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Jun 23, 2023
Good Government
We're constantly bombarded with nonsense about how government is always bad and can never be good because it's always getting in the way of free enterprise and blah blah blah.
5 people are dead - 4 of them were paying customers who stupidly (IMO) gave $250,000 to some jagoff with an out-sized ego, expecting him not to cut any corners, and to take good care of them.
Suckers.
The “Titanic” director and diving expert said he’d had concerns from the start about the vehicle’s hull composition and claims about its network of hull sensors.
James Cameron with short white hair and a dark shirt stands next to a green scale model of his Deepsea Challenger diving vessel.
“We’ve never had an accident like this,” James Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of “Titanic,” said on Thursday.
Mr. Cameron, an expert in submersibles, has dived dozens of times to the ship’s deteriorating hulk and once plunged in a tiny craft of his own design to the bottom of the planet’s deepest recess.
In an interview, Mr. Cameron called the presumed loss of five lives aboard the Titan submersible from the company OceanGate like nothing anyone involved in private ocean exploration had ever seen.
“There’ve never been fatalities at this kind of depth and certainly no implosions,” he said.
An implosion in the deep sea happens when the crushing pressures of the abyss cause a hollow object to collapse violently inward. If the object is big enough to hold five people, Mr. Cameron said in an interview, “it’s going to be an extremely violent event — like 10 cases of dynamite going off.”
In 2012, Mr. Cameron designed and piloted an experimental submersible into a region in the Pacific Ocean called the Challenger Deep. Mr. Cameron had not sought certification of the vessel’s safety by organizations in the maritime industry that provide such services to numerous companies.
“We did that knowingly” because the craft was experimental and its mission scientific, Mr. Cameron said. “I would never design a vehicle to take passengers and not have it certified.”
Mr. Cameron strongly criticized Stockton Rush, the OceanGate chief executive who piloted the submersible when it disappeared Sunday, for never getting his tourist submersible certified as safe. He noted that Mr. Rush called certification an impediment to innovation.
“I agree in principle,” Mr. Cameron said. “But you can’t take that stance when you’re putting paying customers into your submersible — when you have innocent guests who trust you and your statements” about vehicle safety.
As a design weakness in the Titan submersible and a possible cautionary sign to its passengers, Mr. Cameron cited its construction with carbon-fiber composites. The materials are used widely in the aerospace industry because they weigh much less than steel or aluminum, yet pound for pound are stronger and stiffer.
The problem, Mr. Cameron said, is that a carbon-fiber composite has “no strength in compression”— which happens as an undersea vehicle plunges ever deeper into the abyss and faces soaring increases in water pressure. “It’s not what it’s designed for.”
The company, he added, used sensors in the hull of the Titan to assess the status of the carbon-fiber composite hull. In its promotional material, OceanGate pointed to the sensors as an innovative feature for “hull health monitoring.” Early this year, an academic expert described the system as providing the pilot “with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.”
In contrast to the company, Mr. Cameron called it “a warning system” to let the submersible’s pilot know if “the hull is getting ready to implode.”
Mr. Cameron said the sensor network on the sub’s hull was an inadequate solution to a design he saw as intrinsically flawed.
“It’s not like a light coming on when the oil in your car is low,” he said of the network of hull sensors. “This is different.”
Today's Karens
Honest - I'm not advocating for violence.
There are times though when circumstances require a guy to step up and sock that clown right on the jaw.
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| Charlottesville - Aug 2017 |
Indiana - because of course Indiana - gave us another good example of authoritarian bullshit wrapped in a flag and toting a bible.
If these assholes aren't the new Nazis, then they wouldn't keep quoting Hitler to bolster their arguments.
An Indiana chapter of Moms for Liberty, a nonprofit that advocates for “ parental rights ” in education and was recently labeled as “extremist” by an anti-hate watchdog, is apologizing and condemning Adolf Hitler after using a quote attributed to the Nazi leader in its inaugural newsletter.
The group’s Hamilton County chapter on Thursday posted a revised version of its newly launched newsletter, “The Parent Brigade,” on Facebook after it had previously shared a version that featured the Hitler quote on its front cover.
“We condemn Adolf Hitler’s actions and his dark place in human history,” read a statement from chapter chair Paige Miller on the cover of the revised newsletter. “We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology.”
The first version of the newsletter included the quote, “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future,” and cited Hitler. While the origin of the quote is not entirely clear, it has been attributed in numerous historical texts to a 1935 rally speech by the Nazi leader.
“The quote from a horrific leader should put parents on alert,” the updated version read. “If the government has control over our children today, they control our country’s future. We The People must be vigilant and protect children from an overreaching government.”
By Thursday morning, the chapter had removed those versions and posted its new copy of the newsletter, replacing the Hitler quote with the chair’s apology.
The quote has frequently been used by conservative Christian groups as a warning of “what they experience as liberal or left-wing attempts to indoctrinate children,” said Mark Pitcavage, senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
In 2014, for example, a church group in Alabama removed a billboard after using the quote next to images of children. And last year, a Colorado school board member faced calls to resign after posting the quote on Facebook.
“They use it as a way to get people’s attention,” Pitcavage said. “Regardless, you should never use Adolf Hitler quotes to get your point across.”
Some who encountered the newsletter interpreted Moms for Liberty’s use of the quote as a tacit endorsement for Hitler and his beliefs. Moms for Liberty has faced criticism for its activism against school inclusion, including trying to remove books related to race and gender identity from school libraries.
“It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that the largest anti-student inclusion movement organization has allegedly used a quote from one of the appalling figureheads in history,” said Rachel Carroll Rivas, deputy director of research, reporting and analysis for the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The center labeled Moms for Liberty as an “anti-government extremist” group in its 2022 annual report.
Moms for Liberty has come under increasing national scrutiny as it has become a power player in Republican politics. Five presidential candidates plan to speak —- and several grassroots groups plan to protest —- at the group’s annual summit in Philadelphia next week.
