The Washington Post Reports on Impeachment Efforts on Inauguration Day.

FLASHBACK:

The Washington Post Reports on Impeachment Efforts on Inauguration Day.

In an article from the Washington Post from Jan. 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) Matea Gold writes about the effort to impeach President Trump. Titled, “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun” Gold writes: “The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already underway. At the moment the new commander in chief was sworn in, a campaign to build public support for his impeachment went live at ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org, spearheaded by two liberal advocacy groups aiming to lay the groundwork for his eventual ejection from the White House.” Gold continues, ” Their effort is early, strategists admit. But they insist it is not premature — even if it triggers an angry backlash from those who will argue that they are not giving the new president a chance.”
“The impeachment drive comes as Democrats and liberal activists are mounting broad opposition to stymie Trump’s agenda. Among the groups organizing challenges to the Trump administration is the American Civil Liberties Union, which plans to wield public-records requests and lawsuits as part of an aggressive action plan aimed at protecting immigrants and pushing for government transparency, among other issues. ‘We think that President Trump will be in violation of the Constitution and federal statutes on day one, and we plan a vigorous offense to ensure the worst of the constitutional violations do not occur,’ said Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU’s executive director.”

Actually, they were talking about impeaching him within a day or two of the election.

28Posted at 7:03 am by Glenn Reynolds   

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Our Bankrupt Nomenklatura. - VDH

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON:

Our Bankrupt Nomenklatura.

“Take all the signature brand names that the Baby Boomers inherited from prior generations—Harvard, Yale, the New York Times, NPR, CNN, the Oscars, the NFL, the NBA, the FBI, the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and a host of others. And then ask whether they enhanced or diminished such inheritances.”
Plus:

What explains the bankruptcy of the elite?
We have confused credentials with merit—as we learned when Hollywood stars and rich people tried to bribe and buy their mostly lackadaisical children into named schools, eager for the cattle brand BAs and without a care whether their offspring would be well educated.
Graduating from today’s Yale or Harvard law school is not necessarily a sign of achievement, much less legal expertise. Mostly, entrance into heralded schools is a reminder of past good prep school grades and test scores winning admittance—or using some sort of old-boy, networking, athletic, or affirmative action pull.
Being a “senior” official at some alphabet government agency also means little any more outside of the nomenklatura. Academia, the media, and entertainment industries are likewise supposedly meritocratic without being based on demonstrable worth. Otherwise, why would college graduates know so little, the media so often report fantasies as truth, and Hollywood focus on poor remakes? . . . To paraphrase an assessment found in Tacitus’s Agricola, the current American nomenklatura has all but ruined our institutions and branded all that success.

As I say, credentialed, not educated. Related: The Suicide Of Expertise.
Also, flashback:

Here’s a question, and it’s a fair one. What has the ruling class done right in the last 20 years?
Come on, betters, “wow” us with your mad society-running skillz.
We know what America achieved under the old ruling class. It beat the Nazis – the real Nazis, not the fake bugaboo “Nazis” that the left labels everyone to the right of Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit. It fought through the Depression. It trashed the Democrat’s Jim Crow regime. It designed the ’65 Mustang, created the Big Mac and put a man on the moon. It crushed the dirty commies in the Cold War. The old elite was not perfect, but at least you can point to some ticks in the “WIN” column.
Not so with the coterie of half-wits running our institutions today. It’s all check marks under “LOSS.” Iraq. The Wall Street Meltdown. Obamacare. Obama himself.
Oh, and then there’s Jeffrey Epstein.
Do you see a lot of successes? Do you see any? Have I overlooked some tremendous victory this generation of our betters pulled off? I can’t think of any offhand – gee, how about social media? Yeah, there’s progress.

Like I said.

84Posted at 12:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds   

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Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Thomas Jefferson Quotes


Thomas Jefferson

His portrait is on the $2.00 Dollar Bill.

This is amazing. There are two parts to this.

Be sure to read the 2nd part (in RED ).

Thomas Jefferson was a very remarkable man who started   learning very early in life and never stopped.

At 5, began studying under his cousin's tutor.

At 9, studied Latin, Greek and French.

At 14, studied classical literature and additional languages.

At 16, entered the College of William and Mary. 
Also could write in Greek with one hand, while writing the same in Latin with the other.

At 19, studied Law for 5 years starting under George Wythe.

At 23, started his own law practice.

At 25, was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses.

At 31, wrote the widely circulated "Summary View of the Rights of British America," and retired from his law practice.

At 32, was a delegate to the Second Continental Congress.

At 33, wrote the Declaration of Independence.

At 33, took three years to revise Virginia's legal code and wrote a Public Education bill and a statute for Religious Freedom.

At 36, was elected the second Governor of Virginia, succeeding Patrick Henry.

At 40, served in Congress for two years.

At 41, was the American minister to France and negotiated commercial treaties with European nations   along with Ben Franklin and John Adams.

