New Russian Super Torpedo and the New Cold War

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Today we are going to ask some questions about this alleged Russian Superweapon, the Torpedo From Hell, the Status-6. Get your booties on, because we are going to slog through some messy Cold War logic in a few paragraphs.

If you know nothing about this latest scare from Russia, the best article I know about it is on Foxtrot Alpha and can be found here.

Here is what you are supposed to gather about this torpedo. First, it wasn't an accidental leak, the Russians want us to know about it. Second, it may or may not exist, and if it exists, it probably doesn't do everything that it claims to do because some of those things are *really hard* and if you could really do them you might want to keep it a secret. Third, we already knew that they had nasty ways of blowing us up and spreading radioactive death for a long time.

So what is this all about then? The Russians have made it clear that they do not like our little missile shield. Why is a bit of a puzzle and is discussed below but it is very clear that they do not like the shield at all. But we have refused to stop deploying it for whatever reason (also discussed below). So my guess, purely a guess, is that they are presenting this torpedo (underwater missile) as a way of saying “See! We don't really care about your missile shield because we can blow you up anyway! So there!”

Now, what is a little weird about this is that the missile shield that we have and are likely to have in the next decade or so falls loosely into two types. One type is a tactical “Patriot” missile type, developed in part by the Israelis. The other is a strategic missile type developed on our own that uses the Navy SM6 (Standard Missile 6) to the best of my knowledge. The tactical missile defense is a pretty good defense against a fair number of tactical missiles at one time. These missiles that they defend against can certainly cause a lot of damage but they will not destroy Tel Aviv without an awful lot of work.

The strategic missile shield is what we are probably talking about here. The thing about this is that the Russians have nothing to worry about from it. Why? Because in time of nuclear war, the Russians could easily launch enough missiles to overwhelm this shield. This shield is good for a few missiles, maybe, certainly not the tsunami of missiles one would expect if we were in a nuclear war with the Russians.

So what is this shield good for? Two things. The first would be one or two missiles that were launched by mistake or in some way were launched by a rogue site that was not under control of its nominal government. And the second thing it could be useful for is in defense against a few missiles from a country like Iran or N. Korea who only has a few nuclear weapons available at one time and maybe also only a few relatively primitive intercontinental missiles to deliver them with.

So the point of the Status-6 may be to say something like, “We spit on your missile shield! See, we can go around it with our nifty torpedo!”. Ok, fine, but the missile shield was not aimed (so to speak) at Russia, so its all a little puzzling.

Maybe it has more to do with influencing people who are not very sophisticated at this, like the populations of Europe and Asia who are easily frightened? Of course people should be frightened about nuclear war, but I do not see how defending against loony toons like Iran and N. Korea could possibly threaten Russia.

But one thing you can be sure of, this is the kind of nuke vs nuke, spy vs spy thing that happened in the Cold War all the time. And maybe it is about prestige and appearances.  Or maybe it is about something I know nothing about. So welcome to the new Cold War.

Criminalizing Corporate Crime and Malfeasance

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Famously, Don Corleone said in the novel The Godfather that one lawyer with a briefcase could steal more than a gang of thieves with guns, or words to that effect.

Of course, everyone knows this is true. The egregious corruption of our justice system, from top to bottom is well known. Whether it has always been that way or has gotten worse in the last 3 or 4 decades is not known to me, but in the interest of helping our poor, stupid, and corrupt political elite in matters that should be obvious, we are going to make a few comments.

Dear Stupid Politicians,

If you do not start fixing the justice system, you are going to see a blowback that makes the Globalization / Trump debacle look minor in retrospect.

Everyone has noticed, and I mean everyone, that our justice system is grossly unfair and biased in favor of the rich. A poor man can go to jail in Alabama for life for stealing a stapler, but not even stealing billions of dollars on Wall Street and causing the collapse of the world economic system is a cause for even the most modest reprimand.

But if you keep ignoring what the people think, and keep kicking the can down the road while chortling to yourself that you got away with it again, one day this is going to blow up in your face. This is a specific example of the more general "failure of the cultural myth" or "failure to believe in a nation's institutions". It means that people start believing conspiracy theories, even the most ludicrous, and never believe anything that a politician tells them. You don't want that, although it may already be too late as The Donald Trump Disaster demonstrates.

What can you do about this?

In a nutshell, when a corporation commits a crime, people should go to jail. And I do not mean the little people here, say, for example, the 5,000 people that Wells Fargo fired after a decade of crime. We mean the top executives, all of them, and for a reasonable period of time depending on the extent of the crime.

Specifically, this includes the people on Wall Street whose incompetence and greed caused the financial collapse. Put them in jail. This means the executives at Volkswagon, to the very top, who of course knew all along that they were committing fraud with the EPA Decepticon software. This means the Exxon executives, who suppressed research reports on global warming and funded fake science to attempt to delay action on global warming. This means the Wells Fargo executives who stole money from their clients. This means AT&T who was caught stealing $88 million from customers. I suspect that is the tip of the iceberg. Put them in jail.

Put them all in jail.  Yes, even the ones who gave all that money to your reelection campaign and that you have been protecting all these years behind the scenes.  Even those executives you play golf with.  Even them.

Furthermore, if our government can seize the assets of middle class people who have not even been accused of a crime, then civil asset forfeiture could surely be applied to such people as Exxon executives or Wells Fargo executives. Just think of all the good you can do with that extra $100M from the Wells Fargo CEO who of course knew all along that his company was stealing. 

We all know that "statute of limitations" is nothing more than a way of exempting rich criminals from facing the penalties of their crimes.  People figured that out long ago.  So when some stooge quotes "statute of limitations" at us why a criminal corporation can not be prosecuted, we know we are being lied to again.

We dont care that you failed over the last 60 years to make the criminal code correspond in the least to fairness here. We know you are in the pay of the worst criminals / executives. Put them in jail anyway and fix the criminal code while you are at it. 

Of course you wont do it. You are as corrupt as they are. But you have been warned, so dont pretend innocence when this blows up in your face.  

Sincerely,
MW
Global Wahrman

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Article on AT&T Stealing $88 Million

http://www.networkworld.com/article/3148319/mobile-wireless/atandt-to-cough-up-88m-for-cramming-mobile-customer-bills.html

Five Hours of Hell

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The Visual Effects Bakeoff will take place this year at the usual place (La Peer and Wilshire) on January 7, 2017 from 5:30 PM - until 10:30 PM.

