Donald Trump has announced his new initiative for governmental efficiency. This is a derivative idea pushed most famously by Elon Musk.
It has “Efficiency” right there in the name, but it has two co-chairs? Two? This is "efficiency"?
The two leaders are to be Vivek Ramaswamy ("failed presidential candidate") and Elon Musk ("purchaser of politicians"). I am gonna love seeing Vivek and Elon share leadership. Pass me the popcorn.
Democrats are not well-served by a meltdown, a spiral of demoralization that zaps their energy to counter the Trump administration and bounce back in two and four years. Understanding what happened is important because it impacts the future.
He is right. The Competitive Hyperbole is the story of the hour/day/week hogging the headlines and the airwaves but it illuminates nothing. There was no "Trump mandate" and it was a close race, even with the House and Senate races assessed. Trump has a thin, thin margin. Democrats need to point out that There Is No Trump Mandate forcefully & repeatedly. The so-called analysis is just the same old players playing their same old talking points to their same old audiences. Bernie sees it as a failure to court the middle class because, of course he does. Others see it as a failure to boldly support Palestine because, of course they do. And so on. The fact is that Kamala is the second woman presidential candidate to lose and was only the second non-white candidate to run. We are talking about simple sexism and racism in the electorate. Exactly how we fix it - well, I have opinions, but the important thing is to abandon familiar, comfortable arguments and really understand what actually happened.
I do not know who will rise to lead the Democrats. Mr. Jeffries? Ms. AOC? I know it will not be Bernie or a Palestinian advocate, and it cannot be a "bipartisan" throwback. I do know that Democrats must absorb the pain, stop the blame, unify the aim, and get back into the fight.
The sorrow is that said citizen was able to manipulate the system to avoid responsibility and evade accountability while rising to the highest office in the land.
Yet, somehow, his machinations are not yet over. It is not a simple matter of remanding him to authorities to be held until sentencing; in fact, he roams free. The battle continues.
CNN reports Trump Guilty on All 34 Felony Counts
Yesterday was the Washington Presidential Primary for Republicans and Democrats. Washington does not require a voter to be registered in a particular party, but the voter does need to declare a preference or an affiliation for the election. Once declared, a particular voter cannot vote for candidates from the other parties. I did not see an Independent or an Other option, however there were protest votes. On the Democratic side, there was a campaign underway for people to vote Uncommitted, and on the Republican side, there is a continuing effort for Nikki Haley even though she has formally withdrawn from the primary contest. The results were that 85.6% of Democratic primary votes went to Biden while 7.5% of ballots went to uncommitted delegates, leaving 6.9% in some other category. On the Republican side, Trump picked up 74% of votes, Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the race but was still on the ballot, is pulling 22%, and the remainder were scattered for Ron DeSantis (also dropped) and some miscellaneous categories. Some of Haley's 22% represents cross-over Democrats doing protest votes, but we cannot determine how many.
The uncommitted-as-protest group will claim victory based on the 7.5%, however the significance of the Uncommitted vote is unclear. The 7.5% participation is a small number of the whole and no one knows what it would have been without the protest vote. Therefore the other side (who?) can also declare victory. In the end, the uncommitted-as-protest campaign was much sound and fury signifying nothing.
As in the last decade, the vote was primarily by mail with scattered drop boxes usually located near libraries, post offices, and the like. I have not heard any reports of irregularities.
As of "Super Tuesday", Trump and Biden have clinched the required number of delegates to secure their nominations. For all intents and purposes, the Presidential campaign season has begun.
Today is the Washington primary election day and The Stranger, a local progressive newspaper, is recommending that Democrats vote for Uncommitted. I have thoughts.
Vote for Uncommitted in the Dem primary? That has got to be the most mealy-mouthed idea I have heard since Nader was running. "Uncommitted sends a message" because of Gaza? Because of student loans? Because of inflation? Because your milk turned sour before the sell-by date? A clear message! NOT!
You could instead write a letter to the White House and your congresscritters that explicitly and clearly expresses your views. And how could The Stranger imply that TFG is even remotely acceptable?
You don't tug on Superman's cape,
You don't spit into the wind,
You don't vote Uncommitted on the Dem ballot,
And you don't give TFG a win.