At 46, served as the first Secretary of State under George Washington.

At 53, served as Vice President and was elected President of the American Philosophical Society.

At 55, drafted the Kentucky Resolutions and became the active head of the Republican Party.

At 57, was elected the third president of the United States.

At 60, obtained the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the nation's size.

At 61, was elected to a second term as President.

At 65, retired to Monticello.

At 80, helped President Monroe shape the Monroe Doctrine.

At 81, almost single-handedly, created the University of Virginia and served as it's first 
president.

At 83, died on the 50th Anniversary of the Signing of the Declaration of Independence, along with John Adams.

Thomas Jefferson knew because he himself studied, the previous failed attempts at government. He understood actual history, the nature of God, His laws and the nature of man. That happens to be way more than what most understand today.

Jefferson really knew his stuff...

A voice from the past to lead us in the future:

John F. Kennedy held a dinner in the White House for a group of the brightest minds in the nation at that time. He made this statement:

"This is perhaps the assembly of the most intelligence ever to gather at one time in the White House, with the exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe ."   -- Thomas Jefferson

"The democracy will cease to exist when you take   away from those   who are willing to work and give to those who would not."    -- Thomas Jefferson

"It is incumbent on every generation    to pay its  own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on, would save one-half the wars of the world."    -- Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them."   -- Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government   results from too much government."   --   Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."   -- Thomas Jefferson

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms   is,   as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."    -- Thomas Jefferson

"The tree of liberty must    be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."   -- Thomas Jefferson

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes, the propagation of ideas which he  disbelieves   and abhors, is sinful and  tyrannical."    -- Thomas Jefferson

On the Whistleblower Kerfuffle, Imagine a Different Scenario - VDH

On the Whistleblower Kerfuffle, Imagine a Different Scenario

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

October 11, 2019 12:09 PM

Then president-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama arrive for Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington, D.C., January 20, 2017. (J. Scott Applewhite/Reuters)

Imagine . . .

If in early 2015, some White House staffers transcribing confidential presidential calls were disturbed about one conversation that President Obama had with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif. The two allegedly had confidentially discussed the staggered release of some $1.7 billion in withheld U.S. dollars to Iran — as an understood exchange for the release of 4 American hostages, $400 million of which was to be delivered, in an unmarked cargo plane at night, and in various currencies to Tehran.

The payments were allegedly to take place in the general context of the ongoing “Iran Deal” nuclear nonproliferation negotiations, and a time when Iranian-funded Hezbollah was staging terrorist operations in Syria and from Lebanon.

Imagine further that a few of the insider staffers/transcribers talked about their worries over such a quid pro quo and the disconnect between what their president was saying to the Iranians and what the administration was denying to the press. And they were further outraged because such payments were hidden from the public and in apparent violation of US policy prohibiting cash payments for hostage releases.

At that point, a furious conservative Republican, former CIA analyst, and former Dick Cheney staffer, with ties to a likely 2016 Republican presidential candidate, working in the National Intelligence Program, contacted the staff of Representative Nunes, Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The latter’s staff then helped to prep and advise the complainant, along with a mostly conservative leaning law firm, before submitting the formal charges to the inspector general.

The gist of the brief, citing legal precedents, footnoted to often-conservative media, and prepared as a formal legal document, was that the anonymous complainant had heard and learned from anonymous bureaucrats that they in turn had heard the Obama–Zarif call. Such hearsay in the complaint was allowable given that the whistleblower protocols have been mysteriously recently altered to permit such second-hand complaints.

Imagine also that Chairman Nunes did not apprise his Democratic members of the committee of the complaint, but tweeted about its contents for several weeks in criticism of President Obama and his negotiations with Iran, before releasing its existence to the media. Note too that the complainant’s second- and third-hand version of the Obama–Zarif call differed in vital areas from the actual transcription of the call immediately released by President Obama. Imagine further that Chairman Nunes read into the Congressional record his own version of the Obama–Zarif call that was for the most part not accurate, and when called on his deception claimed he was only offering a “parody” of the call.

Chairman Nunes would also announce that the whistleblower’s name would not be disclosed, although he/she was known to Nunes and his Republican committee colleagues, and further that the whistleblower would not appear to testify to the committee to which he/she first addressed his/her complaints, and instead would only answer written questions.

Would Republicans seek impeachment of President Obama on the basis of such evidence of the whistleblower’s alleged quid pro quo?

Would Democrats be angry about the manner in which the whistleblower’s complaint emerged and the anonymous whistleblower’s own background and motives? Would they say that the transcript of the call, not the whistleblower’s second-hand version of it, showed that Obama and Zarif were discussing parameters of further conflict resolution, aside from the Iran deal, and without explicit ransom for hostages?