Whenever possible, I recommend sitting on an aisle seat so it is easier to escape between films and chill out in the lobby. This is one advantage that the non-members have.

The films are listed below in alphabetical order:

Alice through the Looking Glass

Arrival

The BFG

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Captain America: Civil War

Deadpool

Deepwater Horizon

Doctor Strange

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Independence Day: Resurgence

The Jungle Book

Kubo and the Two Strings

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Passengers

Rogue One

Star Trek Beyond

Suicide Squad

Sully

Warcraft

X-Men: Apocalypse

I have never really understood the rules here.

I have no idea what films will be selected, but here are some guesses. I suspect that Dawn of Justice, Captain America, Dr. Strange, Rogue One, X-Men and Jungle Book will be selected. I think they nominate 10 films for consideration. Deadpool is interesting and might be selected. I predict Suicide Squad and Independence Day will not be nominated.

As usual, the Academy members are separated from the unwashed masses by the Academy SS (Screening Service) personnel. If you are not a member and you wish to hobnob with your elite friends, you need to be there early. How early is of course anyone's guess but since the US Government worked so hard to send American jobs overseas in order to destroy the middle class and elevate and exalt the rich, there has usually been no problem getting in. I would say about an hour early is a safe bet, say 4:30 pm.

If you are going to attend, it is best to wear all black and leave your sidearms at home, there is no recording, whistling, spitting, or throwing of items of any sort. Those who are ejected from the theatre are never seen again.

What Field and Where?

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Since my participation in the field of computer graphics and animation is not up to my requirements, although I suppose that could change at any time, the best plan I can come up with is to go to graduate school and try to learn another trade. Many people assume that when I return to school (if I return to school) I will study computer graphics / animation. But why would I do that if the field is not being minimally economically viable? Yes VR/AR is spending a lot of money.  But how that will work out remains to be seen.

No doubt, visualization will be part of what I do in the future, no matter what direction I take. I seem to have dedicated a big part of my life to it, so why not continue?

So what field and where?

1. Field

If it involves computer science, then it might involve computer security, computational biology, machine learning, autonomy, or image understanding. All these fields are very important and interesting. If it involves being able to teach, then a terminal degree in art, the MFA, is useful. It would also be entertaining to get. In a previous life I studied economics and it is clear to me that the world economists are morons and a half, it might be fun to get an advanced degree in it. All my life I have studied history. Why not a PhD in that? Finally, RAND has a graduate institute.  I could probably get in, and try to work on a variety of RAND projects.  I see this as form of regression to a happier time.  The plan is to apply to as many of these as I can afford and have time for. Since I have no money, the final list will no doubt be shorter than the list here.

2. Work

Well one reason one might not want one of these degrees is the fact that I will not get employment after graduation.  But then I probably will not get employment whatever I study. 

3. Where?

All graduate schools are ageist and deliberately so. The ability to get accepted to an elite school such as MIT, Stanford and so forth is zero. I still may apply because I am stubborn and I hate their behavior and I want them to reject me to my face. The good news is that there are many schools where I can get a good education. Any major research university will do. How about UCSC, or NYU, or Columbia, or UNC? Where else do you suggest?

4. How?

To get into a top school, I need the best recommendations. My grades got me into Harvard the last time I tried, and god only knows how my GREs will go, but the last time I took them I did well. So it comes down to my essay and the recommendations.

As usual, my essay will be brilliant for those who have a brain and hopeless for those who are conventional and are terrified of someone who thinks differently.  But I have no plan to sanitize it for the small brained as it would do no one any good.

I am told that the only recommendations that are considered by admissions committees are recommendations by colleagues and peers: in other words, if you are applying for a CS school, you need recommendations by a tenured professor in CS. Anything else will be ignored. Unfortunately, while I know quite a few professors of CS, only one has agreed to write a letter of recommendation.

5. Other strategies

The MS programs are easier to get into, I might volunteer to go do a MS before the PhD to reduce risk. The average PhD candidate will be offered a fellowship. I will offer to do all this on government loans, that may make it easier to admit me. By admitting me they immediately get a graduate who has won an academy award. I am probably responsible for 1/2 billion in revenue based on my work. I will emphasize that I probably would have had at least 5 patents if I had had the money to file.

6. What happens after?

By the time I graduate, I hope to have at least one if not two books published (The details of that for another time.  The first book is well underway).  I will have social security, maybe a tiny income if I keep writing books.  If I get a job, I can repay my govt loans.  If I do not work, then they can come take it out of me.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment in Honor of the Election of Donald Trump

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Every honest and informed American is aghast at the election of Donald Trump to the President of the United states. A misogynist, racist, would-be murderer of women, xenophobe, narcissist in the non-clinical sense, possible narcissist in the clinical sense and most of all, completely inexperienced and inappropriate for the office of President. The people who voted for him and the Republican party must be held accountable for this abomination who is likely to damage the American republic for decades to come.

But moving forward, what can we do to prevent this kind of uninformed election in the future? What was the structural problem here and is there a solution?

I want to propose (seriously) a constitutional amendment to address this. Although I am not a constitutional lawyer and just a common citizen, so forgive the wording which no doubt would need work.

The intent of the amendment would be as follows, “No person may be elected President of the United States who has not been elected to and served honorably in a major political position of the country, such as a member of the House of Representatives, or of the US Senate, or Vice President of the United States.”

In this way, we would know that the would-be president would be cognizant of foreign policy issues, budget issues, legal issues, and many other topics that the President must deal with upon election.

It is arguable that being elected Governor of a state should also qualify a person for election as president, but it is a little questionable because in general a Governor does not have the same foreign policy responsibilities. It is possible that a justice of the peace would also be eligible. It is possible that a senior military leader would also be eligible (see for example Eisenhower).

Obviously these issues would have to be debated before proposing an amendment.

How to Remove a President (Constitutional Methods)

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The obvious question to ask in the context of the Trump disaster, is how do you remove a president who is a maniac, or who suffers from a personality disorder, or is a fanatic and who is expected to involve us in war and attempt to destroy the country hand-in-hand with the incredibly stupid faction that put him into power?

