A New Aluminum-Graphene Battery has World Changing Potential

• Imagine a cellphone battery that can recharge in seconds needing no recharge for 60-72 hours.
  
  
• Imagine having much higher power capabilities on your cellphone.
  
  
• Imagine an electric SUV that's lighter and needs no cooling, recharging completely in a half hour.
   
• Imagine solar cells that can handle 70-80 percent of energy needs, with long-term energy storage.
  
  
• Imagine such a battery being far cheaper to make, from the second most common solid elements on Earth, rather than rare lithium, which only has a few sources in the world.
  
  
• Imagine if the production of the battery has a fraction of the environmental consequence of lithium-ion cells.
   
• Imagine the battery lasting 2-3 times longer than lithium batteries with no loss of storage capacity.
  
  
• And there's no danger of this battery overheating. None.

These are some of the promises of a new battery cell developed by an Australian company, Graphene Manufacturing Group. The batteries are being test-marketed now, and may be ready for the world market by early 2022. Like the blue LED, they have the potential of transforming the world's energy system, and therefore its economy and politics.

With all the current bad news, sometimes applied science gives us a reason to look forward to the near future. Curiosity keeps me going. 

The Big Anom Sting

It appears there is a vulnerability to organized cyber criminal networks. From NBC news:

"A massive international sting involving 16 countries, including the U.S., has netted more than 800 suspects, the seizure of 8 tons of cocaine and more than $48 million, officials said Tuesday."

With all the hacking that's been going on right now, I would've been happy just to hear that Cybertown even had a sherrif. This news makes my week.

PS. I'm trying to post on my blogs more and on Facebook less. 

Trump's Faithful

The Insurrectionists weren’t “hoodwinked.” They were accomplices. I can’t respect the motives of people who were warned for decades that the media outlets they trusted were neither credible nor honorable; that the Christian Nationalist pastors listened to had un-saintly motives and were false prophets. They despised the people who warned them most. These RW nuts bought their news like consumers, and chose the narrative they wanted to believe. They were complicit because it made them heroes and God’s warriors against conspiracies to destroy the pure goodness the Founders created. They fed their egos off that fantasy. But it wasn't free entertainment; the fantasy had its price.

It’s just now beginning to sink in that, hey, their Fearless Leader didn’t march with them, and that he wasn’t even with them metaphorically. No, they were just his entertainment. He laughed watching them play out the reality show he stage-managed. 

And the worst betrayal of all, he didn’t even pardon for them before he left office. It’s going to take a year or more for all this to sink in, but it’s happening. As they’re going through that, the media outlets they trusted are all being sued into bankruptcy, not just for lying, but for passing on Donald Trump’s lies. In fact, the insurrectionists all lied for him, with him, and about him. This is the basest of the base of Trump’s support, and they might become his worst enemies.

Why Do People Believe in Trump?

 What is Trump's appeal? That's always puzzled me. For some reason, I was able to see through the guy early. I never had a high opinion, but he was always easy to avoid. He was a phony, a greedy con-artist, who had absolutely no skills, and whose lifetime super-ability appeared to be making massive amounts of money disappear. One was lying, another was teaching his base how to lie with, for, and about him.

Trump is going to make whole academic careers. Social psychologists will write their theses on him and the hold that he has on 40% of Americans. Psychopathologists are going to be studying his voluminous Tweets to understand clinical narcissism and socio-pathology. 

Perhaps the most interesting and frightening thing about him was how swiftly he got a faithful following. It was as though I woke up one day in April 2016 and discovered that 40% of Americans had converted to Scientology overnight and L. Ron Hubbard had resurrected to assume leadership.  

Most Republicans still believe Trump, but why wouldn't GOP senators vote to bar him office? A lot of it was that they unemployment more than death itself. Yet, that's not really different from most people.

I have noted before how much Trump swore by vengeance. For anyone who slighted him in the least, Trump would try to destroy them, even in the pettiest ways. Even following the law is no excuse to Trump, as the hit he took out on Mike Pence illustrates. Now, it might be true that other presidents like Lyndon Johnson would get revenge, but never to the point of completely destroying enemies, and he would also forgive people. Trump would have none of that.  

No, it's no coincidence that authoritarians are extremely vengeful people. Putin's the best example. His enemies keep getting poisoned. Fact is, name any dictator/authoritarian and you will find they're all remarkably vindictive. In the underworld, vengeance is a consistent principle.

I believe that Trump's vindictiveness is the key to his rise to success as a demagogue. 

 

A reputation of vindictiveness is an intimidating quality. Trump with his low rasping voice, somehow off-key even in speech, sounding like he's suffering GERD/reflux. It drips with threat and harshness. You could tell he's a bully.

One fictional character who's also vengeful is Yahweh-God, and Allah. In fact, in our culture, we're trained to submit to a vindictive God, and his evangelical base is groomed to fear Hell.

Therefore, I think people sense Trump's constant implied threat and respond to it the same way they respond to fear of Hell. With both, they try to make themselves look virtuous by calling their fear "respect" or even joy. Some deny it to the point that they will literally see him as Godlike, or at least one of Cloudbeard's messengers and prophets.  It's the real reasons evangelicals respond to it: they're already groomed to follow a bully God, and to fear his wrath. It's an emotional, and not a rational or reasoned out influence.

And they fear Trump's followers, who will believe him and serve his every wish. They will keep themselves in denial about how they also fear him, and they'll spin their fear as patriotism. What's more, they'll act as checks on each others' doubts.

