Conservatives and the False Romance of Russia - The Atlantic

Anne Applebaum:

Fortunately for all such critics, they don’t have to spend much time in the country they are “rooting” for, because there is no greater fantasy than the idea that Russia is a country of Christian values. In reality, Russia has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, nearly double that of the United States. It has an extremely low record of church attendance, though the numbers are difficult to measure, not least because any form of Christianity outside of the state-controlled Orthodox Church is liable to be considered a cult.

As usual it's tempting to quote the article in full, so well does Anne Applebaum write. Worth a read.

The House Judiciary Committee Talks the Trump Impeachment to Death

Susan B. Glasser, writing for The New Yorker:

I listened closely throughout the entire two days and did not hear Collins or any of the other Republicans claim, as Trump has urged them to, that the President had a “perfect” phone call with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky. Or that Trump did not seek the investigations that he had specifically mentioned in the White House’s own publicly released record of the call. Instead, Trump’s defenders complained that the articles did not charge Trump with an actual crime, such as bribery, but accused him of abuse of power, which is not specified in the Constitution and therefore should not count as an impeachable “high crime and misdemeanor.” Some of their arguments were notably implausible, such as the contention that the President was a noble anti-corruption fighter seeking to get Ukraine to clean up its act. Or that his scheme to pressure Zelensky to investigate Biden, his possible 2020 opponent, and to outsource the matter to his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was a mere matter of foreign-policy preference.

Death by Demagogue

Our country is accepting the unacceptable - The Washington Post:

When this presidency began, it was commonplace to write off fears that our political and journalistic systems would eventually “normalize” the president’s abuses. The worry was that however strong our system might have been in the past, we would come to accept behavior that had never been acceptable before.

This is exactly what has happened.

NYT Opinion: The Double-Barreled Dream World of Trump and His Enablers

A couple of reminders of fact: the Steele Dossier was initially funded by Republicans, not Democrats; Manafort was doing evil for money in Ukraine. Opinion | The Double-Barreled Dream World of Trump and His Enablers - The New York Times:

We began looking into Mr. Trump’s business dealings and ties to Russia in the fall of 2015 with funding from Republicans who wanted to stop his political ascent. The Ukraine alarms went off six months later, when candidate Trump brought into his campaign none other than Mr. Manafort, a man with his own tangled history with Russian oligarchs trying to get their way in Ukraine.

Michael McFaul summarize the impeachment hearings

A good summary of the impeachment hearings, from former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul:

Missed the impeachment hearings over the last 2 weeks? Well, I watched almost every word (doing commentary for @NBCNews & @MSNBC ) so you didn't have to. My quick takeaways in one thread. 1.

Most people had never heard of these witnesses before. I knew most of them: Ambs Taylor, Volker, Yovanovitch, Lt. Col. Vindman, David Holmes, and Dr. Fiona Hill. Ive known Bill, Masha & Fiona for 3 decades. So it was weird watching them; none of them wanted to be there. 2.

The story now is crystal clear. After 2 weeks, none of the basic facts were ever seriously disputed. 3.

Let's start with President Trump and Ukraine. Trump has never cared about Ukrainian sovereignty, democracy, rule of law, or the war with Russia. He made that clear as a candidate. He has been consistent in that view. Trump seeks Putin's favor. Appeasing Putin = dissing Ukraine.4

Trump, however, will use any means necessary to win reelection, including asking foreign governments to help him. He said as much to @GStephanopoulos on camera. He saw an opportunity in Ukraine. He first deputized Guiliani to explore it. 5.

Several months ago, Giuliani began to court Ukrainian prosecutor general Yuri Lutsenko with the goal of opening investigations into Burisma/Biden. The aim was clear -- find/fabricate dirt on VP Biden, at the time the leading Democratic candidate in the 2020 election. 6.

Giuliani also wanted Lutsenko to investigate "Ukrainian meddling" in the 2016 US presidential election. The goal -- deflect attention from the ACTUAL Russian intervention in 2016 & thereby strengthen legitimacy of Trump victory in 2016. 7.

Lutsenko despised US Amb Yovanovitch. In this first quid pro quo, Giuliani got Yovanovitch fired in return for Lutsenko's agreement to open these investigations. (Giuliani's & his 2 sidekicks may have had other motivations in play -- more to come on that) 8.

But then electoral politics in Ukraine intervened. Zelensky was elected president, and Lutsenko's boss, Poroshenko, lost. Lutsenko eventually lost his position. Giuliani's first play failed. 9.

A new , inexperienced president in Ukraine, however, offered a new opportunity to create leverage for Trump/Giuliani. Zelensky, even more than Poroshenko, desperately needed a meeting with Trump to signal his close ties with the US. 10.

Trump took advantage, demanding investigations into Burisma/Biden and "Ukraine 2016 meddling" in return for an Oval office bilateral meeting with Zelensky. He drafted new actors -- the 3 amigos -- to work with Guiliani and achieve these "deliverables" for 2020. 11.

In his call to Zelensnky on July 25th, Trump bluntly asked for a "favor" -- opening these investigations. In other words, Trump was asking a foreign government to help his reelection campaign. 12.

Trump then upped the ante and froze U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. 13.

Zelensky was ready to acquiesce to this quid pro quo, or what Amb Bolton called a "drug deal." He even arranged to announce the opening of these investigations on Zakaria's CNN show. 13.

But then the whistleblower stepped in. Trump panicked, released the aid, and then said (on September 9th) he didn't want anything from Ukraine anymore. 14

Trump used his public office -- the most sacred office in our country -- to try to pursue his private electoral interests. That's the definition of corruption. 15.