There are a variety of case studies from history, both recent and ancient, and we will review some of them here. Please be aware that each of these is contingent on that nations culture, its institutions, its laws and the specific situations at hand (e.g. an unpopular war, a famine, riots, police oppression, etc).

This post will discuss constitutional methods only. A second post will discuss some of the extra-constitutional methods.

I use the term “President” below as a synonym for other titles including “Chancellor”, “Premier”, “Prime Minister”, “Shah” and “First Secretary”.

1. The President is installed / removed on a technicality which may or may not be legal.

In 2000, the right-wing US Supreme Court forced the recount in Florida to be halted in order to install Bush Jr as president. Anyone who examines that situation comes away with the following impression: had the recount continued Al Gore would have won the election. In this way, by controlling the Supreme Court, the right wing was able to defeat the results of an election. Whether or not you believe that or not is irrelevant. A substantial number of Americans do believe it.

If in 2016, the Electoral College were to install Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump, it would be perfectly legal to the best of my knowledge and the Trump faction would go nuts. The Electoral College is an artifact from 200 years ago and is itself a technicality that many people do not find legitimate. I doubt this situation will occur.

2. The President / Tsar / whatever is responsible for (or inherits) a policy so unpopular that he/she resigns from office or declines to run for re-election.

There are many examples of this in history, a notable one being LBJ's decision not to run for re-election and is also probably the case of the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917.  In the latter case the situation in Russia was far more complicated and dire than simply an unpopular war.

3. The President loses a vote of confidence or is impeached and convicted by Congress.

This is more common in parliamentary governments than in our type of government. It requires a congress / parliament that is not controlled by the President's party and/or the President loses control of his own party. As the impeachment of Clinton showed, the fact of an impeachment does not have to be based on anything real and that it is quite possible to survive an impeachment when the charges are baseless and merely the irrational actions of an irresponsible Republican party.

Since the Republicans currently control both houses of Congress and is likely to appoint one of their goons to the Supreme Court, this is an unlikely scenario for the immediate future.  However much the mainstream Republicans hate Donald Trump, he is still technically a Republican and better than a stick-in-the-eye for their right wing, America-hating causes.

There is the entertaining possibility, however low probability, that the Republicans might impeach Trump if he did something egregious, as a way of putting a more compliant reactionary in charge, e.g. Pence.

4. The President commits a crime which is exposed and the resulting scandal causes him/her to resign.

In general for this scenario to work, the scandal has to be so egregious that it overwhelms the attempts of the administration to suppress it.  In this country it usually requires an “independent prosecutor” to be assigned, its report has to be damning, and the threat of impeachment has to be real.

This scenario also requires, or may require, such things as an internal security unit doing the right thing and trying to enforce the law, or a whistle blower who is aware of the crime coming forward, or a responsible press, and usually a combination of the above.

This is a likely scenario ultimately for Trump. But there are many reasons to think that it also might not work in his case. Trump has proven to be remarkably immune to borderline insane behavior already exhibited, the Republicans control both houses of Congress and would have to approve an independent prosecutor, and our internal security forces would have to do the right thing which in general is not a realistic expectation on our part.

5. The Constitution permits a president to be removed without impeachment.

There is a technique for removing the President if he/she is judged to be insane in the opinion of his/her own administration. I know very little about it but I think it is intended to prevent nuclear war in the short run while the government figures out what to do with a certified loony at the top. To the best of my knowledge, these provisions have never been used.

In the next post on the subject of removal, we will review some of the more entertaining but illegal methods of removal of the chief executive such as assassination.  

Memo to Warner Bros: Dont Be Stupid

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I had written what I suppose was a humerous take on Suicide Squad (2016), but in retrospect it is just not a funny matter.

The film is a disaster and deserves to be held up as a world-class example of what not to do. For those of you who do not do this for a living, or who have not studied this craft, we are not talking about vague, aesthetic, mumbo jumbo here. We are talking about basic, straightforward, principles of art. Principles which you can of course violate if you are a genius and know exactly what you are doing. But if you are not a genius, and these people clearly are not, then you had better pay attention.

I am going to go over the details in just a moment, but before I do I want to put the knife in. The WB executives who managed this piece of shit do not deserve their job. Anyone can do better, or said differently, it would be difficult for someone who had been around this stuff for a while to do worse.

What is particularly sad about this train wreck is that there are some very good characterizations here. The Joker, Harley Quinn, Deadshot, the Enchantress are all excellent, IMHO. Its the story(ies) they were made to serve that suck.

Enchantress is such a babe and totally wasted in this movie

Some of the following are technically story structure faults and some of them are pure writing faults.

1. We have three movies here, or at least parts of three movies. One is a movie in flashback form of the Joker and Harley Quinn, their romance and Harley's origin story. It could have been great, but it wasnt completed and besides it should not be told as a flashback. The second movie is the Amanda Waller / Suicide Squad story to defeat Enchantress. And the third is the Enchantress story, what happened to her, and her desire for revenge. The last story is the one that is least realized. The one of the Suicide Squad mission is the most hackneyed. Either story 1 or 3 would have been more interesting.

2. The introduction of the characters for movie 2, Suicide Squad, is hackneyed and unnecessary. The mug sheet, attributes of the character are unnecessary and look forced because they are forced. Making them dance around in fancy type does not help. Maybe this worked in comic book form, I dont know, but it doesnt work here.

3. Here are some examples of bad writing. First, if you are going to send these creeps out with a special forces team, then they are going to have to train together. No special forces team would consent to go on a mission otherwise. But our writers clearly know nothing about special forces. Second, if you are going to turn ordinary humans into blob heads, explain why. How much better to have turned them into something that made sense in the context of the Enchantress. How about ancient Aztec warrior slaves? That would have been interesting, you know pulling people's hearts out of their chest, that sort of thing. Third, if you are going to just blow up the Aztec Brother with a fucking bomb, then why not just saturation bomb the place. The AF has lots of fighter-bombers with 500 lb. bombs that would do a lot better than that stupid charge. Fourth, what exactly was the Enchantress trying to build? What does it do? How? Why? What is the junk in the sky? What purpose does it serve?

The answer is that it serves no purpose.  The writers dont have a clue what they are doing.

