Update from the
Heartland
No.749
18.4.16 – 24.4.16
Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/
To all,
The follow-up news items:
-- Well, surprise, surprise! After the Justice Department filed another legal suit
against Apple, Inc. to circumvent the iPhone security provisions [747], the USG dropped its court case against
Apple. In a one-page letter filed
with a Brooklyn federal court, the USG claimed an individual had recently come
forward to offer the passcode to the long-locked phone. The filing means that in both of the
high-profile cases pitting the Justice Department against Apple, the government
first said it could not open the phone, only to suddenly announce it had found
a way to open the device. And,
these flawed men want us to trust them . . . incredible!
-- After landing and an extended stop in Hawaii [707], the solar-powered, Solar Impulse
II landed safely in Moffett Field, Mountain View, California, at 23:45 [U] PDT,
Saturday, 23.April.2016 {07:45 [Z] GMT, 24.4.2016}, following a 62-hour,
nonstop solo flight without fuel across the remaining Pacific Ocean. The aircraft suffered a substantial
delay due to damage from seriously overheated batteries during the Japan to
Hawaii leg. The unique,
solar-powered aircraft took off from Abu Dhabi [691, 9.3.2015] on its circumnavigation of the planet using
solar-generated, electric power only.
Swiss explorer and psychiatrist Bertrand Piccard piloted the Hawaii to
California leg. He shares the
piloting duties with Swiss businessman and pilot André Borschberg. They have quite a distance yet to fly;
yet, regardless of the outcome, this has been a monumental engineering and
piloting accomplishment.
Congratulations must go to the Solar Impulse II team.
-- You know, the GOP front-runner is correct; the primary
system is rigged [748]. It is rigged in favor of those
candidates who choose to play by the rules, to respect the individuality of the
state party apparatuses, and respect the political process. The GOP front-runner clearly believes
the rules do NOT apply to him. His
conduct appears quite akin to royal prerogative, i.e., the divine right of
kings to do as they wish – the rules do not apply to them. Beyond the GOP front-runner’s conduct,
I am truly gobsmacked at how many American citizens are accepting his sense of royal
prerogative.
News from the economic
front:
-- The European Central Bank (ECB) left all its interest
rates unchanged. ECB President
Mario Draghi indicated his organization stands ready to use “all instruments
available,” including further cuts in all its interest rates, to ensure
inflation returns to its target.
Comments and contributions from Update no.748:
“Just seen the video of the Falcon 9 landing-extraordinary
absolutely. I assume the cost of ‘recycling’ the booster will show as a credit
to the expense they’ve incurred. However a remarkable and superb achievement.
“Much going on this side. The nation is ‘gripped’ in the debate
about the European Union. We have a national referendum in June, ‘in or out’ is
the question. One hardly knows what to think about this business. The governing
party are split in their views which is a sad event indeed. Whereas the
opposition have rallied to the ‘stay in’ side. This is a huge decision
for us and not helped by our leaders disagreeing with each other.
“Of course the right wingers are extremely vocal, basing much of
their argument on the desperate refugee situation in Europe.
“‘We don’t want ‘em’.
“Whereas those of a more compassionate nature are pleading that we
should stay in and take in more refugees.
“I suppose Cap we were all ‘refugees or foreigners ’ in our pasts.
My own great grandmother had a very French surname.
“This is an enormous question for the British people and one I
fear is too complex for most of us to grasp the severity of our decision.
Regrettably we are not being helped by the endless bickering of our would be
leaders.
“We shall see.”
My reply:
Re:
SpaceX booster landing. Yes,
launch cost reduction is the motivation and objective for recovery of the first
stage booster. Agreed . . . very
impressive achievement. The
process will have knock-on benefits in other future projects.
Re:
European Union vote. I have always
believed the notion of a United States of Europe proposed by Sir Winston prior
to WW2 was an exceptional objective and the best hope to avoid another European
War – strength in unity. I hope
the majority of British voters decide wisely on voting day.
Re:
refugees. I am not a fan of or advocate
for absorbing refugees for a host of reasons, but they must be protected from
their assailants. At the end of
the day, national security is more important than internalized compassion. I do not have to invite homeless folks
into my home to assist them.
