* This is an archive of my own blog and online notes, with weekly entries collected by month. The current week in stand-alone format is available here. Feel free to CONTACT ME if so inclined.
DAYLOG MON 24 FEB: Billionaire Mark Cuban has a popular account on BlueSky, with well over a million followers, and often engages with commenters. He recently posted about Bernie Sanders going to Red districts, to discover dissatisfaction with Trump. [ED: Apparently they weren't really Red districts but ... ]
There are reports elsewhere from town halls in which Republicans lit into their elected reps for passively letting Trump do anything he liked. How much to read into that? Not so much yet. Wait until the economy starts to tank, then it will pick up. [ED: Later, reports indicated that consumer confidence is poor even now. I'm thinking it will get worse unless Trump pulls back from the brink. He doesn't seem inclined to.]
Anyway, Cuban was a bit annoyed that Bernie posted to Xitter but not BlueSky. It would seem BlueSky is the future for the Dems -- and both Jasmine Crockett and Pete Buttigieg have popular accounts there, with >400K and >500K followers respectively. We need more Dem leaders on BlueSky. Commenters suggested that some people thought in more worth their time to post to Xitter than BlueSky -- even though it only seems they're getting trolled on Xitter. I suggested: "Why not post to both?"
That got some skepticism, with someone suggesting there might be an app to do that. I wondered if there was, and on investigating found the website for "Federica", which supports crossposting. Baseline account is free, pay subscription for analytics and such.
DAYLOG TUE 25 FEB: In the dark hours of this morning, I was lying in bed, half-awake and feeling gloomy. When I finally got to wake-up, I checked news on my smartphone as I always do, expecting all bad news as usual. To my surprise, I got good news.
The Russians have been pushing on the city of Pokrovsk from last year, making slow progress at great expense. David Axe, writing for FORBES, says that the Pokrovsk offensive is going nowhere, thanks to effective Ukrainian use of drones.
According to President Zelenskyy, Ukraine produced 2.2 million FPV drones in 2024, along with 100,000 long-range drones. The Orcs have been confronted with "a wall of drones" at Pokrovsk, most of them using unjammable fiber-optic comlinks. Ukrainian troops have apparently become competent at tracing back Orc fiber-optic drones by following their threads. Ukrainian fiber-optic drones have enough range to perform "road cutting" well into the Orc rear, breaking supply lines to the front with the wreckage of trucks & other logistical vehicles piling up at chokepoints.
There was not much mention of Ukrainian frontline anti-air defenses -- though there has been talk of short-range radars guiding Ukrainian drones to intercept Orc drones and some mention of anti-air cannon shooting down the devastating big Orc KAB glide bombs. Alas, clearly US aid is being cut off -- but also talk from responsible people about providing frozen Russian funds to Ukraine. We'll have to see what happens.
* Outgoing Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin left with a farewell message to the US military, saying that the military "will stand ready to carry out the policy choices of the next commander in chief, and to obey all lawful orders from a civilian chain of command ... " Notice the inclusion of "lawful". Austin went on to affirm that the military will "continue to stand apart from the political arena; to stand guard over our republic with principle and professionalism; and to stand together with the valued allies and partners who deepen our security."
The first part of the message was welcome to the Trump Gang, the second not so much. I'm wondering how the military will fare under Trump. For certain, not well, but I'm doubting there will be blind obedience either. The military, after all, generally despises the new leadership that has been foisted on them. There is a certainly an art in the military of obeying the letter of directives from the top, but nothing more. There's a mismatch that won't work well.
DAYLOG WED 26 FEB: America's national crisis dominates the news -- but unfortunately, it's a long-term sorta thing, and in the meantime life goes on, other things to talk about. The crisis will be here tomorrow, unfortunately. I can't worry about it all the time.
According to ARSTECHNICA -- and I mentioned it a month ago -- New York State passed a law for broadband internet access, for qualified low-income people. The law says ISPs with over 20,000 customers in the state to offer $15/month broadband with download speeds of at least 25 MBPS, or $20 broadband with 200 MBPS.
Anyway, AT&T had a wireless broadband service in the state, and dumped it rather than comply. Other ISPs were not happy and the case went up to SCOTUS -- which has now rejected the appeal. Other states are considering similar laws. AT&T still offers wireless mobile in the state. Apparently AT&T does not have wired internet there -- the fixed infrastructure would make it hard to drop -- but it does in 21 other states. Me, here in Colorado I've got municipal internet, so here AT&T can hike off.
Ironically, the ISPs lost because they made sure the FCC didn't regulate broadband -- as a "common carrier" -- leaving states free to do so. Gigi Sohn, executive director of the American Association for Public Broadband, commented: "To broadband ISPs and their friends complaining about the New York law ... mandating a low-income broadband service offering: you asked for complete deregulation at the Federal level and you got it. This is the consequence."
* I follow one Jamelle Bouie on BlueSky, and he recently echoed an article about John Deere shareholders who heavily voted down an anti-DEI initiative at the company -- following similar shoot-downs at Costco and Apple. I commented in reply: "The Dems really need to coordinate a DEI alliance -- listing businesses and other organizations committed to DEI, supporting conversation among them on what to do, and providing legal assistance."
I got a fair number of LIKES for that. I get a lot of crazy ideas in these difficult times, but I see that they are crazy and they go nowhere. No, we can't get out of the jam quickly or easily, we can't really send in the A-Team. We have to come up with ideas that aren't bad and crazy, then do the work.