A warning about computer security for medical computing systems was recently raised by a neighbor named Steve Moeller. He wrote:
Here is an article from the Seattle Times talking about the threat from cybercriminals to the national and local healthcare system: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/why-health-care-has-become-a-top-target-for-cybercriminals/#Echobox=1708874045
From the article:
When a cyberattack hit Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center late last year and exposed the personal data of nearly a million patients, many were caught off guard, stunned a breach could infiltrate such a large and highly resourced health care organization.
This is a problem and it is more widespread than most people realize.
The Internet was designed with open access in mind, so it is proving hard to make it secure. This means that *anything* attached to the Internet has some degree of exposure that depends on how much thought and effort the "owner" has put into security. The answer to "how much effort" is often little to none. This means that everything from your medical records to your banking records are at risk. Further, your power grid, your road systems, and even your personal cars are all at risk. The old phone system is relatively secure (ok, I remember 2600 and phone phreaks) but the new wireless systems are far more exposed. Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Xitter, and Snapchat are all exposed, and even giants in the field like Google and Microsoft are exposed.
My point? You should be checking with each and every supplier you use to ask them what their security policies are. In the main, you will find that the corporate security policies protect the corporation but you? You are left dangling. We need legislation that places the burden back on the corporations.
To the surprise of absolutely no living person, Ron Desantis and Vivek Ramaswamy have dropped out of the primary process to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024. We also got news that Chris Christie had dropped out recently. As to Desantis, NBC blamed "Muddled messages, hiring too many staffers and even a puzzle." There are probably similar defenses of Ramaswamy as a candidate. Both of these argument threads miss their respective points.
Ramaswamy was a tech-bro who drank his own coolaid. He got lucky in business, parlayed that into a little bit of political success, and started inhaling his own gaslighting. Like Desantis, he presented himself as a Trump without the baggage. What Ramaswamy calls baggage, we would call a history of recorded and reported statements, policies, and actions. But I digress... Ramaswamy was another sideshow and no one wanted his also-ran tickets, either. On leaving, he has endorsed Trump.
Chris Christie is more of a question mark. He clearly sees Trump for what he is and is willing to state it, but Christie is too little, too late. But even if he were the right amount and on-time, he is running on a negative-Trump platform rather than a content-filled platform of his own. No one knows what Christie stands for outside "not MAGA".
For all intents and purposes, this leaves Nikki Haley. She is but a pale imitation of Trump (pun intended), and the only real question is whether Haley will pull out before Trump falls over from bad health.
But we can be a bit relieved because we are now free of the Ron-Vivek virus.
P.S. Yes, Trump continues to bounce among his various legal cases. I think there are four, perhaps a fifth that I lost track of, and still 91 felony counts hanging over him. He has been recently making more and more verbal mistakes in the press. Confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi is the most recent one, but they are coming in a steady flow. Trump is still the unchallenged favorite to get the Republican nomination.
Ultimately, nuclear power is a poisonous gift to our descendants, not a solution to anything.
And when the supporters are done arguing (fruitlessly) against these arguments, nuclear power is expensive. Solar and wind are already cheaper, so nuclear has lost the war.
We do have a continuing nuclear-waste problem with smoke detectors. They contain a small amount of Americium (I think it is) to generate ions that help detect the smoke. Instead of being properly disposed of, instead of being recycled, the bulk of these units are simply discarded in household waste. That means all of our garbage dumps are becoming nuclear waste dumps. Clever that.
Recently, some researchers in China announced the development of a 50-year battery...that is nuclear powered. Oh, joy. In the article, Chinese-developed nuclear battery has a 50-year lifespan , the researchers use an isotope of Nickel to generate power for small devices (e.g., phones). The article reports that "Betavolt says its nuclear battery will target aerospace, AI devices, medical, MEMS systems, intelligent sensors, small drones, and robots – and may eventually mean manufacturers can sell smartphones that never need charging." Even though the batteries may last 50 years, the small devices will only last a couple years (I found numerous Google articles that quoted 2-3 years based on actual studies). Let us assume the 50-yr batteries will double the lifetime of the average cell phone to six years. That still means that millions of little radioactive devices will be discarded every year; more likely tens of millions or more. All of those devices will be dumped into landfills and garbage heaps to add to the radioactivity of the smoke detectors.
That is a lovely gift for our descendants. Lovely.