To achieved these "deliverables", Trump even went so far as to withhold military assistance to a US partner at war with Russia. (14,000 people have died). Imagine FDR withholding military assistance to the UK in 1940 to pressure Churchill to help him win reelection. 16.

Trump even asked a foreign govt to investigate a private American citizen, even though there is zero evidence of any wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.(Trump never expressed any interest in anti-corruption in Ukraine generally; nor did he use proper channels to pursue.) 17.

Trump and team only stopped running the extortion/coercion/"drug deal" play after they were caught. (And most witnesses only came forward to testify after the whistleblower exposed this abuse of power) Had they not been exposed, the quid pro quo would have occurred. 18.

What did I get wrong? 19.

And if you tuned in to @NBCNews or @MSNBC during the last two weeks, thanks for watching ! (Sorry for typos) 20. END THREAD.

Apollo 12: Fifty years ago, a passionate scientist's keen eye led to the first pinpoint landing on the Moon

Apollo 12: Fifty years ago, a passionate scientist's keen eye led to the first pinpoint landing on the Moon:

...other than being struck by lightning twice within the first minute after it lifted off, [Apollo 12] had an uneventful trip to the Moon... When Mission Commander Pete Conrad stepped out onto the lunar surface, he saw Surveyor 3, about 200 meters away. Ewen Whitaker had gotten it right.

...the astronauts sent a personal note to Whitaker, thanking him for his contributions, and that became one of Ewen’s prized possessions, framed and hanging on the wall of his house.

Rivian - distributed computing [on] wheels

This week Fully Charged posted an episode on Rivian: https://youtu.be/J-falgJE1xg About 5 1/2 minutes in it started to click: Rivian thinks about its vehicle as an embedded, distributed computer. They are using software for suspension control and corner-by-corner roll control. (They have a separate motor driving each wheel, so why not?) It was weird to hear terms like "ethernet backbone" when talking about the design of a vehicle.

... because they're four separate motors you can then drive the torque individually per wheel ... including in the opposite direction to achieve things like tank turn." "... we can do perfect torque vectoring... torque vectoring can do two things: it can stabilize the vehicle... it can make the vehicle more agile.

This bit starting at 09:33 made me think "machine learning" -- but no doubt they can achieve all of this with a straightforward control loop:

[one other thing] we can do in terms of traction control... optimizing the slip of the wheel with respect to the road...

... because we can use the knowledge of the current going into that motor to estimate the torque... we know very accurately what the torque is... we can optimize it immediately... we can determine how much torque is getting us how much acceleration and how much slip, so we know the µ [coeff. of friction] and that means we can optimize the slip of the wheel... for the grip that we have available...

[talks about the slow feedback loop for recovering grip in an ICE vehicle]

... [the Rivian feedback loop is] so fast... imperceptible to the driver...

What an interesting interview!

Mason, Madison, Kasparov: Impeachment, not an election, is the way to stop Trump

Garry Kasparov provides a helpful lesson on the U.S. Constitution:

Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63 (1 November 2019)

The GOP will switch from "he didn't do it" to "he did it, but it's not so bad." But it is. Trump committed all of the original sins envisioned by the Founders: abuse of power, self-dealing, foreign intervention. https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1190291217894006785

When Morris suggested at the Constitutional Convention that reelection would be "sufficient proof of innocence", Mason asked: "Shall any man be above justice? Shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?"

George Mason: "Shall the man who has practiced corruption, and by that means procured his appointment in the first instance, be suffered to escape punishment by repeating his guilt?"—Philadelphia, July 20, 1787

Madison added, "[The president] might pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers." And so the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States" was added to "bribery and treason".

Trump's impeachment is a stress test for American democracy and the Constitution as designed. Soliciting a foreign power for personal gain is exactly what the Founders feared.

By the way, Mason & Madison also warned that impeachment would be essential in case the president tried to pardon his way out of trouble, if he's "connected in any suspicious manner with any person and .. will shelter him". To keep in mind...

To people saying "but Trump didn't get away with it", that's idiotic. You cannot wait for someone to get away with a crime when its goal is to take power and cover it up. And robbing a bank is still illegal if the cashier doesn't give you the money!

---

Records of the Constitutional Convention include some other, very apropos arguments about impeachment. These are from Constitution.org:

Mr. PINKNEY & Mr. Govr. MORRIS moved to strike out this part of the Resolution. Mr. P. observd. he ought not to be impeachable whilst in office

Mr. DAVIE. If he be not impeachable whilst in office, he will spare no efforts or means whatever to get himself re-elected. He considered this as an essential security for the good behaviour of the Executive.

Mr. WILSON concurred in the necessity of making the Executive impeachable whilst in office.

Charged EVs | New study: 10 percent EV penetration could shift utility’s entire peak load

Driving a PHEV has taught me that, for daily commutes, "lack of charging infrastructure" isn't really a thing. The charging infrastructure already exists. It's the electric service to your garage or carport. Come home, plug in, and wake up to a full "tank".

Plug-in vehicles that arrive home with some charge remaining can even solve a problem for the grid as a whole, by reducing peak demand. Just add vehicle-to-grid.

Charged EVs| ... 10% EV penetration could shift utility’s entire peak load:

“We were surprised both at the relatively small 10 percent EV market saturation required to completely clip the SCE residential peak and the large annual savings…even after paying for nighttime recharging,” Jackson Associates President Jerry Jackson told Utility Dive.

The true cruelty of Trump’s family separation

The ACLU works incredibly hard to right a terrible wrong. I'd had no idea:

Only now do we understand the true cruelty of Trump’s family separation - The Washington Post:

Last week, hours before the deadline set by the judge, the government submitted the numbers to the American Civil Liberties Union, to whose volunteers it has fallen to clean up the mess created by President Trump, former attorney general Jeff Sessions, former homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and others.

