DEMAND that the Republicans in the Senate hold hearings and a vote on confirmation for SCOTUS nominee!

Of course, I am hardly a typical voter. I am a lifelong Progressive Democrat in a blue state with two female Democratic senators. But I am so outraged by the attitude of entitlement to power, regardless of the system of checks and balances the Constitution REQUIRES, that seems to be the knee-jerk response of virtually all of the Republicans, that I find it hard not to imagine that MOST Americans will find this unfair and objectionable, even if they tend to be a little on the Conservative side. I urge everyone who lives in a state with a Republican senator, and even everyone period, to barrage the Republican senators, and Mitch McConnell in particular, with calls, e-mails, and letters DEMANDING that they proceed to consider President Obama's nominee in a timely fashion and vote on confirmation promptly. 

​ 
Here's what I sent to several Republican Senators, including McConnell: 

"Our constitution requires the president to nominate a successor to a Supreme Court justice in a timely fashion, and for the Senate to consider and vote on confirmation of the president's nominee in a timely fashion. Sen. McConnell himself voted to confirm Justice Kennedy, in a Democratic Senate, in the last year of President Reagan's term, and Justice Kennedy was confirmed. This is the way it is done in our country. Now the Republicans are threatening to return to the dirty politics of the Reconstruction Era and block the legitimate nomination of the president. We the people are outraged. We will not stand for it. We DEMAND that the Senate promptly consider and vote on confirmation of the president's nominee for the Supreme Court."

Republican plans to block a Supreme Court nomination

• If the Republicans want to sit there and advocate a return to the Reconstruction

​E​

ra dirty politics, which was the last time a Senate tried to deny a sitting president with many months in office the right to name a Supreme Court nominee, we will give them a fight. (Note: Mitch McConnell voted

​to confirm Justice

 Kennedy, appointed by Reagan in the last year of office, when many in Washington KNEW Reagan was already suffering from mental lapses due to Alzheimers

​'​

. The Democratically controlled Senate held timely hearings and consented to the nomination of Justice Kennedy, part of the Right Wing majority today. This is known as HYPOCRISY in all caps).

I believe public pressure can force the Republicans in the Senate to hold hearings, and to approve a qualified candidate for the empty SCOTUS seat over the coming months. This is, after all, their CONSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY.

At worst, we will make this a battle royal campaign issue. They want to use every trick in the book to keep their special privilege, their minority rule against the will of the majority. Vote for the Democrats, for Senate, for president, for the House, to restore the Rule of Law to our country where the Republicans believe only in Bosses' Rule.

Framed properly, this is a powerful message.

Of course, I am hardly a typical voter. I am a lifelong Progressive Democrat in a blue state with two female Democratic senators. But I am so outraged by the attitude of entitlement to power, regardless of the system of checks and balances the Constitution REQUIRES, that seems to be the knee-jerk response of virtually all of the Republicans, that I find it hard not to imagine that MOST Americans will find this unfair and objectionable, even if they tend to be a little on the Conservative side. I urge everyone who lives in a state with a Republican senator, and even everyone period, to barrage the Republican senators, and Mitch McConnell in particular, with calls, e-mails, and letters DEMANDING that they proceed to consider President Obama's nominee in a timely fashion and vote on confirmation promptly. 

What the Kissinger meme in the recent debate means in the Sanders v. Clinton race

 Clinton seemed taken aback in the Milwaukee debate by Bernie's zinger that he was proud not to be Henry Kissinger's friend. But I think this actually is more telling about his candidacy vs. hers than HRC supporters realize. Her whole schtick is her resume, and in particular her foreign policy creds as against his supposed lack of experience and expertise. But here we have HIM schooling HER in the really awful unintended consequences of a supposed master manipulator of foreign policy in the recent past, Republican Henry Kissinger, whom she cited as someone who admired HER and whom she obviously admired back. It's a judgment thing again. There's that pesky worst foreign policy blunder in US History in 2003 that she voted for, and now she's touting the support of a truly evil man, arguably a war criminal. It really does reflect badly on HER judgment, and make Sanders look like the thoughtful and historically informed candidate that he IS.

Strong new online ad for Bernie Sanders featuring Eric Garner's daughter

http://m.nydailynews.com/news/politics/sanders-releases-new-ad-featuring-eric-garner-daughter-article-1.2528817

​ 

Contra a "feminist" argument for voting for Clinton (Maria Bustillos, LA Times)

Maria Bustillos, writing in an op ed the LA Times, takes issue with the notion that women should vote for Clinton, even if they agree more with Sanders on issues. (For example, for her, Clinton's Iraq War vote is a "deal breaker," she expresses the view that anyone who cast such a vote should not be given credence as a Democratic candidate for president at all, regardless of who they are).

HERE 

Time for the truth: Bernie CAN win

​​

Time to debunk the myth that "Bernie can't win" once and for all. New Hampshire is not typical of the nation as a whole, of course, nut NO ONE has ever won its primary with a margin of more than 16 pts. Bernie won by 21%, won every cohort of Democrats, including women,

​ except for "incomes over $200,000," and

got the largest voter turnout for a Democratic primary ever in that state

​. He 

won the under 30 vote 85/15, and has been beating Republicans in national polls by LARGER MARGINS THAN HRC. Young voters, up to the 40s in fact, do not react negatively to the"socialist"

​ ​

label, and while there's no denying the Rs will try to use it against him, it's not as if they won't smear her with equally effective crap, and there's pretty good basis to conclude that almost everyone who won't vote for Bernie because he's a (Democratic) socialist WOULDN'T VOTE FOR HIM, OR HRC, ANYWAY.

​Even so, 

demographics still favor Democrats for November.

​​

Takeaway: Bernie can be a winner. If our party can unite behind him, we can organize his powerful and enthusiastic grassroots insurgency into the political revolution necessary to build the coalition that will take back the Congress, if not in this cycle then the next one, and bring about a NEW New Deal in America.

​ (HRC says she can "get things done," but there's no reason to believe she has any better ability to get Democrats elected to Congress, or work with Republicans, who, if anything, hate her even more than they hate Bernie). ​

GO BERNIE. BERNIE CAN WIN.

​ BERNIE CAN BRING ABOUT REAL CHANGE IN OUR COUNTRY. ​

Facebook exchange on Madeleine Allbright's "special place in hell" remarks.

This is a Facebook exchange between me (the original poster) and a Clinton supporter acquaintance. I get accused of taking this stuff too seriously, which may be true, but I adhere to my views as stated here.


