Global
Featuring heavy hitters from the realms of cable news and punditry, Politicon - which is to Politics what Comic Con is to superheroes and comic books - took place July 29-30 at the Pasadena Convention Center. This “politi-palooza” attracted prominent speakers, performers and audiences from across the liberal and conservative ends of the spectrum. Highlights of the chattering classes’ chitchat at Politicon included:
“Po-Crazy”
The first panel I attended at what was dubbed “Independence Hall” was entitled “Trump: Genius or Lunatic?” Sally Kohn, an openly gay reliably lefty commentator who has opinionated on Fox News and CNN, moderated the discussion with pro and anti Trump participants. Referring to the president and his state of mind (or lack of), Kohn set the stage for the weekend talkfest by paraphrasing the old Gershwin Brothers’ song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”, quipping: “You say potato, I say ‘po-crazy’.”
Coulter Interruptus: Ersatz Nazis, Real Reds
Thank you for inviting me to speak here. I’m grateful and honored, but it is not an easy task. I’ve spoken on television and to large crowds and to important big shots, but here you are asking me to speak to hundreds of thousands of ghosts and billions of ghosts in waiting. To think about this subject wisely we must keep all of them in mind, as well as those who tried to prevent Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those who survived, those who reported, those who forced themselves to remember over and over in order to educate others.
Perhaps even more difficult is thinking about those who rushed to make all those deaths and injuries happen or who went along unquestioning, and those who do the same today. Nice people. Decent people. People superficially similar to you. People who do not abuse their children or their pets. People perhaps like the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet who was asked last week if he would launch a nuclear attack on China if President Trump ordered him to. His response was a very principled and reasonable yes, he would obey orders.
"President Trump openly called on the Russians to find and release 30,000 Clinton emails during the campaign," said Driesen, a law professor at Syracuse University's College of Law. "Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Kremlin-connected Russians to discuss Russian-gathered materials incriminating Clinton, a meeting all admitted to attending. Furthermore, many Trump aides denied ever meeting with Russians and later admitted that they had when contrary evidence emerged, suggesting that they are hiding something. Trump has financial ties with the Russians going back many years, which may have made him financially beholden to them. Finally, our intelligence services found that Russia had obtained compromising, albeit unverified, salacious material on Trump.
Since the facts show that Trump and his aides invited Russian interference and the Russians did intervene, we need an independent investigation to see whether these things are related, including an investigation of possible financial entanglements predating the election."
This is about a clean, environmentally benign, cost effective way to capture energy which is otherwise lost.
Cisterns are normally considered to be rainwater storage devices either underground, or at ground level. Also, cisterns are not involved with the production of electricity.
The 12 continental U.S. places with the most annual rainfall are all on the west coast. Their average figures range from 105.6” at Grays River Hatchery, Washington state, to 130.6” at Aberdeen Reservoir, also in Washington.
What if a rather large cistern were placed at the top of a 200’ tower, just offshore in Washington state, where the rainfall was 108” (9 feet) per year? What if this device collected rainfall, and periodically allowed the accumulated water to escape by way of turbines just above the water’s surface? The turbines would be connected to the nearest power transmission lines
How much electricity could such a cistern/turbine combination generate in one year? Let’s talk about one acre in size, nine feet in depth. One acre is 43,560 square feet. This is not much larger than the average putting green at a golf course.
When the U.S.A. wanted a regime change it used to be done in secret by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), especially when that country had a democratically elected government such as Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), Nicaragua (1980's), Haiti (2006), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014) and Syria, where the bloody project is still raging, the body count mounting, and millions of refuges are homeless.
In the last few decades the U.S. has grown bolder in its regime change projects. What used to be done secretly is now unabashedly done in plain sight. The 2017 Venezuela regime change project has gone public. Most of the U.S. public cannot see the forest for the trees of propaganda that has the public confused about what is behind the chaos in Venezuela today. Mostly what is behind it is U.S. funding millions of dollars to the political parties of the oligarchs. Without that money the opposition political parties would be more divided than they already are and weaker.
I was asked to speak about prosecuting weapons dealers and war makers with a focus on Saudi Arabia. There are, I think, many ways that one could go about that. I say this as a non-lawyer, with certain perverse preferences that lawyers generally don’t share.
Both houses of Congress have now passed big new sanctions bills by veto-proof majorities, in fact with near unanimity. The vote this week in the House of Misrepresentatives was 419–3 on a bill to sanction Russia, Iran, and North Korea as punishment for primarily imaginary crimes, despite the sum total of the global legal bodies having asked the United States to judge these crimes, skip over a trial, and move right ahead with punishment being exactly equal to the number of principled opponents of war employed on Capitol Hill.
The most recent vote in the Senate on a version of the bill that did not yet include North Korea was 97-2. The Senate will now take up the new bill for another vote.
Two of the last four commercial nuclear power plants under construction in the United States—both of them at the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina—have been cancelled. A decision on the remaining two, which are in Georgia, will be made in August.
“DING DONG, Summer is dead,” says Glenn Carroll, one of a core group of safe energy activists who have labored for decades to rid the southeast of these last four reactor projects.
No longer will we have to explain to our less superhero-obsessed friends why Spider-Man doesn’t do things with the Avengers in the movies even though he’s a Marvel character. After his appearance in Captain America: Civil War, we finally have the first collaboration between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios in an attempt to help Sony make a Spider-Man movie that’s not awful. And – surprise surprise! – Spider-Man: Homecoming is actually pretty good.
Homecoming benefits quite a lot from being part of the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe. Spider-Man works best in a setting filled with other superheroes. There have been entire comic series based on him teaming up with other characters because friendly, chatty Peter Parker plays off them so well. So while Iron Man stops short of stealing the show, his constant involvement in the background gives everything else a context that the previous Spider-Man movies have lacked.
Something extraordinary has happened in Washington. President Donald Trump has made it clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by October—the facts be damned. In short, the fix is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is in compliance and thereby set the stage for a military confrontation. His advisors have even been kind enough to explain how they will go about this. Rarely has a sinister plan to destroy an arms control agreement and pave the way for war been so openly telegraphed.