4. A personal pet peeve of mine is to have a crash of some vehicle and then have people walk away. No, you do not have a helicopter crash and then roll it over a bunch of times without everyone inside having broken ribs, or crushed vertebrae or worse.

Listen up!  A helicopter crashes and rolls over a bunch of times, then two things are true. First, it explodes. Second nobody walks away. Got that?

This movie is worse than just a bad movie, it is a waste of good talent and a good opportunity. The executives and filmmakers who perpetrated this disaster should be ashamed of themselves.

The Trans Pacific Partnership and National Security

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The NY Times has published an editorial describing how rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership was self-destructive and will allow China to take over the world and destroy America. <insert link here>

They may very well be right. But whoever wrote this is in the dark about some fundamental issues that seem to have escaped them. So allow me to help my brilliant, elite editorial writer learn about some basic reality in American in 2016.

First, although we hear how Globalization and NeoLiberalism has been good for the world economy and especially the American economy, most of us have not seen it. We have seen the rich get richer, the middle class get destroyed by taxes, reduced wages, reduced pensions and the destruction of jobs but we have not seen how this new economy helps us. We have seen the government lie about unemployment and do absolutely nothing about helping the middle and working classes except perhaps to suggest that we could learn to type and become a secretary, or maybe work at Jack in the Box for minimum wage.

And furthermore, this has been going on for 30 years. But no response from Washington, no acknowledgement of the problem. No attempts to fix it that are not laughable. But we do see bankers and fund managers destroy the economy, not get prosecuted and given their multi-million bonuses nevertheless. We see Wells Fargo commit fraud for a decade, fire 5,000 little people, but no one goes to jail and the CEO retires with 100 million dollars after some insider trading which of course is not investigated. We see middle class people get assets seized by the police without being accused of a crime and the DOJ say that it is OK.

Now before you read any further, you should reread the above two paragraphs. You should reread them again. You should keep rereading them until you understand them. Until you understand that they are true. Then when or if you finally get it through your head that we have a corrupt and unacceptable economy for millions of Americans, then we can move on. The point is that your trade deals and Globalization is not a favorite concept among millions and millions of Americans. Ok, got that?

Second, the TPP was negotiated in secret and sprung on the American people about a year ago. When it was released to the public with the statement that we must ratify this treaty at once, and no discussion permitted, people demurred. Since a ratified treaty becomes law, it makes sense that there be some discussion of what is essentially a proposed law(s). We cant have that, the Government says, we must ratify this at once!

But what we discovered when we looked at the TPP was some very egregious and unlikeable provisions. Well, unlikeable unless you are a large, corrupt corporation of course. In fact, there is a lot to dislike about this “partnership”, when it was finally presented to the American people.

Third, you now tell us that the TPP had nothing to do with trade. In fact, it had to do with national security as manifested by trade blocks that will form a bulwark against China and Russia (if anyone cared about Russia as an economic power, which they do not, apparently).

Well, that is interesting and it may even be true. But your efforts to slide that past the American people without discussing your real motives or the slightest effort to protect the American people against the egregious and manifest crimes of international corporations doomed this effort.

As you say, it has nothing to do with trade. It may or may not have something to do with national security. But it certainly has a lot to do with the trust that the American people have in their government, and that is where you lost.

But there is a way forward. All you have to do is be honest with the American people about what your real motives are, fix the problems with the treaty to protect the American people and their laws, and convince them that your trade policies actually help Americans instead of just stridently assert that they do against all the evidence of people's experience of the last 30 years.

If you do that, I have no doubt that a treaty can be ratified.

Good luck.

Causes and Mysteries about Election 2016

A minority of American voters have elected an irresponsible, racist, misogynist, narcissistic, and unqualified asshole to be POTUS and are in complete denial of how they have fucked this country.

Causes

In order to achieve this, a number of things had to happen. I review a few of them here. First, women and Hispanics who were presumed to vote for HRC and against Trump did not do so in substantial numbers. Trump could not have won without their support. Second, we learn that the country is perfectly willing to ignore their leaders. Just about every elite politician, intellectual and news source supported HRC, some of them half-heartedly, and opposed Trump. Third, voting Republicans, not their leaders but the rank and file, supported their candidate and the Democrats did not. Fourth, we, the Democrats, won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote. We may have to do something about the Electoral College, but that will be hard. Fifth, you can not run a candidate for POTUS unless he/she is a superior communicator and HRC is not. Sixth, we ran a Washington insider in a year when the country seethed with anger about how the system was failing them.  We had plenty of warning, see the Occupy movement and the campaign of Bernie Sanders. In other words, we, the Democrats, chose the wrong candidate.

Mysteries

I do not understand why the Washington elite has completely failed to understand and recognize the anger about the economy that has been building for over 30 years. 

Also, remember that the Trump vote only reflects the anger on the right.  There is a similar anger but on the left, what we might call the Sanders supporters.  These people were completely and utterly disenfranchised in this election being forced to vote for HRC as a lesser evil than Trump.

There is anger about the wealth inequality. There is anger about a justice system that favors the rich and punishes the poor. There is anger about a tax system that oppresses the middle class. There is anger about a justice system that lets corporate criminals commit any crime and go free.

The Polls

I do not understand why the polls were so wrong, nor do I understand why so many people, including the pollsters themselves, are in denial of the scope of their disaster.  This is as bad as "Dewey Defeats Truman". 

The implications of the polling failure are not commonly recognized. For example, you think you know what percentage of women or Hispanics voted for Trump? Well, you don't. Those numbers come from exit polls. The same technology that was so wrong going into the election. The fact is that this technology is thoroughly discredited. You can believe those numbers if you wish, but I don't.

The Good News

There is good news, its not all bad.

First, Washington needed a wake up call that business-as-usual does not work. Probably nothing less dramatic would have gotten the message across and even so it is not clear that Washington heard the message. Second, Trump is essentially a third party candidate that used a weak Republican party to get nominated and then elected. So if you want a path for a third party to win the White House, one has just been demonstrated for you. Third, Trump does not exactly have the support of the Republican Party. He will not get things all his own way in the Congress. Fourth, Trump has no track record of working with Washington. The last time we had a true Washington outsider, Jimmy Carter, it made a very big difference on what got done and what did not.