POST:

I really do think it's disgusting of Madeleine Allbright to try to browbeat women, solely on the basis of gender, to support Hillary Clinton. ("There's a special place in hell for women who don't support each other"). Sure, affirmative action. Sure, aggressive action for equal pay and opportunity. But telling people they should support a woman SOLELY because she is a woman is no better, indeed no different, than the sexism they are fighting.​


​Reply:​


"Browbeat?" "Sexism?"




​Me: Nope. How is it not sexist to say you should judge someone solely on the basis of their sex? I would've thought that was pretty much the definition of the term. And it's also definitionally sexist to limit the application only to one sex. Saying the objection is hyperbole amounts to merely labeling rather than addressing substance.

And saying there's a special place in hell for people you don't agree with (Allbright's words) is AT LEAST "browbeating".

Allbright's comments are out of line and indefensible. She should apologize for them.


​Reply: "...a special place in hell..." As you know is a reference to DANTE'S INFERNO. It was meant tongue-in-cheek. Albright is known to have used the idiom many times before. Kinda like "friends don't let friends vote Republican." I think you're a bit quick to umbridge on this one, my dear. I know it stings to have such a powerful and well-respected woman such as Maddy (who also knows what it means to hold a cabinet post) exhort women to stick together and create history by electing the first female US president. What you see as browbeating, I see as legitimate peer pressure. What you see as sexism, I see as an under-respected class linking arms.

​Me: As always, you're entitled to your opinion. As am I. If you substituted LGBT, or black, or hispanic, for the gender identifier, the bias of the remarks would be indisputable. Not surprising, necessarily, but not defensible as a comment made during a public campaign for public office. Racism, homophobia, sexism... all of them have their flip side. And I don't accept the idea that "it's all tongue in cheek." That just doesn't fly in a campaign that is supposed to be based on inclusiveness. People do vote on the basis of bias, but that doesn't excuse openly advocating it. You pretty much acknowledge this, by calling it "legitmate peer pressure." There's nothing legitimate about peer pressure based on identity politics; it's one of the things that's deeply wrong with our society, and IT WORKS BOTH WAYS. And I did not take it as a joke. If it were not YOUR candidate, I suspect you'd be plenty quick to level the criticism. Imagine if Sanders said "We jews have to stick together. Jewish voters should vote for me or God'll get 'em! Ha! Ha!" Maybe it would be laughed off. I doubt it. (Or substitute "Cuban" and Marco Rubio if you want). Stuff you might be able to say (even if in poor taste) in private is just not acceptable in a surrogate for a candidate for president. Clinton should have realized that and distanced herself, which she did not.

OK, this is a blip. But it's an indication, and it is hardly the only one, that Clinton wants to use a sort of feminist tribalism to her advantage, and I am hardly alone in finding that objectionable. When, if she is the nominee, there is a mostly unspoken (dog-whistled, rather), but very real, anti-feminist backlash against her on the right, we Democrats will rightly object to THAT, of course, and insist that the fact that she is a woman has nothing to do with her qualification to be president. As, of course, it does not. But it does work both ways, and she would be wise, even at this stage, to be sensitive to that.

Reply:
WARNING: PATRONIZING RESPONSE. 
[I had noted in a previous exchange that this gentleman was being patronizing].
I gauge the accuracy on my post by the lenghth of your response.