The national Moms for Liberty chapter took to Twitter to call the Star’s reporting “intentional dishonesty,” even while issuing a statement that condemned the chapter’s decision to quote Hitler.
“They should not have quoted Hitler. Period,” read the statement from co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice. “Parents are passionate about protecting future generations from tyranny, but Hitler did not need to be quoted to make that point.”
That's Hot
Sea surface temperatures 4 to 5 degrees Celsius above normal
surround the United Kingdom on Wednesday. (NOAA)
‘Beyond extreme’ ocean heat wave in North Atlantic is worst in 170 years
The exceptionally warm waters could pose a deadly threat to marine life and impact summer weather in the U.K. and Europe
The ocean waters surrounding the United Kingdom and much of Europe are baking in an unprecedented marine heat wave that scientists say is being intensified by human-caused climate change. Scientists are astounded not only by how much the waters have warmed during the past month but also how early in the year the heat wave is occurring. The warm waters are a threat to marine life and could worsen heat waves over land this summer, they say.
Sea surface temperatures are running as high as 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal, the warmest in more than 170 years, and are more typical of August and September when the waters are usually at their warmest. The event has registered as a Category 4 on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine heat wave scale with localized areas reaching Category 5, the two highest categories on the scale.
NOAA defines a marine heat wave as a period with persistent and unusually warm ocean temperatures, “which can have significant impacts on marine life as well as coastal communities and economies.” The agency describes Category 4 as “extreme” and Category 5 as “beyond extreme.”
Last month was the warmest May since 1850 for the North Atlantic around the United Kingdom and the warmest compared to average for any month, the country’s Met Office reported. And that was before water temperatures soared in early June, in part because of abundant sunshine and warm breezes from the southwest, Met Office meteorologist Aidan McGivern said in a video update Tuesday.
The average sea surface temperature near the United Kingdom and Ireland is closing in on 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit), which has only happened once before in June, tweeted Ben Noll, a meteorologist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand. “It seems very likely that June 2023 will set a new record in the region as sea temperatures continue to rise,” Noll said.
The North Atlantic heat wave is part of a rapid warming of ocean waters globally since March that has scientists confused about the cause and concerned about its impacts.
Global ocean surface temperature reached a record high in May for the second consecutive month, NOAA said in a report last week, and appears to have continued on a record pace during June. The chance of seeing such warm sea surface temperatures is 1-in-256,000, Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami, said, adding “this is beyond extraordinary” in a recent tweet.
NOAA forecasters say the marine heat wave conditions in the North Atlantic have a 90 to 100 percent chance to continue through August and a 70 to 80 percent chance to last through the end of the year, although the intensity of the heat is predicted to decrease. Most of the world’s oceans have at least a 70 percent chance of marine heat wave conditions persisting at least through the summer, NOAA predicts.This is how the sea surface temperatures look right now.
— Scott Duncan (@ScottDuncanWX) June 15, 2023
🟥 = Warmer than average
🟦 = Cooler than average
Records are being broken every day. pic.twitter.com/BH9iCXUgXC
The unusually warm waters in the tropical Atlantic are already influencing the hurricane season, having helped Tropical Storm Bret form the farthest east of any storm on record so early in the season. Longer-term impacts of warming oceans could include higher sea levels, more intense storms with heavier rain and more frequent regional marine heat waves like the one surrounding Europe now.
Possible causes range from cleaner air to climate change
What’s causing such extreme ocean warmth is debatable.
Some scientists have pointed to a reduction in air pollution from ships, which starting in 2020 were required to use fuel containing less sulfur. Sulfur degrades air quality but also acts to cool the Earth’s surface by reflecting sunlight back into space.
Other warming influences might include a weaker-than-normal area of high pressure in the North Atlantic, weaker winds carrying less sun-blocking Saharan dust into the Atlantic and a developing El Nino, which tends to warm ocean waters in certain areas. In addition to natural variation in weather and ocean patterns, scientists say that human-caused climate change has increased the odds of heat waves both on land and in the oceans.
“Every spike in the variability between warmer and cooler events tends to be greater than the previous one,” Thomas Smith, a professor of environmental geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said in an email. “That underlying trend is caused by fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions.”
Potential impacts on marine life and local weather
Experts say that while the impacts on marine life depend on how long the heat wave persists, they could be deadly because warming waters deplete the oxygen marine animals need to survive.
“The temperatures are not yet lethal for most sensitive species, although they will be stressed,” Smith said. “However, if temperatures remain at 4 to 5 degrees Celsius above normal through to September, we could witness a significant die-off in critical species for the marine ecosystems that surround the UK, such as kelp and seagrass, as well as oysters and various fish species that are important for regional economies.”
Potential weather impacts for the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe this summer and beyond range from heat waves to higher chances for heavy rain.
Smith notes that because the United Kingdom and Ireland are surrounded by an unusually warm North Atlantic Ocean to the west and an equally warm North Sea to the east, “whichever way the winds blow, they will pass over warmer waters than we’ve ever experienced in the observational record for this time of year.”
That could lead to “a more turbulent atmosphere, and the associated storms and heavy rainfall,” Smith said. “If the winds don’t blow and we sit under a high pressure system, the surrounding heat has the potential to form a heat dome that might exacerbate summer heatwaves.”
Heat domes are sprawling zones of high pressure that trap heat underneath them and can lead to extreme and extended heat waves, such as the one that has scorched Texas with blistering heat since last week. Summer is already off to an abnormally warm start in Europe, and temperatures are forecast to remain well above normal through at least much of the next week.
“The temperatures are not yet lethal for most sensitive species, although they will be stressed,” Smith said. “However, if temperatures remain at 4 to 5 degrees Celsius above normal through to September, we could witness a significant die-off in critical species for the marine ecosystems that surround the UK, such as kelp and seagrass, as well as oysters and various fish species that are important for regional economies.”
Potential weather impacts for the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe this summer and beyond range from heat waves to higher chances for heavy rain.