Conclusions

I can only hope that this clusterf*ck that is Trump will be a wake up call and that the principle of unintended consequences will apply here.

In the long run, we don't know if this is a complete disaster, or whether it was a necessary transition to a better government.

Notice to Trump Supporters

We are going to find a more polite way to say this.  Or something like this.  I would skip this post for the time being.

Personal Power Conservation Notes

I dont write about shit like this so that people who hate me can use it to make fun of me. I already know what you think. I write it so that others who are in distress may, occassionally, read about my experience and get some useful information from it. Who knows what the odds are of this. I think that they are small, but w.t.f. why not try a little idealism now and then?

I have been able to get my gas and power bill down from roughly $150 / month to less than $50/month. I am told that these are very good figures, but its all still baffling to me. Someone who is not working can afford none of this and yet they have to live even if the rich fly their widebody jets around. Supposedly there is a utilities program under the name of 211 that I have yet to try.

But for those of you who are interested in lowering your power bill and / or have no income, here are some notes on what is necessary to get the numbers down by 2/3rds.

1. Enroll in your power company's “CARE” program. This gets you somewhere between a 20 to 30 percent discount on your bill. You need to watch this one, as it tends to reset to off.

2. Unplug your washer and dryer and use the laundromat. Yes that will cost you between $10 to $20 per visit (including detergent), but at least it wont be a surprise at the end of the month.

3. Turn off your heat and air conditioning. I live in Southern California. The heat is oppressive and it gets cold at night. But the pipes wont freeze and its time to realize that you are worthless garbage because you are poor, and you can wear a fucking sweater to keep warm.

4. Replace all the curly lights with LEDs, available at Walmart for roughly $3.00 per light.

5. Unplug all unknown electronics devices, period. Trace all power lines and if you do not need it, dont use it. Remember, if it is plugged in it is probably using power whether there is a light glowing or not.

6. Turn all computers onto maximum power savings. Wait for the fucking disk to spin up.

7. Only run your workstation when you need it, and then turn it off. Never run it overnight.

8. Turn down the temperature on your water heater, assuming you still have gas.

9. Dont use the electric oven and rarely use the electric stove. Use your outdoors propane stove where you can. It may or may not save money in the long run, but in the short run it will save on your electricity bill and let you keep the lights on.

Remember what we are trying to achieve here. We are trying to keep lights on and the ability to charge our smartphones and run some of our computers. Everything else is and should be optional.

Working From My Smartphone: Water and Power

As part of the continuing effort to live within my means, I decided that when SDGE (San Diego Gas and Electric) turned off my power this time, I would just keep it off and spend the money otherwise sent to them to continue to build up my “no power” infrastructure and see how it went. This is going to be much more detail than most of you will be interested in, so feel free to skip to the end.

The power went off the Wednesday morning after Trump was elected. At the end of 9 days, I called SDGE and made a deal. Here is what I learned in these 9 days.

1. No Power Infrastructure

I bought a $20 solar water shower, and spent at least as much money installing it. But it is installed, and the next time that the gas and power goes off (but the water stays on), I will have warm showers at least some of the time. The rest of the time I will have cold water “towel” showers.

I bought a $40 propane camping stove, and I have now built a place for it. It does just what I need. As the reviews say, it pretty much has two settings: full off and full on. I have to stay there and watch it when I cook, as otherwise it will blast whatever is being cooked into charcoal. I have to wear gloves or I will burn the shit out of myself. But it works fine and I can have hot food when the power is off. I plan to continue to use it even when the power is on to see how this affects my lifestyle and energy bills.

I bought a second, larger ice chest for $40 and split my food between the two chests. I try to keep things out of the water, this means an internal strainer for the fruits/vegetables and a container for things like cheese. With two ice chests, I need to spend $4-$8 every 3 days or so to keep things cool. They also require maintenance every few days basically to drain the water.

I bought a $15 external battery for my smartphone. It makes all the difference in terms of smartphone usage especially at night.

I bought a $20 power inverter for my car and used it to charge my laptop. It also depleted my battery and I needed to rejoin AAA to get a charge. This costs $70 these days. No more charging my laptop from my car and no more charging my phone from the car unless the engine is running.

I bought $10 in batteries and would need to do that about every other week. I bought two very cheap “miners” headset LED flashlights and they are my preferred go to lighting solution.

I either go to the Escondido Library if it is open to charge my devices, or on days or times when it is closed, I go to Starbucks and pay $5 for something and use their facilities. In both cases there is unsecured WIFI that I can use. The nearest 24 hour cafe is an hour away in San Diego.

I was able to turn my smartphone into a tethered hotspot. However, I also needed to increase my data plan from $40 a month to $60 and it may go up from there.

2. Productivity

My producitivity went to hell. A lot of my writing and work has to happen when I think about it, not when I have managed to get to the library and to Starbucks. I have severe insomnia and I need to be able to work from home and without a charged laptop I can not do that.

3. Mental State

I am severely challenged to end this situation (unemployment, living in isolation) and I need to be productive to do so. The despair caused by living in a dark house and not getting work done was and is dangerous. Furthermore, it greatly increased my requirements for medication way beyond the normal and that is not sustainable.

4. SDGE Cooperation

One more time, SDGE was helpful in making a deal to get the power on. I have reduced my monthly nut to under $50/month for gas and electric, the problem has always been the back bill.

Another time I will discuss how I got my bill down as far as I have.

Election 2016 What We Learned Part 1

My first impression when I saw Trump winning was that “we are so fucked”. And we are. But here are a few notes on the things that we learned, or that I learned.

1. Polling science is bullshit. If they have not figured out the Bradley Effect by now, they never will.

2. Polling may have thrown the election to Trump because some people voted for third parties who might have voted differently if they had only known the real situation.

3. Women and Hispanics did not support Hillary.

4. There is no reason to think that a woman candidate can be elected president.

5. Trump's support is not just uneducated white men. He could not have done what he did without considerable support from women and minorities.

6. Washington thought they could fuck the middle class with impunity, and the middle class fucked back.

7. The Democrats ran a Washington insider in a year when Americans were pissed off at being impoverished.

8. America has voted what it thinks about immigration, Globalization, fucking the middle class to make money for the rich, and LGBT rights.