Outside the Marvel universe, which is about as unaware of real-world power as fiction can get, a person's power is defined by how many people will follow his wishes, with modifiers for how long they'll follow it, to what difficulty, against at what risk, and how immoral they're willing to be for their master. It doesn't matter how the person does it: through economic power (money, salaries, retainers), through sheer threat and force, political power, bullying, or even just through gentle persuasion. People have social tendencies. They try to form up into groups against other people they fear.  

What's so amazing about Trump is how deeply in denial they bury doubts about him. The most harmful thing about Trump is that he's taught his followers to lie with him, for him, and about him. Once a politician accomplishes that, he need only golf and enjoy his dictatorship. His followers will lie to each other, blinding each other to his every failing and flaw, spinning his defeats into victories. This is why GOP senators are supporting him.

Trump isn't like authoritarians we see in fiction. He's not a criminal mastermind. He had some good instincts about power, but it came from a background of having power handed, and being allowed to bully people with it. He never quite had the grasp of political power, especially in a democracy like the US. I believe he always thought the presidency was a dictatorship and couldn't understand why other presidents were always so restrained. As a sociopath, he could only see that restraint as weakness. His narcissism makes him believe that everyone thinks just like him, only they're weak and dumb.

He honestly thought Clinton, Biden and whoever stood in his way were guilty of something because he was. He believed all he had to do was focus people's attention on it, and their crimes would become plain. No coincidence this is exactly how the GOP acted about Hillary Clinton. No matter how many times she was proved not guilty, the GOP base became more convinced of her wrongdoing. The fact that they didn't find any simply meant that she was also a criminal mastermind.    

Trump definitely wasn't one. He wasn't intelligent: i.e. he sent a confession of his Ukraine caper to Nancy Pelosi, and was then stunned that he was immediately impeached. He was a liar, but he had no subtlety or guile. You could see his insurrection coming months away. His influence over his followers is still great, but his power is mortally wounded.

Once people begin to realize that his power to take revenge is in eclipse, his people will grow distracted and doubtful. Give it six months to a year, and ambitious politician like Cruz or Hawley will begin to pick apart his following.

Unfortunately, those two have learned from Trump, and they're much more intelligent. If Republicans win the next presidential election, it'll be the last election. A marginal win in one election won't get the US out of this crisis. The Dems must win the next three elections, by higher and higher margins.

Impeachment Trial: The Rematch

Today, in barely less than two hours, we'll see the political bout of the still (sigh😞) young millennium. In one corner, the current champion, only-once defeated, Don "The Cro-Magnon Demagogue" Trump. In this corner are eight Democratic Pencil Necks. The biased referee is the once-greatest legislative body in the world, the US Senate, trying to redeem itself after a decade of Turtle rule. The judge is old enough to be your grandfather's grandfather, bringing wisdom to spare, but with the acuity of a houseplant.

What this means to me personally is I'm not going to get any work done this afternoon, and probably not for the week.

Trump's actions need to be given public trial. It's overdue. The country needs that much.

The consequences of the Senate ratifying the charges? He'll be barred from office, but more immediately, he'll lose his Secret Service protection. This is important because an attempt to arrest Trump will conflict with the Secret Service's mission to protect him. I think the AG of New York is waiting to see if he has to deal with that in his arrest warrant. Straightening out that inter-agency conflict is going to literally take a court-case on its own, or an Act of Congress and then a court case.   

If he's not found guilty, Congress will then vote on invoking the 14th Amendment against Trump, which would prevent him from ever holding office. The constitutionality of that move isn't in question, and it only takes a simple majority of both Houses.

As important as it is for the country to face Trump's guilt in the insurrection, it's as important that he be barred from office.   

UPDATE: Turns out I figured the time zone wrong. The impeachment already started by the time I posted this. The senate did do something very important: it decided that you can impeach someone who's out of office to keep them from taking office ever again, just like the Constitution obviously says. 

 

Voting Rights Act? We Need an Amendment

 Maybe a Voting Rights Act is what we have to settle for in immediately. But really, nothing short of a constitutional amendment will fix the problems in the long-term.

The SCOTUS has shown it can knock down any VRAct that they wish to. However, they do have a good basis for having that power. The original US Constitution says nothing about the popular vote. At the time, popular vote was hardly even a political theory, and it was impossible in 1789 to take a popular vote for president. Because the states had literally created the federal government, they started out with having greater political power than the central government. So, they were left their choice in conducting elections. The results: only 4% of the free male population had any privilege of voting.

It isn't until 1868 that the 14th Amendment was enacted, that a right to vote is mentioned, but without a previous precedent in the constitution, it hangs in mid-air.

The 14th Amendment dictates several rules to the states. In the first section, it says anyone born in or naturalized as a US citizen has equal rights and privileges, the state could not pick and choose which ones had rights. That sets up the second section, that covers specifically the right to vote:

"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state." 

[Emphasis mine, the links are from the source, and explain the later amendments made to reflect universal suffrage and the voting age changed to eighteen.]

Prior to this, the states determined who had the right to vote. It did make

Just in case the states didn't get the message (because the ex-Confederate states weren't), the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870, it said:

Section 1:

"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Section 2:

"The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

At this stage, it's apparent that the general Right to Vote was no longer just a political theory, but would be the practice from then on.

But still, the details pertaining to the right to vote weren't mentioned. This left the states to still select who had the right, as long as it wasn't due to race, color, or previous servitude. If they could find exceptions for other reasons that corresponded approximately to race. This let all kinds of abuses and methods pass through. It also didn't give the states any obligation to make voting easy, nor to gerrymander fairly, nor did it regulate the obligations the states had in regards to the voting rolls.