Smith notes that because the United Kingdom and Ireland are surrounded by an unusually warm North Atlantic Ocean to the west and an equally warm North Sea to the east, “whichever way the winds blow, they will pass over warmer waters than we’ve ever experienced in the observational record for this time of year.”
That could lead to “a more turbulent atmosphere, and the associated storms and heavy rainfall,” Smith said. “If the winds don’t blow and we sit under a high pressure system, the surrounding heat has the potential to form a heat dome that might exacerbate summer heatwaves.”
Heat domes are sprawling zones of high pressure that trap heat underneath them and can lead to extreme and extended heat waves, such as the one that has scorched Texas with blistering heat since last week. Summer is already off to an abnormally warm start in Europe, and temperatures are forecast to remain well above normal through at least much of the next week.
'Beyond extreme' by definition.
— Scott Duncan (@ScottDuncanWX) June 19, 2023
Ireland and the British Isles are at the epicentre of a major marine heatwave. We have not seen the North Atlantic look like this in modern records.
Marine heatwaves are categorised from 1 to 5. There are hotspots hitting category 5. pic.twitter.com/2lle3hrsGv
It's All A Fucking Circus
Maybe it's nothing but the usual bluff-n-bluster, aimed at drumming up a little free publicity, but are we really willing simply to dismiss it?
I get that 120 years ago, we had a president who would challenge staffers, and cabinet members, and visiting foreign dignitaries to boxing matches at the White House. But that was at the tail end of the Wild West period, and before we'd figured out that a few concussions could shorten your life by decades.
Not that serious risks to our health or looking like a strutting hyper-macho cock have ever tempered our more idiotic impulses, but c'mon, people.
Why Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg say they’re ready for a ‘cage match’
Only six weeks ago, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg competed in his first jujitsu tournament, taking home a couple of medals and posting a photo of himself on Instagram, his arm raised in post-match triumph. Now, the billionaire has been challenged to a cage match by another billionaire — Elon Musk — and Zuckerberg is apparently game.
Musk has been taking shots at Zuckerberg on social media amid reports that Meta, Facebook’s parent, is working on a social media platform to rival Twitter, which Musk purchased in October. On Tuesday, in a Twitter thread about Meta’s purported plans, Musk appeared to agree with the suggestion that Meta has copied rival social media companies.
Another user told Musk in jest to “be careful” because Zuckerberg now trains in jujitsu.
Then Musk responded: “I’m up for a cage match if he is lol.”
A day later on Instagram, Zuckerberg posted a screenshot of Musk’s tweet, with the caption: “Send Me Location.”
And Musk later tweeted “Vegas Octagon,” referring to the Ultimate Fighting Championship arena.
“I have this great move that I call ‘The Walrus,’ where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing,” Musk added.
Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Asked about Zuckerberg’s Instagram post, Meta spokeswoman Elana Widmann told The Washington Post in a statement: “The story speaks for itself.”
It’s far from certain whether the matchup will happen — some combat sports observers are skeptical. That did not stop internet users from musing about how a fight between the two billionaires might look — and who would win. Musk’s fighting experience is unclear, but in recent months Zuckerberg has flaunted his physical fitness. In late May, he posted a photo of himself wearing a camouflaged vest, writing that he had done 300 squats, 200 push-ups and 100 pull-ups, while wearing a 20-pound “weighted pack.”
Zuckerberg has also made no secret of his affinity for Brazilian jujitsu and mixed martial arts, saying on the “The Joe Rogan Experience” in August 2022 that he’d become interested in martial arts “in the last 12 months.”
“It really is the best sport,” Zuckerberg said. “From the very first session that I did, like five minutes in, I was like, ‘Where has this been my whole life?’”
In October, Zuckerberg attended an unusual UFC event in which he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, were among just a handful of spectators watching in person, while most of the seats remained empty. Zuckerberg was still ranked as a white belt when he participated during the May jujitsu tournament in which he won a gold and a silver medal. During one match, Zuckerberg reportedly was choked unconscious at one point, which he denied in an email this month to the New York Times.
At the center of Musk’s exchange with Zuckerberg is Meta’s plan to roll out a social media platform that rivals Twitter. Meta confirmed its plans to news outlets in March. This month, the Verge reported that the new app could be called Threads, and that Meta officials are pitching it as a more “sanely run” platform than Twitter — which has seen an exodus of advertisers since Musk took over in October.
“At least it will be ‘sane,’” Musk tweeted disparagingly about Meta’s purported new platform. “Was worried there for a moment.”
Minutes later, Musk said he’d take on Zuckerberg in the cage.
Jun 22, 2023
Today's Tweet
It was nasty at my place last night too - but nothing like this.
And remember - the smart guys have been warning us about this kinda shit for decades.
Tonight was the scariest night of my life. It started pelting people with hail at Red Rocks and my sister and I luckily found shelter under a sign. I am bleeding and have huge bumps on my head from the hail. Hoping everyone made it out safely. pic.twitter.com/jong1SBuYd
— nicole (@nikkitbfh) June 22, 2023
The Basic Dilemma
This is exactly the kind of dilemma Sun Tzu talked about.
It should be obvious that US politics is a sewer, better suited to the worst possible comments section on the worst possible website. It's fucking awful in way to many ways.
I don't think that's happened by accident, and I don't think the Dark Money Gang is even trying to hide their cards anymore.
We are being divided on purpose, and at the same time, we're being told that being divided is the real problem, and the solution is to go with a Third Party.
Bullshit. Standard Daddy State Divide-n-Conquer bullshit.
We can spend the time and effort it takes to sort through some of the shit and come to some basic conclusions about our approximate position on the old Left/Right spectrum, but an awful lot of people don't feel motivated for whatever reason, or they don't have the intellectual interest (or the mental horsepower) to do the work.
