Last word on the subject of the week: If you're voting to put the fox in charge of the chicken coop, and if you're doing this to please a relative, spouse or friend who consistently tries to dominate your life, remember that you possess one of the world's greatest powers, the Secret Ballot. No matter what scoundrels trying to undo our civil rights and liberties may tell you, no one will ever know how you voted. This would be a good time to look into your own soul.

Let's suppose for a minute that a newly elected president of the US has been elected and is able to get Congress to
• pass legislation expanding health care, including confirming the principles and major provisions of Roe v Wade, rendering the Supreme Court irrelevant in the matter
• pass a plan for loans (or grants or tax offsets) for first-time home purchase and small business startup
• pass the border reform act that was both introduced by Republicans and then killed by that same party
and
• pass a constitutional amendment abolishing the Electoral College in favor of direct popular vote for president and vide-president and sending it to the states
• letting justice take its course regardless of political considerations in the matter of persons who have conspired or acted against the Constitution or have been convicted of other crimes
• accepting blame and being willing nto change course when policies misfire.

Now let's suppose the other person is elected, whose program would include
• reducing benefits, excluding participants and transferring public funds from Medicare and Social Security, principally to reduce taxes, including creating laws on female health care that are solely pro-natal and assign all medical decisions to unelected, politically appointed bureaucrats with no scientific training
• using police and military power to round up people based on their appearance, accent or name
• separating families based on their ability to provide ad hoc documentation of their nationality notwithstanding that they had been seized without warrant
• deporting those who cannot satisfy politically appointed bureaucrats of their right of residence with consequent loss of property and civil rights
• attempt to manipulate voting rights and procedures to insure continued power of a minority
• pardoning persons based on political considerations of persons who have conspired or acted against the Constitution or have been convicted of other crimes
• blaming every misstep on the actions of others.

Which of those sets of policies is likely to harm you or your family, and how?

Which of those sets of policies is likely to benefit you or your family, and how?

Which set is most consistent with American values?

Which of those platforms are you going to vote for this fall?

Personalities are transient; policies affect generations.

For the past ten years I've been working with a group that is seeking to help small, minority businesses to start farming enterprises. Our emphasis has been on indoor farming and lately on microgreens.

An associate of one of our members had acquired a substantial endowment of equipment for controlled environment agriculture (CEA) and recently moved it to a location on an island in Puget Sound. Much of the food produced was distributed via food banks in the northern part of the Seattle metropolitan area. Our group had previously provided a modest amount of fresh green produce to the distribution effort, and I can attest to the efficacy of their program.

Within a day of the delivery the equipment and before it could become operational it was set afire by person or persons unknown and totally destroyed with a loss of about $250,000. The non-profit was of course devastated.

Because the affected organization is related to a minority community, no one is seriously discounting the probability that the attack was racially or ethnically motivated.

Anyone wishing to know more or to help may find more information here
(https://www.kiro7.com/.../whi.../OTC2UZDOJFGY7KWGHQ46YJZZ5Q/)
plus a GoFundMe here (https://www.gofundme.com/.../support-blackseed-farms)

And if you live in the area and hear the inevitable whispers, the Island County sheriff wants to hear from you. Someone needs to go to jail.

One hundred and thirty million Russians can be wrong. But they're not blind or deaf or stupid. Perhaps we can help them understand what's going on in Ukraine. It might cost a few cents per minute, but it just might work. Call or text a new Russian friend today. Some possible messages follow.

To call a Russian phone from the USA, first dial 01 for for international numbers, then one for calls from the USA, then 7 for Russia, then add a 3 or 4 digit city (area) code (NOT beginning with 6 or 7, because those are in Kazakhstan, go figure!), then add the individual phone number, which will have either 3 or four numbers, making a total of ten after the country code 7. Area codes beginning with 9 are for mobile phones.

E.g., to call Ivan Ivanovich Ivanetz in Irkutsk,

Continues...

TextForFree

The election may be over, but the pandemic is not, especially in the USA. It's likely we'll continue "winning" well into 2021. During the past week we have experienced over 100,000 cases five times, and a death rate of 1,000 cases per day seems to be baked into the cake.