Re:
the past. As always, in such
questions, it all depends upon how far back we wish to go. Evolution tells us we are all
descendants from the same genetic source 3.2M years ago, so unless we are
living in the Great Rift Valley of Africa, we are all immigrants, refugees or
interlopers everywhere. My
paternal ancestors were French Huguenots.
I suppose the salient question is, when does anyone qualify as a native?
You
will vote before we do. May the
Good Lord give you the wisdom and insight you need, as well as your countrymen,
to vote for what is best for the British people. Godspeed and following winds.
[Postscript not
included in ths thread: President Obama offered a compelling case in
favor of European Union in his speech in Hannover, Germany. I am with him, a united Europe to just
too bloody important for a host of reasons. Frankly, from my humble perspective, the pro’s vastly
outnumber and outweigh the con’s on this question.]
Another contribution:
“To paraphrase you, regarding the direction our country has been
heading and may continue to head.
“I trust history shall record the consequences of our behavior,
conduct and misdeeds, and correctly label us for what we were – A once great
civilization.”
My response:
Re:
“A once great civilization.” The implication of your statement is that you have bought
into the notion we are no longer great.
Compared to the cataclysmic trauma of the 60’s & 70’s, I have some
difficulty understanding the basis of your conclusion.
Or,
perhaps we are dealing with a definition problem. What defines “great” in this context? By whatever definition you subscribed
to, when was the last time we were “great”
. . . Round two:
“I wish I had the time to devote to providing you the answer you
deserve, for I admire greatly your devotion to your blog and the research you
put forth in providing us timely and informative discourse on the events of the
day. However, without the facts to back me up I will try to offer
something short as to what is not great so as to provide you some semblance of
an answer. In my opinion we are presently led by the worst
Commander-in-Chief of all time—in my lifetime. We have incident after
incident of governmental wrong-doing with seemingly no disciplinary action
being taken, no example of leadership set by the leader of our country.
We have a democratic presidential front-runner that should be in jail. In
addition we have the present leadership and the democratic hopeful that both
have disdain for our military. We have a growing entitlement base that
has disdain for authority and for contributing to society, and quite possibly
disdain for the military as well. Under the reigns of Carter, Clinton,
and obama [sic], I see a trend of deterioration and I see that continuing with
the portent of a win by the DNC later this year, and with no hope of ever
reversing that deterioration. I hope I am wrong, but I see too much
dissension on the Republican side for the GOP to get their act together.
If the DNC had a candidate other than a socialist catering to the millennials
or a liar extraordinaire catering to who knows what I could be easily tempted
to vote Democrat for the first time in my life.
“And as to the last time we were great, I will say that was under
the leadership of Ronald Regan. However, what first came to mind when I
saw your question was the time during WWII. Before that it would have to
be when Teddy Roosevelt was president.”
. . . my response to round two:
Re:
“worst Commander-in-Chief of all time.” In my humble opinion, that label should go to Jimmy Carter
for several reasons. Further, to
be candid, forthright and sincere, I had many more military disagreements with
Bush (43) than with Obama. We can
go into the details as you may wish.
As an example, Bush (43) must be accountable for allowing Rumsfeld to
remain SecDef after 9/11; he might have been acceptable for a cost-cutting or
reform Defense Department, but he was nothing short of a tragedy as a war
SecDef. The greatest mistake of
the Bush (43) administration was even attempting the Battle of Iraq on the cheap,
e.g., roughly 300,000 troops (192,000 Americans) were committed to take ALL of
Iraq, while 956,000 troops (500,000 Americans) were committed just to retake
Kuwait. [What’s
wrong with this picture?] The
rampant looting in Baghdad after the fall of the Iraqi government was a classic
example of what happens when there are insufficient troops to secure the
country taken. While Bush has a
better reputation with the military, he made far worse military decisions than ANY
of the Obama decisions. A lot of
Americans died because of the bad decisions of Bush / Rumsfeld, and I will
argue the ISIL we face today grew from that mistake, a failure to secure the
country once we owned it.