For my own bad self, I've been chided for being part of the problem - "our deeply divided nation" - because I try to pay some attention to what's going on, and I come down (mostly) on the progressive side of things. So plenty of people see me as way too partisan. And I'm betting that a majority of those people haven't stopped to think about the difference between ideology and partisanship, because then they'd have to make some kind of decision, which puts them right back into a position where they have to figure out what the issue is and where they stand on it, when what they really want is a sensible-sounding excuse not to engage at all.
Opinion
So - dilemma.
- If you do the responsible citizen-of-a-democracy thing and take a side, you risk being wrong, voting for the wrong guy, and made to look a fool - possibly in public
- If you shun the process by hiding behind Both-Sides-ism, then you can self-congratulate because you're "too smart to fall for any of that politics stuff", but you've handed your right to self-determination to someone else
It may not feel right to be choosing the lesser of two evils, but why would you stand aside and let someone else choose the greater of those evils for you?
Keep choosing the lesser of the two evils, and over time, the "lesser of the two evils" starts to look more like what it is: The greater good.
A No Labels candidate would likely throw the election to Trump
For most of our careers, the two of us have been on opposite sides of the political aisle. We regularly express our disagreements in a weekly point-counterpoint commentary on a digital platform in Maryland.
But we love our country more than we love our parties, and as we look ahead to the 2024 presidential election, we are in complete agreement: To save the American republic, former president Donald Trump must be defeated. And that’s why the centrist political organization No Labels must cease and desist from its effort to nominate a third-party candidate.
We agree on three points: (1) In a head-to-head general-election contest, Trump faces the same challenges to winning the popular vote as he has in the past, perhaps worse; (2) a moderate independent third-party candidate on the ballot gives Trump the best possible chance of winning reelection; and (3) with Trump saying he will seek reelection even if he is convicted of crimes, we can’t just hope that this threat will go away.
The coup that Trump and his cronies attempted after he lost the 2020 election represented the greatest threat to our democracy since the Civil War. That threat is ongoing. Trump is the Republican front-runner, and, at least so far, his indictments appear to have only intensified his support.
That might change as his legal troubles mount, but if he wins the GOP nomination for president, all Americans who believe in democracy must unite behind a single candidate to assure that Trump, in the words of then-Rep. Liz Cheney, “never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
Even a wounded Trump will be formidable in 2024. Four out of 5 of his voters in 2020 told exit pollers they voted mostly “for [their] candidate” rather than “against his opponent.” Because he has so many hardcore loyalists, his vote is unlikely to fall significantly below its 2016 and 2020 level, about 46 percent.
Dedicated Trump loyalists don’t represent a majority of the electorate. That’s why he has lost the popular vote in both his presidential runs and did not top 47 percent in either. As long as the anti-Trump vote is unified behind a single candidate, Trump is very unlikely to win, as Joe Biden demonstrated in 2020. And this would most likely be the case in a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024.
But a third-party candidate dramatically changes the equation. If he or she takes even a small part of the anti-Trump vote away from Biden, Trump is likely to be returned to the White House. That’s why the No Labels effort poses such a danger to our democracy.
In the five states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — most likely to decide the 2024 election in the electoral college, the numbers tell the story. Together, they have 73 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump narrowly won all of them. In 2020, Biden did.
In all five of these swing states, Biden’s razor-thin margins came from a massive anti-Trump vote. In all of them, at least 1 in 3 Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump; in Wisconsin, that number was 38 percent; in Arizona (where No Labels has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot) a whopping 45 percent.
Even a small drop-off from his 2020 anti-Trump vote would put President Biden in a precarious position in 2024. He has no margin for error. Just 44,000 votes out of more than 10 million cast in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — less than half of 1 percent — were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the electoral college that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives.
Our calculations show that if a No Labels candidate had won just 3 percent of the popular vote in 2020, Trump would probably be sitting in the White House.
Given Biden’s current low approval rating, it’s not unreasonable to assume a No Labels candidate in 2024 could peel off at least 15 percent of the anti-Trump vote from the president. If that happened, and Trump’s base stayed with him, Trump would win all five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office.
Early polling shows Biden and Trump running neck and neck, and every indication is that Biden will again need a big anti-Trump vote. In an April Wall Street Journal poll, 11.5 percent of voters said they disapproved of the way both Biden and Trump handled the presidency. Biden led among those voters by 54 percent to 15 percent. That advantage translates to about 4.5 percent of the total vote, giving Biden that much of a head start in the race. He’s likely to need every bit of that to overcome the intensity of the pro-Trump vote.
If the No Labels organization concludes it wants to put a third-party candidate in the race, that candidate would almost certainly throw the 2024 election to Trump. We need voices from all sides saying, “Not now, No Labels. For the good of the country, cease this third-party effort now.”
Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council and author of “The New Democrats and the Return to Power,” is an adjunct professor of graduate studies in government at Johns Hopkins University.
Craig Fuller is a longtime Republican strategist and served as assistant to President Ronald Reagan for Cabinet affairs and chief of staff to Vice President George H.W. Bush.
For most of our careers, the two of us have been on opposite sides of the political aisle. We regularly express our disagreements in a weekly point-counterpoint commentary on a digital platform in Maryland.
But we love our country more than we love our parties, and as we look ahead to the 2024 presidential election, we are in complete agreement: To save the American republic, former president Donald Trump must be defeated. And that’s why the centrist political organization No Labels must cease and desist from its effort to nominate a third-party candidate.
We agree on three points: (1) In a head-to-head general-election contest, Trump faces the same challenges to winning the popular vote as he has in the past, perhaps worse; (2) a moderate independent third-party candidate on the ballot gives Trump the best possible chance of winning reelection; and (3) with Trump saying he will seek reelection even if he is convicted of crimes, we can’t just hope that this threat will go away.
The coup that Trump and his cronies attempted after he lost the 2020 election represented the greatest threat to our democracy since the Civil War. That threat is ongoing. Trump is the Republican front-runner, and, at least so far, his indictments appear to have only intensified his support.