Those wounds won’t heal easily, or ever. [1]

Even now, volunteers working under the coordination of the ACLU are going door to door in Guatemala and Honduras, seeking to ascertain whether families have recovered their children.

---

[1] When we do evil in the world, it will come back to bite us:

Many terrorism analysts say that the existence of CIA prisons, the use of torture and the military abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay were potent recruitment tools for a new generation of terrorists.

Co-opting DOJ

Mindy Finn, Intuition, Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa all seem to be on the same page (below).

Marcy Wheeler provides context.

Reverse Twitter timeline:

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Jeff McFadden - @homemadeguitars: Well, y'all, I am officially scared shitless. It only takes one minute to launch a nuclear weapon. It only took one minute to abandon the Kurds. It only took one minute to open a criminal investigation into the people who failed to save our country.

---

Mindy Finn - @mindyfinn: This here's why it was outright dangerous to elect a dictator aspirant to the White House to start with, and why we must prepare for him to do anything, and everything, with reckless abandon to get re-elected.

Richard Engel - @RichardEngel: There is something I call the Dictator's Treadmill: once you get on, you can’t get off, because falling off means ending up in jail. It's something I often consider wherever I report. What options does the leader have, and what is he/she willing to do not to fall off?

---

Matthew Miller - @matthewamiller: The AG flew to Italy twice to personally investigate a right wing conspiracy theory the Italian government has now confirmed is nonsense. What is going on at DOJ? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/23/world/europe/italy-trump-conspiracy-conte.html

---

Glenn Kirschner - @glennkirschner2: I’m beyond troubled, Kathleen. This looks like Barr using - ok, abusing - the DOJ to assist a criminal president. This is how institutions fail. The House should consider drafting articles of impeachment for Barr. They can’t let Barr corrupt/destroy the DOJ w/out a fight.

Kathleen Chu - @KathleenChu5: Glenn. What the hell with grand jury investigation pushed by Barr into origins of Russia probe?

---

Intuition - @voicebyvote: 🤔 That's strange. @sarahkendzior and @AndreaChalupa have been talking about it since DT came into power. If you wanna know what happens next, listen to @gaslitnation.

Matthew Miller - @matthewamiller: Even with Trump as president, I never thought DOJ could become politicized this badly. Incredibly dangerous moment for our country.

Giuliani’s Ukraine Team: In Search of Influence, Dirt and Money - The New York Times

Two weeks later, this is still unsettling. Giuliani’s Ukraine Team: In Search of Influence, Dirt and Money - The New York Times:

Over the past year, the two men connected Mr. Giuliani with Ukrainians who were willing to participate in efforts to push a largely unsubstantiated narrative about the Bidens.

The headline says "Dirt" - which sounds like "something unsavory but true". But that's not what these devils were after. They looked for people who were willing to say bad things about the Bidens, even if those bad things were lies.

The Death of Stalin

Inside Trump's First Pentagon Briefing - POLITICO Magazine:

Things quickly got interesting as senior leaders jockeyed for influence.

[Bolton's] comment seemed to indicate that as national security advisor he should be the integrator and therefore the de facto lead.

Mnuchin tried to wield the most influence by making sweeping, declarative statements as if he was speaking for the White House. Kudlow was also attempting to assert himself...

It was as if the treasury secretary and chief economic adviser had started their own trade war in the Pentagon.

Gathering his things, [Mattis] turned and walked out of the room and down the hall, fully expecting the others to flow out of the room behind him.

They didn’t.

BEV, ICE and Cobalt: an illuminating Twitter thread

Thanks to Robert Llewellyn for resuscitating the following Twitter thread. Unfortunately, the thread is so old that neither Thread Reader App nor Twitterrific is able to retrieve it. Twitter's web interface can still retrieve it, so I've taken the liberty of transcribing it below.

Synchronicity on Twitter: "The Dirty Secrets of #ICE - Part 1..." / Twitter:

The Dirty Secrets of #ICE - Part 1 Whenever there’s a debate about the benefits of battery electric vehicles #BEV vs internal combustion engine #ICE vehicles, one of the 1st things usually mentioned is cobalt with lurid stories such as linked here.

But when you fill your tank with petrol or diesel did you know that cobalt is used as a key ingredient?

When we figured out that sulphur in our fossil fuels was a key component to acid rain (remember acid rain?) & also contributed to serious health issues it was decided that ultra low sulphur fuels was the way to go. But the catch is that removing sulphur during the refining process is actually quite hard. You need something to act as a catalyst to aid the Desulphurisation process. So they added a metal to kick start the key reaction.

And yes, the metal they add is cobalt. Here’s the lowdown from the “Cobalt Institute” (cont) https://cobaltinstitute.org/desulphurisation.html

It’s a long and detailed article but the key information is in the first few paragraphs.

So to make low sulphur petrol & diesel, which is the global standard now, they must add cobalt during the refining process. Yes, but that cobalt doesn’t get into the final product we put into our tanks right? Right?? Wrong!!! In fact a lot is left in the final output.

Check out the list of toxins and carcinogens that make up ordinary everyday diesel exhaust emissions for instance. Yes it’s a long list of nasties but look who’s there? Yes, it’s our friend cobalt.

So when the anti-BEV lobby start shouting about cobalt in batteries, tell them about the cobalt in their fuel. At least the cobalt in the battery *stays* in the battery and can be completely recycled. The cobalt in their fuel is spewed out the exhaust for our children to breathe.

And then we should consider how Cobalt relates to EV batteries. So this from Amnesty International confirms that about 20%, at most, of the cobalt from the DRC is hand mined. The rest is machine mined.