Re:
“I see a trend of deterioration.” Simply put, I do not.
I think the tearing of our societal fabric was far worse in the 60’s and
early 70’s than we see today. We
had a bad patch back then, but we endured and became better. The combination of the societal tragedy
of the Great Recession (its direct causes) along with the prevailing threat of
Islamo-fascism have placed our societal under enormous stress. Instead of focusing our ire on the root
causes of that stress, we erroneously find attraction to those outside the
political norm, i.e., any port in a storm.
Actually,
I could agree with your assessment of the primary situation to date. With the results from the New York
closed primary, it is looking like the Fall election may well be the two
front-runners. We shall see.
Re:
great. I still suppose this topic
hangs upon definitions. Even the
vaunted Reagan made serious mistakes, e.g., Iran-Contra, sending Marines into
Lebanon with seriously restricted rules of engagement, et cetera. Even WW2, FDR was and still is despised
by Republicans for his legislative and executive actions during the Great
Depression, allowing their political bias to overshadow what FDR accomplished
during the war. Fortunately,
enough reasonable Republicans supported the President, e.g., Knox, Stimson,
Donovan, et al. I see this
pessimistic “Great Again” mantra as simple political drivel rather than
substantive rhetoric.
. . . Round three:
“One thing is clear. I certainly provide good fodder for
your informed retorts.”
. . . my response to round three:
Quite
so and thank you for your contributions.
After all, the primary purpose of the Update is a vigorous public debate
of contemporary issues.
[Another postscript
not included in the thread: As noted above, I have been and continue to
be critical of ‘Rummy’ Rumsfeld for his performance (or lack of performance) as
SecDef and the number of Americans killed as a consequence. One of the principal, if not primary,
reasons I have been so critical of Carter is his SecDef Harold Brown. In calm retrospect, using the SecDef
metric, the worst has to be Johnson and his SecDef Robert Strange McNamara, who
managed to kill more Americans with his incompetence than all SecDef’s combined
since the job came into existence in 1947. On balance, I give Johnson credit for the Civil Rights Act
of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Carter had no positive counter-balance.]
A different
contribution from the same contributor:
“Why are the numbers of available primary delegates different for
the DNC vs. the GOP in each state? Maybe I have forgotten a basic lesson
in Civics.”
My reply:
Short
answer: the political parties establish the numbers, the rules, and everything
else about the candidate selection process. The number of delegates for each state is roughly based on
number of party members in each state.
The super-delegates are party members in Congress and DNC leadership.
. . . follow-up comment:
“So, rather than having one set of rules that all abide by, the
different party factions have the prerogative of massaging the rules as befits
their needs as they perceive them? This makes me wonder what perks are
available to delegates or party members.”
. . . my follow-up reply:
Again,
short answer: yes! The political
parties are private organizations.
They (the members) decide what rules shall govern their affairs, as long
as no one is injured, property damages or other laws violated. The political parties enable (allow) the
state parties to define their rules for electing their delegates. Frankly, there is wisdom in that
diversity. It forces candidates to
have a ground game in all 50 states and the territories, rather what we witness
today with the GOP front-runner trying to muscle or intimidate his way to the
party nomination with a minimalist ground game.
Re:
perks for delegates. According to
the GOP front-runner, if we can believe or trust anything he says, he can fly
them anywhere in his private jet (which apparently has had its operating
certificate suspended), put them up in his resorts, all expenses paid, et
cetera. Is that buying their
vote? Sure looks like it to me. Yet, again according to “him,” such
ethical transgressions are permitted “under the rules.”
Comment to the Blog:
“I still detest the Republican front runner. Back when I was a
secretarial science major, we were taught to make these buffoons look good
until we could find better jobs. Many of his staffers do exactly that. (I later
learned, as a communications major, how to work with the crises caused, by
their communication and other failings, for a hefty fee.)
“All the same, people seem not to realize that both he and Senator
Sanders are actually doing what so many of the Second Amendment wing-nuts claim to
be preparing for—fighting a corrupt government that is ruining the country.