Me:
Which is unworthy of you. And indeed patronizing. I take the failure to address the substance of an argument as concession that it is correct.

~~~
OK,  I realize I sometimes come off as a self-righteous blowhard, but the blitheness and condescension towards my objection to tactics which, were the shoe on the other foot, would be treated entirely differently, does get under my skin a little.

Responding to pro-Kasich post

An extended family member posted a pro-Kasich item on FB. I'm sure I'll have pissed her off with this response, but I couldn't just say nothing:

Kasich is not a moderate. He supports a balanced budget amendment, which is one of the most foolish proposals to come down the pike in some time. The ability to address critical infrastructure needs and respond to economic recession in a way that ensures some economic security for ordinary working people would be essentially destroyed by such a short-sighted policy. In the past, even Republicans, such as Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and both Bushes, understood this simple economic truth. Moreover, his agenda in Ohio, apart from having enough sense to accept free money under the Affordable Care Act for Medicaid expansion (in which instance he was more sensible than most Right Wing Republicans), has been to attack the ability of working people to organize, cut funding for education, and pursue essentially the ALEC / Koch Bros. right wing legislative agenda. Moderate? Not so much. The truth is that NOT ONE of the Republican candidates can be reasonably described as anything other than "far right" or, in the case of Trump, nativist crypt

​o​

​

-fascist.

​ 

Try this (Bill Moyers interviewing Elizabeth Warren on the subject of Hillary Clinton... some years ago

https://www.facebook.com/shaunking/videos/986305904741661/ 

 

Robert Reich debunks Bernie skepticism

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/?fref=nf#  

Bernie ties HRC in Iowa.

I had hoped for an outright win. But you have to recognize going from 50 pts behind to a draw is a historic achievement. The real test of Bernie's staying power will be the Mar 1 so called Super Tuesday. He doesn't poll all that well in southern states or among African Americans. Which just shows how important an educated electorate is. Cornel West certainly understands that Bernie is better for minority communitys' interests.

Here's what worries me. Now that it looks like there could conceivably be a path to victory, the health insurance/for profit medical provider cartel is going to pour huge amounts of cash into an effort to smear and crush Bernie's candidacy.

The people will have to organize, volunteer, and sacrifice their own money like never before if Bernie is to succeed.

Try this video Tracy Ullman does Angela Merkel

https://www.facebook.com/gregpeyton/videos/10153152074510378/ 

♦ David Studhalter

 

Please visit The Gyromantic Informicon 

Opportunity knocks

There's no such thing as safe bets in presidential politics, especially not this early. But it's sure looking like the Republicans may not be able to avoid nominating Trump. Here's the thing. What that means, if you believe, as I do, that Trump can only get 40%, 45% tops, of the national vote, is that

​​

this is the best opportunity we will ever have to elect a real progressive.

​ GO BERNIE! ​

TV ad for Bernie Sanders

I think this will be an effective TV ad for Bernie. 

https://youtu.be/2nwRiuh1Cug 

​ 

This taps into something real, which is that Americans are as much sad and dismayed as angry that the America they once believed in wholeheartedly has been to a great extent hijacked by oligarchs who think it's OK to BUY policy that hurts ordinary people and helps only the few. GO BERNIE! We want Bernie to succeed, because his success is OUR success.

On the unelectable Bernie meme

I will admit that this story (link below) is a tad biased. But there is some information in there as well, and it buttresses the argument that those who decline to support Sanders because he's "unelectable" are not basing that view on facts.

http://usuncut.com/news/president-bernie-sanders-impossible-became-inevitable/

Sanders is obviously not inevitable. But neither is Clinton.

Bernie unelectable? Not so fast.

I just made the following argument to a friend who says he'd like to support Sanders, but feels he must support Clinton because Sanders is "unelectable."

Head/Head cross-party polling even now (closer to the election than the last time we had this exchange) is still pretty meaningless, admittedly, but such polling has consistently and for many months shown Bernie doing better against Republicans generally, and likely candidates Trump and Cruz, in particular, than Clinton.

The view you express is based on collective "political experience," but it's not supported by recent data, which I put more stock in.

It is very, very difficult to quantify the "enthusiasm factor," and the related demographic factors: high poll numbers among under-35s, including women, who are likely nonvoters but who say they would vote for Sanders. This data could be deceptive. Or it could just be right; i.e. that Bernie would actually stand a better chance of winning than Clinton. No one can say they know for sure which way things will turn out, except to say that the endorsement and power politics angles heavily favor Clinton and she still, albeit more narrowly, leads Sanders in poll averages, nationally.

If, and it's a huge if, Sanders were the nominee, it would necessarily (I would argue) be because the "political revolution" he keeps talking about actually came about. This is precisely the kind of groundswell of support among independents, and especially young voters and even more especially typical non-voters and first-time voters, that would be the only possible way Democrats could take back the House this year. Everyone realizes that for any Democratic president to really succeed we have to take back the Senate, preferably this year, and retake the House sooner rather than later. This is a vitally important consideration, in my opinion, and the chance, even if slim, that Sanders could ignite a "wave election" in 2016 cannot be discounted entirely, whereas, I think it's safe to say, the chance that Clinton will do so is essentially zero. She is pretty likely, I believe, to win the election if she is the nominee, but we can expect virtually nothing in the way of "coattail effect," to use the old-fashioned term for it.

Bernie's campaign still surprising

Two immediately adjacent headlines in NYT right now are music to my ears:

«Poll Finds Sanders Ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire» and

«Passion for Sanders in Iowa Worries Clinton.»

As recently as two weeks ago most people would've said this was impossible.

If there's one thing that's shaping up clearly in 2016 it's that Americans are tired of politics as usual.

​

Why Should Saudi Arabia be considered ANY sort of ally of the US?

​

The New York Times op ed timidly asks "Is Saudi Arabia a Risky Ally?" What I want to know, is WHY should Saudi Arabia be considered an ally of the US at all? It knowingly endorses and promulgates a particularly insidious and violent form of Islam (Wahabism), which is the philosophical underpinning of both ISIS and Al Qaida; it refuses to use its own military power to suppress radical Jihadism, it engages in barbaric practices and has no adherence to even basic international standards of administration of justice, human rights, or political administration responsive to the needs and will of its people; it is prosecuting a barbaric and illegal war of aggression in Yemen; it is a rogue Petro-state that opposes necessary actions to address Climate Change at every turn; it secretly acts in opposition to many US interests, and, as Bob Graham has clearly said he himself read in the redacted parts of the 9/11 Commission report, its public officials were COMPLICIT in the 9/11 attacks. And now it is actively undermining the attempts of the US to quell the instability in the region by stirring up even more trouble with Iran, totally unnecessarily.

Does this sound like the actions of any sort of ally? I believe the US should put Saudi Arabia on notice: mend your ways at once; and behave like a member in good standing of the international community going forward, or we will disengage from you, both commercially and politically, and pursue a whole new policy: isolation and containment. These have worked before to constrain and restrain the power of nations whose policies mainly were directed at destabilizing a peaceful order of international cooperation. They can again.

Our policy towards Saudi Arabia is based on an antiquated calculus: namely that they are an essential source of oil, which we cannot do without. But wake up, America! That just isn't the case any more. We DO NOT NEED SAUDI ARABIA going forward.

​

The Force Awakens (spoilers in article)