That might change as his legal troubles mount, but if he wins the GOP nomination for president, all Americans who believe in democracy must unite behind a single candidate to assure that Trump, in the words of then-Rep. Liz Cheney, “never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”
Even a wounded Trump will be formidable in 2024. Four out of 5 of his voters in 2020 told exit pollers they voted mostly “for [their] candidate” rather than “against his opponent.” Because he has so many hardcore loyalists, his vote is unlikely to fall significantly below its 2016 and 2020 level, about 46 percent.
Dedicated Trump loyalists don’t represent a majority of the electorate. That’s why he has lost the popular vote in both his presidential runs and did not top 47 percent in either. As long as the anti-Trump vote is unified behind a single candidate, Trump is very unlikely to win, as Joe Biden demonstrated in 2020. And this would most likely be the case in a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024.
But a third-party candidate dramatically changes the equation. If he or she takes even a small part of the anti-Trump vote away from Biden, Trump is likely to be returned to the White House. That’s why the No Labels effort poses such a danger to our democracy.
In the five states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — most likely to decide the 2024 election in the electoral college, the numbers tell the story. Together, they have 73 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump narrowly won all of them. In 2020, Biden did.
In all five of these swing states, Biden’s razor-thin margins came from a massive anti-Trump vote. In all of them, at least 1 in 3 Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump; in Wisconsin, that number was 38 percent; in Arizona (where No Labels has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot) a whopping 45 percent.
Even a small drop-off from his 2020 anti-Trump vote would put President Biden in a precarious position in 2024. He has no margin for error. Just 44,000 votes out of more than 10 million cast in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — less than half of 1 percent — were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the electoral college that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives.
Our calculations show that if a No Labels candidate had won just 3 percent of the popular vote in 2020, Trump would probably be sitting in the White House.
Given Biden’s current low approval rating, it’s not unreasonable to assume a No Labels candidate in 2024 could peel off at least 15 percent of the anti-Trump vote from the president. If that happened, and Trump’s base stayed with him, Trump would win all five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office.
Early polling shows Biden and Trump running neck and neck, and every indication is that Biden will again need a big anti-Trump vote. In an April Wall Street Journal poll, 11.5 percent of voters said they disapproved of the way both Biden and Trump handled the presidency. Biden led among those voters by 54 percent to 15 percent. That advantage translates to about 4.5 percent of the total vote, giving Biden that much of a head start in the race. He’s likely to need every bit of that to overcome the intensity of the pro-Trump vote.
If the No Labels organization concludes it wants to put a third-party candidate in the race, that candidate would almost certainly throw the 2024 election to Trump. We need voices from all sides saying, “Not now, No Labels. For the good of the country, cease this third-party effort now.”
A Status Report
free·dom
noun
➡︎ the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
"we do have some freedom of choice"
"he was a champion of Irish freedom"
"the shark thrashed its way to freedom"
Dictators’ dark secret: They’re learning from each other
In the spring of 2012, Vladimir Putin was feeling the pressure.
For months, anti-Putin protests had surged through the streets of Moscow and other cities following fraudulent parliamentary elections the previous December. Mr. Putin, who was about to be sworn in for a third term as president, harbored a fear of “color” revolutions — the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine — as well as other popular revolts like the 2010-2012 Arab Spring, in which four dictators were overthrown. Until his inauguration in May, Russian authorities had tolerated the demonstrations. But when street protests broke out again, some marred by violence, the police moved in aggressively and hundreds were arrested.
On July 20, Mr. Putin signed legislation — rushed through parliament in just two weeks — to give the government a strong hand over nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which he suspected were behind the protests. He had long been apprehensive about independent activism, especially by groups that were financed from abroad. Under the new law, any group that received money from overseas and engaged in “political activity” was required to register as a “foreign agent” with the Justice Ministry or face heavy fines.
The law crippled these groups, the backbone of a nascent civil society that had blossomed in the 1990s in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Such organizations are the heartbeat of a healthy democracy, providing an independent and autonomous channel for people to voice their desires and aspirations. One of the first groups to be targeted was Memorial, founded during Mikhail Gorbachev’s years of reform to protect the historical record of Soviet repressions and to defend human rights in the current day. Mr. Putin was determined to squelch it and others like it.
Soon, similar laws began to crop up around the world. In the following years, at least 60 nations passed or drafted laws designed to restrict NGOs, and 96 carried out other policies curtailing them, imposing cumbersome registration requirements, intrusive monitoring, harassment and shutdowns. The wave of repressive measures offers a revealing look at the titanic struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. In the past decade, dictators have forged transnational bonds, sharing methods, copying tactics and learning from one another. They are finding new ways to quash free speech and independent journalism, eradicate NGOs, silence dissent and suffocate criticism.
In previous editorials in this series, we examined how young people who posted freely on social media were wrongly imprisoned by authoritarian regimes. We also described how Russia created and exploited disinformation about biological weapons. This editorial looks at how autocracies are reinforcing themselves by swapping methods and tactics.
The dictators want most of all to survive. They are succeeding.
A cascade of restrictions
In the spring of 2012, Vladimir Putin was feeling the pressure.
For months, anti-Putin protests had surged through the streets of Moscow and other cities following fraudulent parliamentary elections the previous December. Mr. Putin, who was about to be sworn in for a third term as president, harbored a fear of “color” revolutions — the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine — as well as other popular revolts like the 2010-2012 Arab Spring, in which four dictators were overthrown. Until his inauguration in May, Russian authorities had tolerated the demonstrations. But when street protests broke out again, some marred by violence, the police moved in aggressively and hundreds were arrested.
On July 20, Mr. Putin signed legislation — rushed through parliament in just two weeks — to give the government a strong hand over nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which he suspected were behind the protests. He had long been apprehensive about independent activism, especially by groups that were financed from abroad. Under the new law, any group that received money from overseas and engaged in “political activity” was required to register as a “foreign agent” with the Justice Ministry or face heavy fines.