This is the real way those battles take place, from the view of people I know
who support either of those candidates. The idea of a few thousands or tens of
thousands of semi-organized wannabe fighters taking on the largest military the
world has ever known (complete with total surveillance of the population) is
ludicrous. The idea of a populist winning an election despite the merciless
maneuverings of both parties makes better sense. That has been done at least
once, by Teddy Roosevelt. (There’s more history to study there, but the basis
holds.) We may hope that the more rational and experienced populist, Senator
Sanders, emerges a winner from his party’s milling machine. The reason for that
is simple. The only candidates with real chances of winning will be those
chosen by the two major party primary processes. At this point, the Democrat
nominee is almost certain to win, per many and varied polls. (Remember that the
election is typically decided by independents, who are less of a factor in
primaries.) Your statement that the Democrat primary is ‘not the election of
the next president’ is thus either ill-informed or disingenuous. Besides, you
comment on the Republican primary freely and extensively. Why not discuss the
Democrats? I see it as important to note that the Democrat internal party
process is more effective so far than the Republicans’ at suppressing dissent.
Besides the internal machinations, there is some reason the traditional media
failed to cover the viewer-grabbing story of Sanders’ campaign for so long.
Finally finding it unavoidable, they continue to downplay his chances. We hear
nothing of the ways Clinton could stumble again, either.
“Changing the phrase for this nation at its founding to ‘Christian
people’ still oversimplifies. The Christian population was undoubtedly a
majority, but they were widely varied in their religious and political beliefs.
There were always substantial populations of non-Christians, and at this late
date we need also to include Native Americans and slaves, many of whom retained
their African and/or Caribbean beliefs.”
My response to the
Blog:
Re:
service to the buffoons. Quite
so. One of my motives when I
decided to leave the cockpit for management was along those lines. I wanted to prove you did not have to
be an asshole to be successful in business. I failed!
Re:
the current two-party political system.
Interesting observations. I
have never . . . well, actually, I guess never is not the correct word, since I
considered myself a Republican until Richard Nixon became president. I have been a dedicated, moderate,
independent, non-partisan ever since and remain so to this day.
Re:
“Why not discuss the Democrats?” Well, I certainly have spent more words on the Republican
front-runner than I have all other candidates combined. My bad! However, I do believe I have offered support and criticism
about both of the remaining Democratic candidates as well as about candidates
who are no longer actively running – both Republican and Democrat. If
you have something -- anything -- you want to say about the Democratic
candidates, you are most welcome to do so, at your convenience.
I
am not particularly concerned about the primary process . . . other than the rules
are the rules. When the political
parties complete their choices and the election ballot is defined, I will make
my choice of those on the ballot before I cast my vote on Election Day.
Re:
“Christian people.” I can agree with your assessment. My understanding of demographics both then and now suggests
Christians remain the majority religious affiliation in this Grand Republic,
although diminishing in fraction of our citizenry. Yes, exactly, there have always been non-Christians in our
citizenry from the Founding to present, and that fraction is increasing in
size.
. . . Round two:
“The problem with saying ‘the rules are the rules’ is that the
rules are rigged, geared not to furthering the representative republic but to
keeping the corrupt in power. This explains simply why populists from all over
the political spectrum are in rebellion. Regardless of pretty much anything
else, we know that our ‘leaders’ serve corporations, Wall Street, and the
wealthy. We don't believe anything establishment figures say, whether it's ‘our’
party or the other gang.”
. . . my response to round two:
Re:
“the rules are rigged.” Yes, they are, as we should all expect in any
non-governmental organization. The
political parties are emphasizing what their ‘leadership’ believes is necessary
for their organizations. The
primaries are NOT elections. They
are internal party political selection events by the rigged rules. Primary voters are NOT electing the
next president; they are only selecting their candidate to represent them. I was not allowed to vote, as I refuse
to declare an affiliation with any political party, but I am not offended by
that exclusion. Further, both
political parties emphasize state party apparatuses, and they also are rigged
per the motives of state party leaders.