Trials and court cases seem to be the mark of our times. Today is the start of Sam Bankman-Fried's trial for the FTX debacle and yesterday was the start of the penalties phase of Donald J. Trump's trial for real estate fraud in New York. Defendants along with Donald are Don, Jr., and Eric. No one has explained how Ivanka (or Jared) escaped, but they do not seem to be on the indictments.
I have long enjoyed a podcast called All the President's Lawyers with Ken White and Josh Barro. That podcast ended about a year ago and morphed into Serious Trouble, in part because Trump's legal problems had metastasized far beyond Trump himself.
During these trying times (no apologies), the USA has depended on a trustworthy judicial system. I refer here specifically to courts and judges. Unfortunately, Trump and the Republicans have spent years - decades - installing incompetent, biased, and corrupt judges throughout the federal judicial system, enough of these such that the judicial system is losing its trustworthyness. If you have any doubts, look at Thomas and Alito on the US Supreme Court; if doubts remain, look at the rest of the recent appointments such as Kavanaugh and note that Roberts is no shining example of anything, himself.
My point is that democracy needs to be strengthened against attacks by political, financial, and judicial hacks.
Ending his quest to take on Vladimir Putin, Yevgeny Prigozhin has ordered his Wagner Group to stop their advance on Moscow. Lukashenko of Belarus claims he has negotiated a peace between Prigozhin and Putin such that Prigozhin will go to Belarus and Putin will drop the charges of rebellion.
For Prigozhin, I predict a defenestration. Wherever he shows up, it will be at the foot of a tall building with many windows. It may have happened already or it may happen six months from now, but he will show up dead or show up not at all. Putin will express regrets.
For Putin, I predict replacement. He has been shown as weak and cowardly (fleeing to one's hideout is not a signal of bravery). One way or the other, Putin will be deposed, probably by the end of 2023. Some new gangster will take his place, and although I cannot guess who it will be, it will not be Prigozhin.
Time will tell. The situation is changing rapidly and reports are squirrelly.
Noting the event, the mercenary Wagner Group has left Ukraine to invade Russia. A column is moving toward Moscow. Putin has fled to his stronghold. Senior government ministers are leaving (one has flown to Turkiye). The Wagner groups in Venezula and Syria are unstable and may be leaving soon for Russia, leaving al-Assad and other dictators with reduced support.
It seems unlikely that Prigozin will unseat Putin, however one of them will not survive this. Furthermore, it is predicted that this is only the first wave and that Putin will succumb to a second, third, or fourth wave.
Ukraine seems happy.
Just putting this post here as an historical marker so that we can remember how it started. Or should I say, how it ended?
SCOTUS, the Supreme Court Of The United States, has faced some recent tests. No, I am not referring to the infamous confirmation shows for the last 2-3 justices, but rather to the recent relevations about Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito.
Clarence Thomas had rambunctious hearings when he was nominated. Anita Hill came forward with shocking allegations that would have derailed any other nominee, but Clarence Thomas cruised on to confirmation. I do not remember Sam Alito's confirmation hearings, but I suspect he was better coached and trained such that the hearings went more smoothly. The most recent three, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil M. Gorsuch, and Brett M. Kavanaugh, were a sorry bunch, both through their own antics and with contributions from Senator Mitch McConnell as supported by the Republican members of the Senate. These are old news.
In the last month or so, journalists have uncovered allegations (being formal here - just allegations) that Thomas has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars of "gifts" from a Republican billionaire named (ironicaly) Crow. Crow took Thomas and his wife on all-expenses-paid junkets around the world and bought the birthplace home of Thomas - and gave Thomas' mother free rent to live there. Is this bad? Yes, but Thomas failed to report these gifts even though he is required by law to report such gifts. More recently, he was given a window to restate and refile his attestation paperwork, and he has blown through the deadline.
While Thomas is redoing his paperwork, journalists have uncovered similar allegations (being formal here - just allegations) that Alito has accepted thousands and thousands of dollars of gifts, including an infamous salmon fishing trip to Alaska, none of which he reported as required. Alito claims some wordplay that exempts him from reporting requirements, claiming an trip in a private jet is some sort of infrastructure? It is hard to explain his position because it is stupid.
