One Republican Strategy for Containing Kamala and Defeating Democracy

Since Kamala Harris is doing well against her opponent, the convicted felon and known abuser of women, Republicans have been working on strategies in case Trump loses the election and can not steal it, as they are certainly planning to do.

My summary of at least one of their strategies is as follows:

First win a majority in the Senate.  With the resignation of Senator Manchin they believe they have a good chance of either winning a 50-50 position or even a 51-49 position.  If they do the latter, they can tie up any legislation and control senate investigations.  According to a survey prediction by thehill.com, the Republicans are favored to win the Senate.

Second, win a majority in the House.  Again, they are favored to win the House of Representatives.

Third, they overwhelmingly control the Supreme Court which has demonstrate a willingness to violate any standard of law or precedence to support extreme Republican positions.

With these three things, or even two of them, the Republicans are confident they can "contain" Kamala Harris and defeat any attempt to improve the country or act in the nation's interest.  Then they can use this to go for the presidency in 2028.

Therefore, although defeating Trump is obviously the highest priority, winning the House and the Senate are essential if we are to do more than just prevent Trump from destroying the country.  We need both houses in order to move the country forward.  And even then, the nation must deal with the right wing and lawless former Supreme Court, something the Democrats, at least, have proven unwilling to do so far.

Republican zombie horde attempting to climb the Statue of Liberty

The Angel's Celebrate the Arrival of Jill's Album

The vinyl for Jill's new double album, Earthly Pleasures, arrived at the house today.  The album is about the secular use of sacred music, among other things.  

The angels celebrate in heaven!

The images were created with Midjourney.

Final Warning

I have tried to avoid writing about either Ukraine or the Israel/Hamas war.  But if I read one more stupid editorial about either, I will be forced to take action.  You have been warned.

More Rendered Images 08/09/2024

Not that any of this particularly matters, here are some images rendered with Arnold that are going up on Instagram.

SIGGRAPH 2024 and Denver Report

This was perhaps one of my most enjoyable and useful SIGGRAPH's for years.  Here is a synopsis of some of the high points.  

A special thank you to Paul Debevec who invited me to a half dozen parties and encouraged me to go to them, and to the exhibit floor, and to papers that I knew nothing about.

Also special thanks to Julian Gomez who somehow found me a technical pass.  The Technical Program costs about $1,000 these days and without it you can not go to the heart of SIGGRAPH. It was wonderful to have.  Some of its value comes from not feeling less than the other participants.

If people is the heart of a SIGGRAPH then this was an excellent SIGGRAPH.  From NYU there was Ken Perlin, Denis Zorin and Aaron Hertzmann.  From UNC we had Henry Fuchs, Turner Whitted, Mary Whitton, Nick England and Mark LeVoy.  From WETA and the ASWF, Kimball Thurston.  From Autodesk we had Marcel de Jong and Frederic Servant (manages Arnold).  From SCAD we had Gray Marshall and Christos Sfetsios (who had a good theory of alien UFOs).  Briefly sat near Debbie Deas.

I made a point of reading every poster and taking pictures of some of them.  Every third poster had the author standing there and you could ask questions.

The good news and the bad news is that there were at least two papers whose ideas I have had and that furthermore I had done work on, but was told they could never be papers.

From the Pioneer's event we learn that Thad Beier passed away several months ago.  

Finally, I stayed at the Motel 6 downtown for about $80/night.  It was not too bad either.  The Uber cost between the hotel and the convention center was about $15 each way.  There is a great train between Denver International Airport and Union Station.  It takes a long time but that is because DIA is way the heck out there.  It turns out there was a decent little cafe in the back of the Hyatt and one can also get healthy food at Target of all places.  The downtown area was all ripped up because of construction.

Denver has a lot of interesting old construction left over from the mining days, I presume.  Too bad it has been discovered, it would be a good place to buy an old house and fix it up.   The Meow Wolf venue was entertaining.  Denver seems to be a "meat town".  It was hard to find decent healthy food for vegetarians.

I came home, of course, and had COVID.

A proud author

Doug Kay and George Joblove

A happy Poster

Robo Doggy

Meow Wolf

A modern data glove

COVID Again

Came back from SIGGRAPH, felt lousy, took a COVID test and guess what?

Pictures for Siggraph

 How can you go to Siggraph without bringing pictures?  Well you can't.  Here are a few rendered pictures and maybe I will do a few Midjourney pictures as well.  Csn you get which one is which?

Suggestions for Kamala's Platform

In light of the threat to American Democracy posed by Trump and his fellow conspirators, we humbly present to you some ideas for your still-evolving position platform.  

Many people have noticed that many Democrats dont seem to want freedom as much as the Republicans want tyranny.  I hope that you, my fellow Democrats, will be serious and resolute in opposing Trump and all his works.

This is in no particular order.

- Encourage Justices Thomas, Alito and Roberts to resign in light of their outrageous behavior designed to delay any trial of former president Trump. This partisan political behavior is unworthy of the Supreme Court.

- Work with the Department of Justice to see that former president Trump receives a fair and timely trial for the criminal charges related to Jan 6 and for his apparent abuse of highly classified material.

- Encourage Justice Cannon to resign in light of her partisan behavior in the classified document case or face impeachment.

- Work with Congress to encourage other fascists put in place in our justice system by McConnell and other right wing nuts to resign or be impeached

- Work with Congress to see that important government activities such as the federal budget and the promotion of military officers not be held hostage ever again to the Republican right or any one member of Congress.

- Increase aid and support to Ukraine

- Trump-proof our foreign policy alliances so no one president can destroy our country’s alliances

- Sponsor and pass legislation to guarantee reproductive rights to women

- Sponsor and pass legislation to eliminate the so-called “right to work” states

- Sponsor and pass legislation to restore the Voting Rights Act

- Sponsor and pass legislation to eliminate “Citizens United”

- Sponsor and pass legislation to require some version of objective truth to the news media. End the Fox News and One America abominations. Free speech is not the same as actively lying, slandering and working to destroy democracy.  You know what I mean.  Its pretty crazy.

Picture of convention by Midjourney:

100th Anniversary of the Planetarium

 This week is the 100th Anniversary of the Planetarium.  The International Planetarium Society is meeting in Berlin.

Picture courtesy of Midjourney

As a friend points out, in two years in Japan.

https://www.ips-planetarium.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1874313&group=

Anarchy, Oligarchy and Tyranny c/o The Financial Times

The Financial Times has a good article on the failure of the American Republic using analogies to the Greek political science terms of anarchy vs oligarchy vs tyranny.  You can read the entire article here (although it may be behind a paywall).

https://www.ft.com/content/a7eea0af-bf9f-4635-812b-271c30620e72

Here are two paragraphs that I thought were entertaining:

The anarchy can seem fun, at least for a while. With some luck, chaos can bring political fruit. At a convention, where one spectacle soon displaces the next, these different guises of democratic collapse can give one another cover. The strongman act of Trump and Vance distracts from their blatant dependence on the wealthy. Their threat to deport migrants shrouds the reality that none of the relevant oligarchs was born in the US, that Trump married two migrants and that Vance married the daughter of migrants.

In practice, though, the Republicans’ anti-republic is contradictory. The different variants of repression can be equally celebrated so long as they are all directed against an imagined enemy. But the plan to fire tens of thousands of civil servants (anarchy) would get in the way of deporting millions of people (tyranny). As the billionaires claim power ever more openly (oligarchy), they put pressure on the aspiring authoritarians who are supposed to be the strongmen (tyranny). The people who want a strongman don’t want him to be a puppet. Signs of strain were certainly evident at the convention. 

Image courtesy of MidJourney