9. By fucking up on this election, we lose the supreme court for the rest of our lives, and we may very well lose abortion rights. We chose these positions, and the country voted, and we lost.

Hold Your Nose and Vote for Hillary ?

In our first ever presidential election since Global Wahrman came into existence, we have decided to hold our nose and vote for Hillary Clinton. Maybe.

Its true that HRC stands for so many things I despise, and that there would be no hope under an HRC administration of things getting better. Surely if you wanted an example of what the word "corporate whore" means, one should look no further than Ms. Clinton.  And if you want to see Globalization continue to crush Americans in order to give more money to the rich, HRC is your candidate.  She hates unions, she hates the poor, she hates the working classes.  

She is pretty much despicable in every possible way.

But we have the following reasons for voting for her and ultimately they have won out.

1. Bernie Sanders, who I adore, whether or not he would have made a good president, is working for her and has asked his supporters to vote for her, so in deference to him, I will.

2. Trump is an abomination and I have promised my overseas friends that I would do what I could to defeat him. Particularly those who have been fucked by the Brexit madness have requested this.

3. Even though my vote is meaningless as HRC will win CA easily, there is still the issue of the popular vote and I think that there is some validity to adding my pittance to the destruction of Trump.

4. Our enemies are gloating over the stupidity of this election and I hate that. Yes, even though our country's government has fucked its people as hard as it can in order to make more money for the rich, I have a residual self image of this being a great country once, and it irritates me that China is gloating over our self-inflicted stupidity.

If you dont believe me, the Guardian has an excellent article here.

5. The right wing thugs at the FBI have really pissed me off.

Since HRC will certainly win (editors note: oops!), I will go over in a later post the minimum that is required for her to have any credibility in my eyes.  Of course, HRC will not give a fuck what I or any other powerless American cares, so why bother?

It will make me feel better, that's why.

Rumors of War Part II

The rumors about the Libyan Internet Hack were not confirmed, so this post is deleted.

Background Material on Wonder Woman

Now that the Wonder Woman movie is really coming it is time for all of the readers of this blog to be up to date on the fabulous secret history of Wonder Woman.

Impeccable feminist credentials combined with a fabulous unconventional sex and marriage relationship between Marston and the two women who lived with him and raised his children result in a story that is very modern and rewarding.

The person who set off this whole revisionist look at Wonder Woman, if that is what it is, is Jill Lapore of Harvard and the Smithsonian Magazine article is by her.

See

Smithsonian Magazine article by Jill Lapore

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/origin-story-wonder-woman-180952710/?no-ist

Atlantic Magazine article which goes into more detail about "kinky sex"

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/wonder-womans-kinky-feminist-roots/380788/

NPR article

http://www.npr.org/2014/10/27/359078315/the-man-behind-wonder-woman-was-inspired-by-both-suffragists-and-centerfolds

For those of you sadly out of touch with popular culture, Wonder Woman had a modern cameo that is considered the high point of Batman vs Superman: The Dawn of Justice (2016) and her own movie is being prepared for which a first trailer has been issued and can be seen at the following link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q8fG0TtVAY

IMDB page on Wonder Woman
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0451279/

Lost Nuclear Bomb Found Off Coast? Don't Worry.

updated 11/6/2016

Apparently, a few weeks ago a diver off the coast of British Columbia was diving in a place he did not normally go and came across something really weird. It was a big metal artifact with large hemispheres the size of basketballs on it. It looked like a prop from a Science Fiction movie from the 1950s or 1960s. What could it possibly be?

A Mark IV with all its pieces and covers on

So when he got up to the surface he drew a picture and started asking around. No one had any idea until someone who had been around a long time suggested that he had found “the lost bomb”. You know, one of them nuclear things that the US lost off the coast of Canada when an early bomber crashed.

Golly, what could be more fun than a 60 or so year old nuclear bomb?

If this is the missing bomb, then it is indeed a bomb but not a nuclear one exactly. It would be a dummy Mark IV, a very early type of fission bomb, that did not have any plutonium, although it did have conventional explosives. In fact it is not exactly clear what was dropped, but it was a dummy they tell us.

So the Canadian Navy was interested and said they would check it out and we are waiting for their findings.

But what is fun about the article, other than the discovery itself, is the comments from the readers who are sure, totally certain, absolutely KNOW that the US lied and this is a real live nuclear bomb waiting to go off.

I have no doubt that the finding, if it is indeed the lost dummy bomb, should be treated with care and disposed of, as it is quite possibly an environmental danger of some sort, leaking nasty stuff into the water, such as a whole lot of decaying conventional explosives.

But it is almost certainly not a live nuclear bomb. How do I know this?

Because we (the USA) may not always be right, and we may lie about stuff from time to time, and, yes, we may do stupid things now and again, but, generally speaking, we do not leave unexploded nuclear bombs lying off the coast of the Pacific Northwest in shallow waters.

Honest, we don't. If it had really been a nuclear bomb, we would have spared no expense to find and dispose of it. We may be stupid, but we are not that stupid.

See the article at the Guardian website here.

_____________________________________


Updated 11/6/2016.  OK, I have done a little more research.  The released dummy bomb from the February 1950 event exploded on impact with the ocean.  It contained the HE (high explosive) and uranium elements but not the plutonium core and thus had zero chance of causing a nuclear explosion.  This explains why they did not search for and retrieve the dummy as whatever they dropped would have been destroyed in the HE explosion.

If we can believe what they tell us, and I think in this case that it is likely that we can, then whatever was found is unrelated to the B-36 crash and the dummy Mark IV.


_____________________________________


Wikipedia page on the Mark IV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_4_nuclear_bomb

Wikipedia page on the bomber that crashed, the B-36 which was a really weird airplane
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker

Torrent Downloads and Personal Morality

A friend was trying to explain to me that he did not need Torrent to view such things as “Agents of SHIELD”, that he was willing to wait until God and the Networks allowed him to see it on Netflix.

Could it be that he was suggesting that I was in some way morally deficient, possibly even wallowing in sin?

I don't see it that way.

Like all misunderstood geniuses, I feel the need to explain myself, usually while the representative of conventional society, often dressed in a tuxedo, is held at risk, soon to be defenestrated, or laser-decapitated or even eaten by an Amazonian life form.  Unless I feel that he/she/they/it have properly acknowledged my good will and desire to help, their doom is certain.

