Rants of a Fuzzy Curmudgeon

There is an interesting article in City Journal about the nuclear option that the left is desperately ignoring these days. No, not a nuclear option in the Senate to kill the filibuster altogether. A nuclear option to replace coal power plants with clean nuclear power that isn’t dependent on wind or sunlight and can be relied on round-the-clock and in any season.

Unfortunately I ran across a sentence I had to take issue with.

“But then came the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island plant and the core meltdown at the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl in 1986. Both, understandably, led to calls for stricter regulations.”

Not so fast. My problem is with the interjection, “understandably.” Despite the fact that the Three Mile Island accident was certain serious and not to be treated lightly, “its small radioactive releases had no detectable health effects on plant workers or the public” (NRC “Backgrounder on the Three Mile Island Accident”, last reviewed/updated June 2018 – publicly available on the NRC website).

Chernobyl was a type of reactor that nobody (except apparently the Soviets) was building anymore, precisely because of the chance that something like the Chernobyl meltdown might happen. The only operating reactor in the US that was even close to that design was the Hanford N unit, the last operating reactor at Hanford, which was eventually decommissioned in 1987 (a year after the Chernobyl accident). And I remember experts at the time explaining how Hanford likely couldn’t do what Chernobyl did, anyway, because despite facial similarities, it was designed quite differently (for one thing, it operated 300 degrees cooler than Chernobyl, and it possessed a dedicated cooling system, which Chernobyl did not). This is borne out by a GAO report (“Comparison of DOE’s Hanford N-Reactor With the Chernobyl Reactor”, GAO/RCED-86213BR, publicly available on the GAO website).

The only reason those accidents led to calls for stricter regulations was because the anti-nuclear movement (financed by the Soviet Union) was punching above its weight class, and politicians of the “we must do something about this immediately, immediately, immediately!” stripe were able to get such regulations put in place without much public scrutiny of the frankly minimal problems caused by Three Mile Island and the fact that an accident like Chernobyl was impossible at any operating American nuclear plant (with the possible exception of Hanford-N, but see the GAO report previously mentioned) at the time.

I don’t have a problem with the rest of the article, which is about what idiots Governor Cuomo and the State of New York are for demanding the shutdown of Indian Point Units #2 and #3 in favor of some vaporware promises of replacement with “renewable energy” (likely two large natural gas power plants which will add to New York State’s CO2 emissions, whereas Indian Point produced zero CO2). Given that Indian Point currently produces 11% of the electrical power used in New York State, and a quarter of the electricity used by New York City and Westchester County, I wish them luck with that.  But they’re sure as hell not going to generate that kind of power with supposedly-carbon-neutral solar or wind power.  And the price of power is just going to go up and up and up in New York State.  This isn’t really about clean green energy, is it, Mr. Cuomo?  Because I’ll bet an honest investigation would find that there have been plenty of “incentives”* thrown around in Albany by special interests to get the Indian Point units shut down well before the end of their working life.

And OBTW — where is New York State going to get all that natural gas?  Cuomo has banned fracking and pipelines from Pennsylvania to bring in fracked natural gas.  Follow the money…I’ll bet it leads to some interesting places.

My sister and her husband really need to start thinking seriously about getting the hell out of New York.

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* And by “incentives”, I mean, “bribes”.

I keep seeing the meme displaying the photo of the Democratic Congresswomen dressed in white at the SOTU juxtaposed over a photo of a parade of the KKK at the 1924 Democratic National Convention, noting that “The Democratic Party created the KKK”. Facebook is now running a PolitiFact fact check with a slightly different* meme stating that no, in fact, the Democratic Party did not create the KKK. And people on the right are pointing and laughing at PolitiFact. (Even I admit to having laughed a bit and made a few choice remarks.)

But hang on a minute, fellow travelers of the Right.

Since it is historical fact that the original KKK was formed by six former Confederate soldiers in Pulaski, TN, PolitiFact is *technically* correct.

One could argue that the Democratic Party had a hand in its creation by being a major part of the circumstances that ultimately led to that creation, though. (By which I mean, secession and the Civil War.) And I have absolutely no doubt that Klan elements have had some measure of control over the Democratic Party ever since. On the other hand, the Republican Party is not necessarily clean-handed in this regard — there was a time in Indiana when the GOP was in control of the state and at the same time was heavily infested with Klansmen. I speak of course of the 1920’s and the D.C. Stevenson Klan. Indiana Democrats actually came out *against* the Klan at their 1923 state convention.