Overall, about 60% of the world’s supply comes from the DRC. So that means only about 12%, at the very most, of the global supply of cobalt is actually hand mined. Also add that a lot of that cobalt is used for other things like high quality steel, and the fact that a lot is also used in cell phone, tablet, laptop batteries, and petrol/diesel fuel of course, and that the amount of cobalt actually in EV batteries has fallen dramatically. The chances of hand mined cobalt getting into your EV battery is next to nil.

So it’s just disingenuous & misleading to link unethically sourced cobalt solely with EVs when in reality it’s used for a lot more other applications in every part of our society. But of course it serves many parties with anti-EV interests for that false association to be made.

Some selected replies:

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simon blackmore @blackmore_s Jun 20

#FFS the #FUD they peddled about BEV's battery chemistry and they are pumping that crap into the air via exhaust fumes.

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DIYMicha @DIYMicha Jun 22

... and cobalt is an ingredient in hardened high temperature steel, used in valves and valve seats of ICE engines.

Synchronicity @Synchronicity34 Jun 22

Yes indeed, mentioned further down in the thread.

---

Synchronicity @Synchronicity34 Jun 21

But the cobalt in batteries stays in the batteries and is then recycled. The cobalt in fuel is distributed though our most populous cities, day upon day, accumulating on our streets, in the air, in our children’s lungs. Which source should you be most immediately worried about?

---

Synchronicity @Synchronicity34 Jun 21

Key research on the long term cumulative effects of our children ingesting heavy metal particulates such as cobalt are only just starting. I don’t think you are qualified to say whether any other issue is bigger.

Follow the Testimony

Susan B. Glasser, in The New Yorker:

Kent, Sondland, and Yovanovitch remain U.S. government officials, and could be fired. Both Kent and Yovanovitch ... have given decades of service to their country at the State Department. This is bravery of a sort that has become so rare in our public life as to be almost unimaginable.

Trump himself, in other words, was putting together a rogue foreign-policy team, run by Giuliani, the President’s private attorney, that would go outside normal N.S.C. and State Department channels to pressure Ukraine.

The ... outlines ... have been known since the start ... but the testimony by Hill and others ... shows how much the President was directly implicated... The scandal, as this week showed, is about a lot more than saying “do us a favor though” in a phone call.

Hill’s decision to appear on Monday, in defiance of White House demands, was crucial.

... there is nothing the White House can do to retract the sworn statements of its officials who are now coöperating with the impeachment probe on Capitol Hill.

Trump has been staffing his cabinet with "temporary" and "acting" officials who haven't been vetted by Congress. He has been hollowing out federal agencies and replacing career bureaucrats with people loyal to himself, rather than to our Constitution. These changes have made it easier to violate the law in secret (Giuliani and Mulvaney notwithstanding). Other changes, like the near elimination of press briefings, have made it harder to ask even informal questions about the actions of Team Trump. Its refusal to cooperate with Congressional inquiries has been a brazen attempt to avoid all accountability. Sarah Kendzior seems to have understood this administration from the start.

I studied dictatorships and authoritarian regimes the entire time I was doing my PhD.... A lot of things that Trump was doing in his campaign reminded me of things I saw in Uzbekistan, Russia, and other authoritarian states around the world.

Thank goodness the House of Representatives began to fulfill its duty re impeachment before the executive was completely gutted. Thank goodness Trump and his toadies are so inept. Where might we be now if they were actually skilled? Added bonus: Vanity Fair

A World We Built to Burn - Quinn Norton

A World We Built to Burn | emptywheel:

So here we are: Keeping the lines on will probably kill people. Turning them off will probably kill people. Our political system is facing a real-life trolley problem created by our ever-expanding technical debt. It can’t have been easy for the people making the decisions.

One of our jobs in this century is to accept that we don’t live on the planet we thought we lived on, and our societies aren’t doing what we thought they were. Even if we were able to change our politics overnight, which is probably impossible without some planetary level disaster wake up call, it would still take many decades to dig ourselves out of out technical debt, and in the mean time, we have to stay alive and try to thrive.

I can imagine you looking at the screen, saying “It shouldn’t be this way!” But it is this way. The world we thought we had, with a safe stable environment and not too many people, that is not the world we live in. That is, in short, not real. At the individual level as well as the policy level, we need to let go of that which is not real.

Framing a mesh of interrelated social, political and environmental problems as technical debt is brilliant. Finding it on emptywheel, a site that I visit for its insights into the takeover of our federal government, is surprising but welcome.

White House restricted access to Trump's calls with Putin and Saudi crown prince - CNNPolitics

White House restricted access to Trump's calls with Putin and Saudi crown prince - CNNPolitics:

Administration officials say John Eisenberg, the White House deputy counsel for national security affairs and a national security legal adviser, directed the Ukraine transcript call be moved to the separate highly classified system, as detailed in the whistleblower complaint. That system is normally reserved for "code word" documents that are extremely sensitive, such as covert operations.

The White House acknowledged earlier Friday that administration officials directed the Ukraine call transcript be filed in a highly classified system, confirming allegations contained in the whistleblower complaint.

The Risk Trump Poses to All Americans | emptywheel

The Definition of "Collusion" as Impeachment Proceeds: the Risk Trump Poses to All Americans | emptywheel:

So not only do Americans lose out on having a President who makes decisions based on how they benefit the country rather than himself personally, but they also get a far weaker President in the bargain, someone who — if he ever decided to prioritize American interests over his own — would have already traded away his bargaining chips to do so.

Please read the whole post.