Come now, Mr. Bond. You do not expect me to miss an episode of Agents of SHIELD, do you?

You see I am not stealing anything.  I am merely borrowing for my own personal and legally defensible use this media product, so that I might better analyze it and review it for this Blog and society at large.

My mission is to help the world, not to steal from it.

The networks were formed on the concept of advertiser-based content. Now, that is not good enough for them. Greed has driven them mad and now they change the rules and declare that the viewer must also subscribe to some service that they have made some sort of pact with to extract money from the newly disenfranchised.

When all I want to do is to view, unimpeded by any network latency or bizarre distribution rules, their creative product so that I might be morally or intellectually uplifted. Yes, I seek improvement, I seek enlightenment. They have broadcast the material, with advertisers as the FCC has permitted, should I not also be permitted to dip my beak and see what has been paid for?

Are we mere tools of corrupt, international media organizations who wish to extract more and more money from the innocent citizen?

And further, what harm am I doing?  Am I making financial profit with this material?  Am I generating badly derezzed rar files to send to my supposedly degraded and morally debased friends?  No, I am using it for my own use. What harm therefore do I cause?

Besides, these companies, all of them, owe me.  I sacrificed my life to help invent and prove the technology they use to create this product. Selflessly, I dedicated myself to that end, and what reward did I get? I was left for dead, impoverished and disenfranchised. Will it hurt so much for them to allow me to view their product created with technology whose early development they totally did not pay for, and review it for the benefit of my readers and all the world?

I personify, even objectify, the desire for all man and womankind to improve themselves through the new synthetic media.

I am only trying to help.

Guidelines for Requests for Free Work

At various times in my so-called career, I have made it clear that when I was not otherwise occupied, that I would be happy to help my friends do something entrepreneurial in an effort to jumpstart some interesting or worthwhile venture to the place where it could be self financing. Or alternatively, we could do a project that is not ever going to be financially positive, but has some artistic or societal merit.

Although I sincerely meant this offer, the reality has shown that (a) doing projects that do not have funding behind them never seems to work out and (b) people have grossly misunderstood what I was offering, which has changed anyway based on previous experience.

So in the interests of clarity and good will, and not to waste anyone's time, here are a variety of guidelines, explanations, and also a discussion of things that have been learned.

1. Underfinanced and improperly managed projects almost always fail.

I have done about a half dozen projects for friends way below market rates (or free) which have not achieved their goals and have not been at all satisfying. Here are some of the things that happen: The project runs into a barrier that very modest money would solve, but no money is available. Or, the other people on the project can not be bothered to keep me informed about what is going on, and/or bother to review the work that I did on their behalf. Or, the other people on the project lose interest and I just wasted my time.

2. With few exceptions, projects that have been proposed have been insufficiently interesting or possibly just badly described

Just what it says. In most cases, the projects are just a way to get some free labor and do not really capture my imagination and lead nowhere. My creative input is not required or desired. In one case my creative input probably was desired, but my friend did not actually tell me that, I had to figure it out later which, yes, is a little weird but there you are.

One notable exception was an excellent entrepreneurial project by someone who will go by the initials of ES. His project is/was actually a very good and challenging idea that under the circumstances I was not able to achieve. This is a big disappointment to me, but is not a reflection on him. He totally got it.

3. Projects that claim that they will pay me after they get financed never get financed.

Therefore, if we are going to do a project and I am not going to get paid, the project has to be worth it to me on some other level. See below.

4. A project that claims to be entrepreneurial and wants my input but does not offer concrete terms is not going to work for me.

If you think that something is going to get financed (and 98% of the time these projects do not get financed), and you want my input without paying me, then you need to be specific about what it is I get. I can not guess, and a verbal agreement (or non-agreement) isnt worth the paper its written on. Sure youre a friend. Sure things are at an early stage. It is still important to be specific and be clear.

5. Any project that does not pay me, has to have one or more of the following.

It could be a genuine pro bono project that actually tries to help the world in some minor way that I am in favor of. It could be a for profit venture in which case we must be clear about my role, my equity or other compensation, and we need to be clear about the resources necessary to achieve success and what the role of other people on the project are. And I have to believe that the people on the project are serious. But even then, note 6 below.

6. At this point in my life, and given the track record here, any such project has to have significant creative input from me and credit for me, or it is not worth my time. Been there, done that, its time to show new work.

But why mince words, the free project is basically dead, unless it is my work.

Alternatively, of course, you could pay me, and then I am happy to do whatever you want. Its the way the free market system works, it makes whores of us all.

Editorial: US Coast Guard Continues Oppression of Innocent Civilian Submersibles

Global Wahrman wishes to protest yet another example of the US Coast Guard oppressing the innocent and civilian use of submersibles and semi-submersibles.

Yes, this unfortunate oppression by our out of control, drug-obsessed Coast Guard, eager as always to restrict the use of the oceans by the people of the world has seized what they say is a SPSS, self-propelled semi-submersible, minding its own business in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Central America with what they say is an 8 foot hold filled with tons of cocaine. Of course we have to take their word for it as the SPSS sank before they could remove the so-called evidence.  Before it sank, the USCG removed a mere 2.8 tons of cocaine.

“Cocaine? What cocaine?” said Raul Rodriguez of Columbia. “We thought we were bringing talcum powder to our relatives in Guatemala. This is clearly unwarrented oppressiion by the US Coast Guard attacking innocent native peoples”.

The private use of semi-submersibles, something we want to encourage, is being held back by this outrageous behavior on the part of our Coast Guard and we hope that the Government will take note of our protests and restrain this kind of attacks on innocent neighborly talcum-haulers in the future.

See here for more information.

Rumors of War October 2016

Lets now move beyond the grim reality of the collapse of our political system, and lighten things up around here by considering whether or not we are on the brink of another serious regional or world war. Not only is this a very reasonable time to ask such questions, it also leads into the larger blog theme of “predicting the future”. In this case, no esoteric knowledge is necessary, we can rely on our own knowledge of history and what we can see of world events.