The nationalists among us may note that India is overtaking the US in the absolute number of cases, but they should also note that they have four times our population and a fraction of our medical capability (not as a matter of talent, just as a function of wealth). Japan, on the other hand, with 38 percent of our population has just 108,151 cases and five deaths, respectively one percent as many cases and 0.0002 percent as many deaths. This is incontrovertibly a difference of policy; it is the same disease.

Continuing our current policies for another 73 days is an foolish, even insane, approach. We can project an additional death toll of 70,000 at least, plus deaths among the newly infected, at today's reduced rate, of at least (100,00 per day X 73 days = 7.3MM * .0240 = ) 175,000, totaling 412,000 attributable to the current regime.

In a parliamentary system, the current adminstration would be gone this week, which if so—coupled with changes in public health measures—could save tens of thousands of lives.

The current task force should resign forthwith, recognizing that their approach has been fruitless. There is no excuse for retaining them solely because the Founders had to travel to the capital on horseback.

To extend the trans-Pacific comparison, if the task force members do not deign to resign, they might consider what might have been expected of them during Japan's samurai era.

(Graphic: Kaiser Family Foundation; https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/fact-sheet/coronavirus-tracker/)

Perhaps you're considering voting to re-elect Donald Trump because of his stellar perfornance in combatting Covid-19. You might want to consider the actual numbers, so you can be prepared for your excoriation at Thanksgiving dinner in 2022 (no one will be holding Thanksgiving dinner this year and possibly next.)

In fact, some number between 290,000 and 545,000 of our fellow citizens will die before Inauguration Day 2021. Your vote cannot change that. You can only change what happens thereafter. Please choose wisely. Here is some castor oil for what ails us.

It's not hard to understand the progress of the Covid-19 pandemic in the US or to anticipate the (lack of) results from federal efforts to control its spread. Consider the adjacent graph (click it for a larger view), which tracks deaths and projected deaths as the US responds to the nine million cases reported to date (which probably represent a somewhat larger real number). The horizontal axis is tiime since the reporting of the fifth death (left) until the present (right).

The blue line shows the number of deaths reported daily as a fourteen-day moving average. An early peak in April is followed by another in July and August, and we are now experiencing an even higher and rising death toll in October. If this looks like waves to you, you are correct, It appears we are now experiencing a third surge in deaths. Oh my, surely no one could have foreseen this!

Well, maybe.

Consider the red line. It shows the projection of deaths through Inauguration Day 2021, calculated as the seven-day moving average number of new cases daily since February, multiplied by the then-known death rate, which peaked at 7.2% in April. Thus it appeared on April 22 that over 640,000 persons would die. At that time, three months into the epidemic, public concern over what would come to be called a pandemic, was still rising slowly despite the deaths of over 30,000 residents of New York and New Jersey. The red line shows the projection based only on what is known at the time. Note that at this time it is again rising.

Throughout the winter and spring, the appointment of a presidential task force was accompanied by continued denials by the President and numerous subordinates that the disease was not serious and would "just go away." There were no serious attempts to impose health discipline on the general population. However, by April 22, the peak day of new cases in the first surge, over 45,000 Americans had died, and the case load exceed 825,000. Could it be that the US government, which had won WWII and put men on the moon, had gotten it wrong?

Happily for those screaming "hoax!" the number of new cases began to drop as the initial points of infection, coastal cities with large levels of international travel from Asia and Europe, began to impose health care policies like social distancing and masking. The nation heard the first cries of "we're winning" from the President and his supporters. Meanwhile the daily death toll fluctuated between 300 and 3,000, as those infected in the first wave continued dying. Inconsiderate of them.

The temporary decline after April occurred despite the inaction or floundering of the federal government.. Those states and cities with competent governments took action to acquire necessary resources. More importantly, the medical establishment shared information about what was and was not working in the care of infected persons who became sick or were hospitalized.

The green line and the purple line take account of the fact that some proportion of those already infected will die. The green line shows the estimate based on the average ratio of deaths:cases over the entire pandemic (since February); the purple line uses the ratio as of the then-current data. Because the "latent" deaths are included, a decline in new cases (which is not happening) has little effect on the number of deaths.