The SCOTUS pretty much killed the Voting Rights Act in 2013 in the Shelby County vs Holder, repealing two key provisions . These allowed the states that had a history of voter discrimination to start practicing it again.

The conservative constructionists/originalists could do it because the original Constitution doesn't define the right to vote. Therefore, they could say the Founders didn't care about it. Without reference to the intent of the Founders, the conservative SCOTUS felt free to impose its own standard.

Only a Voting Rights Amendment will take the decision out of their hands, and keep the legislative enforcement to the Congress where it belongs. 

 

 

AFTER THE AFTERMATH,: WHAT WE SHOULD LOOK FORWARD TO

 My entry yesterday was depressing. But after the next eight months or so, the future will get brighter. In fact, with a little luck, things will be better than any time since the early '60s.

Disclaimers: accurately conjecturing about the future is impossible and depends only on luck. We live in an inherently random universe. What we see as order is only the things our senses are evolved to perceive.

Also, this presumes that the Biden Administration will be somewhat more than competent, that the mutant strains of COVID are at least tractable, and of course, that another deadly pandemic from a different germ doesn't start.

But it's still fun to look ahead and hope.

About COVID aftereffects:

-A vaccination program will begin to turn the tide of the virus in 2022. COVID will continue diminishing waves. PPE protocols will be enforced depending on the severity of the virus.

-Scientific advances made in fighting this virus will yield advances in treatments of other diseases.

-Public health will be taken much more seriously, and receive a great uptick in funding and employment. We'll be more than ready for the next disease outbreak.

-A new healthcare system will be enacted, building on what's left of Obamacare.

-Religion will diminish in both political power and popularity; if for no other reason but because people will be out of the habit of going to church.*1 Once the habit is broken, most won't get it back. For example, for the first time ever reported a decline in active membership. It'll decline, but won't be extinct.

-Those who scoffed COVID will be hit the hardest when the final body count is counted, causing a decline in rural areas, which will be rescued with government programs.

-When the epidemic is over, expect survivors to come out of their isolation to be ecstatic, almost giddy. Expect things to be absolutely nuts for weeks. Expect a sudden, if modest, baby boom.

-Also, when its over, expect businesses to rebound, and wages offered to be great. But there will be big changes, both from industries that won't come back, and brand new industries. A generation's habits will be permanently changed. Also, expect there to be a government programs to start farms and repopulate rural areas and small towns. There will also be programs.

-And kids will actually love to go to school.

-Expect crime to decline.

-As much as I hate to point this out, in the end, survivors will likely benefit economically from the lower population and the change in age demographics. However, this will be diminished by people permanently disabled by the virus.

 And now the consequent outcomes of the Donald J. Trump and the insurrection:

-The court cases over the Trump-initiated attacks on Dominion Voting Systems have led to lawsuits against conservative outlets/commentators who repeated and amplified Trump's baseless claims. Harassed Dominion staffers were targeted by Trump cadres for harassment and death threats. They have sued Fox News, Lou Dobbs, etc, for defamation, and have forced them to retract. However, the harassment didn't stop. With clear malice and demonstrable damage, the plaintiff have a very strong, almost airtight case. It can put the entire conservative propaganda apparatus out of business. This will further the decline in conservatism.

-After the government gets through putting out all the Trump-ignited fires, reforms in our government will be proposed, at least a few will be constitutional Amendments, and many of them will be passed. Among the changes that might be made: a roll-back of the power of the president and executive branch, and laws which prescribe statutory penalties for dereliction and abuse; the abolishment--or at least a change--in the electoral college; statehood for Washington DC and Puerto Rico, a Voting Rights Constitutional amendment which will include further transparency in elections, limits on gerrymandering, and campaign finance reform; much stronger laws about privacy; and, of course, more laws on domestic terrorism and insurgency.

-Section 230 of the 1996 telecom act will be altered. I won't conjecture on type of change.

-Expect a rethink in the design of computers to at least be initiated by 2024. Also, a project for a redesign of the World Wide Web, Internet 2.0 will at least be in the works. The emphasis for both will be on much tighter security protocols. Expect fiber-optic networks to spread throughout the entire country. All of this in anticipation for quantum computing.

-Expect a worldwide conference, and treaties to be negotiated limiting governments' use of hacking, the use of drones, and the disallowing the development of soldierbots.

-A new treaty with Iran will be in negotiation at least until 2024.

-A new international treaty about climate change will be signed, based on the Paris Accords.

-As things get better, and they will, the Trump years will be remembered as either a nightmare, or the worst part of a 20 or 40-year nightmare. COVID-19 will probably called the Trump Virus. I'm more certain that the historically horrible year of 2020 is going to be associated with Trump, just like the year 1929 belongs to Hoover.

For a final note: we lost a lot of time to mitigate the effects of climate change. I won't conjecture on the effects it will have, and it might have some good effects in some places, as a whole it'll be a negative change for the US and the world. I won't conjecture beyond that.

*1 Clergy and ministers know this, know that their revenues will be in decline which is why some are so stubbornly insisting that their followers must continue with weekly church attendance. All this will do is assure that their flocks are hit worse by COVID, and will know attending church caused it. Also, once away from weekly faith reinforcement, ex-congs will begin to notice just how wealthy televangelists have become, and more importantly, they'll resent it, 

*2 The political Right would've opposed PPE even without Trump's influence. Trump has good instincts about power, and knew he could only ahead of the issue by going extreme anti-mask and underplaying the problem. Conservatives sense that COVID is a direct challenge to their individualism, a cornerstone of their ideology. Epidemics can't be stopped without organized measures and cooperation, totally antithetical to individualism. 