I wanted to like the new Star Wars movie, and I did, more or less. I enjoyed the experience, as a space romp with some elements of nostalgia. I did, however, feel like it was more or less a remake of the 1977 original, but without the novelty. The space graphics were good, but actually, far from the best I've ever seen. (For many, this is trivial, but for some of us space realism is vital). For example, I don't know if it was deliberate, but the starfields were actually terrible; almost exactly like those in the original. Real starfields, even "naked eye", have stars of varying brightness, a clearly delineated galactic plane, voids where there are few stars, here and there very bright stars, maybe some nebulosity visible as faint fuzziness; and a "milky" appearance where the more distant galaxy's billions of stars fail to resolve as points of light. The star fields in this movie were pretty much just randomly distributed points of equal brightness. You would never see that in reality, and it's boring. OK, technicality, but it's a symptom. The whole movie felt just a bit formulaic, contrived, not really engaging on a human-story level. I keep thinking "jejune." Afraid the word fits, if perhaps a little harsh.

I have to pretty much agree with this commentary, by Michael Hiltzik, from the LA Times Business section (after all, movies are business here in LA). It's not so much a movie as a giant commercial for the whole Disney Star Wars commercial enterprise.

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-star-wars-the-force-awakens-stinks-20151226-column.html

♦ David Studhalter

 

Please visit The Gyromantic Informicon 

Some Optimistic Thoughts for Christmas

Krugman has a column about the disappointed expectations of technology over the last 40 years or so, and hopes for the future. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/25/opinion/things-to-celebrate-like-dreams-of-flying-cars.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=0 

I've been re-reading utopian Space Operatist Iain M. Banks (who died young a couple of years ago) (Player of Games is his best book, IMO). He's not strictly speaking writing about our future, but he is writing about a society that has emerged from our stage of technology to a much higher stage. I set aside his facile assumption that there will be hyperspace, faster than light, etc., because I believe those things probably really are impossible (if they weren't, and civilizations were even a little bit probable to arise now and then in the universe, I think it's pretty obvious that space travelers would have been to Earth many times before in the 14 billion year life of the universe, and we would know about them. There are a helluva lot of planets in any given galaxy, but a society that set about systematically exploring them, if it was capable of surviving at an advanced level of technology, and even without "Warp Drive" or whatever, could plausibly visit every single one of them in just a few million years (out of 14,000 million years to work with). 

But he does make some assumptions I think are likely TRUE. Such as that the Problem of Medicine will eventually yield to knowledge completely; medicine will become perfect, like a game whose rules are completely understood and the outcomes are completely predictable. And the temptation to enhance the evolutionary contingencies that make our bodies less than ideal and that cause us to age and die rather quickly will be irresistible. Future humans will not be immortal, but they will live a LONG, LONG time, free of disease and most forms of physical suffering. 

Such as that ultimately economies of scarcity and elites just don't make any sense. The universe is essentially full of matter and energy; there is no reason why future development of human civilization should be in any way limited by resource availability. This is admittedly a REALLY long term view, but if you think about it, unless you want to talk about the survival of life into the tens of billions of years, there will be plenty of everything, including starshine and any quantity of all the elements in any form desired, essentially forever. This also implies that if we meet up with beings comparable to ourselves, there is no need for competition; there is abundance for all. 

Such as that some sort of moral convergence on freedom of action and freedom from want is essentially inevitable. 

We live in ancient history, from the point of view of most "people" who will ever live, of this I'm reasonably sure. And we have only the barest glimpse of what the future will bring. 

The only thing that can prevent it from happening, apart from the (relatively) unlikely contingency of something like an asteroid destroying our planet before we have a chance to develop some backup sites (a contingecy people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking take quite seriously), is STUPIDITY. Sure, we could blow it. We could wreck our planet and become extinct before we even really get going. But boy oh boy would that ever be DUMB. 

♦ David Studhalter

Please visit The Gyromantic Informicon 

Find out what the number one song on your birthday was.

This is fun. 

http://playback.fm/birthday-song 

Mine was "Till I Waltz Again with You" by Teresa Brewer. It really dates me. (1953). 

♦ David Studhalter

 

Please visit The Gyromantic Informicon 

Iain Banks's Culture novels and left wing utopianism

 I am currently reading Simone Caroti's rather "academish" critical appraisal of Iain M. Banks's science fiction.* She makes the point that he rejected the implicit libertarian right wing narrative of much of American space opera, and instead posited an advanced society (not actually a future society, because it's only approximately human), based not on the assumption that today's political economy of scarcity and elitism will just continue into the future indefinitely, but on more or less the following assumptions: 

•   The current regime of production and exploitation of resources and people by and for elites is unsustainable and if not changed will result in the collapse of advanced civilization on Earth (a not unlikely outcome). 
  
•   This is true in broad outlines everywhere. 
  
•   Where cultures do achieve success and longevity, and become true spacefaring civilizations (leave aside for the moment whether quasi-magical technology is possible; Banks obviously chose to adopt that, since it makes the stories more fun)... they are necessarily economies of abundance, where scarcity is not a driving factor and people can pretty much have what they want; possession and control of resources stops being the primary motivating factor in the existence of the "people." (Who may or may not be human). 
  
•   A fairly obvious and consistent kind of overarching morality is a necessary element in all that. 
  
•   "Flesh sentients" ultimately aren't as good at balancing all these factors and making good decisions as AIs, so AIs end up running the place. 

None of this is surprising to anyone familiar with Banks, who was a Scottish nationalist democratic socialist, even a Marxist utopian. (Banks died in 2013 at 59 of cancer). 

Personally, both as a premise for fiction and as the essential truth of the matter, I buy into all of these except the last point. I remain unconvinced that AI, which really should be called Artificial Consciousness, since that's the key distinction, is even possible, still less than that it necessarily makes better decisions than flesh minds. Or, for that matter, that it would, as Banks assumes, necessarily have any interest at all in cooperating with icky flesh sentients (a la Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series, which was the inspiration for Star Trek's Borg), if it did. But again, my working assumption is as follows: Cybernetics is unbounded and the ability of machines to emulate intelligence will grow and develop indefinitely; if there are ever starships, they will be physically controlled by artificial "minds," but directed by flesh sentience, because I just don't believe in artificial consciousness. Call it an article of faith. I just don't buy that that inner awareness emerges from efficient computation, any more than that if a star trek transporter were somehow possible to construct, it would actually deliver you (and not a simulacrum that only appeared to be you, whether conscious or not)... to the destination. 

To anyone who's happened to read or listen to my ideas on this overall subject, I know I'm repeating myself, but these ideas are rumbling around in my head and I'm trying to pull them together into a magisterium for a science fiction universe of my own devising. 

----

*The Culture Series of Iain M. Banks: A Critical Introduction. I don't actually recommend this book except to anyone who has a strong interest in Banks as a writer. 

Fwd: Almost 250,000 signatures demanding the DNC return Bernie's voter file!

If you believe, as I do, irrespective of who you're supporting for president, that Debbie Wasserman Schulz's virtually complete shutdown of the Sanders campaign is an obviously politically motivated overreaction to what was primarily, and fundamentally, a software glitch for which the DNC's own contractors are responsible, please consider signing the petition demanding that the Sanders campaign have restored access to their own data without delay. It is apparently true that there was improper access to files that should not have been accessible in the first place, but this overreaction to a problem that was mostly caused by a third party and has already been stopped is just not justifiable.