By contrast, in South Korea, which imposed strict requirements limiting public gatherings, social distancing and personal hygiene, the number of infections and deaths per capita is a tiny fraction of the US rates. In Singapore, which "quarantined" its people in the first weeks of the world pandemic, the infections and deaths are about one percent of the US rate.

Data source

El candidato demócrata y ex-vice-presidente Joe Biden ha anunciado que en el primer día de su presidencia, formará un grupo de trabajo ejecutivo para encontrar y reunir los padres y niños separado en la frontera de los EEUU y México. La dicha separación ya es en su tercer año para algunos de los estimados 545 niños cuyos padres no se han identificado, por causa de la incompetencia y falta de empatía de los funcionarios fronterizos, bajo la dirección de la administración actual. Tristemente, es probable que algunas reuniones nunca se realizarán, un resultado—en mi opinión—indiscutiblemente en las manos del Pres. Donald Trump.

Democratic candidate and former Vice-president Joe Biden has announced that on the first day of his presidency he will form a task force reporting to him to find and reunite the children and parents separated by the immigration policies of the US along the southern frontier. That separation is now in its third year for some of the affected children due to the incompetence and lack of empathy of frontier officials, all under the guidance of the present administration. Sadly it is likely that some reunions will never happen, a result that in my opinion is incontestably in the hands of Pres. Donald Trump.

A literary scenario: The head of state of a large, heavily armed nation that dominates the world in military and commercial power is losing his grip on reality due to age and an undiagnosed disease. His advisors and sycophants close ranks to hide his disabilities from the public.

As his condition worsens he is often trundled off to various governmental or private estates, lodges and other venues, publicly "to rest" and privately to be treated for symptoms of the malady by practitioners sometimes accused of quackery. His family, sometimes suspected of scheming against him, swirls about performing their usual daily routines and when asked about his condition asserts that nothing is amiss.

At times he is incommunicado; at other, more lucid times he is presented as the spokesman of the nation, making public pronouncements on issues of the day under close watch of government officials lest he make false, misleading or outright dangerous statements that might lead to civil unrest or even to war.

No, not that head of state! I refer, of course, to the theme of "The Madness of King George III," by Alan Bennett, the book (1992), play and movie (1994). (Slight variations in title.) All parallel scenarios are purely coincidental.

I await anxiously the FOX News report — based on a shocking exposé by Rush Limbaugh — of how Barack Obama Sr. conceived the creation of the coronavirus way back in 1956 when he was a student in Kenya and later, with the connivance of his wife the junior anthropology professor and his US in-laws the furniture salesman and the branch bank manager and funded by the global Communist menace, conspired posthumously to maneuver his son Barack Jr. into the US presidency, wherein he was able during brief breaks in meetings with Chinese President Xi to arrange for the laboratory formulation of the new virus. Truly diabolical!

In The Guardian of Sat 8 Feb 2020, Karine Jean-Pierre writes "The real outrage about Iowa? The Democratic party silencing black voters.

"If Democrats want to dismantle white supremacy, they can start right now by dismantling a caucus system that ignores black voters

The results from Iowa are in: there are no results.

On Thursday, three days after the caucuses began on Monday, the Associated Press announced that due to irregularities and how close the race is, it would be unable to declare a winner.

Confusion and a lack of information are the story coming out of Iowa right now. But there’s another story worth telling: that, no matter who wins, the results won’t be representative of the Democratic race for president writ large. And that’s because the Democratic nomination process, by starting in Iowa and New Hampshire, systematically drowns out the voices and power of black voters.

‘Right now, there’s a spotlight shining on Iowa. I hope we use it to illuminate the real injustice of the caucuses.’

It may behoove the Democratic Party of Washington State to be sure its own house is in order.

Read the Jean-Pierre article

Some advocacy group has been posting photographs supposedly of alternative modes of transportation in the Seattle. Note to the noncognoscenti: these photographs show the only level street in all of downtown Seattle, specifically on Second Avenue.