DON'T BLAME PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN FOR THESE CONSEQUENCES

 Tomorrow, I'll post the good things that I believe might happen when the troubles all shake out. But I'm not in the mood for that today.

This afternoon, I'm making a list of what I believe are inevitable consequences we'll suffer, NO MATTER WHAT BIDEN DOES.

With more transmittable mutant strains of Covid spreading here and abroad, all with unpredictable symptoms and mortality, I think these will be the consequences:

-Expect the total deaths from COVID to double in the US by summer. A SIGNIFICANT number will be children.

-By then, every survivor will have a friend or family member who died of COVID. By the end of the year, every survivor might know two or more people who died of it.

-The economy in the US is going to get worse.

-International trade is going to grind almost to a halt.

Results from the Trump unrest (with COVID spreading):

-Right Wing terrorism will grow into the spring. It might start to diminish then, when hopes for Trump reclaiming the throne fade, or if COVID decimates them. 

-Some state houses might be taken, and we'll have state governments in exile, at least for week or two. But finally, they will fail. The Republic won't buckle.

-More law enforcement will be killed or injured by RW terrorists than done by BLM in the last five years. (Because Blue Lives Matter, unless they oppose Trump terrorists.)

-COVID will turn disproportionately harsh in rural areas that lack access to medical care, and it won't relent until the terrorism dies down.

-It will also grow disproportionately hard on RW terrorists, because of their COVID denial, their conspiracy delusions about it, AND THEIR POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ABOUT PPE. /s

-The rebellion will weaken government relief and vaccination programs. They will be minimal at least until summer.

-Some cities will suffer at least limited blockades by RW terrorists in the countryside.

-We'll see a lot of homeless, and endemic starvation in public, which will aggravate the epidemic.

-The military will have to be mobilized to retake some state houses, but the Republic itself won't be threatened.

-We'll lose important ground on the world stage, and then we'll realize just how important our high prestige in the world had been to our quality of life. 

-We'll have to import MORE products and food, adding to our trade deficit, and making industry flight and outsourcing more prevalent, not less. (The very opposite of Trump's promises.)

-We'll also have to bring in more immigrants due to labor shortages. (Also, the very opposite of Trump's promises.).

-The value of government bonds will decline, and we'll probably see a rating hit. This will make funding a recovery and other programs much more difficult.

I believe these outcomes are already set. Of course, the future is inherently unpredictable, but don't blame President Biden or a Democratic Congress for these things.

They will happen because of actions and inactions by Trump, his enablers, and his followers. Their cynicism about government itself; their hatred of Democrats, Liberals, science, outsourcing, etc, their laundry list of hatreds; and their hate-driven conspiracy fantasies.

Trump has been a disaster for the US on the order of another, if a non-nuclear (so far) World War.

I won't guess about or call for punishment for him. It's up to the DOJ to investigate and see what charges it can make, and then it's up to the judicial branch. It's completely unpredictable. 

However, for those who still justify Trump's actions over the last four years I have some advice: you better pray there's no God, because IMHO, that would be your best chance to avoid joining Trump in Hell. Yes, I'm an atheist, but anybody can be wrong.  

PS. If this is winning, I'm tired of it. So, Trump did, hypothetically, keep one promise.

WE MUST BE TRIPPING

On days like this, I wonder if pollutants haven't poisoned the brains of 60% of our population while psychiatric meds flattened the emotions and detached the thinking of at least 50% (with overlap). I just remember people not clouding their minds with hatred, way out of proportion to transgressions, and not generating fantasy reasons to hate their targets even more.

Also, how is it our leadership (on psych meds?) reacts with cool deliberation after being terrorized by a murderous mob? I can't imagine this in the '50s & '60s.

You wouldn't see this in the 19th century, when alcohol and nicotine were the principal anti-depressants, and in an environment with reduced pollutants. No, then, a Senator could beat another one within an inch of his life on the Senate floor, and be cheered. I call that a very focused, very limited riot.

Hey, when lead was phased out of gasoline the murder rate dropped. It dropped the same way in EVERY COUNTRY WHEN IT WAS REMOVED. Our brains operate on chemicals. Chemicals that get into our brains affect our thinking and emotions and in unpredictable ways.

It's quite possible that the hatred, chaos, and social stagnation that has seized our society is nothing more than a continuous, collective drug trip, with unfortunate real-world consequences.

DONALD, YOU'RE FIRED!!!

 

 What a week! Tuesday night I was close to suicidal, it looked so bad. I didn't take the fact that the swing states hadn't begun to count the early/mail-in/absentee and provisional ballots yet.

But today, today, I'm happier than I've been in 5 years, probably happier than I've ever been. It's such a relief. 

Congratulations, to Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris, the 46th POTUS and VPOTUS of the United States. 😎

Our constitutional crises: Part 1

The US has serious constitutional problems. It's undeniable now. Our constitution was antiquated 70 years ago. We had hints of these troubles: Bush v. Gore; presidential scandals going back fifty years; the resistance to reproductive rights, and how it made SCOTUS nominations a campaign priority; voter suppression; lopsided gerrymanders of states' voting districts; the SCOTUS's virtual nullification of the Voting Rights Act against the clear intent of Congress; the development of corporate person-hood as a legal entity; the equating of money with political speech.

I could continue to cite many examples that prove the US Constitution is failing. This is happening because it's a first draft, therefore, it was bound to show seams and cracks by now. It's a wonder it hasn't buckled before. My contention is that today, the citizens of the US should consider writing a second draft, and put it up for ratification.