Whenever a war happens, there are always people who say that there were clear signs that the war was obviously going to happen and that either we should have been better prepared, or should have avoided it, or that the government knew it was going to happen and wanted it to happen, or any of a number of other opinions, some of them interesting, many of them completely out-of-their-mind crazy.

Hindsight is 20/20 but in the real world there are always tensions and conflicts that could explode into a major war. But it also the case that there are a variety of “indicators” that a war may be on the horizon. Here are a few drawn from recent history: (a) a nation is pursuing what it sees to be a goal of critical national importance and another nation executes economic sanctions (war) against it, (b) a nation is executing a rearmament of their armed forces as fast as they possibly can, (c) a nation executes an intense intelligence attack on another nation with whom they are at peace of a size that is unparalled in peacetime, (d) a nation insists that it controls another nation's territory or that a formerly public right-of-way is declared to be their sovereign territory, and always has been.

Do we see any of these four situations in the world today? In fact, we see all four of these.

Russia has a centuries long relationship with Ukraine and Crimea. They see that relationship differently than we do. For them, Crimea is the ice-free port that Russia strategically requires. For them, Ukraine is a slavic territory that has been part of Russia for centuries. The very origins of Moscow and Russia can be traced to Kievan Rus in what we might now call Ukraine. The west has imposed sanctions on Russia for the events in that part of the world. Right or wrong, these sanctions are certainly hurting Russia.

Both Russia and China are extensively rearming and reconfiguring their armed forces. The Russian army, navy and air force seem to be rebuilding at a vastly increased rate. China is doing something similar.

For the last decade, China has executed a cyber-attack against the United States of unprecedented scope. The only people who do not know it at this point are people who are really not paying attention (or don't want to know). The US Government has given every indication that it knows and that it wants it to stop. We know that something has been going on in part because our country has begun an immense investment in offensive and defensive cyberwar.

China's actions in the South China Sea are about as aggressive as a nation can be in times of peace. It is a setup for a hot war, and they are arming for it. They want it, they need it, they have to have it. And if we don't like it, we have to fight for it. The problem is not what we want, the problem is what all China's neighbors want and we are in a mutual defense alliance with those neighbors. Probability of war? High, about as high as war between India and Pakistan, for example.

Oh, did I forget to mention India and Pakistan?  Or India and China?  Or Vietnam and China? Or Pakistan's financing of terrorist groups? The war in Syria and the refugee crisis? Russia's blatant cyberwar against America? N. Korea and its nuclear weapons? Russia and Chechnya (what's left of it)? Or the Congo? Or Somalia? Or Sudan? Or Libya?

So are we headed to world war? Not necessarily. After all, even a hot regional war does not imply a world war.  But if we do end up in a major world war, there will be people who say that there was plenty of evidence that it was on the horizon.

This topic continues here.

Three Cold War Intelligence Stories

When the Cold War ended, or at least morphed into another form, many people claimed to expect a peace dividend. I never did, I thought that was the most egregious wishful thinking as clearly the world was leaving one set of perils and diving right into another. (To be fair, the people calling for a "peace dividend" knew this very well, they were merely arguing for more money for such things as education after years of being told there was no money for it, we had to spend the money on the Cold War). 

On the other hand, I did expect and we are slowly receiving an “intelligence voyeur dividend” as events that happened during the Cold War became explained, or partially explained, or revealed, or whatever. What is the value of such exposure? I think that there is value in telling the history of that time, or at least some of that history, and there is also value in having a better educated citizenry, one which will have some understanding of the way the world works and what has been happening around them in the recent historical past. 

We have here three essays, all published in The Guardian in the UK about three different people who were involved in intelligence matters in the Cold War and whose story, what is known about them at least, is worth reading if you care about this sort of stuff.

The first is an article on Ashraf Marwan who was killed in London in 2007. He died a very rich man. He may have been assassinated, he may have committed suicide. He was certainly a spy for Israel, or was he a double agent under the control of Egypt? Its a wonderful story that suggests an answer to one of the mysteries, but by no means all.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/who-killed-20th-centurys-greatest-spy-ashraf-marwan

The second is about a Czech / Soviet spy who penetrated the CIA and was the last prisoner traded to the Soviet Union in the cold war. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/30/how-a-czech-super-spy-infiltrated-cia-karel-koecher

The final story is about a dyslexic member of the US Intelligence community (possibly the National Reconnaissance Office) who collected material and tried to sell it to interested parties and how they caught him.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/26/spy-couldnt-spell-how-biggest-heists-us-espionage-history-foiled

Spy vs Spy from Mad Magazine

Are Young People Too Impatient With the Political Process?

I have often heard it said that youth, callow youth, are too impatient with our political process. That they expect the great ship of state to change direction on a dime, not realizing the immense momentum that must be overcome and that many parties must be appeased in our collaborative political process before change can occur.

I have also heard it said that people with experience know how hard it is to change the system and are here for the long haul. They know its a marathon not a sprint, and that only by applying steady pressure over a long period of time and building coalitions can we achieve a more worthwhile polity.

Well, as some wit said, “all generalizations are wrong”. In my case, at least, the exact opposite is true. I used to be patient with the process until I realized how cynical and disingenuous the process was. How often the political process simply lied to steal the money, or to get their way.

And in the last 30 years I have seen our government fail to implement the voting rights laws, even go backwards on this critical issue.  I have seen public education continue to get low priority. I have seen the Dept of Justice fail to implement the law when it involved the murder of citizens for their political beliefs and even straightforward racism.  I have seen the worst criminal abuses of corporations and the rich go unpunished and worse, the hypocrisy of a congress that pretends to disapprove but does not actually enact the legislation that would permit criminal penalties to be applied (assuming the Dept of Justice would act against the rich which is not likely).

I have seen the lip service paid to the poor and disenfranchised which is not backed up by legislation and positive action.  I have seen the tax burden shifted to the middle class and the reality of the corporate tax code. I have seen the appalling "war on drugs" and the lives it has destroyed, every bit as destructive as the drug use it so hypocritically fails to prevent.  Leonard Peltier is still in jail and the FBI goes nuts whenever they think that a president might pardon him and therefore permit justice to exist in the land.

Henceforth, dear political leaders, the new rule is as follows. Fix it now, or we will assume that you are just lying or ineffective.

No more patience, no more slack.

Fix it now or go away.