The law crippled these groups, the backbone of a nascent civil society that had blossomed in the 1990s in Russia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Such organizations are the heartbeat of a healthy democracy, providing an independent and autonomous channel for people to voice their desires and aspirations. One of the first groups to be targeted was Memorial, founded during Mikhail Gorbachev’s years of reform to protect the historical record of Soviet repressions and to defend human rights in the current day. Mr. Putin was determined to squelch it and others like it.
Soon, similar laws began to crop up around the world. In the following years, at least 60 nations passed or drafted laws designed to restrict NGOs, and 96 carried out other policies curtailing them, imposing cumbersome registration requirements, intrusive monitoring, harassment and shutdowns. The wave of repressive measures offers a revealing look at the titanic struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. In the past decade, dictators have forged transnational bonds, sharing methods, copying tactics and learning from one another. They are finding new ways to quash free speech and independent journalism, eradicate NGOs, silence dissent and suffocate criticism.
In previous editorials in this series, we examined how young people who posted freely on social media were wrongly imprisoned by authoritarian regimes. We also described how Russia created and exploited disinformation about biological weapons. This editorial looks at how autocracies are reinforcing themselves by swapping methods and tactics.
The dictators want most of all to survive. They are succeeding.
A cascade of restrictions
The Russian “foreign agent” law hung an albatross around the neck of NGOs and, later, independent journalists and bloggers — anyone who received any money from abroad, even payment for a single freelance article. All were required to post a label on their published material identifying it as the work of a “foreign agent,” which in Russia has traditionally been associated with spying. When many organizations refused to oblige, the law was amended so the Justice Ministry could put them in the registry without their consent. Then in 2015, Russia added a new law designating any organization “undesirable” if the government deemed it a threat to national security — effectively a ban. One of the organizations so labeled was the Open Society Foundations established by financier George Soros, which had been, among other things, a lifeline of personal subsidies for Russian scientists in the lean years after the Soviet collapse.
Azerbaijan was the first among former Soviet republics to copy Russia’s 2012 law in 2013 and 2014. Then came Tajikistan in 2014 and Kazakhstan in 2015 with legislation directly limiting foreign funding to NGOs or sharply increasing bureaucratic burdens on them. The laws were largely borrowed from Russia. The cascade of laws has been documented in the Civic Freedom Monitor of the International Center for Not-for-profit Law.
Egypt also put NGOs in the crosshairs. In 2013, the courts convicted 43 NGO workers, including Americans, Egyptians and Europeans, many in absentia, on charges of operating without required government approval. The notorious criminal prosecution, Case 173, dragged on for years. Although the 43 were later acquitted in a retrial, the harassment continues. Under President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, Egyptian authorities have frozen the assets of human rights activists, banned them from traveling abroad and regularly called them in for questioning on suspicions of “foreign funding.” This included Hossam Bahgat, founder and director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, one of Egypt’s most well-known rights organizations. Egypt replaced a draconian 2017 law on NGOs with a new one in 2019 but retained many harsh restrictions. The new law banned activities under vaguely worded terms such as any “political” work or any activity that undermines “national security.”
Cambodia, ruled by strongman Hun Sen for decades, in 2015 imposed a law under which NGOs can be disbanded if their activities “jeopardize peace, stability, and public order or harm the national security, culture and traditions of Cambodian society.” Uganda, which has an active community of NGOs, imposed a restrictive law in 2016; the groups have faced suspensions, freezing of accounts, denial of funding and restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly. In Nicaragua, the dictatorship led by former Sandinista guerrilla Daniel Ortega adopted a “foreign agent” law in 2020 and a law restricting NGOs in 2022. It has canceled the legal registration of more than 950 civil society organizations since 2018.
China, which originally permitted NGOs to exist in a legal gray zone, took a harder line after Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. A new NGO law went into effect in 2017, increasing state control over foreign and domestic funding to civil society groups. While Russia operated with blacklists, China created a whitelist, rewarding some NGOs whose interests it approved, as it sought to punish those in sensitive areas such as media, human rights and religion. Lu Jun, co-founder of one of the early successful NGOs, the Beijing Yirenping Center, which fought discrimination, recalled the ways in which the state turned against his group. For seven years, it was allowed to grow. But then, he recalled, “Between 2014 and 2019, in four separate crackdowns, nine of my colleagues were jailed and five of our offices were repeatedly searched until they were shut down.”
A secret school — or ‘mad scientists’?
How did so many countries come to do the same thing in the same decade? The answers are difficult to find — dictatorships are shrouded in secrecy. But Stephen G.F. Hall, a professor at the University of Bath, in Britain, uncovered evidence that the dictators copy, share and learn from one another. His new book, “The Authoritarian International,” looks at how this works.
According to Mr. Hall, authoritarian regimes must constantly maintain the illusion of steadfast control. Relax for a minute, and the illusion could vanish. “Protest is like a run on the bank,” Mr. Hall told us. “The protesters only have to get it right once.” For autocracies, protest and dissent are an existential threat.
“They’ve all seen what happens to autocrats generally — the Gaddafi moment, being dragged through the streets and beaten to death with a lead pipe. … They seem to know that if one country becomes democratic in a region, the rest will almost certainly follow. … And the best way to ensure that survival is to learn, to cooperate and to share best practices because you constantly have to stay one step ahead.”
Mr. Hall says much “authoritarian learning” is indirect, diffused through like-minded networks and emulation. When he began his research, he thought he might find an actual school of dictatorship, with Mr. Putin or other despots as “either star pupils or teachers telling other autocrats how to establish best survival practices.” But Mr. Hall did not find contemporary evidence of such a school. “I think it is primarily a case of trial and error,” he said, with the dictators more like “mad scientists” who run experiments and then share the results. which are passed around in the shadows, through security services and old-boy networks.