Now, I haven't researched this topic yet, but I've long debated politics on social media. I know, for expertise on the subject, that's laughable. Before that, I did the same thing on discussion groups going back 25 years. No, that doesn't qualify me as a Constitutional scholar either.

However, those many political discussions and arguments do give me experience with the popular opinions and our various factions understandings of US history, civics, and politics. It's also caused me to think and read about political theory. I will study more as I post more blog entries on the topic.

 The right to question

Nevertheless, I'm starting with this assertion: the greatest problem in our Constitution is the lack of a definition, or any clear description, of rights. It cites some rights definitely exists: free speech; freedom of religion; the right to remain silent. Then concedes that there may be others not mentioned (the 9th Amendment), and the ones that aren't mentioned are reserved to the states and the people "respectively" (the 10th Amendment).

In other words, the Founders punt. Their most important document gives no hint as to how to recognize if a specific right, or what human options or actions are rights and what aren't. It basically trusts our intuition.

A detailed discussions of rights are in the Founders' writings. Thomas Paine's Rights of Man being a great example. Judges and justices alike have gone to the Founders' secondary writings for guidance. But one needs to ask: which Founder and when? They not only differed in their opinions, but their opinions changed over time. If they had known that scholars and judges would be culling their private writings for wisdom on how to run a nuclear-armed country nearly 250 years later, would they have written the same things? It's impossible to know, of course, but then how do we know the musings from the doctrine and dogma? 

The Federalist Papers, are a good source to find out what they thought as the Constitution was being considered for ratification. However, those are the opinions of only three Founders.

Worse, by 1800, their entire vision of how the new country would operate had completely broken down. They created our system in the hope that it would avoid factions, then they watched their dream fail. The contentious factions fought so bitterly that the Founders were in despair. But they had no other plan, so the new system continued to evolve. 

Another source are the debates in state legislatures about the Constitution. But again there's the problem of which Founder to choose as the expert? Also, if they thought that way at the time, what did they think later?

The Founders themselves obscure things further with hypocrisy. It's not strictly true that modern liberals hail by what the Founders promised, while Conservatives are more influenced by their actions, but it's mostly true. How Jefferson could espouse on freedom and rights while owning slaves is often cited as irreconcilable. He doesn't say how, in any of his writings, the man who developed the political theory of rights in the Declaration of Independence had no conscience about keeping his slaves. His promises to release them all appear to be for show, and pale compared to what he did.    

In the Declaration, Jefferson asserted that all men (women not thought of yet) have inalienable rights endowed by the creator. 

He did this, because the Declaration had to explain why a rebellion against a king who ruled by the Will of God wasn't a rebellion against God Himself. Inalienable rights were Jefferson's challenge to the Divine Right of Kings. The political theory served its revolutionary purpose, but how much did Jefferson, and the other Founders really believe it?

If we judge by their actions and writings after the Revolution, they mostly act like it was sophistry all along. Then again, so was the Divine Right of Kings. I will say just because the Founders used Jefferson's theory as an excuse doesn't mean that Jefferson's insight was false, or unworkable. I believe the opposite is true, but Jefferson, like other Southern Founders who grew up in the slavery caste system, probably would've been panicked at suggestion that they live one day without their slaves.  

End of Part 1.

Being politically active

I'm text-banking for the Democratic Party. I'm glad I finally found my participation niche. I can do this far better than say, phone banking or canvassing. I tend to go blank and lose my attention when nervous, and both make me nervous. I'm also going to be a poll worker on Election Day. Obviously this election is going to be an event of history. I hope Trump is shut out, 0 electoral votes, but that's probably hoping too much. 

In case I haven't said this before

We cannot have a representative government with democratic rights and allow people to hoard as much money as they can grab. You cannot have an impartial judiciary, a cogent legislature, or an un-corrupted president. Not while the government power has to compete with economic power, and not when government is so easily captured by moneyed interests. Economic power is too easily leveraged into political power.

I remember the definition of money given in high school classes as a "medium of exchange." Wikipedia defines money just:

"Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context.^[1][2][3] The main functions of money are distinguished as: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment.^[4][5] Any item or verifiable record that fulfils these functions can be considered as money."

I beg to differ with experts about this: money is power, first and foremost. If power in human affairs is defined as the ability to get others to follow your will/wishes, whether to compel them or persuade them in other ways, money is power. It's different from other types of power in that you can count it because laws of mathematics apply to it.

Money is also the world's oldest sustained social program. The first coins were issued by Lydia. The king's head stamped on it meant the King was guaranteeing the amount of gold or silver in the coin. James Burke in his 1970s PBS series Connections tells how the touchstone could be used to determine the amount of gold in a coin. 

At the time, it democratized power and diversified the ways of getting it through production of goods and providing of services that earned it. Early accounting also provided a means to determine the responsibility. "Follow the money" is a practice as old as currency itself. It also multiplied the ways people could cooperate. Contracts became written, with the exact amount of money specified.

A neglected quality that money has that shouldn't need to be expounded, but does is due to the fog of ideology: money is a government program.

Libertarian efforts to uncouple currency from government have so far failed, and I think they will continue to fail, miserably. Bitcoins are good scams, ransoms, and money laundering, but not much else. They're also good for speculating if you like to gamble at unknown odds. By making all transactions private and closed to scrutiny, it becomes somewhat like having a tree falling in the woods. The transaction doesn't exist until it's exchanged out of bitcoins and into a real currency. Going into why they'll is really beyond the scope of this essay. 