Would Republicans simply respond that after the Benghazi travesty, the Fast and Furious scandal, the monitoring of the Associated Press reporters and Fox News’s James Rosen, the Lois Lerner IRS scandal, and the hot mic, quid pro quo horse trading of Obama with the Russian government, they had now more than enough evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors anyway and would proceed on the prompt of the whistleblower to impeach the president?

Battleground: 7 in 10 say US ‘on the edge of civil war’ 

by Paul Bedard

 | October 23, 2019 01:27 P 

“The majority of Americans believe that we are two-thirds of the way to being on the edge of civil war. That to me is a very pessimistic place,” said Mo Elleithee, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service.

 And worse, he said in announcing 

 the results of the 

institute’s Battleground Poll, the political division is likely to make the upcoming 2020 presidential race the nastiest in modern history.

(Screenshot)

Highlighting findings that show voters angered with compromise and growing unfavorable ratings of President Trump and most 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, he said the poll “paints a scenario, a picture of a highly negative campaign that will continue to exacerbate the incivility in our public discourse."

He added, “It will be a sort of race to the bottom, or has the potential to be a race to the bottom.” 

The Civility Poll is an offshoot of the famous bipartisan Battleground Poll conducted by Democratic pollster Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners and Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group.

While it found that 87% are frustrated with the rudeness in politics today, it also revealed that the public really isn’t interested in traditional compromise. For example, a nearly equal 84% said that they are “tired of leaders compromising [their] values and ideals.”

Elleithee explained, “It seems to me what they’re saying is, ‘I believe in common ground, it’s just that common ground is where I’m standing. As soon you move over to where I am, we’ll be on common ground.’”

(Screenshot)

Goeas pointed to the poor favorable ratings of presidential candidates and said that 2020 may be a rare race between candidates that less than half the country likes.

“There is going to be a large body of voters who dislike both of them, and that’s going to be the swing vote in the election, which means it dictates the kind of campaign that’s run,” he said.

 Lake agreed that national division is widening. “There is relative consensus that divisions in this country are getting worse,” she said in her memo accompanying the survey released Tuesday.

Both pollsters noted that the public blames social media, the news media, and Trump for the growing division.

But Goeas, not a fan of the president, said he believes that Trump didn’t start the rudeness in today’s politics. “He is a symptom of where we are, not ‘the’ disease,” he said, adding, “One of the things that I have focused on as we have gone into this death spiral of incivility in the country, that we had to be at a certain point for Trump to become acceptable.”

 The poll backs that up. It found that 84% believe that “behavior that used to be seen as unacceptable is now accepted as normal behavior.”

Bill Gates’ Nuclear Reactor Hits a Roadblock

Bill Gates’ Nuclear Reactor Hits a Roadblock
Matthew Greenwood posted on October 21, 2019 

Bill Gates is optimistic about the future—and the role of nuclear energy as an environmentally friendly energy source—but he faces significant obstacles along the way.

His company, TerraPower, is working on new technologies to revolutionize nuclear power. One of them is a traveling wave reactor (TWR). A TWR doesn’t rely exclusively on enriched uranium, which is expensive to acquire and the waste is problematic to store with a half-life of almost 4.5 billion years. Rather, TWR initiates the reaction with enriched uranium then switches to depleted uranium, the waste left over from uranium enrichment. A TWR could run on depleted uranium for decades.

 Rather than cooling the reactor with water, a TWR uses liquid sodium as a coolant. The reactor can therefore operate at a lower temperature than conventional reactors and is less vulnerable to a Chernobyl-type accident.

TerraPower is also developing a molten chloride fast reactor, which uses molten salt as a coolant and as the fuel medium, giving it the potential to significantly boost efficiency.

At TerraPower’s state-of-the-art Bellevue lab, engineers put sophisticated computer models of the company’s technologies through real-world tests without having to use actual radioactive fuel. Powerful cutting-edge computers process the data at a complexity and speed previously unheard of in the nuclear industry.

“The new thing is advanced physics, enabled by modern computing power that was really only available in the last 10 to 15 years,” said Chris Levesque, TerraPower president and CEO.

TerraPower and the Traveling Wave Reactor.

TerraPower recently hit an important milestone: 1,000 hours of continuous operations on an isothermal loop that is testing the effects of moving molten salt through a reactor. This is a significant step forward in the company’s efforts to create a licensed demonstration reactor.

One major problem with a TWR power plant is the price. It will cost about $3 billion to build a demonstration reactor. Even Bill Gates isn’t rich enough to fund it himself. TerraPower had signed a promising agreement with China to build a demonstration reactor, but the project has been shuttered due to China-U.S. trade tensions. The company is now lobbying Congress for a public-private partnership to fund the reactor.

Despite the setbacks, Gates still seems optimistic about nuclear power’s potential.

“Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day,” Gates said. “The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation.”

Read more about developments in nuclear power at Nuclear Propulsion: How We Could Reach the Stars with Current Technology.

Climate Change Crisis

Climate Change Crisis