Manafort, Giuliana, Trump and Ukraine

Thread by @AshaRangappa_: "Manafort was calling the shots to WH[?]":

This is the part that was most interesting to me: The part where Fruity and Trump feel they need to “reassure” Manafort that he’ll get a pardon, like they have to keep him happy. Why? 🤔

What a tangled web...

How to Break Trump's Stonewall - The Atlantic

How to Break Trump's Stonewall - The Atlantic:

Pressed for his reaction, Ervin said Nixon’s position was “executive poppycock, akin to the divine right of kings.” Ervin declared that his committee had no intention of submitting to the suggested judicial delays, but would instead utilize the Senate’s sergeant at arms to arrest any recalcitrant White House aide, bring him to the bar of the Senate for trial, and ultimately compel him to testify.

Impeach Already

If Trump extorted a foreign leader for political gain, it’s impeachment time - The Washington Post:

This complaint was considered so troubling by a Trump-appointed inspector general that he asked that the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, immediately forward the complaint to Congress, but Maguire refused to do so, reportedly on the advice of William Barr’s Justice Department.

Everything You Need to Know About the DNI, the IG, and the Whistleblower Report - The Bulwark:

Upon receipt of the report from the IG, the DNI “shall within 7 calendar days of such receipt, forward such transmittal to the congressional intelligence committees” of Congress. “Shall” means shall. It does not mean “may” or “if the DNI agrees with the inspector general.”

George Conway and Neal K. Katyal: Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top. - The Washington Post:

So it appears that the president might have used his official powers — in particular, perhaps the threat of withholding a quarter-billion dollars in military aid — to leverage a foreign government into helping him defeat a potential political opponent in the United States.

If Trump did that, it would be the ultimate impeachable act. Trump has already done more than enough to warrant impeachment and removal with his relentless attempts, on multiple fronts, to sabotage the counterintelligence and criminal investigation by then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and to conceal evidence of those attempts. The president’s efforts were impeachable because, in committing those obstructive acts, he put his personal interests above the nation’s: He tried to stop an investigation into whether a hostile foreign power, Russia, tried to interfere with our democracy — simply because he seemed to find it personally embarrassing. Trump breached his duty of faithful execution to the nation not only because he likely broke the law but also because, through his disregard for the law, he put his self-interest first.

Trump whistleblower complaint involving Ukraine, explained - The Washington Post:

The overlapping timelines of Coats’s resignation, Maguire’s elevation and the whistleblower complaint are also raising eyebrows. Trump announced the exit of Coats, with whom he occasionally clashed, on July 28. That’s three days after his call with Zelensky. Trump announced Maguire’s selection Aug. 8. Four days later, the whistleblower complaint was filed.

Trump Whistleblower Complaint: The Obvious Problem with Rudy Giuliani's Spin on Ukraine | National Review:

There is not a Republican alive who would find it acceptable for a Democratic president to press a foreign country to work with his personal lawyer to investigate a domestic political rival.

Trump and Giuliani’s Quest for Fake Ukraine "Dirt” on Biden: An Explainer

To abstract from all of these articles: Trump should be impeached, ASAP.

1. Just Security: Trump and Giuliani’s Quest for Fake Ukraine “Dirt” on Biden: An Explainer
2. The Hill: Dem senator calls for Senate to investigate Giuliani's planned Ukraine trip
3. Washington Post: Whistleblower complaint about President Trump involves Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter
4. Washington Post: Trump tries to force Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 election
5. The Intercept: A Republican Conspiracy Theory About a Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Has Gone Mainstream. But It Is Not True.

Give us your tired...

Thread by @Breznican:

When I got back to the office, a senior reporter said, “So you went out with Nick? How’d it go?”

“Great,” I said, not wanting to call it “boring.” “We got some good stuff.”

“What’d you think of Nick?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer this. There was expectation in the question.

Was there something wrong with Nick that I didn’t realize?

“He was cool,” I said. “Nice guy.”

The older reporter just stared at me. Reading me. “You know who he is, right?”

Leadership and Sacrifice - Against Demagoguery

My father served on D-Day. He experienced a leader who spawned hatred. - The Washington Post:

He walked by himself among the gravestones of his compatriots from the 4th Infantry Division, and eventually stopped and stood for a long time at the marker of one of his commanders, Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Later we asked my dad why he spent the most time at Roosevelt’s grave, rather than at the resting places of his fellow infantrymen... he showed us where he had landed on Utah Beach and described seeing the general standing calmly amid the indescribable chaos of battle and firmly directing the troops ashore. He said Roosevelt’s selfless, honorable leadership heartened him and, he presumed, thousands of other terrified young soldiers on that day.

They all were war heroes — the captured, the killed, the wounded, the mentally maimed, the lucky survivors such as my dad — because of circumstance, not desire. They went to war because of what happened when xenophobia and demagoguery supplanted real leadership.

Juxtapose

Five Things I Learned From the Mueller Report

The president committed crimes.

The president also committed impeachable offenses.

Sara Kendzior: Impeachment Isn't Optional for Democrats

Sarah Kendzior laid out the case for the impeachment of Trump this morning on AMJoy, as she usually does, that it's not an optional situation for the Democrats. In her opinion, they have no choice in the matter, that the body of evidence is so clear, so obvious by now that that is the only true course of action. It's their Constitutional obligation, their actual job to have impeachment hearings on Trump.

Pelosi Warns Democrats: Stay in the Center or Trump May Contest Election Results

Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not believe President Trump can be removed through impeachment — the only way to do it, she said this week, is to defeat him in 2020 by a margin so “big” he cannot challenge the legitimacy of a Democratic victory.

(I hope she's right. This is a terrible gamble to take.)

That is something she worries about.

