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!

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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.

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[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.