And then there are arguments that the Klan of the early 1900’s was not the same Klan that Forrest ordered shut down. And that the Klan of the 1920’s was not the same Klan as the one in the early 1900’s. And that the Klan of today isn’t really related to the Klan of the 1920’s. There’s plenty of historical evidence out there to argue the point, but most people would rather argue what they think they know rather than do that icky research.

But the bald statement “The Democratic Party created the KKK” without any other qualification is demonstrably false. Six pissed-off butternut veterans created the KKK, for what they considered to be good reason, and it went on from there until Nathan Bedford Forrest, its Grand Wizard, ordered it to disband in 1869. Subsequent iterations of the Klan more likely drove the political parties as opposed to the parties driving the Klan (and we can see that clearly in the historyof the D.C. Stevenson Indiana Klan of the 1920’s).

Either way you slice it, the Klan is bad medicine, and the Democratic Party needs to accept the fact that the Klan has *usually* been associated with it. But the GOP has had its dalliances with the Klan as well. So neither party’s hands are completely clean of this matter. Maybe both sides should simply denounce it and move on.

Besides, there are plenty of other things about the Democratic Party to point and laugh about. Let’s not get stuck on one thing, shall we?

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* I realized as I was moving this over to the blog from Facebook that the image I’d seen and the image that FB was fact-checking were not exactly the same meme, but said essentially the same thing.  So just for the record…

If you have Liberty Mutual automobile insurance, please stay the hell away from me and my wife with your car.

My wife will have been without her car for nearly a month when it finally gets out of the body shop, thanks to Liberty Mutual slow-rolling her claim against one of their clients (who admitted fault).  The shop was only able to order parts TODAY because the claim wasn’t approved until late yesterday, and it’s been 2-1/2 weeks since the accident.  Plus, LM lied about not receiving photos from the body shop a week ago so they could process the claim.

We have State Farm (I have been a State Farm customer continuously since the mid-1980s) and you can say what you like about State Farm, but I have never seen State Farm slow-roll a claim like this…and I’ve never seen any other insurance company do it, either.  Some kid rear-ended my wife at a red light a few years ago and we had the vehicle in the body shop and repaired by the end of the following week.  I don’t recall what insurance company the kid used but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t Liberty Mutual.  (Actually I think it might have been Farmer’s, but I’ve slept since then.)

Bottom line:  Liberty Mutual Bad.

Rather, I suspect it was a rearward advance to a previously-prepared position.  (Some would call that “a retreat”; I would call it “a trap”, but we’ll see where events lead us.)

Anyway,

More NBC/WSJ poll: Pelosi’s negatives shot up during government shutdown more than any pol // now the most unpopular politician tested in the survey. pic.twitter.com/pSMBFydwx7

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) January 27, 2019

Pelosi may think she won something, but if she won anything, the victory was Pyrrhic.  Her numbers are in the tank.  She didn’t get the government funded for the rest of the fiscal year, and she’s got another deadline looming in less than three weeks.  Trump may very well throw up his hands at the end of that period and tell the American public, “Well, I tried, but Pelosi is intransigent and isn’t interested in protecting American lives and property from an invasion over our southern border.”  Americans in general (other than the nutbag millennial progressives who were mind-raped by our universities over the past 20 years or so) are looking at the facts:

• Trump is enunciating clearly that there is a national security problem at the border, and the “caravans” are only adding fuel to his fire
• Trump stayed in Washington over the Christmas holiday trying to get some negotiations going
• Pelosi and crew took off for the Caribbean and spent their Christmas on the beach
• Dueling “fuck yous”: Pelosi cancels Trump’s invitation to SOTU, Trump cancels Pelosi’s boondoggle holiday junket
• Trump continues to point to national security; Pelosi continues to stonewall on The Wall

Americans in general are seeing this chain of events and starting to think (if they didn’t know it already) there is something terribly wrong with the left wing of American politics.  They may not be rabid Trump supporters (they may indeed hate his guts), but they’re not happy about the fact that reasonable accommodations are not being made by the Democrats, who instead of taking Trump seriously are haring off to warmer climes and pursuing their own agendas that haven’t a chance in hell of succeeding as long as the GOP holds the Senate.