“We have to inoculate against that, we have to be prepared for that,” Ms. Pelosi said during an interview at the Capitol on Wednesday as she discussed her concern that Mr. Trump would not give up power voluntarily if he lost re-election by a slim margin next year.

Donald Trump Won't Say if He'll Accept Result of Election [2016]

Mr. Trump insisted, without offering evidence, that the general election has been rigged against him, and he twice refused to say that he would accept its result.

“I will look at it at the time,” Mr. Trump said. “I will keep you in suspense.”

For me this statement by itself should have disqualified Mr. Trump from the office of U.S. President. In effect he was saying he would not respect the laws which he would be required to swear to uphold.

“That’s horrifying,” Mrs. Clinton replied. “Let’s be clear about what he is saying and what that means. He is denigrating — he is talking down our democracy. And I am appalled that someone who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that position.”

Climate change: Bill McKibben’s advice for activists - Vox

Climate change: Bill McKibben’s advice for activists - Vox:

Sean Illing
I worry a lot of people have trouble connecting the dots between these food supply disruptions and the political chaos that results from them. For instance, you point out how a 2010 heat wave in Russia, which wrecked their grain harvest, led directly to the Arab Spring. How did that happen and what are similar scenarios that could play out in the near future?

Bill McKibben
That happened because the Arab world is the biggest importer of grain from eastern Europe and when the price went way up for a loaf of bread, the predictable trouble ensued. Probably an even more dire example is what happened in Syria. In the early part of this century, we had the deepest drought ever recorded in the Fertile Crescent. That drove an immense number of Syrian farmers, maybe a million farm families, off their land and into the cities.

And there’s been a lot of academic work to establish that that was one of the key things that triggered the civil war (here and here). Syria was already a brutal and unstable place, unable to cope with this massive influx of people. And so many of those people were spun out into the rest of the world where they utterly discombobulated the politics of Western Europe inside of 18 months.

So we can look at what happened in Syria and Europe and expect much more of that in the century ahead. And I think the low end is 200 million climate refugees and the high end approaches a billion. So take the kind of upheaval that the wave of refugees out of Syria created and multiply it by a couple of hundred and ask yourself how that’s going to impact war and peace, or development, or any of the other things we desperately care about?

New Mexico seeks energy savings in state building upgrades | Local News | santafenewmexican.com

New Mexico seeks energy savings in state building upgrades | Local News | santafenewmexican.com:

New Mexico is pushing forward with multimillion-dollar, energy-saving upgrades to its portfolio of agency buildings in the state capital, as part of an emerging climate-change strategy from Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

The General Services Department which oversees more than 800 buildings plans to invest $32 million on projects to improve the energy efficiency of state buildings in Santa Fe and generate on-site renewable electricity with photovoltaic solar panels.

The state government’s first battery storage for solar energy is part of the project.

State legislation approved this year provides $20 million in direct spending on the energy upgrades at state buildings.

The contractor hired to implement building improvements in Santa Fe has guaranteed energy-related savings of $1.1 million a year... The state expects actual annual savings of about $1.4 million.

Separately, General Services said it has received $1 million in state funds to purchase electric vehicles for use by state workers. Another $1.5 million is going toward the creation of vehicle charging stations at state facilities within Santa Fe County.

It's very encouraging to see all of this. Thank you, Governor Lujan Grisham.

Power without Accountability

Former Mozilla CTO was detained at US border and told he had no right to a lawyer / Boing Boing.

North Carolina Orders Duke Energy to Excavate All Coal Ash - The New York Times

Michael Shellenberger has observed that, of all current types of electricity generation, only nuclear has the cost of waste management included in its price. Now some of that cost is being rolled, almost retroactively, into the cost of electricity from coal. North Carolina Orders Duke Energy to Excavate All Coal Ash - The New York Times.

Is Nuclear Power the Key to Finally Reducing the CO2 Footprint?

NB: These are essentially the same points Michael Shellenberger makes, but they come from a different source. Is Nuclear Power the Key to Finally Reducing the CO2 Footprint?:

In about 20 years, at a cost of at least two hundred billion dollars, it has added about 80 gigawatts of wind and solar generating capacity—enough in principle to cover its winter peak—to its energy mix, an amazing feat in itself.

the International Energy Agency shows that the amount of CO2 generated per kWh of electricity in Germany is still about 480 grams, despite their large investment in wind and solar technology. The reason is that the country still relies on coal and natural gas for about half of its electricity, as its wind and solar fleet lay idle most of the time. In the meantime, France—which relies on nuclear power for 75 percent of its electricity—generated only about 70 grams of CO2 per kWh. When France decided to go nuclear after the first oil shock in 1973, it derived about two thirds of its power from coal and oil-fired power plants and emitted 500 grams of CO2 per kWh. Twenty five years later, its power sector was almost carbon-free.

Because of its reliance on nuclear power, France currently has one of the lowest rates of CO2 emissions per kWh in Europe. Every year, the French power sector emits approximately 260 million fewer tonne (metric ton) of CO2 than its German counterpart, despite similar productions (respectively 560 billion kWh and 630 billion kWh). This is equivalent to taking 175 million cars off the road (assuming an average emission of 0.15 kg-CO2 per car and per km and 10,000 km per car and per year)—about 75 percent of the whole European fleet of personal vehicles.

Delays in implementation caused by legal and regulatory issues—in particular those associated with long-term liability—are likely when it comes to choosing the sites that will have to permanently host billions of tonnes of CO2. Such delays have been happening for the geological disposal of used nuclear fuel. However, unlike used nuclear fuel, which can be safely stored at reactor sites while waiting for a final disposal solution, CO2 is currently released to the atmosphere until a final solution emerges—which could take a while.