We supporters of Bernie Sanders do not intend to stand for this.

Thank you.

♦ David Studhalter

 

Please visit The Gyromantic Informicon 

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Carl Gibson <noreply@list.moveon.org>
Date: Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 6:09 PM
Subject: Almost 250,000 signatures demanding the DNC return Bernie's voter file!
To: Studhalter@gyromantic.com


Dear Supporters,

Thank you SO much for signing the petition to Debbie Wasserman Schultz demanding the DNC restore the Sanders campaign's access to the voter database. We're on the verge of a quarter million signatures in under 24 hours thanks to your signing and sharing this critically-important petition.

Our goal is to reach 500,000 signatures before tomorrow night's Democratic debate to send a strong message to the DNC that we won't tolerate their sabotage of the Sanders campaign. Please share this link with all of your friends to help us reach our goal:

http://pac.petitions.moveon.org/sign/debbie-wasserman-schultz-2?mailing_id=32323&source=s.icn.em.cr&r_by=14160954 

If the DNC refuses to reverse their decision to cut the Sanders campaign off from their own data this weekend, we'll deliver all of the signatures to the DNC offices on Monday morning.

Thanks for everything you've done so far!

Solidarity forever,

Carl Gibson
 

---

This message was sent to David Studhalter by Carl Gibson through MoveOn's public petition website. MoveOn Political Action licensed and paid for this service, but does not endorse contents of this message. To unsubscribe or report this email as inappropriate, click here: http://petitions.moveon.org/unsub.html?i=32323-14160954-h6aO7Q

Want to make a donation? MoveOn is entirely funded by our 8 million members—no corporate contributions, no big checks from CEOs. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

Star Wars

The L. A. Times is republishing its reviews of all the Star Wars films to date, and the verdict is not surprising. Most enthusiastic was Charles Champlin back in 1977 for the original film, now rather sillily retitled "Episode IV -- A New Hope." (As Star Wars geeks all know, it was always Episode IV; that epithet appears on the very first screen). Champlin also liked "Strikes Back" (1980) (as did most reviewers in those days), and even, unlike almost everyone, liked the ewoks in "Return of the Jedi" (1983) (which I never noticed before was intentionally titled to bring to mind Tolkien (Return of the King)). 

Kenneth Turan, along with most of the rest of the known universe, was unimpressed by the three "prequel" films, "Phantom Menace," "Attack of the Clones," and "Revenge of the Sith". (1999-2005) (I only managed to see one of these, and it was awful. Oh wait, I might have seen the second one, too. I honestly can't remember). 

But most of the buzz about Episode VII, "The Force Awakens," the first film under the new Disney franchise, with the original cast as old folks and John Williams composing a new score, and J. J. Abrams, who did a great job reinventing the Star Trek franchise, as director... is positive. 

At its best, space opera is great fun. At its worst, well, frankly, the worst thing you can say about the prequel movies, which have some pretty great graphics, etc., is that they're boring. The invention is just not that special. I have a feeling this new one will overcome that.  

♦ David Studhalter

 

Please visit The Gyromantic Informicon 

Obama's speech and the terrorist threat

It appears that Obama's speech is being widely panned as not enough, etc. Which is unfortunate. Obviously, there are some things that need to be done, primarily in the area of making assault weapons and explosives much harder to get a hold of, and vetting travelers and restricting immigration waivers from the "War Zone" (which I am enough of a realpolitiker to advocate should include Western Asia from Turkey to the Caucasus to Yemen east to India and the Easternmost of the "Stans", and west across Northern Africa from Egypt to Kenya across to Nigeria to Morocco). But it remains a FACT that terrorism is far less significant than the flu, auto accidents, or ordinary murder as a threat to the populace of the United States (64 deaths, total, since Sep. 12, 2001). It's terrible; it needs to be addressed, but we should NOT overreact. I believe had it not been for 9/11 there would not have been a second Bush/Cheney term, and, callous as it may seem, the Bush presidency was far more damaging to the USA than 9/11 itself.




I worry that, although in reality terrorism, awful as it is, simply is NOT an existential threat to the US, it will end up highjacking our whole political climate, AGAIN, and remove the focus from critical issues like income inequality, oligarchic control and and power of money in politics, infrastructure investment, universal health care, and, the real biggie, the REAL existential threat, conversion to a renewable energy future so we have a livable planet as the century progresses.

Importance of Paris and Insanity of Climate Change Denial

It's no secret that I consider Paul Krugman to be essential reading for just about anyone, but I try to avoid touting his columns too often. However, today's column about the importance of the Paris talks and the absolute, potentially devastating destructiveness of Republican anti-science ideology on this issue is truly, truly, a must-read. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/04/opinion/republicans-climate-change-denial-denial.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region 

Thank you.  

My humble predictions on presidential politics

​Here's my prediction, which is hardly a great departure from conventional wisdom, but whatever. IF there is a Paris-level terror attack in the US by ISIS or its hangers-on between now and the election, it is entirely possible that Donald Trump will be our next president. As hideous a prospect as that is. And if it happens before the Democratic primaries are complete, it is virtually certain that it will be Clinton who is nominated. She might still win in November, but it will be a close election. If this does NOT happen, I predict that Clinton, while very likely to be the nominee, could just possibly be upset, and in any case whoever is the Democratic nominee will win relatively easily. The memory of the current jitters will have faded almost entirely. 

This isn't an opinion about my preferences, just my call as to what is LIKELY to happen. I remain a committed Bernie Sanders supporter, and will remain so unless he at some point withdraws and endorses another candidate.

One other point, though. While I disagree with the likes of Joe Scarborough on almost everything, he is right that Pres. Obama needs to get back to the US and stay here for a while, formulate a strong but sensible response to the current apprehension about international terrorism (which, after all, is hardly groundless), and address the American people on the subject, outlining exactly what the US will be doing about it. Tout de suite. ​

Solidarité

Amazon's website opens with no ads or other junk, just the French flag and the word "Solidarité".

♦ David Studhalter

 

Please visit The Gyromantic Informicon 

Health Care Cost Comment

​As a follow up to my comment on how for profit diagnostics are a racket, here's an idea. On the way to enhanced Medicare for All, which is what we really need, by way of opt-in to Medicare for Anyone (aka Public Option), providers should be required to publish their negotiated "insurance" prices, and be required to charge the same rates to anyone, regardless of insured or uninsured status. Gouging uninsured patients should be illegal. Moreover, billing in hospitals should be according to published "reasonable and customary" rates, so that, in principle, anyone could calculate what their bill will be based on what was done, without any mysterious and ridiculously high charges, such as $10 for an aspirin. Services should be charged as services, at published prices, and drugs, equipment, and materials should be priced according to a published schedule that is based on cost. ​

In the long run, of course, the prices, reimbursements, premiums, and subsidies to low income people, will all need to be based on reality, so that we have affordable health care with realistic reimbursements to health care facilities and professionals, not so that they can make huge profits, but so that they can cover their costs and pay their employees fair compensation.

My customer comment to a for-profit diagnostic lab (Quest)

OK, I admit to being a curmudgeon, but I really do believe that making profits on health care, which should be considered a human right, is immoral and unacceptable, and is an inherent conflict of interest. So, true to my curmudgeonly nature, I incorporated the following comment into my response to a patient survey for Quest Diagnostics:

​I do not appreciate, being asked to provide a credit card and told a totally incorrect probable patient responsibility amount, and I invariably refuse this request, although it is asked in such a way that many unsuspecting clients may not realize that they are under no legal obligation to comply. My insurance is supposed to pay for diagnostic tests in full but there is usually some amount you people claim I owe you, which indicates that you are charging more than a reasonable and customary amount (not to mention that the practice of charging uninsured patients far more is tantamount to profiteering but is apparently legal, due to a failure of regulation on Federal and State levels). Further, the estimated amount is never correct or even close (the amount they state is usually many hundreds of percent of the actual residual charge). Moreover, I do not and will not give out a credit card to be billed an unknown amount at any time and you should not be asking patients to do this.

It is my firm belief that all health care should be provided on a non-profit basis and therefore companies like Quest are, in my opinion, profiteering rackets which should, by rights, be illegal. In the future, we will eventually reach a consensus that health care is a right, not a privilege, and that profiteering on health care is deeply immoral and unacceptable in a civilized society. At that time, we will look back on operations such as yours the way we look back today on child labor sweatshops of the early 20th century: vestiges of an age of barbarism when activity which is clearly criminal in nature was tolerated. ​

Fake mental illness diagnosis used to deny vets health care

Ian Masters reported on Veterans Day about the alarming practice of categorizing wounded soldiers as having personality disorder, rather than PTSD or other effects from injuries suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton should come out strongly in favor of ending the practice of categorizing personality disorder as an ineligible condition for continued medical care for veterans. It is absolutely scandalous that this country is turning people out with a fake diagnosis of mental illness, and refusing them the medical care that they need. To add insult to injury, some of these veterans are even being required to rebate part of their signing bonus, because they are being discharged with a fake mental illness. This reminds me of the practice of the Chinese government during the Cultural Revolution of billing families for the bullet used to execute their family member. I am ashamed of my country that this is going on.

ds

Conservative Republican tells it like it is.

​​

Here is a conversation Robert Reich posted, that he had with a conservative Republican former member of Congress with whom he maintains at least cordial relations (but who preferred to remain anonymous for obvious reasons). Reich asked him what he thought of the current crop of Republican candidates for president.

Him: "They're all nuts."

Me: "Seriously. What do you really think of them?"

Him: "I just told you. They're bonkers. Bizarre. They're like a Star Wars bar room."

Me: "How did it happen? How did your party manage to come up with this collection?"

Him: "We didn't. They came up with themselves. There's no party any more. It's chaos. Anybody can just decide they want to be the Republican nominee, and make a run for it. Carson? Trump? They're in the lead, and they're both out of their f*cking minds."

Me: "That's not reassuring."

Him: "It's a disaster. I'm telling you, if either of them is elected, this country is going to hell. The rest of them aren't much better. I mean, Carly Fiorina? Really? Rubio? Please. Ted Cruz? Oh my god. And the people we thought had it sewn up, who are halfway sane — Bush and Christie — they're sounding almost as batty as the rest."

Me: "Who's to blame for this mess?"

Him: "Roger Ailes, David and Charles Koch, Rupert Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh. I could go on. They've poisoned the American mind and destroyed the Republican Party.

The following is Washington Monthly weekend blogger, Nancy LeTourneau's comment: "Wow! One has to wonder how many more there are out there like this guy. Too bad he doesn't have the courage to say all that publicly. But that probably wouldn't make much difference anyway."

 

Yet another comment on the implications of faster than light travel, or the impossibility thereof.

​A friend sent me a link to this youtube presentation hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson. With the suggestion that there is new research indicating that the commonly held belief that no massive particles travel faster than light may not be correct. And that somehow this has implications for the future possibility of Star Trek/Star Wars style faster than light space travel. I won't get into the arcane reasons why FTL violates causality and is almost certainly impossible, as I have blathered on about all that before. See gyromantic.com and search for FTL if you are interested. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UwmIG8lRfQ

Here is my characteristically grumpy response (Warning: of no interest to people who don't think long term and have an interest in the future of humanity at the longest time scales).

This was fairly interesting, although in terms of giving any real indication that it will ever be possible to move ordinary matter (such as human beings) at superluminal speeds, I'd say, pretty much: zippo. Glashow was the most conservative, but there's really nothing any of them said that indicates there's any reason to believe physics will ever open that door.

I'm not troubled by that. It is apparent to me, speaking quasi-teleologically, that the universe is organized in such a way that the great leap, on the scale of the bodies of, and in terms of distances accessible to, naturally evolved beings and their artificial civilizations, is the relatively great distances between stars. The inferrable fact that these distances are bridgeable at all only with difficulty, and that they will never be bridgeable casually, in spans of time short in comparison to the "attention span" of such natural beings, has two major implications: there is a strong natural incentive to achieve long term sustainability, balance and efficient resource utilization within star systems, and the universe is not likely to be overrun by extremely advanced civilizations that plow through the field and destroy the opportunities for unique evolution in many disparate locales. Essentially, physics, and therefore economics, favors staying home and cultivating one's own star-system garden, and maybe colonizing slowly nearby stars. Galaxy-spanning empires are just too expensive and impractical to be worth pursuing. In general.

Another possible implication is that either in the future, or elsewhere already, it is probably transcendent organisms, possibly of artificial origin, that have the capacity to exist for extremely long periods of time, that will or already have the ability to practically travel among the stars. That this is not apparent indicates to me that it happens either rarely, or that, in this comparatively young universe, it has not yet become common.

Note that that doesn't refer to slow colonization of other stars, and slow spread of civilization, which I believe is possible for our kind, or beings much like us, without much enhancement or modification through intentional artificial evolution. The evidence (peace to theories to the contrary) that visitation to the Earth by other life has either not occurred (my view), or, at minimum, has been exceedingly rare (no more than which I believe the evidence allows), suggests that even this does not commonly occur in the wider universe, since, for reasons we've discussed several times before, if civilizations were common that 1) were able to sustainably begin a program of even subluminal speed colonization, and 2) were able to survive and prosecute such a program for at least hundreds of thousands of years or more, we would almost certainly already know about them, because any such civilization could colonize an entire galaxy in a period of time short in relation to the period of time that habitable worlds, and thus, probably, life, have existed in any given galaxy. And as far as we can see, and that's actually rather a lot (I cite Kepler and the "absence of evidence" from SETI), this has not happened in our Galaxy and probably not in any nearby galaxy (since even a civilization of that level of advancement would probably leave evidence of mega-engineering that would be detectable at prodigious distances).

I admit I have very definite views on this subject, which I find endlessly fascinating. I am a little intolerant of speculation that doesn't address the issues. That's one of the things I dislike about a lot of science fiction. Somehow if it just drops all pretense and posits magic (hyperspace drive or whatever), that's preferable to when it pretends to address the implications of the actual limits of physical reality, but then just ignores the objections. Most "wormhole" stuff in science fiction, for example, is just nonsense, because it completely ignores well-known effects of General Relativity.