But now we find ourselves in a position of such great wealth disparity that our system has stagnated and is breaking down. Think about this: any solvable social problem we have always hits and impasse in the same place: taxing the wealthy. Since the wealthy are the only people today who have substantial money, if tax revenues can't be collected from them, or their wealth can't be bounded, social progress will stagnate. This is what happens with any national or international issue you raise. It happens with our crumbled infrastructure, it happens with health care, it happens with criminal justice reform, it happens with environmental problems. We use the word "corporate" to shift blame to a faceless entity, but the wealthy are behind the corporations.

Our country, our society is going to collapse if excess wealth can't be controlled. Right now, the financiers and banks are the gatekeepers to wealth. They know what sort of person they'd trust with a loan. People Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who are obsessive and fanatical about making money, no matter the cost to the workers and to their environment. In other words: conservative capitalist. They'll also capture government agencies and elected officials.

The notion that billionaires are better than everyone else has to die. This is difficult to do, because they're powerful people, and human beings are awed with power no matter the source and means.

A prediction (A hope?)

 For left-leaning people or centrists who think defeating Trump will heal the country, I have bad news: a single election isn't going to do it. The Democrats have to be committed to creating landslides from here on out.

Biden is far from my first choice for president, but he's the best one to run for this election. The Left might think Trump's disastrous term affords a grand opportunity to guide the country Left, but no, it isn't that. It's just a chance to stop the hemorrhaging.

(BTW, I laugh off suggestions that Biden has dementia. Maybe he's short of sleep some days, but dementia is nonsense. I also laugh it off the same suggestions about Trump. People think it's easy to diagnose a syndrome that's only positively identified by autopsy, and when diagnoses are most difficult tasks physicians have.)  

The GOP must be defeated, and it must be in a landslide. They had a chance to remove Trump and they cynically refused. If I were religious, I would see God's judgment in how right on the heels of Trump's acquittal, both COVID and an economic recession both hit us. (Yes, the recession started in February, independent of COVID.)

For their support of Trump, their failure to remove him, GOP's in Congress and everywhere deserve ignominy. For the corruption of our government, for backing Trump in his incompetent response to COVID, I hope they continue to lose subsequent elections to the point where they become a regional party at best.

If that happens, I expect the Democratic Party will split between the liberals and the centrists. The GOP's ideological and electoral competition are the only forces keeping the two factions together. The unity isn't viable in the long run.

I see Biden as transitional. Since guys his age are known to frequently die, Biden is probably transient as well. Yes, he's a centrist. He (and/or Harris) will have to make the choice whether he's going to screw the wealthy by taxing them, or screw his base by embracing business interests. It might seem he's already made the choice, but I don't presume that, despite indications of leaning toward the wealthy. The wealthy are used to getting their way, so they're easy to pwn. He knows it's not viable to maintain Clinton/Obama triangulation. So, either his voting or his financial constituency is going to get screwed. 

However, he won't have that choice if the GOP remains competitive.

I give a disclaimer to all my predictions: we live in an intrinsically unpredictable universe. Guesses about the future that aren't scientifically tested are almost always wrong.

Also, if Trump stays in power, nothing I've predicted here even applies.  My predictions on that contingency are all uniformly dire.  

The infamy of the Trump presidency

Trump says the Corona Virus is "ashes." More magical thinking, more ignoring, more avoiding. More criminal negligence.

We now have, by official count, 115,784 deaths from CV-19. This is with 584 dying just so far today.

By comparison: In World War I, the 116,516 US soldiers killed.

The number of US deaths from Corona will surpass our country's World War I deaths either today or tomorrow.

The Trump administration has now been demonstrably worse for America than a World War. Simultaneously, he's probably also worse than the Great Depression.

He is THE WORST president ever, and it's not even close. It's hard to think of a worse person we could have entrusted the office of the president. 😡

https://factba.se/topic/calendar

Trump says the Corona Virus is "ashes." More magical thinking, more ignoring, more avoiding. More criminal negligence.

We now have, by official count, 115,784 deaths from CV-19. This is with 584 dying just so far today.

By comparison: In World War I, the 116,516 US soldiers killed.

The number of US deaths from Corona will surpass our country's World War I deaths either today or tomorrow.

The Trump administration has now been demonstrably worse for America than a World War. Simultaneously, he's probably also worse than the Great Depression.

He is THE WORST president ever, and it's not even close. It's hard to think of a worse person we could have entrusted the office of the president. 😡

https://factba.se/topic/calendar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

The drum beat accelerates

The current CoronaVirus report.

Worldwide with 179 countries reporting cases:   

•  245,613 cases; 230,588 cases this morning. 
•  10,048 deaths; 9,390 deaths this morning.
•  88,437 recovered; 86,261 recovered by this morning.

 U.S.

• 14,299 cases; 10,816 cases this morning (It's double what it was on Tuesday.)
• 218 deaths; 161 deaths this morning.

    

Trump's dismissive denial & lethargy has put us on Italy's curve

Here are today's stats on the Corona Virus:

Worldwide with 177 countries reporting cases:

• 230,588 cases, 219,217 as of last night,
• 9,390 deaths, 8,966 last night
• 86,261 recovered (1/3 of the total cases)

U.S.   

•  10,816 cases, 9,417 last night.
•  161 deaths, 154 last night

(Source: https://factba.se/topic/calendar, their sources are linked.)