Both Alito and Thomas offer explanations that the law is complex. If true, then they are not qualified for their current positions and honorable people would resign. If we assume that they are smart enough on the law to hold their jobs as the ultimate arbiters of the law in the US, that SCOTUS gig, then they are disengenuous and honorable people would resign, again. It is quite clear that honor, impartiality, and the appearance of impartiality mean more about theatrics than actual compliance to Alito and Thomas. Even if the allegations of corruption are merely appearances and not actual corruption, these two men have failed.
Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., has a choice: he can redeem SCOTUS, impose ethics standards, and evict Alito and Thomas based on severe ethical lapses, or the Chief Justice can continue to oversee and overlook corruption on SCOTUS. It strikes me that this is not a difficult choice, but the fact that Roberts continues to dither suggests that he is willing to tolerate severe ethical failures, making him a co-conspirator of the failings.
God Save SCOTUS,
Florida governor Ron DeSantis is an idiot. Large chunks of the Florida legislature are, too, if they support this legislation.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/15/1157049312/george-santos-politics-of-shame
"There was a time when shame was a powerful force in American politics. That time is not now." [NPR]
George Santos (he of many names) is flagged in the article as the poster child of the moment, but there are so many recent examples (McCarthy, Scott, Cruz, Gingrich, Nixon, and more) and new ones continue to arise (Luna). However, I think the positioning of the assertion is wrong and I want to flip it around because I think a different perspective sheds more light on the consequences.
Honor was once a force in politics, but honor is now dead in American politics. [me]
Where once people would serve in government from a sense of honor, when once their behavior was guided by a sense of honor, that was a time when government was a productive factor in life. Remember Eisenhower who built the Interstate Highway System? Remember Kennedy who inspired the lunar landings? Remember Johnson who brought voting rights to oppressed peoples? Even Nixon brought us clean air and water through the EPA (although he failed in so many other ways).
Then came Nixon and Gingrich who discarded honor for self-advancement, who left shame on the sidelines to achieve dubious ends. Their descendents - from Trump to McCarthy, Gree, Gaetz, Cruz, Rubio, Scott, and others - these people seem to have embraced shame and willful stupidity as badges of honor (irony just died. Again.)
When honor is restored to government, then shall we have the government we deserve.
There have also been a handful of Secret documents found in old offices that were used by President Biden after he left the VP position. Biden has promptly searched for additional documents and handed them all over. This is in sharp contrast with Trump's troubles wherein he keeps documents that he is supposed to turn over, and he does not seem to look for documents when asked (he says he looked for documents, but then a search under subpoena finds more documents). Anyway, Trump obstructs, Biden complies, and the press seems to think the two are somehow equivalent.
The real problem is Representative George Santos, R-NY. He appears to be a serial liar, have some real money problems, and running from Brazilian authorities for fraud there. So Santos hogs headlines that should be about Trump's problems. Santos is also important because he was a critical vote for McCarthy (in the opening paragraph), and it is not clear McCarthy would be Speaker today were it not for Santos and his vote. As a result, McCarthy and his team are just ignoring the Santos problem. The Santos Problem? Yeah, a demonstrated liar was seated as a Republican Representative in Congress. The seating of Santos should have been postponed until the legal troubles were sorted out, but this would likely require a replacement and the replacement would likely be a Democrat and so McCarthy et al are just ignoring the problem. with Republicans, it is always projection. Today, fraud, tomorrow voting fraud, and so on.
Nine votes and Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) has yet to meet the required majority for a win as Speaker of the House 2023-2024. The BBC has a balanced summary of possible outcomes, McCarthy wins (eventually), McCarthy withdraws, or Dems join up with "centrist" Republicans to select a compromise candidate (Republican). Finally, many commentators are saying that a McCarthy loss (either the second or third BBC conclusions) would lead to the end of McCarthy's political career.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64170729
McCarthy wins. I have to see this as the most likely end game. McCarthy (and his MAGA/Tea Party opponents) have never recognized a loss. McCarthy will keep pounding until he wins. The others will finally succumb to loss of honor and give in. This is the only real way that the Republican House can get to the desired games of investigations, impeachments, and other foolery that they want to pursue. Eventually, they will give in at this round and advance to the next round. Advance to the next round? Well, move to the next round.