After more than two decades spent analyzing available data, experts from institutions such as the World Health Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, concluded that 43 people died of causes directly attributable to the Chernobyl accident. They also indicate a potential 3 percent increase in cancer mortality in the 600,000 most exposed people. In such a large population, unfortunately, more than 120,000 lethal cancers are expected to occur spontaneously—independently of any radiation exposure—and the Chernobyl accident may add 4,000 cases to this macabre toll. However, a long standing issue associated with this predicted increase is that it cannot be verified with certainty because it is much smaller than—and mostly undistinguishable from—the background of spontaneous cancers.

Finally, whereas most of the general public will very likely point at the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents as the worst modern science and engineering failures, only very few will remember the 1975 collapse of the Banqiao dam (China) where approximately 26,000 people died from flooding and another 145,000 died because of epidemics and famine. Another dam, Machchu-2, in India also failed a few years later (1979) killing at least 2,000 people. Experience shows that nuclear power does not entail more risk than other industries.

Assuming a typical consumption of 7,000 kWh per year, a person living in San Francisco would be responsible for the production of about 6.2 cubic centimeters of used nuclear fuel per year weighing 18 grams if the electricity came only from a nuclear power plant. It would take about 55 years for this person to fill the equivalent of a can of soda with used nuclear fuel. So, yes, these used fuel assemblies contain very dangerous materials—standing next to one, unprotected, would kill you in a few minutes—but there is very little of it. If the same electricity had come only from a gas—natural or bio—power plant during the same 55 years, that person would have been responsible for the emission of about 190 tonnes of CO2—900,000 cans of soda or one every half-hour—and twice that amount if it had come from a coal power plant.

In New Mexico, renewables don't always mean clean energy | Local News | santafenewmexican.com

2008 brought plans to erect wind turbines across the Taos plateau. Last year long-distance transmission lines were ready to carry wind power across the bird migration routes near the Bosque del Apache. And now this: a geothermal plant may be harming an aquifer in New Mexico's Animas Valley. This is an interesting read from the Santa Fe New Mexican, about roses, tilapia, politics and energy politics: In New Mexico, renewables don't always mean clean energy | Local News | santafenewmexican.com:

Riding his horse through cattle pasture of brush and brittle mesquite, Randy Walter spotted a 10-foot geyser spewing from a well that had been capped and padlocked for 12 years.

The dark side of renewable energy is that every form of production carries its own environmental baggage.

During the 2012 legislative session, Southern New Mexico Democrats Sen. John Arthur Smith and Rep. Rudy Martinez co-sponsored a bill that took jurisdiction over 250-plus-degree water from the Office of the State Engineer and placed it in the hands of the Oil Conservation Division.

In other words, the hot water was no longer considered water, but energy. The agency historically tasked with managing water in New Mexico was stripped of its authority over the project.

One of the people unafraid to speak out is Meira Gault, a 69-year-old cattle rancher who once served in intelligence in the Israeli Army and has been a Hidalgo conservation district official for 11 years.

Gault said she views the well blowout as the surest sign that the geothermal water simply isn’t going where Cyrq promised it would go.

Lightning Strike Prototype Review - Cycle News

I've complained since the invasion of Kuwait that the U.S. was missing an opportunity to develop energy-efficiency technology - that the rest of the world would pay to buy. Of course I missed the idea of developing "alternative" (non-fossil-fuel) energy tech, etc. Anyway, this is encouraging news: some U.S. businesses are intent on doing exactly that. Witness Lightning Motorcycle Group: Lightning Strike Prototype Review - Cycle News:

...we think India will be right there with [China, as a market], basically to address the environmental problems that they face at present...

the two largest motorcycle markets in the world will both predominantly focus on electric motorcycles in the coming years, and Lightning will be there to serve them.

Amazon is cleaning up (its act)

After almost a decade I may be able to rejoin Amazon Prime. (Yes, I'm a self-congratulating hypocrite.) It bugged me that they never published the relative carbon costs of Prime vs. std shipping. Now, within the last couple of weeks, they're:

1. stating goals for carbon-neutral ops
2. investing in Rivian
3. hiring away at least one GM executive
4. offering Prime members "one day a week" bundled deliveries (which sounds much the same as std shipping ;))

Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature' | Environment | The Guardian

Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature' | Environment | The Guardian:

“The main cause of the decline is agricultural intensification,” Sánchez-Bayo said. “That means the elimination of all trees and shrubs that normally surround the fields, so there are plain, bare fields that are treated with synthetic fertilisers and pesticides.” He said the demise of insects appears to have started at the dawn of the 20th century, accelerated during the 1950s and 1960s and reached “alarming proportions” over the last two decades.

He thinks new classes of insecticides introduced in the last 20 years, including neonicotinoids and fipronil, have been particularly damaging as they are used routinely and persist in the environment: “They sterilise the soil, killing all the grubs.” This has effects even in nature reserves nearby; the 75% insect losses recorded in Germany were in protected areas.

... organic farms had more insects and that occasional pesticide use in the past did not cause the level of decline seen in recent decades. “Industrial-scale, intensive agriculture is the one that is killing the ecosystems,” he said.

“When you consider 80% of biomass of insects has disappeared in 25-30 years, it is a big concern.”

Government shutdown: Interior Department is advancing Arctic drilling - Vox

I forget - what is the correct name for a form of government that combines kakistocracy with kleptocracy? Government shutdown: Interior Department is advancing Arctic drilling - Vox.

