Mattis or Gen. Jack Keane, a retired Army vice chief of staff, as defense secretary. But General Keane has decided against returning to government in a full-time capacity.
Photo
General Mattis appearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee as a general in 2010.CreditBrendan Smialowski for The New York Times
The selection of General Mattis is a boost for the Marines. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be working with Joseph F. Dunford, the four-star Marine general who serves as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It would also create an unusual situation at the Pentagon because the new defense secretary would be General Dunford’s former commanding officer. During the Iraq invasion, General Dunford was a colonel who led a Marine regiment that reported to General Mattis.
General Mattis led the First Marine Division during the 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. He later commanded American troops during the hard-fought battle to retake Falluja from Sunni insurgents in 2004. As head of the Central Command, General Mattis was heavily involved in plans to counter Iran’s military and protect the sea lanes in the Persian Gulf.
William Kristol, editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard and a staunch opponent of Mr. Trump’s, sought to persuade General Mattis to mount an independent presidential bid. And he was courted by both the campaigns of Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton to speak at the political conventions, but declined.
In a new book, “Warriors and Citizens,” which General Mattis edited with Kori Schake, a Hoover Institution fellow who served in the George W. Bush administration, he complained that politicians had relied too much on military commanders to make the case for their policies.
“President Bush left to Gen. David Petraeus the task of overcoming congressional opposition to the 2006 Iraq surge,” General Mattis and Ms. Schake wrote. “President Obama has been mostly silent on the war in Afghanistan since 2009; the case for continuing American troop presence has been made entirely by the military.”
Military commanders, they wrote, have a responsibility to carry out and advocate the president’s policies. “This does not remove elected officials from the responsibility to win political arguments instead of depending on the military to do so,” they added.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine Date: Mon, Nov 28, 2016 at 10:55 AM Subject: re: Lawsuit Aims to Hold 2 Contractors Accountable for C.I.A. Torture To: "letters@nytimes.com"
To the Editor:
The job description for the POTUS is laid out in our Constitution. The president "shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" Yet "Nearly 15 years after the United States adopted a program to interrogate terrorism suspects using techniques now widely considered to be torture, no one involved in helping craft it [or executing in] has been held legally accountable. Even as President Obama acknowledged that the United States “tortured some folks,” his administration declined to prosecute any government officials."
It remains for the Civil Courts to pursue justice where our Executive prefers to turn a blind eye. Prosecutorial discretion has run amok here, effectively nullifying our criminal law code.
Mitchell and Jessen are not uniquely responsible for the U.S. torture program. Responsibility for that is shared up and down the chain of command from president George W. Bush to the private who held the leash. But they're the two have aren't shielded from justice by our CIA and military establishments.
that Trump's a loser, even he concedes alleging fraud while winning'd make no sense this latest lie's a fantasy that feeds the ego that allied itself to Pence no narrative's as dear as victimhood that masks aggression as a quest for rights alleging his pursuit is for our good he takes hypocrisy to artful heights to delegitimize the vote per se while claiming nonetheless that he had won leaves nothing settled at the end of day democracy itself has been undone the Donald flip-flops without blush or shame as long as networks blare his gilded name
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine<levinebar@gmail.com> Date: Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 8:23 AM Subject: re: Harsher Security Tactics? Obama Left Door Ajar, and Donald Trump Is Knocking To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>
To the Editor: the precedent Obama leaves in place
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: barry levine<levinebar@gmail.com> Date: Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 8:23 AM Subject: re: Harsher Security Tactics? Obama Left Door Ajar, and Donald Trump Is Knocking To: "letters@nytimes.com" <letters@nytimes.com>
To the Editor: the precedent Obama leaves in place
David Plouffe takes a lot of words to get to "IT REALLY WAS A CHANGE ELECTIONThe voters were serious about that. And there was only one change candidate." Voters looked at a director of WalMart and the senator from Wall Street and they did not see an agent of the change they wanted. They stayed away in droves. Hillary Clinton lost to a man who got fewer votes than Mitt Romney got four years earlier. This election was about losing, not winning. And we all lost. Barry Haskell Levine
Like many people around the world, I expected a comfortable Hillary Clinton victory on Tuesday. But I’m not a random pundit when it comes to understanding presidential races and the electorate — I managed one Obama presidential campaign and oversaw another from the White House. So of all the forecasts that got it wrong, my prediction that Mrs. Clinton was a 100 percent favorite was a glaring miss.
My confidence was not partisan spin. It was based on public data, voting history and some sense of the Clinton campaign’s own models. I played with various state scenarios, and even in the most generous outcomes, could not get Donald J. Trump to 270 electoral votes.
But he ended up winning 306 electoral votes and, most important, did it by breaking into the Upper Midwest, leaving the blue Big Ten firewall in ruins.