Any other route—for example any street crossing Second Avenue itself and continuing more than a block or so—requires climbing hills at 45° angles. It is a popular fantasy of the sandals and ponytail set that cars can be completely replaced by other means of transportation. The reality is that residents of the urban area travel not in straight lines as shown but in thousands of sporadic and random trips among millions of random destination. Most of those trips originate and end outside the municipality of Seattle in other municipalities whose local governments' propensity for competition exceeds their desire for cooperation.

By far the greater problem is the storage of all the needed vehicles between trips; paradoxically, Seattle is allowing high-density construction without parking, which adds to the backup in congested areas. Walking or cycling on the few level streets in the metropolitan area may be a healthful alternative for twentysomethings, but it is surely inappropriate for taking children to after-school activities or elderly residents to appointments or shopping.

Greater Seattle and surrounding counties are in the process of building a fixed-rail transit system, whose origins and destinations in addition to downtown Seattle include several suburban shopping malls, many of which are in decline under pressure from online purchase and delivery systems. That system, like many in older eastern cities, maybe come maladapted to future residential working patterns.

Happily a better solution is on the horizon in the form of autonomous vehicles that are not owned by their occupants but instead respond to short-term demand for travel between random origins and destinations without regard for arbitrary starting and ending times such as the eight-hour workday. In the interim, buses are the alternative that offers both predictable routing and flexibility. The challenge is not technological but social, as buses hardly confer high social status on their riders.

Sadly, the political battle is the most intractable part of this problem. The overwhelming disparity of the funds available to the automobile and gasoline lobbies compared to the alternative approaches makes it unlikely that rationality will prevail.

A friend posted on social media a link to a social media article labeled "Lindsay Graham says he won't read impeachment transcripts," and he has also full-throatedly supported Tr*mp in other forums. Another friend asked, "what happened to him? John McCain must be turning over in his grave."

It seems rather obvious: He's positioning himself as Tr*mp's successor, knowing he'd whomp VP Mike Pence in primaries. By appearing to support Tr*mp now, he can preserve rapport with the crazies while potentially appealing to a wider audience.

Would a deposed Tr*mp support Pence or Graham?

Pres. Trump has claimed that he had no pending deals in Russia after the beginning of his presidential campaign. Yet consider the Internet domain trumptowermoscow.com. It was registered in 2008 by "The Trump Organization" and has been renewed annually including three times (2015, 2016 and 2017) since the presidential campaign of 2016 began.

If indeed the project was to end before the election campaign of 2016 as Pres. Trump has asserted, why would registrants renew the related domain afterward, most recently in July 2017, through 2018? It certainly contradicts the statement that the candidate had no pending deals in Russia. It would appear that someone within The Trump Organization is at the very least hedging his bet, and as everyone knows, that "organization" is totally controlled by one person.

Two reasons for the contradiction suggest themselves: Either (a) that oft-cited, unnamed "low ranking employee who is no longer with the company" failed in his/her responsibility to cancel it, or (b) there was never any intent to abandon the project unless the presidential bid faiiled. Take your choice.

Of course there may be other possible reasons for the unnecessary renewal, such as poltergeists, an undiscovered email from Hillary or surreptitious actions by unnamed conspirators out to get The Donald.

Following is the WHOIS query —which anyone can execute— that shows the original registration and status (standard disclaimers & terms omitted). The standard terminal inquiry, which obscures the name of the registrant using a privacy device of the registrar, is followed by the public report from whoisxy.com (LINK) which reveals the name of the registrant.

As Deep Throat might have said had he lived longer, "follow the domain."


©2017 A. R. Clark

The Guardian reported (earlier in October) that "a renewable energy revolution could end the world’s rising demand for oil and coal in the 2020s, decades ahead of forecasts from oil and mining companies."

Comment: With the tiniest nudge from the US government, which still sets the tone for the world economy, the rate of conversion to sustainable energy could be accelerated. Even the current energy companies could benefit: Though they have historically made $ by the sale of fuels and related products (plastics, another problem area), they have also created the world's greatest systems of logistics and commodity management.

So why are they dragging their feet? Converting to this service function as their primary function could guarantee their continuation regardless of the decline of fuels. One would think shareholders who value long-term appreciation would support this approach in huge numbers. As for the speculators, who gives a damn?