Now, I can't help but wonder if anyone actually read this post all the way to the end. If you did, please comment.​

Reiterating Reality on Presidential Election System in America

​I hate having to say this over and over again, because it seems so bloody obvious to me. But here, I'll say it again.

Everyone can make their own judgments, of course. That's democracy. As for me, I am working for the nomination and election of Bernie Sanders. But if he is not the nominee, I am realistic. We have a completely bipolar system in this country. The nominee of one of the two "main" parties is always elected president. Ask President Gore about the 200,000 wasted votes for Nader in Florida in 2000, and how that "protest vote" affected his election to the presidency. So, I for one will follow Bernie Sanders's stated preferences, if it comes to that, and VOTE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINEE in November 2016, whether it's Sanders, Hillary Clinton, or (conceivably but highly unlikely) someone else.​

​

​​

​This is particularly so this year, because the Republican field is, to a man (and one utterly deranged woman), completely unacceptable. I'll go further, this is far and away the worst set of candidates for president, with the greatest potential to wreak possibly irreparable havoc on our country, ever. I will not throw away my vote and increase the chances, even minutely, that one of these lunatics is elected president. ​

Universal Health Care Blues

I've seen recent reports about efforts in several states to enact Single Payer health care.

Universal health care, many Americans do not know, started in Canada a Saskatchewan provincial law (in 1946; primarily as a response to a shortage of doctors, although it's hardly a coincidence that the NHS in Britain dates from around the same time). Only later was it adopted by the nation as a whole.

America is a more difficult case, because the health insurance industry is so deeply entrenched in a for-profit high-marketing expense model, and is already regulated, for better or worse, heavily, on a Federal level (not particularly for the benefit of consumers, but it is regulated). This makes it really hard for states, especially smaller states, to institute truly universal health care for their own citizens.

What is clearly needed is to amend the ACA to allow more robust negotiation, especially with regard to pharmaceuticals, incentivize and later require health providers to be non-profit, and ditto insurance providers, and, most importantly, 1) enhance Medicare so that for its enrollees it is a true universal health care system, like Australia's or Taiwan's... AND.... 2) offer it, in addition to its current aged-and-disabled enrollee elibility class, as a premium-based PUBLIC OPTION to everyone, and FREE to children. This should be Bernie's (or Hillary's for that matter) plan, and, frankly, they should both publish model legislation and promise to do their damndest to get it passed in their first term.

Either concurrently or shortly afterwards, Medicaid could be converted to sliding scale subsidy program for low income people, to pay for the Public Option. Then we would have one form of public health care, which is available to everyone, although not necessarily free to everyone. The subsidies would have to go deep enough to truly guarantee that public option health care is a RIGHT of all citizens, not a privilege that only the wealthy can afford.

I would envision, down the road, that a VA-style public health network would be instituted as an option available to most people (depending on geography), which would provide advanced health care at the lowest possible cost within this system. 

As Dennis Kucinich used to frequently say, the profit motive and health care simply do not mix. 

Being pragmatic and realistic: Biden is wrong: the Republicans ARE the enemy

​I support Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, as I've said many times. On the issues, he's better. That's it. But, I also agree with Bill Maher that we have to defeat the Republicans, and if ends up not being Bernie, then we go with whoever it is, and that's almost certainly Clinton. I'm not giving up, and I am working for Bernie, but I will not just stand by and watch the Republicans win.

All of which is prelude to saying that even though I thought it was just possible that a Biden candidacy would end up helping Bernie, probably only marginally, but some, so I was kind of hoping he WOULD run, I AGREE with Clinton's castigation of Republicans, and I think Biden's apologia for his "Republican friends" is nonsense. The Republicans have not made themselves the "enemy" of Progressive policy and politics because they're awful people (although some of them are, of course), but because they are deluded and believe in policies that have terrible consequences for ordinary people. I am not their "enemy" in the way we were the enemies of the Nazis in WWII. It's not a fight with weapons, and something short of total surrender (by them) is possible. But politically, OF COURSE they are the enemy. They are trying to create a society in America that I don't want to see come about, and I'm not sure I could bear to live in. Fighting them on every front is IMPORTANT. And it's TOO IMPORTANT to waste our votes... if we can get Bernie nominated, that will be absolutely wonderful, and I am confident we can get him elected. If not, we have to get the Democrat elected anyway, because at least we will be forestalling the truly frightening and horrible prospect of a unified REPUBLICAN government, free to wreak havoc on our Democracy and society unimpaired.​

Of course I blame George W. Bush for 9/11... not entirely, but he is partly responsible, and here's why

​For some reason, we're not supposed to acknowledge this.

REPORTS: Jeb! is incredulous that anyone can blame his brother for 9/11.

Here's how it works. If it were a murder, obviously Al Qaida is analogous to the actual murderer. But it you were the newly elected sheriff, and your deputy told you there was a call warning that someone had repeatedly threatened the victim, you knew who that someone was, and all you did was say "OK, Deputy, thanks, you've covered your ass, but that was a big deal to the last sheriff, and I won the election," you'd hold that new sheriff culpable for allowing the PREVENTABLE crime to occur. It's much the same. The Bush administration in the Summer of 2001 had literally hundreds of warnings that Al Qaida was planning a terror operation in the US, and they did absolutely nothing. So, it's reasonable to conclude that 9/11 could have been prevented, and they were too stupid and stubborn to do so. I call that blameworthy. Of course they didn't DO it. But they are nonetheless partially responsible.

And politically, they SHOULD be deemed accountable. Many of the political changes in our country, such as the trillion dollar national security industrial complex since 2001, the Patriot Act and wholesale violation of the Fourth Amendment (imagine the hue and cry if they did that to the Second Amendment!)... are the result of the 9/11 attacks, which by any reasonable analysis the Bush administration FAILED to prevent, due to incompetence and negligence. The party that still adheres to the same world view as Bush and his cronies should be thrown out of every political office in the land!

​

Sanders needs his supporters' energy and hard work, but not to complain about the media

​I'm a little discouraged by all the Sanders folks who can talk about nothing else on social media than that the media and commentariat are out of touch with the focus groups and internet polls (which are notoriously selection-biased) showing Bernie "won" the debate. This isn't going to help Bernie win the nomination. Fact is, she did get a shot in the arm for her campaign, which last week looked troubled, and it looked like Biden would get in, and now it doesn't and if I were a better I'd bet he won't. There's a poll today showing she's risen to even or beating Sanders even in New Hampshire, so it's foolish to try to deny that she benefited more than he did from the debate.

And it just doesn't matter. As Sanders supporters, our job is to put out his message and try to convince people to support him on the issues... which is his entire message. His has always been a come-from-behind campaign, and we will have to work like hell if he is to have a chance at success. She has only to hold on to a lead she's had all along. ​

DNC's DWS M U S T G O

​I have made no secret of my dissatisfaction with DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz's refusal to even consider the opinions of millions of Democrats who have made known that they want more debates than the six her committee scheduled. Now, with charges and countercharges of her having not consulted with her vice-chairs, and lying about it, and all the obvious dissent about this issue and her governance in general it seems to me obvious:

FOR THE GOOD OF THE PARTY and the election of its nominee and House and Senate candidates next year, SHE MUST RESIGN NOW.