McCarthy withdraws. Although this might make sense with an old-style Republican operating on pragmatism, that does not describe McCarthy. After two years, Trump still refuses to acknowledge that he lost, and there is no reason that McCarthy should. Like Trump, he should simply call his fellow Republicans corrupt and object to the cheating voters! Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Democratic-Republican compromise candidate. Again, this makes sense in an old-style Republican pragmatism, but the MAGA and Tea Party wedge of the Republican party would never let the resulting leadership function. The Democrats might get some committee chairs, some rules changes, and other benefits, but the MAGATs and Qanoners would burn down the Congress. The "moderate" Republicans that might join this D-R group might argue for compromise to advance their agenda, but there are three problems with this compromise. First, there are no more moderate Republicans; they are extinct. I think McCain may have been the last. Second, the MAGATs and Qanon wedge would stop all progress. And third, who would want the job? No Democrat would accept and there are no Republicans that could handle it (no credible alternatives to McCarthy). Boehner and Ryan were the last two to try, they gave up, and neither of them was a shining example of anything in the first place. Trump has shown that he is toast, has no weight anymore in the Republican party. Any Democrat that tried would suffer worse than McCarthy from Boebert, Goetz, and Goser.
Not considered by the BBC, but there is discussion that an outsider might be selected as a compromise candidate. Perhaps a now-retired Republican congressmember or Trump himself might be put into nomination. I really cannot see that.
Somehow, this will all get sorted out and a Speaker will be elected. Then we descend into the madness that is today's MAGA-Tea Party. There will be an endless display of regressive investigations, unsubstantiated impeachments, and pointless government shut-downs. Good times to come.
Photo: Spencer Ridge (view from), Eugene OR, December 2022Headlines are buzzing with fragmentary reports of an attack on power substations in Moore County, North Carolina. It could have happened anywhere, but the reports out of NC say that one or more people broke down a fence and shot up a power substation. Well, two power substations. This has resulted in power outages for 40,000 customers of Duke Power. The exact methods of the attack are not very surprising. It feels like every year a squirrel takes out a power substation, so using guns and trucks is not a major advance. That it is human-done seems to be the surprise this time.
We should not be surprised. In fact, we should have been prepared.
On 12 September 2001, we were back at work and wondering what could happen next. What could the international terrorists do after the attacks on the Pentagon in Washington DC and the Twin Towers of New York? My regular lunch crowd was sure that 9/11 was but the first of a series of attacks and we debated what would come next. Perhaps someone would drive a truck of explosives half-way across a major hydro dam and blow up the dam, depriving Las Vegas and LA of power and drowning anyone downstream? Perhaps someone would ship checked bags in airlines - good thing that airlines were grounded. Perhaps someone would dump a truck full of chemicals into a reservoir and poison a city? Trains, planes, trucks, cars, chemicals, nukes, gas clouds - we came up with quite a list. After a bit of debate, because that is what engineers approach problems, we realized that the luncheon spot had gone silent and everyone was watching us, so we quickly changed to the latest baseball scores. In the following days, it became clear that this was a one-shot attempt and that the terrorist group did not have a sustained plan of terror. Airplanes were again allowed to fly and security at the airports was beefed up.
The aspect we did not examine was the international terrorist. We took that as a given. We never considered that domestic terrorists would play this deadly game. The Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans, to name a few, have continued to attack the United States through cyber means but no one has really tried to attack using conventional means. We must be honest with ourselves: in the last 20 years, if a foreign agency had been determined to execute a physical attack, they would have launched it by now and there is a good chance that at least one attempt would have succeeded in doing some damage. I certainly do not wish for this, but no defense is perfect for 20 years.
After watching the development of self-described "militias" in the US, it is painfully clear that one or more of them are going to do something stupid. This particular attack in NC could be the result of excessive beer by some dimwits, but the synchronization of mutiple sites simultaneously indicates some forethought and training was pursued.
So I think there are two lessons here that must lead to action plans. First, we need to watch the militias and bring them to heel. I would argue the January 6 attack on the US Capitol is included here, but we know that these self-described militias (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and the rest) are actively seeking opportunities to do something stupid. We must find them and stop them.
Second, we need to strengthen the digital protections of our infrastructure. This threat is greater than a power substation. This threat covers power, water, gas, and communications. The SCADA systems must be upgraded to block false access, other computer systems must be self-policing, the physical assets must be hardened to prevent access, and surveillence of the physical assets must be improved.
Some might cry out that these steps are an imposition by an overreaching government intent on control, but these are protective acts and not offensive actions. We must protect ourselves against enemies, foreign and domestic.