What I find most interesting is reports that some House Democrats are beginning to show signs of unrest over Pelosi’s stonewalling.  Not all Democrats are Pelosi and Hoyer and the egregious AOC.  Some still have enough brains to understand that their constituencies back home are not happy about the border situation and want something done, even if it’s not a $5 billion wall.  (The poll I saw reported over the weekend said that 80% of respondents want the border situation addressed, and not in a bullshit, handwaving way.)  Trump was even ready to hand Democrats a legal DACA solution AND fund payroll for the government workers who had missed a paycheck — and the leadership rebuffed him, showing that they actually don’t give a damn about the kids who were brought here by their illegal immigrant parents, other than using them as political props.  But there were defectors who crossed the aisle to vote with Republicans on these measures, suggesting that Pelosi’s grip on the Speaker’s gavel isn’t as firm as she thinks it is.  (Which should have been obvious anyway.)

The consensus on Saturday seemed to be that Trump had blinked and Pelosi had won.

I don’t think so.

GOPers need to keep their powder dry and see how the next three weeks play out.  If Trump continues to appear to be the good-faith negotiator and Pelosi et al. continue to stonewall, you have to wonder how much longer the rank and file Dems will continue to march in lockstep.  Members of the House have a problem — they get re-elected every two years.  Memories have a lot less time to fade.  And if they keep blocking a partial but significant fix* to a serious problem down on the border, more and more Members are going to start to think it’s time for real negotiations and compromises.

I keep saying it but people don’t listen:  Trump is a businessman, not a politician.  The art of deal-making is the art of compromise.  Trump keeps saying he wants a $5 billion Wall, but in truth, if it can be proven that spending less money to shore up existing wall sections, build out the wall sections that have already been authorized in past years, add additional high-tech protection in areas with less physical protection, and maybe even add more Border Patrol personnel is all we really need to do, Trump will likely accept that if the Dems are prepared to make some concessions from their side — like admitting there is a problem in the first place.

The more the Dems refuse to negotiate and compromise in good faith, the more they expose their real agenda to patriotic Americans.  The question is, how much longer will patriotic Americans stand for this bullshit?

PS:  I hope you’ll note that instead of immediately jumping all over this and getting upset that Trump had surrendered (like a lot of conservatives reflexively did), I waited until Monday and thought about the situation and its possible ramifications over the weekend.  As with the Covington affair, people need to stop shooting from the fucking hip, get the facts, and apply some critical thinking before they just go off and say something the Internet will never let them live down.  Get off Facebook and spend some time in the clean world.  It will do wonders for your ability to see things as they really are.

EDIT 1/29 TO ADD:  I’ve seen other people say that if he’s going to declare an emergency and build the wall with DoD funds, he should just have gone ahead and not give the Dems three weeks of breathing space.  But face it — Trump has to bend over backwards to make it clear that he’s not the obstacle, the Dems are.  Thus he stayed in DC over Christmas and said he was ready to negotiate at any time, while Pelosi and crew scarpered.  He could as easily have headed to Florida and held meetings via Skype if Pelosi wanted to talk.  Staying at the White House simply emphasized his readiness to talk and her unwillingness to budge (to the extent that she told her people to go ahead and leave town for Christmas).  It was an exercise in gamesmanship of appearances, and I think Trump won.

Likewise, the dueling “fuck you’s” were an unforced error on Pelosi’s part and a masterstroke by Trump.  Pelosi’s only possible reason for withdrawing the SOTU invitation was to deny Trump his national stage at a point where he could have used it to win the shutdown.  It was shallow and catty and mean, but that’s Pelosi.  On the other hand, Trump cancelling Pelosi’s junket at the last possible moment simply pointed up how unserious Pelosi was about the shutdown — for her, it was business as usual, despite the fact that the shutdown was close to a month old.  Trump shut that shit down hard, and you have to wonder if it had anything to do with how smoothly they came to agreement to reopen for three weeks and negotiate.