It would be helpful if Clinton and Sanders would both, in concert, tell her that, first privately, and then, if necessary, publicly. ​This is no longer just about her obvious Clinton bias. It's about her making a party that is actually remarkably unified appear divisive and at loggerheads when it just isn't necessary. She has become a major liability and IT IS TIME TO GO.

Robert Reich's new «Saving Capitalism»

​Usually I buy these political books and then never read them, but I have found Robert Reich pretty readable in the past. And since it's been billed as a sort of American-style optimistic Piketty* for people who have a life and won't read a 1500 page tome, I plunged ahead and ordered an e-book copy of Robert Reich's new book Saving Capitalism, for the Many, not the Few. 

Reich is almost dead on congruent with Bernie Sanders on economic policy, so this book may serve as a sort of informal manifesto for Sandersism.​ (Despite the fact that, as a former cabinet member under Clinton (Labor) and longtime friend of the Clintons, Reich has not formally endorsed Bernie). 

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*Capital in the Twenty-First Century, [Engl. Translation] 2014.

Pres. Obama's defense of TPP is just diversionary tactic

From my work of many years, I know a little something of how to fairly and squarely rebut an argument. The argument against TPP is detailed and substantive, as presented, for example, at Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch website. Pres Obama offers conclusory statements about how great lower foreign taxes are, when the fact is that we ALREADY have low tarriffs and free trade with almost all of the TPP countries. He avoids the issues of dumping, inflated definitions of intellectual property that benefit only big Pharma, currency manipulation, and rigged dispute resolution, among other major problems with the deal, then resorts to the non sequitur that opponents only want the status quo. Of course opponents prefer the status quo to something worse! This isn't argument, it's the old magician's trick of diversion.

Are Space Elevators going to be necessary?

​From a recent discussion with an interested friend of whether our potential future interplanetary civilization will necessarily rely on Space Elevator technology for traffic to and from the surface of Earth. ​

​

​[We have to take] into account the fact that the rocket equation applies to any rocket (i.e., any system that achieves escape by pushing against itself), whereas a space elevator (or any one of a number of other related technologies) does not, and thus is freed from the inexorable logarithmic logic of rockets, which is that the cost of lifting mass to orbit grows exponentially with mass. There's just no way around it. Chemical rockets, atomic rockets, fusion rockets, any rockets. You can improve efficiency but even with 100% efficiency you are still faced with very steep costs to lift substantial mass from a gravity well like Earth's. Only magic, i.e., anti-gravity or something of the sort, can get around this in a self-contained vessel. If you look at the curve of increasing materials strength, and the kinds of materials being researched now (fullerene and carbyne fibers, and even more exotic things), it seems to me far less speculative to infer that it's likely humans (or, by the same logic and some time or place, others), would solve these problems than that they would invent something for which no theoretical basis exists at all.

​

I rest my case, other than to throw in that I'm pretty sure this is the direction most people who dream of building things like Banks Orbitals are thinking. It's not so much getting up there to build stuff, because that could be done with rockets, but if you want to have traffic, i.e., ordinary people going into space and back routinely, rockets, of any kind, just aren't going to work. (The whole issue of the near impossibility of building rockets that have low environmental impact is a whole other can of worms; and if you're talking about atomic rockets of any kind, then that becomes even worse of an issue).

Of course, if you are talking about leaving the vast majority of humans to fend for themselves on Earth, while a whole new subset of humanity becomes Homo caelestis or whatever, then it won't matter. Rockets of one kind or another work just fine in interplanetary space, away from large gravity wells.

And then there's the whole issue of interstellar travel. Rockets are very poor for that, too, for a set of different reasons. No practical solution for moving significant masses to other stars yet presents itself. For example, a fusion rocket that's 99% efficient would have to carry enough fuel to power the entirety of human civilization for several years just to get a schoolbus sized payload vehicle to .1 of the speed of light, and slow it back to planetary velocities at the other end. The fuel to payload ratio has to be something like 100,000 to 1. And that's still slow enough that it couldn't be practical without some form of suspended animation.

I do believe we will eventually send long range probes to suspected habitable planets orbiting so called nearby stars (<50 l.y. or so), and even longer range, if our culture survives and becomes a thriving spacefaring civilization here in the Solar System, our descendants will figure out some way to go there. But that, I think, will require a quantum leap in technological abilities that we can't really foresee except in general at this point. Somewhere, others have probably done this, but, as I always harp on, the fact that we don't see them is prima facie evidence that it's very hard, and, at least so far in the history of the universe, doesn't happen all that often. ​

Kudos to Hillary Clinton on opposing TPP

Already said this, but I'll say it again. I am a Sanders supporter through and through, and I believe although it is an uphill battle, it is possible for him to win. I think he's better on just about every policy issue than any other candidate.

But I nonetheless congratulate and thank Hillary Clinton for recognizing that the interests of ordinary working people are not served by the corporate-negotiated Trans Pacific Partnership agreement. I believe that her opposition to it will give weak-kneed Democrats in Congress cover to vote against it, and that is a very good thing.

President Obama would be well advised to backpedal the whole deal and just let it die. His own party is pretty overwhelmingly opposed to it.

Thank you, Ms. Clinton.

Joshua Holland on why progressives should oppose Obama's so-called Trade agenda

​The indomitable Joshua Holland, writing on BillMoyers.com, explains how the TPP and related TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership are such bad ideas, and even for Obama supporters, are something they should OPPOSE. {Link}  TPP and TTIP, if passed, will harm ordinary Americans, and the realization that they are a keystone of the Obama legacy will permanently detract from that legacy, just as the failure of NAFTA has permanently detracted from Clinton's.

The fight against these trade deals, which are supported far more by pro-Corporate Republicans than by Democrats (and that should tell you something right there), is going to be UPHILL, but public involvement can make a difference. I urge everyone to write to your Senators and Congress persons and make it clear you EXPECT them to follow the wishes of the majority of their constituents and vote NO on both of these bad deals for America. Thank you.

 ​

Earth and Mars and Life

Here's something to think about.

If all these statements, which are conventional wisdom in the paleontology/paleoplanetology world, are true, there's a problem.

• Life originated about as quickly on Earth as possible after conditions on this planet settled down to the point where water remained liquid and the planet was no longer being bombarded by numerous large impacts that had the effect of melting the surface of the planet repeatedly; about 4 by ago.

• Given the presence of minute amounts of liquid water on Mars and the known existence on earth of extremophiles that can live chemoautotrophically deep beneath the surface of Earth, present day Earth life could almost certainly find a toehold and survive on Mars.
  
• Conditions on ancient Mars were more hospitable, with a thicker atmosphere and liquid water, earlier than on Earth.

• No evidence has arisen for the existence of life on Mars.

See, either life should have originated on Mars during its period of brief hospitableness to life (in which case a very real possibility exists that life on Earth is actually from Mars), and we should expect to find life beneath the surface of Mars, hanging on, as it were, for dear life, OR, the first premise above, which implies that life always arises very soon after conditions for its existence arise and stabilize, is wrong. Perhaps, after all, the origin of life on Earth was extremely fortuitous, and often conditions for life may exist, but life does not arise.

Stay tuned. We may have the answer to this conundrum in the not too distant future.