The Lincoln Memorial During the Government Shutdown - The Atlantic

The Lincoln Memorial During the Government Shutdown - The Atlantic:

From the start of his career, Lincoln foresaw how American democracy might end—not through foreign conquest, but by our own fading attachment to its institutions. “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher,” he said in 1838. “As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

If shutdowns become routine, if politicians view the government in which they serve as a disposable tool, if we’re no longer capable of governing ourselves, this only reflects Trump’s contemptuous attitude toward democracy itself. Shuttered museums, federal workers who can’t pay their bills, national parks with stinking toilets: This is what Trump thinks of American republicanism. This is what the suicide of a great democracy looks like.

The Land of Opportunity

Via Stewart Brand, a bit of weekend inspiration from Mekka Okereke @mekkaokereke, posted on 5 January 2019:

Everyone loves SpaceX, and thinks of Elon as the genius founder that invents new types of rockets that are cheaper, faster, more efficient. It's fun to think of it as SpaceX versus NASA, or Silicon Valley vs Aerospace. But let's talk about D&I, and logs. Logs as in timber. 🌲

If you've seen my talk on D&I, then you are familiar with under-matching: a phenomenon where bright kids from rural areas don't pursue intellectually rigorous careers. Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. Under-matching affects white folk too.

Stanford research shows that with minor intervention, you can connect under-matched kids with the opportunities to reach their potential. A guidance counselor, college advisor,or mentor, can put a person on the right path.

In Idaho, a lumberjack had a son, who he hoped would also become a lumberjack. But this kid liked rockets... 🚀 He made rockets for fun in high school. He even made a rocket out of his dad's acetylene welder. He went to college not at CalTech or MIT, but at the U. Of Idaho.

In high school, he wanted to be an aviation mechanic, a big step up from lumberjack for a kid that likes rockets. His geomoetry teacher recognized the under-matching, and asked him: ‘Do you want to be the guy who fixes the plane or the guy who designs the plane?’

Like I said, he was not a rich kid. He worked as a lumberjack all 4 years at Idaho to pay for his degree in mechanical engineering. Here he is, paying for school.

Photo credit: U of Idaho.

After college, he moved to California, to work in the traditional space industry.

He worked for 15 years at traditional space companies: Hughes, TRW. He got a masters from Loyola Marymount. He was the lead engineer for the TR-106, one of the most powerful rockets ever made. But he felt stiffled by process at work. He had ideas for new types of rockets.

But building rockets is expensive, and they don't give kids from Idaho billions of dollars to start their own company, no matter what's on their resume. So he built rockets at home, building the largest amateur liquid-fueled rocket in history. Elon Musk noticed...

He joined SpaceX as a "founding employee." He designed the Merlin engine. He's CTO of Propulsion. His name is Tom Mueller. Everyone knows Elon Musk. No one knows Tom Mueller, even though Tom is the one currently designing a rocket that will put humans on Mars. 🤷🏿‍♂️

Somewhere in flyover country, there is an aviation tech who could be building rockets, but they didn't receive the right nudge in high school. Somewhere in Georgia there is a black woman teaching HS math at a rural school, that could have advanced the state of the art in ML.

Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. The goal of inclusion work is not "More black folk!" Or "More women!" The lack of black folk and women is a symptom of the root cause: opportunity to succeed and thrive is not evenly distributed.

Sometimes the interventions are easy: a nudge by a geometry teacher. Sometimes the interventions are much more work: creating a company culture that is not hostile for black women. But the net result is the same: more inclusion, better talent, and a better end product.

Sorry to burst the Tony Stark / Bruce Wayne diletante-billionaire-genius myth. 🤷🏿‍♂️ But to me, this is much more inspiring: SpaceX is the brainchild of a poor kid, lumberjack, rocket nerd, who's been working on this his whole life. 👍🏿👍🏿 (SpaceX Tour - Texas Test Site)

For me, the point of this article is that "opportunity" in general is one of the best things a society can provide. But, for more about the life arc of Tom Mueller in particular, see:

• STEM Education Leads to Career in Rocket Science
• Tom Mueller: From Idaho Logger To Space Explorer

The Green New Deal, explained - Vox

<humor>This wide-ranging article leaves the impression that the Green New Deal is, like the article itself, doomed by its broad scope.</humor> I will randomly quote one of its many interesting points.

The Green New Deal, explained - Vox:

... climate change impacts are going to cost more than climate mitigation anyway. The GND is big, but “big things will happen,” says Chakrabarti. “The two options are, either we’re going to intentionally do the big things we want, or big things we don’t want will happen to us.”

We're screwed if we do nothing. Might as well find some interesting weak spots and start working on them.

Play Bill

I sometimes have trouble keeping track of people quoted in articles. Here's a playbill for this one.

People

Evan Weber: a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright: a policy analyst employed by the nascent New Consensus.

Saikat Chakrabarti: Chief of Staff to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a co-founder of Brand New Congress.

Greg Carlock: a researcher, essayist and podcaster who writes about U.S. policy, governance, climate change, the Green New Deal, and political philosophy. Currently works for Data for Progress. If he were a software developer, I think he would be an advocate for rapid prototyping; the article quotes him as favoring the method (for new policy/programs) of "Pilot and scale".

Organizations

Sunrise Movement: a youth-led organization advocating for a Green New Deal (bold climate action coupled with efforts to address worsening social inequities).

Data for Progress: bills itself as "the think tank for the future of progressivism", and as representating citizens who believe in Medicare for all, a Green Job guarantee, and the abolition of ICE.

New Consensus: a policy non-profit that identifies itself as follows:

We are a global, distributed network of academics, creators, activists, leaders and entrepreneurs working to make the new consensus the standard operating system for national economies around the world.

Brand New Congress: an organization founded after the 2016 elections with the goal of recruiting 400 "fresh new faces" to run for Congress.