Not that I expect anything to come out of the negotiations.  It’s long been a tenet of diplomacy that the less you want a negotiation or a treaty to succeed, the more people you rope into the process.  There are seventeen people on that committee.  That’s at least twelve or thirteen too many.  Too many opinions means there will not be a serious agreement or understanding produced by the time the committee’s brief ends.  My guess is as good as anyone’s at this point, but I think we’ll be back to shutdown city after the end of the three-week hiatus.

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* The Wall is not a panacea and never has been (and I’m sure DJT knows it), but it’s a start.  Certain pundits have pointed out that drug traffic coming across the border is a result of American demand for drugs; without demand, there’s no cross-border trade.  On the other hand, the War on Drugs always has been and always will be a failure.  MS-13 is definitely a problem, but it’s a problem that can be dealt with if law enforcement is serious about it; for one thing, just start killing the fuckers when you find them instead of trying to arrest them.  I’ve said the same about drug dealers and drug cookers for years.  Cockroach?  Kill it.  If your chances of dying when you get caught rise significantly, you might think twice about being stupid.  No amount of money is worth bleeding out against a wall somewhere.  Want to get serious about dealing with these problems?  Make it a death sentence, to be executed immediately, to belong to a gang and/or deal in or manufacture illegal drugs.  If you have to, commission special magistrates to travel with the police to make sure it’s all legal.  Do I give a damn if that sounds like kangaroo courts or Judge Dredd?  No.  Get caught with a coven of MS-13 or with illegal drugs on your person, or red-handed cooking meth, you fucking deserve to die; you’re irredeemable as a human being because you hold the lives of other human beings so cheaply.  “I’m only filling an existing demand” isn’t an excuse.

Didn’t seem to get a lot of play for some reason, but the Newark airport went into a brief ground stop yesterday because of a drone flying at 3500 feet in its approach path (or near enough that one pilot reported missing it by 30 feet).  This more or less on the metaphorical heels of London’s Gatwick Airport being closed for two days back in December (and a military presence in respond to that being withdrawn only a few days ago) because of drones encroaching on its airspace.

It seems to me that if a drone is capable of flying to 3500 feet, it ought to be required to have a transponder and be registered with the FAA. I’ve really never understood the pushback on that sort of thing from drone owners, given that I’m an amateur radio operator and fully accept the fact that I have to have a federal license issued by the FCC (after successfully passing a test, too — three tests, in my case, since I’m an Extra-class licensee) to pursue my Very Expensive Hobby. Private pilots need licenses to fly at that sort of altitude, so I don’t see how drone operators with beefy drones capable of flying way up there get a pass. (And let me make it clear that I’m not calling for the little toy drones that will barely get up to a hundred feet to require transponders and registration.)

That said, I’m not naive — just as I fully understand that unlicensed jerks are able to buy amateur radio equipment and encroach on the licensed Amateur bands, I fully understand that someone acting with malice aforethought would simply disable their drone’s transponder, but drones without transponders would be subject to shootdown if they got into restricted airspace. (So would drones with transponders, but at least they could, notionally, be traced back to a federal licensee.) Maybe commercial aircraft ought to have laser turrets mounted that could automatically target drones that are violating their airspace and take them out. (Nah, I’m dreaming now. Think of the people on the ground.)

And I’m also all for freedom and telling the government to go hang, but all it will take is one drone taking out a fully-laden passenger aircraft when it is most vulnerable (takeoff or landing), and that will be the end of anyone flying drones legally in the US other than law enforcement and the military, and maybe certain heavily-restricted corporations with special usage licenses. You know this in your hearts, drone owners.  The thing about a drone that makes it attractive to a certain segment of the population (otherwise known as “terrorists”) is that you don’t even need to attach a bomb to it — just ramming it into a wing will cause a lot of damage all by itself:

“It punctures a hole right through the leading edge,” Poormon says. The drone went deep into the wing, hitting and denting a spar, a vital structural element. “All the weight of the aircraft is suspended on the spars,” Poormon says. “If you damage the spar enough on that side, you would not, um, survive. The aircraft would crash.”

In the present case, hopefully the dumbass who was flying the drone will be stupid enough to post flight video somewhere. Equally hopefully it was just a dumbass flying a private drone for kicks and giggles, and not a terrorist flying a drone with malice aforethought. In either case the authorities had better be taking this shit seriously.