Notes CV-19's exponential growth:

1.  The world's first known case of CV-19 occurred sometime in November 2119.
2. The US identified its first confirmed case on January 21st.
3.  By Friday last week, the US had 2,882 cases.
4. According to Rachel Maddow, the US's growth curve is very similar to Italy's
5. No measures implemented now are going to have an effect for at least a month.
6. On the current growth curve, US could expect ~40,000 cases by Thursday next week.   
7. Also on the current growth curve, 10 million cases by this day next month is plausible.

The stats above are already obsolete since I started writing this. See: https://factba.se/topic/calendar for the current numbers.

This is scarier than any horror story I can come up with. I could only say please don't commit suicide. We're going to need every person we can spare to get through this crisis.

Place the blame on Trump. He didn't have to fire the White House Pandemic Response Team in 2017,  nor cut the CDC budget for epidemic response. He knew about it happening in China as early as December, and at the very latest, should have responded to the first US case. Instead, he dismissed it, called it a hoax, called it fake news, and asserted it was all about attacking him. He pissed away at least 9 weeks, then responded at first by appointing a task force for spin control. That time lost will cost us hundreds of thousands of lives, and leave us with an economy that will cost us more. 

Italy, which is suffering the worst from this pandemic reported 470 people died of it yesterday alone. (It's not certain that number includes people who died complications like bacterial pneumonia.) Their medical system is in total collapse, and it was rated as excellent by WHO. Like Trump and the US, they were dismissive of the virus at first. Like Italy, we are two months behind an exponential curve. There's no way we're going to catch up on the curve before our healthcare system collapses from the strain.

Meanwhile, the markets are showing their confidence in Trump, dropping whenever he announces another measure. Never mind that he's using the war powers act to take over industries. Trump's poor administrator, and there's no doubt of this. I also fear that after years of cuts and humiliation from Republicans, the US government is no longer structured to handle such an emergency. Add to that: Trump hires for personal loyalty and nothing else. His other hires have been clueless or careless. Trump putting himself in charge of our industries is like Tsar Nicholas II taking personal command of Russia's military during World War I. All he's going to do is turn it into a clusterfuck and discredit him even further.  

How bad is this?

For those calling the Coronavirus a hoax, reality's rebuttal came fast. The Senate just passed $8.3bil in funding to fight CV-19.

Note 1: It passed 96-1.

Note 2: the Senate is Republican and pro-Trump. They'd blame a conspiracy if they could.

Note 3: By comparison, in 2018 the budget for the entire National Institutes of Health was $37 billion.

Note 4: Also by comparison, the NIH budget for Alzheimer's research was only $1.8 billion.

You might call this funding for CV-19 "significant."

https://thehill.com/.../486147-senate-passes-83-billion...

Also, the WHO has put the mortality rate much higher than initially thought, at 3.4%. [Added on edit: 0.4% for this season's flu, which is moderately severe.] Trump says he thinks it's a "really false number," then quotes his "hunch" as saying it's less than 1%. He says people are getting sick and never go to the hospital. Shouldn't he ask first if health researchers don't consider that before he reports his "hunches"? They're professionals, of course they have.

Ten thousand deaths from the flu this year? That's actually only moderately high for the seasonal flu, which has never been a joke, BTW. Its death rate is only 0.1%. [0.4% this year]. That's news, but not news enough to grab the front pages.

Note: At 3.4%, CV-19 mortality rate is 𝟑𝟒 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 [seasonal] 𝐟𝐥𝐮 [is normally, and [it's] about as contagious. [Note: it's 9 times as fatal as this year's flu.] Take a moment to wrap your mind around that. Unless something lucky happens, the deaths from CV-19 could be in the hundreds of thousands or millions. If 80 million people in the US catch this, a completely plausible number, 2.7 million people could die. Everybody left alive will know somebody who died of this. We are in 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭 trouble.

https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB10MMRK?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare

Hell of a way to run a government, with a president denouncing expert data because he considers a conspiracy to wreck his own unsullied record more likely; because he presumes people must be thinking about him at all times to the dearth of all other crucial matters. Any possible "shadow government" or "fake news outlet" would also be afraid for their own lives, and therefore would want accurate news about this.

To prevent the spread: wash your hands. I would also recommend using hand-sanitizer. Do your best not to touch your face. Cough or sneeze into your shirtsleeve. If someone coughs or sneezes in your presence and doesn't cover, leave the room or the area. Use disinfecting wipes to clean surfaces other people have touched, otherwise, get some gloves and wear them. This is especially true for shopping carts.

The virus can live up to nine days on surfaces. So, if you get a box delivered, handle it with gloves. I might recommend a mask for opening the box. Otherwise, I generally wouldn't. Tearing the box open will make particles fly, so open carefully. Cutting instead of ripping will reduce airborne viruses. Clean the removed item thoroughly after its unwrapped. Then wash your hands and face.

As an alternative, you could allow the box to sit for nine days before opening.

Given the contagiousness of this disease, everybody will catch it ultimately. However, it's best that it happen later than sooner. Slowing the spread will give it a chance to mutate into less virulent form, and will allow herd immunity to eventually take hold. Or even a vaccine and treatments might come about. 

This is going to be terrible. It's possible that every survivor will know somebody who dies of this, but we will get through this.

PS. I don't write these things to spread panic. And I don't think I'm a pessimist. I think there's a cult of over-optimism in this society, a social pressure toward it, that needs to be confronted. Over-optimism about Trump is what powers his support. Optimism is good for supporting hope which maintains our daily function. Pessimism is good for recognizing when caution is called for. But they're both ill-advised and disadvantages if they're kept as general rules.

I write this so people could take a sober look at Trump and what he's done, and what we might expect in the coming year. Remember this on Election Day.