So, for those who choose affiliate with and vote in party selection
events, the choices are: play by the rules, change the rules before the next
primary in their state, or take their affiliation elsewhere. Some of the state parties made a huge mistake
in opening primaries. In those
states, we have NO idea what real votes will look like in the real election.
Re:
“our ‘leaders’ serve corporations, Wall Street, and the wealthy.” It has always been . . . follow the
money. And, thanks to the
Supremes’ terrible Citizens United ruling, we have made the money much harder to
follow. This is where I agree
absolutely with Bernie Sanders – our political system is, has been and will
continue to be corrupted by money . . . until we change the system.
. . . Round three:
“I was not making a legal point but speaking as an observer. The
parties may not be selecting a President through their primaries in some legal
sense, but functionally that's exactly what they are doing. Due to the
two-party system, we will be said to elect one of the two people selected in
this less-than-democratic process. Call it what you will, it subverts the
intention of the Constitution, which never addresses dominant political
parties. The Founders hoped to avoid this sad situation, but only attempted to
address it through the misguided electoral college. That tries to stop
malignant forces, but fails because it relies on people already in power.
It may be a saving grace that neither major party has sold itself to the
Millennial generation. They may yet overturn those corrupt powers.”
. . . my response to
round three:
Thank
you for your observations, perspective and opinions.
The
Constitution
does not address many aspects of life, as we know it today. Heck, senators were ‘elected’ by state
legislatures until passage of the 17th Amendment (1913), with the first election of
U.S. senators by We, the People, in 1914.
We
have discussed the Electoral College many times. My opinion has not changed. I still believe in the wisdom of the Founders / Framers to
avoid simple, popular elections. I
think we bear witness in this silly season why the Founders were correct to
avoid simple, popular elections.
I
certainly agree that corruption (direct and indirect) has been a persistent
threat to the election process.
Something, many things, must change to lessen, if not eliminate, the
influence of money, which has become a new form of royalty.
At
the end of the day, I think we both seek the same objective – fair, reasonable,
uncorrupted elections – federal, state and local.
. . . Round four:
“We are in agreement as to the ultimate goal, but the parties'
machinery makes decisions too important to all of us to be left to
self-interested power brokers. If we see the political parties in the same
light as we do the Salvation Army or the Red Cross, we risk our national
future. (Actually, the Red Cross works with more regulation than the
politicians. Scary thought, huh?)”
. . . my response to round four:
In
essence, it seems, you are suggesting the political parties be eliminated or
regulated at the federal level, and supersede the states. If my perception is correct, I can see
attractions, but I also see detractors.
While we can all see the bad things, this may be one of those ‘be
careful what you wish for’ situations – the result may be far worse than what
we have now.
. . . Round five:
“The parties cannot be eliminated and regulation would entail
major issues. Rather than try to control the parties we have, we need to find
ways to make life easier for additional parties. They already exist, and I imagine at least two (the
Libertarians and the Green Party) could draw members if they could get their
messages out as easily as the two major parties. How to get this through the
parties that have a tight grip on the process is a good question. Businesses do
that by presenting cost / analysis. Because so many people are interested right
now in changing the system, addressing the electorate rather than the
entrenched politicians would probably be more effective. That leaves the
question of getting the message to the people. Perhaps the heart of that task
would be best by Internet.”
. . . my response to round five:
You
know, frankly, I agree. I would
love to see a proper debate between the candidates for the various political
parties – Democratic, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Constitutional . . .
heck, we might even throw in the Communists, Socialists and Reform. Part of the flip side of the inclusive
coin is where do we draw the line?
How does one qualify to be considered a viable candidate? There needs to be a threshold, or
things get out of control, e.g., 17 individuals for just the Republican
nomination. Even independents (no
party affiliation) would be acceptable . . . if they met the threshold
requirement. The difficulty is the
Press, who are driven by ratings, commercial sales, shareholder return, et
cetera, and thus are susceptible to manipulation. Perhaps an independent governmental body, like what the
Federal Election Commission should be, should sponsor or host debates for those
who qualify to the threshold level.
One thing for certain, I want to hear other voices, which is precisely
why I continue to do this Update.
My
very best wishes to all. Take care
of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
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