Edit to add:  I have a friend who has a fairly sophisticated drone who says “It was a UFO, pilots report UFOs as drones so the tower will believe them.”  He apparently meant this in all seriousness, as he also said that to get a drone to 3500 feet would probably expend the battery and recovery would have to be by parachute.  The only reason I would argue the latter point is because the drones that were apparently sighted at Gatwick were said to be “industrial” drones, and I suspect such drones aren’t just your uncle’s quadcopter.  (See any number of drone-shot videos of radio/TV tower climbers, for instance.)  My friend’s drone is software-limited to 400 feet (although he acknowledges the software could be hacked to overcome that) and he says it continuously updates its database of no-fly zones and won’t penetrate those zones.  Of course he didn’t note that the no-fly zone database could also be hacked, but I will charitably accept that he knows that and just didn’t write it.

I’d also make the point that the operator of a drone flown to 3500 feet with the intent to crash into an aircraft doesn’t need to worry about how his drone is going to get back to the ground.  And that you don’t have to be at 3500 feet to take out a landing or ascending jet.  In fact, I’d think being way up there would limit the ability to acquire your target; a plane has a lot more options at that level than it would at, say, a couple hundred feet and locked in on final approach.

The plain fact is, I dunno.  I just think it’s ridiculous not to license and register drones that can fly any higher than what might be considered “hobbyist” altitudes, and to be honest, I think any drone outside of the strictly “toy” class ought to be licensed and registered.

Just going to drop this here as questions are starting to be raised about whether or not the asshole who got in that kid’s face over the weekend could actually have served as seems to be his claim in a Marine combat unit in Vietnam.

Briefly, it’s unlikely he’s old enough to have made it to Vietnam before all the Marine combat units left the country.

NoMan2000 on Twitter: Time for a full thread on Nathan Phillips.

Phillips sort of BSes around the subject by vaguely saying he served in Vietnam “in Vietnam times” rather than “in Vietnam”.  Which sounds like more evidence that he’s just another Stolen Valor jerkoff.

Edit to add:  The Washington Post is walking back the claim that Phillips served in Vietnam.  Scroll all the way to the bottom to find the correction:

Correction: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly said that Native American activist Nathan Phillips fought in the Vietnam War. Phillips served in the U.S. Marines from 1972 to 1976 but was never deployed to Vietnam.

H/T: Instapundit.

I wouldn’t bet money on it, but I suspect that if in fact he did serve, he ended up with a General or a Bad Conduct Discharge.  Would like to see his DD-214.

Edit to add:  The DD-214 has been released.  He served 1972-1976 in the Marine Corps Reserve, was never deployed, his MOS was a refrigeration mechanic, his only decoration was an Expert Rifleman badge, he was UA/AWOL at least three times (I saw four times claimed in another post that I can’t find now), and he was discharged (note, not “honorably discharged”) as an E-1.

You can draw your own conclusions.

but I don’t feel like writing them right now, so you get humor instead.  At least, if you’re a conservative and not a NeverTrumper, it’s humor.

(Via.)

I saw a post on Facebook today that claims Ezekiel 22:30 supports the idea that Donald Trump should build the Wall.

.וָאֲבַקֵּשׁ מֵהֶם אִישׁ גֹּדֵר-גָּדֵר וְעֹמֵד בַּפֶּרֶץ לְפָנַי, בְּעַד הָאָרֶץ–לְבִלְתִּי שַׁחֲתָהּ; וְלֹא, מָצָאתִי

And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the breach before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.

Sorry, but no.  While I believe the Wall should be built, I don’t need Biblical support for that (and you are literally preaching to the choir, here, because the progs who are fighting against the Wall have no use for the Bible and don’t care what either you or it have to say).

But I hate it when Bible verses are taken out of context. In context, this verse does not mean a literal wall, e.g., one of stone or brick. Ezekiel tells us that God is looking for a man who will build a wall of morality and put a stop to the evil in the land being perpetrated by the priests, the princes, and the people (which is discussed in the preceding verses). By finding a man to build this metaphorical wall and stand in the breach, God means “find the righteous man who will put a stop to this immoral behavior before I destroy your people utterly.”  By which he was referring to the eventual sack of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians.