The Fix is in.

The GOP Senate's going to rubberstamp an acquittal, and the only good thing about it is they've taken a few weeks to refuse witnesses and documents. This gave Schiff and other House managers a chance to lay out the case for the world and for history.

They say history is written by the victors. I hope it's abusive to them. I hope Trump McConnell's names become insults in the future. These people are the worst traitors since Benedict Arnold, and Arnold at least helped the cause before he turned against it. These guys have no redeeming qualities.

The Democratic Party must win in a landslide in November, or else damage to the Republic will be irreversible. Trump will set up Ivanka and Don Jr. to succeed him, and the US will become a monarchy in a very late stage of decay. The US will be unable to lead the world while climate change continues to constrict civilization.  And if the US won't lead, who will? 

The Dems have one clear advantage: Trump can't stop being Trump. He will continue to commit obvious crimes, he will take disgusting revenge on people, he will continue to transparently lie, he will wreck our alliances, create a dire situation at the border, he will tear up the Constitution, he will profit off the presidency, he will continue and escalate the war on women, he will continue to make rash and irrational decisions, never seeing them as mistakes. and he will use the presidency to intervene in things that are none of a president's business. 

Trump can't change his ways. He's hermetically ignorant, unable to learn, an obdurate a-know-it-all, and driven purely by his ego that he now identifies with his country. And he's unable mentally to separate his interests from his country's. This means, among other things, that he can't expand his base. No, all the people who are attracted to such a character are already with him. He can smear his opponent, but he can't make his opponent more smeared than he already is. 

I think he's hopeless. I hope he's hopeless.



 

The House impeached Trump, the Senate is impeaching itself.

Chief Justice John Roberts showing his rapt attention to a historic moment, not to mention his impartiality as a judge. Thanks to sketch artist/political cartoonist Bill Hennessey. I hope Hennessey wins a Pulitzer Prize, and Roberts is remembered for this more than anything else.

The GOP has become a historic disgrace. A report from Raw Story says that GOP Senators were told if they vote against the president, "Your head will be on a pike." CBS broke the story, saying the source was an anonymous Trump confidante. Likely, the confidante was anonymous because he didn't want his head on a pike. That's always a danger for confidants of President Trump, also known by the title, "King of the Orcs."

In any real trial that would be considered jury tampering. The Senators should at least be incensed enough to remove him on that principle. If twenty Republicans decide amongst each other that they will vote to convict Trump, their heads won't be on a pike. Trump will be out of office, the threat removed. They would feel such relief. Trump has been a source of stress for the GOP leadership, though they'd never admit it. 

However, that won't happen because if they even discussed changing their votes, and it gets back to Trump, then they'll also get an artificial wooden neck, and they might not get all twenty to agree.

"Head on a pike" is an exaggerated metaphor for "lose your job." But what it also expresses is the degree of contempt Trump harbors toward anyone who's disloyal. He'd make the term as literal as he could.

I'll repeat what I've said before: most people fear unemployment more than they do death. That's because death carries no stress afterward. Unemployment is fraught with anxiety and weighted with responsibility. It's less abstract than death in most people's thinking. It even presents the fear of death by starvation. And if Trump ostracizes them, nobody will answer their calls. So there's destitution and loneliness to deal with. That's what Senators who vote to remove Trump will face. No wonder defending the Constitution and restraining Trump are a distant second and third place to them behind keeping their jobs.  

Even so, defending the Constitution, presidential oversight, and preserving the relevance of the Congress, are all part of a Senator's job requirements. If Senators won't do those things when necessary, they should be in a different job. They need to be voted out for their poor career choice.

How could Trump generate such terror in others? Simply put, it's his iron-fisted revenge code. Lyndon Johnson was known to be vengeful, but he never leaned into it the way Trump does, and never with such a hair-trigger. Trump will do his best to destroy anybody who crosses him. Also, he's willing to lie big and lie often, even to himself. It's hard to tell how much of his constant deceit is due to guile, and how much is from mental illness. It's plain that he is mentally ill with a psychotic narcissistic personality. Either way, it's given him a fifteen-lie-day habit. 
 
Trump is not intelligent in any way, but he's willing to do those two things to get and stay in power. That's all he's needed to do to wreck our government. It shows just how vulnerable our system has always been. Now that he's done it, more intelligent evil people will likely try it. Our Constitution was obviously overdue for amendments, but now we may never get the chance.

And when I say he's not intelligent, I have a guess that he didn't even come up with the plan to extort Ukraine. The plan seems more like something that Putin would do. So, I think Putin dictated the plan to him, and Trump was checking back with him at every step. Trump has no background with that level of cunning. Putin, on the other hand, was trained by the KGB where conspiracies were part of the job description. For evidence, Trump withdrew the funding from Ukraine again an hour-and-a-half after he agreed to send it. What changed? My suspicion is he talked to Putin.

Senators should be insulted by Trump's threat. They should see it as an attempt to extort them exactly the way Trump extorted Ukraine. It's also a hint as to how Trump is going to govern after the Senate dispenses with the trial. The least GOP Senators can do is look interested. But no, they're treating the House manager's arguments like high-school detention.

 We're seeing one bit of classic satire from the case. Mitch McConnell has banned cameras from the chamber. But have allowed an artist to sketch it to give posterity some visual record of the impeachment. It turns out that the artist Bill Hennessey has been subversively lampooning GOP Senators in a way a camera never could. I hope his pictures make the GOP look like clowns long after the Trump administration is voted out in November. It's grueling to go through this, but if we could laugh at it later, the trauma of it might be softened.