And there are traces of collaboration. According to Mr. Hall, Russia has frequently looked to Belarus as a proving ground and source of authoritarian methods. In 2002, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko created the Belarusian Republican Youth Union, a pro-regime, patriotic organization that could take control of the streets in Minsk in the event of an attempted color revolution. After the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Kremlin quickly created its own groups of “patriotic youths.” Years later, when Mr. Lukashenko was facing massive protests after stealing the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Putin came to his rescue. For instance, when Belarusian television workers quit their jobs in protest of the election fraud, Mr. Putin sent in Russians to keep the broadcasts going. (For Russia, the help is also driven by security concerns, given Belarus’s proximity to NATO.) Belarus also cooperates with China, which has long provided it with facial recognition technology. China’s telecommunications giant Huawei set up research centers in Belarus and brought Belarusian students to China for training.
Some authoritarian learning has its origin in history books. Magnus Fiskesjö, a professor at Cornell University, has shown how China in the past decade or so has brought back show trials, with staged, coerced confessions, borrowing both from the Mao era and reaching back to Joseph Stalin’s show trials of the 1930s. The extrajudicial show trials have been used against journalists, bloggers, academics, lawyers and entertainers, among others. The forced confessions go a step further than just silencing dissent; they are used to “shape reality” and create a more “predictably obedient society.”
The digital censors
According to Mr. Hall, authoritarian regimes must constantly maintain the illusion of steadfast control. Relax for a minute, and the illusion could vanish. “Protest is like a run on the bank,” Mr. Hall told us. “The protesters only have to get it right once.” For autocracies, protest and dissent are an existential threat.
“They’ve all seen what happens to autocrats generally — the Gaddafi moment, being dragged through the streets and beaten to death with a lead pipe. … They seem to know that if one country becomes democratic in a region, the rest will almost certainly follow. … And the best way to ensure that survival is to learn, to cooperate and to share best practices because you constantly have to stay one step ahead.”
Mr. Hall says much “authoritarian learning” is indirect, diffused through like-minded networks and emulation. When he began his research, he thought he might find an actual school of dictatorship, with Mr. Putin or other despots as “either star pupils or teachers telling other autocrats how to establish best survival practices.” But Mr. Hall did not find contemporary evidence of such a school. “I think it is primarily a case of trial and error,” he said, with the dictators more like “mad scientists” who run experiments and then share the results. which are passed around in the shadows, through security services and old-boy networks.
And there are traces of collaboration. According to Mr. Hall, Russia has frequently looked to Belarus as a proving ground and source of authoritarian methods. In 2002, Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko created the Belarusian Republican Youth Union, a pro-regime, patriotic organization that could take control of the streets in Minsk in the event of an attempted color revolution. After the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Kremlin quickly created its own groups of “patriotic youths.” Years later, when Mr. Lukashenko was facing massive protests after stealing the 2020 presidential election, Mr. Putin came to his rescue. For instance, when Belarusian television workers quit their jobs in protest of the election fraud, Mr. Putin sent in Russians to keep the broadcasts going. (For Russia, the help is also driven by security concerns, given Belarus’s proximity to NATO.) Belarus also cooperates with China, which has long provided it with facial recognition technology. China’s telecommunications giant Huawei set up research centers in Belarus and brought Belarusian students to China for training.
Some authoritarian learning has its origin in history books. Magnus Fiskesjö, a professor at Cornell University, has shown how China in the past decade or so has brought back show trials, with staged, coerced confessions, borrowing both from the Mao era and reaching back to Joseph Stalin’s show trials of the 1930s. The extrajudicial show trials have been used against journalists, bloggers, academics, lawyers and entertainers, among others. The forced confessions go a step further than just silencing dissent; they are used to “shape reality” and create a more “predictably obedient society.”
The digital censors
In the world of authoritarian tactics, Russia and China are the center of gravity. They share know-how for policing the internet and generate sheaves of propaganda and disinformation, sometimes broadcasting identical sets of lies at the same time. Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022, but closer cooperation to squelch free speech on the internet was already well underway.
A glimpse of how it works was provided recently in a trove of internal documents, emails and audio recordings disclosed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an April 5 report by Daniil Belovodyev, Andrei Soshnikov and Reid Standish. The materials depict Russia and China working closely to help each other more tightly control the internet in two high-level meetings in 2017 and 2019.
The first meeting, on July 4, 2017, was a two-hour session in Moscow between Ren Xianling, who was then-deputy minister of the Cyberspace Administration of China, and Aleksandr Zharov, then-head of Roskomnadzor, the Russian government agency that censors the internet. According to the documents and other materials, the Russians wanted expertise from China about “mechanisms for permitting and controlling” mass media, online media and “individual bloggers,” as well as China’s experience regulating messenger apps, encryption services and virtual private networks. The Russians asked to send a delegation to China to study its vast domestic surveillance system and the “Great Firewall” that blocks unwanted overseas information. The Chinese visitors were particularly interested in methods used by the Russian agency to control the media coverage of public protest. The Chinese visitors’ questions were prompted by public demonstrations just a few months before, organized by opposition leader Alexei Navalny in March 2017. Mr. Zharov reportedly responded that the Kremlin wasn’t worried because the protests were small-scale and Mr. Putin’s public support was at a “very high level.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin in March. (Washington Post illustration; Alexey Maishev/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images)
The discussion came just as Russia was looking at how to install more sophisticated controls over the internet. The government attempted in 2018 to block the popular messaging platform Telegram but failed to do so. In May 2019, Mr. Putin signed new legislation requiring that Russian companies install more intrusive controls, and also envisioning the creation of an entirely isolated Russian internet. Outside researchers have found that the new controls gave the Kremlin “fine-grained information control” over internet traffic.
In July 2019, the Russian and Chinese teams met again in Moscow, according to the RFE/RL report. Mr. Zharov asked the Chinese for advice about how to deal with platforms that successfully evade Russia’s blocking. The failure with Telegram was brought up as an example. The Russians also asked the Chinese how they used artificial intelligence to identify and block “prohibited content.” RFE/RL disclosed this year that Roskomnadzor has been using sophisticated techniques to track Russians online, searching for posts that insult Mr. Putin or call for protests.