The whole chapter is about the evil ways into which God believes the inhabitants of Jerusalem have fallen, from the mighty to the low, and with whom he is running out of patience.

For Jews, the man God sought would have been the Messiah (who never showed up); for Christians, the man clearly prefigures Jesus.

Whatever Donald Trump is, he’s not the Messiah and he’s not Jesus.  And God is not commanding him to build a wall and seal up the breach, the citizens of this country who are sick and tired of their border being full of holes are commanding it.

One cannot use the Bible as if it were the I Ching.  It doesn’t work that way.  Cherry-picking a verse here and there to prove your point works only with the unlearned who have never cracked the covers of the Book that defines their faith.

So there’s this:

On Thursday night, her first night as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, new Michigan Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib spoke to a crowd of supporters and decided to personify the famous statement of Michelle Obama that Democrats go high when the GOP goes low, saying of President Trump, “We’re gonna go in there and we’re gonna impeach the mother***er.”

The Democrat party is dead, their takeover of the House is just a dead cat bounce, at least partly driven by creative vote counting in California and assorted vote fraud other places. It’s pretty clear from early returns that they’re going to piss so many people off in the next two years, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide and he’ll have veto-proof majorities in both houses.  Do you want more Trump?  Because this is how you get more Trump.

Just like right now. Democrats want the government back in business? Intelligent Democrats* should be telling Pelosi to negotiate and compromise, because right now she’s the only one standing in the way (along with the radical socialists in her party). Bitch acts like she’s large and in charge, but she’s got control of only one house of Congress. Cocaine Mitch is going to tie her up in knots (has already said he won’t bring up the House bill to end the shutdown because he knows Trump will veto it) and God Emperor Trump is just going to smile for the next two years as he keeps pruning the fedgov back…two old regulations down for every new one enacted, and more conservative judges approved by the Senate with exactly zero say from the House.

And now I see that the same impeachment bill has been introduced as was introduced in 2017; and bills have been introduced to eliminate the Electoral College and limit Presidential pardon power.  Apparently Democrats agree with me that they will never occupy the White House again.  And Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), who introduced the twin Electoral College and pardon power bills, lives in a state that would be absolutely steamrollered and rendered inconsequential by the repeal of Art. II, Sec. 1, Clauses 2-3 of the Constitution.  Small states will never vote against their own interests and repeal the Electoral College (and if any do, their citizens should rise up and remove their legislatures).

And I’m going to make a trenchant point here about Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA)’s second try at impeaching the president.  His whole point centers around the firing of Jim Comey.  We’ve been through this before with the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, who was impeached because he fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton (a slimy snake who should have been fired years before, but Lincoln for some reason had a soft spot for the guy**).  Impeachment failed by one vote.  The 1867 Tenure in Office Act (passed specifically by the Radical Republicans over Johnson’s veto, intended to cripple Johnson’s presidency, which is what the whole hooroar was about) was repealed in 1887, and even later (1926) was declared unconstitutional by reference when a similar statute from 1876 was overturned.  Rep. Sherman would do well to research Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926).

Moreover, impeachment would fail by more today, if the Senate even decided to take it up (and if Cocaine Mitch allows it to come to the Senate floor, it will be to teach the Democrats the lesson that you DON’T FUCK WITH THIS SHIT LIGHTLY).

It will be a fun two years while absolutely nothing gets done except less fedgov and more conservative judges. Keep the fedgov shutdown the whole time…and FWIW, the whole fedgov isn’t shut down anyway, only the parts that didn’t get their appropriations approved in time. Social Security checks won’t stop and the military will still get paid…at least if the Democrats know what’s good for them.

One notices that they always leave things like national parks until last in the appropriations process, as if these things were a sword poised over the necks of the common folk. I read somewhere that, regardless of the ballyhooed shutdown, over 80% of Fedgov is actually at work (even if some of those people are working without pay for the nonce).  Fedgov is a joke and should be cut all the way back to the Constitutional bone. Plus, taxation is theft.

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* Yes, I realize that is an oxymoron.

** Or more to the point, it kept Stanton where Lincoln could keep an eye on him.  Lincoln, a great reader of character, rarely did anything that wasn’t pragmatic, and Stanton was, as noted, a slimy snake.