What happened? We will know much more when all the data is in and we can see exactly who voted. But based on what we know, it was a combination of several factors that led to this stunning upset.
DEMOCRATIC TURNOUT WAS VERY WEAK Overall turnout was as well, as Donald J. Trump received fewer votes in winning than Mitt Romney did when he lost decisively in 2012.
Still, the nagging worry about a lack of broad-based enthusiasm for Mrs. Clinton, which I noted often as someone familiar with the Obama coalition, proved to be justified. She had passionate supporters and volunteers, for sure. But for sporadic and potential first-time voters, the spark was not there.
In Detroit, Mrs. Clinton received roughly 70,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did in 2012; she lost Michigan by just 12,000 votes. In Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, she received roughly 40,000 votes fewer than Mr. Obama did, and she lost the state by just 27,000. In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, turnout in majority African-American precincts was down 11 percent from four years ago.
It’s a reminder that presidential campaigns are driven in large part by personality, not party. Ronald Reagan, President Obama and now Mr. Trump all were able to create electoral coalitions unique to them.
MR. TRUMP’S MARGINS IN RURAL AND EXURBAN COUNTIES WERE OFF THE CHARTS For example, in Madison County, an exurban area outside Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Romney’s margin over Mr. Obama was 20.4 percentage points; Mr. Trump’s margin over Mrs. Clinton was 39.8. In Buchanan County, Iowa, outside Cedar Rapids, Mr. Obama beat Mr. Romney by 13.9 points. Mr. Trump reversed that result, winning the county by 14.2 points. That happened in thousands of counties throughout the country, and it added up quickly.
IT REALLY WAS A CHANGE ELECTION The voters were serious about that. And there was only one change candidate.
STRONG AND WEAK CURRENTS BEAT DATA AND ANALYTICSThe models for both support (vote share) and turnout were off significantly. It appears that there really were hidden Trump voters, meaning his ceiling of support was higher than most of us believed possible based on polling and modeling survey responses. And millions of potential Clinton voters who the models suggested would vote stayed home.
THE THIRD PARTIES This will need to be confirmed by more data and analysis, but one major reason Mr. Trump’s ceiling could have ended up higher than projected was that the potential Trump voters parked with Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, left to vote for Mr. Trump. But potential Clinton targets, especially the younger Johnson voters, stuck with him. Mr. Johnson’s support declined over time, but not equally — those who were potential Clinton voters were stickier than the Trump targets. Mr. Johnson won 8 percent of voters under 45, but only 2 percent of those over 65.
MESSAGE MUDDLE The only two messages that appeared to punch through were the anti-Trump line, on the left, and the grossly overhyped email issue on the right. Mrs. Clinton talked about what she wanted to do from a policy perspective every day, but this campaign was not the Lincoln-Douglas debates, it was “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The three big TV networks together devoted 32 minutes on their evening newscasts to policy coverage in 2016. Again — 32. The race turned into “The Jerry Springer Show,” and that was the kind of campaign Mr. Trump was most comfortable with — and I’m sure the ugliness had the added effect of suppressing turnout.
THE TRUMP CAMPAIGNERS WERE SMART As they flew around Pennsylvania and Michigan and boasted they could change the map, many people, including me, ridiculed them as aimlessly and amateurishly wasting time and resources. But they saw something and committed to a strategy few even in the Republican Party thought would work. They challenged conventional wisdom, and were proved right. And Mr. Trump’s appeal to voters in these states was as strong as he predicted it would be.
JAMES COMEY From the last debate until Election Day, the dominant news was the F.B.I. and Mrs. Clinton’s emails along with a drumbeat of daily WikiLeaks dumps. Postelection research will help shed light here, but the small number of undecided voters at the end should have broken at least equally based on their demographic and voting history. If exit polls are accurate, they moved to Mr. Trump much more than to Mrs. Clinton in certain battleground states, and it’s quite possible the shadow created by the F.B.I. director was the major culprit. Oct. 19, the day of the final debate, was a long 20 days to Nov. 8, and the atmosphere was far from ideal for the Democratic candidate.
Democrats will spend months analyzing what happened, and making important course corrections. We need new talent and leaders to emerge at all levels, including some who can begin to think about running in 2020 against President Trump. Our bench looks thin and conventional, but no one thought, in 2004 or 2012, that Barack Obama or Donald Trump would be serious candidates, let alone win the presidency.
The name of our savior may not be on any of our tongues now. It will be fascinating to see who emerges from the rubble of losing what looked like a sure thing.
Correction: November 11, 2016
An earlier version of this essay incompletely described an estimate of the amount of time devoted to policy issues on network television during the presidential election. The estimate of 32 minutes is for the main three networks’ evening newscasts, not for their total coverage.