Then in October 2019, on the sidelines of the World Internet Conference in China, Russia and China signed a cooperation agreement on counteracting the spread of “forbidden information.” In December 2019, China sent requests to Russia, in three separate letters, with censorship requests to block articles and sites, such as the Epoch Times, a newspaper with ties to the Falun Gong movement that is persecuted in China, and links on GitHub, the software development website, that describe ways to bypass China’s firewall inside the country.
The dictators have clung to power
Of course, the United States and other democracies also cooperate and spend billions of dollars annually promoting the values of open societies and rule of law around the world. Like the dictators, the democracies share tactics and methods with one another. But there is one important difference: Diffusion of democracy appeals to — and relies upon — individuals and free thinking, while autocrats pursue their own survival by suffocating individual voices.
The latest Freedom in the World report shows a decline in freedom for the 17th year in a row. Many autocrats are proving resilient. In the nearly 11 years since Mr. Putin signed the “foreign agent” law, most of the world’s leading dictators have held on. Rarely have they been toppled by popular protests. They are building new means of repression along with the old. In China, tech companies have invented an electronic surveillance system that can automatically recognize a protest banner and demonstrators’ faces — and alert the police.
In Russia, Mr. Putin is unrestrained. The “foreign agent” and “undesirable” laws were revised again in 2022, making them significantly more draconian. While the earlier version singled out those who received money from abroad, now a “foreign agent” can be anyone who receives any kind of support from overseas or comes “under foreign influence in other forms.” New names are added every Friday to the registry compiled by the Justice Ministry.
As of June 16, the registry listed 621 groups and people.
“Authoritarian regimes are much more brazen than before,” said William J. Dobson, co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and author of “The Dictator’s Learning Curve,” published in 2012. “They are not sitting still.”
At the same time, autocracies are racked with challenges and setbacks. Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine might yet doom his rule. In China, Mr. Xi demands obedience, but protesters defy him, as they did last winter over “zero covid” restrictions. And one example of successful protest came recently in Georgia. The ruling Georgian Dream party advanced yet another “foreign agent” bill to require any organization receiving more than 20 percent of its funds from foreign sources to register as “agents of foreign influence.” But the bill was widely criticized, and after mass protests around the Parliament building in March, it was dropped.
All who believe in democracy must find new ways to advance it. This is especially important now, when democracy has lost luster around the globe.
Democracy’s greatest strength is openness. It should be harnessed to tell the truth loudly and widely.
Jun 21, 2023
When It Goes Bad
... it just goes bad.
John Eastman’s expert witness in disbarment hearing is barred for not being an expert
Attorney at the heart of Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert results of 2020 election faces potential disbarment
A judge in California barred an expert witness from testifying in the disbarment trial of John Eastman, the former attorney for former president Donald Trump, since the witness was not an expert, The Daily Beastreported.
Mr Eastman is facing a potential disbarment for his involvement in a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. He attempted to call a man named Joseph Fried, an accountant who wrote an eBook that questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results, as a witness.
But California State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland vetoed the attempt.
“I don’t see how Mr Fried is qualified to be an expert,” NPR reporter Tom Dreisbach reported her saying. “He has no experience in voting or election matters.”
In addition, California bar attorney Duncan Carling said “We don’t believe the opinion of a CPA ... is relevant” and that Mr Fried “never identified any instances of fraud.”
Mr Eastman is facing 11 disciplinary charges related to his efforts to concoct a plan that would have allowed then-vice president Mike Pence to certify Mr Trump as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. If found culpable, he could lose his law license or have it suspended. The California Supreme Court will ultimately give the final ruling.
Mr Carling called Mr Eastman’s actions a “last-ditch effort” in a series “of increasingly desperate attempts to overturn the election.”
He was fully aware in real time that his plan was damaging the nation,” Mr Carling said, adding that “Dr Eastman sought at every turn to avoid every public test of his theory, and he privately confessed … that his theory had no chance of persuading the court.”
Mr Carling pointed to an email exchange between Mr Eastman and Mr Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob, wherein Mr Jacob said Mr Eastman was being “gravely irresponsible.”
Mr Eastman’s attorney Randal Miller defended his client’s actions, saying “Lawyers get to argue debatable issues, which is what Dr Eastman did,” according to The Washington Post.
Attorney at the heart of Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert results of 2020 election faces potential disbarment
A judge in California barred an expert witness from testifying in the disbarment trial of John Eastman, the former attorney for former president Donald Trump, since the witness was not an expert, The Daily Beastreported.
Mr Eastman is facing a potential disbarment for his involvement in a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. He attempted to call a man named Joseph Fried, an accountant who wrote an eBook that questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results, as a witness.
But California State Bar Court Judge Yvette Roland vetoed the attempt.
“I don’t see how Mr Fried is qualified to be an expert,” NPR reporter Tom Dreisbach reported her saying. “He has no experience in voting or election matters.”
In addition, California bar attorney Duncan Carling said “We don’t believe the opinion of a CPA ... is relevant” and that Mr Fried “never identified any instances of fraud.”
Mr Eastman is facing 11 disciplinary charges related to his efforts to concoct a plan that would have allowed then-vice president Mike Pence to certify Mr Trump as the winner of the 2020 presidential election. If found culpable, he could lose his law license or have it suspended. The California Supreme Court will ultimately give the final ruling.
Mr Carling called Mr Eastman’s actions a “last-ditch effort” in a series “of increasingly desperate attempts to overturn the election.”
He was fully aware in real time that his plan was damaging the nation,” Mr Carling said, adding that “Dr Eastman sought at every turn to avoid every public test of his theory, and he privately confessed … that his theory had no chance of persuading the court.”
Mr Carling pointed to an email exchange between Mr Eastman and Mr Pence’s attorney Greg Jacob, wherein Mr Jacob said Mr Eastman was being “gravely irresponsible.”
Mr Eastman’s attorney Randal Miller defended his client’s actions, saying “Lawyers get to argue debatable issues, which is what Dr Eastman did,” according to The Washington Post.
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