It appears GOP in Congress, after being raked over the coals at town halls, have been told not to have them any more, or make sure those attending are screened. Hey, they're working for Trump, not his constituents, so that makes sense. In response, it looks like Dems are now starting to run town halls in Red districts. It looks like general dissatisfaction with Trump is on the increase, but we'll have to see what happens.
DAYLOG THU 27 FEB: In my ongoing search for interesting things that aren't bad news, I found discussion of a military walkie-talkie made by a Ukrainian firm, the "Himera G1". It appears that Ukrainian troops used commercial walkie-talkies for a long time, but they're insecure and leave much to be desired. The G1, however, uses Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption with a 256-bit cipher key, which in itself is all but impossible to crack -- a supercomputer would take far longer than lifetimes to do it.
On top of that, the G1 has "pseudo-random frequency hopping (PRFH)", with the digital communications stream hopping from frequency to frequency, making it hard to detect or jam. Operating on a low frequency band also helps in that regard.
The G1 uses a "mesh area network (MANET)", meaning the phones establish a dynamic network on their own to route communications among each other. Range is 500 meters to 2 kilometers, depending on obstructions, but can be extended to 15 kilometers with a relay node. The device can be hooked up to an Android phone over bluetooth, it seems to allow the phone to configure it, or send the encrypted stream over the phone network. The G1 has a ruggedized case and long battery life.
The G1 has a "locator mode" to allow troops to found for air evacuation or such. Some of the literature says the G1 resists cracking by quantum computers, though it appears a quantum computer can't break AES-256 that much more easily than a conventional computer. One thing not mentioned in the literature is how a tactical team all gets the same cipher key (& frequency hopping pattern) before going on a mission. It might be done manually, using a smartphone.
* As a footnote, further investigation suggests a quantum computer could crack a message encrypted by AES-256 about twice as easily as a conventional computer, which is still a long time. Apparently a trick has been devised in which the 256-bit cipher key for AES is broken down into sub-keys, resulting in a more complicated encryption scheme that makes it a lot harder to crack.
* These days, I will spend part of my day feeling depressed, for obvious reasons, then snap out of it -- rinse & repeat. In either state, I get annoyed at defeatists on BlueSky, saying there is no hope. OK, things are really bad, but we don't know what's going to happen.
I tell the defeatists to knock it off. They always double down, so I block them. To get some perspective, consider the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 dec 1941. For the first half of 1942, the USA went from defeat to defeat by the Japanese. Then the Japanese started running out of steam. By the beginning of 1943, they were on the defensive. By the beginning of 1944, they were clearly going to lose the war. Again, we're in big trouble now, but not as much as we were in 1942.
DAYLOG FRI 28 FEB: According to an article from SCIENCENEWS, political scientist Kevin Arceneaux of the research university Sciences Po in Paris conducted a study with 5,000 subjects that showed about 15% want to burn everything down.
Arcenaux says: "Chaos is a strategy that some people use to account for a perceived loss in status. Their reaction to that is to then start to create trouble, as a way to turn the cart on its head and try to reclaim their place."
Of that 15%, a third just like destruction for its own sake, while the rest more indifferently think that things are so bad that they might as well go to ruin, with a new order then arising. According to Arcenaux, "chaos seekers" tend to be ego-driven, feeling the world is not holding them in enough esteem. They are predominantly white males, with women and people of color more interested in maintaining society.
None of that is surprising. 15% sounds like a low estimate. I suspect there are a lot of people who go along with chaos seeking in an indifferent fashion, not giving it much though, and idly going along with it.
* Big news for the day was tantrums at the White House that are likely to have significant results. It all started with Donald Trump claiming during his presidential campaign that he could end the Ukraine War in one day. That was unrealistic even for him, so after taking office Trump began a "peace offensive", which on the face of it was just theatrics and busy work. If Putin wanted peace, he'd leave Ukraine. As long as he doesn't, Ukraine has to fight back. Nothing else can happen.
Part of this busy work was motion towards an agreement to grant the US mining rights in Ukraine. There was much objection over that, but mining concessions are nothing unusual, and the agreement that was cooked up was general, lacking in specific commitments.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to the White House this morning to sign the deal, with Trump and Zelenskyy appearing for the media. Things went off the rails when Vice President JD Vance started claiming Joe Biden had made no effort to negotiate peace. That was, of course, because Joe knew it was a waste of time. Zelenskyy tried to correct Vance -- but that led to an angry argument, with Trump and Vance belittling and trying to bully Zelenskyy, and Zelenskyy calling them on it. Zelenskyy ended up leaving without signing.
There were some criticisms, notably from GOP, that Zelenskyy mishandled the meeting, but much more sympathy with him. There were comments that Trump had planned to dump on Zelenskyy in advance, but Trump doesn't think things out. His confused peace plan couldn't end any other way.
I don't think Zelenskyy planned it out either, but it was the right response to Trump's humbug peace plan. Trump had been stringing European leaders along with it, even though it was ridiculous. Now it's finally died, revealing what was obvious all along: Trump is a Putin ally. Europe now can't avoid recognizing that the USA is no longer a friend, and also figure out what to do to help Ukraine given that fact. There's been talk of taking frozen Russian assets and handing them to Ukraine; I don't know if that will happen, but the odds have improved.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 03 MAR: The Trump Administration is engaged in a drunken dance with Russia -- trying to make nice with Putin, but stumbling around doing it. One aspect of this is the notion that a peace deal with Russia could mean US companies reinvesting there.
Well, no. Writing in UKRAINIAN REVIEW, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld & Steven Tian of Yale say: "American companies are not rushing back." At the peak, US firms only got about 1% of their global revenue from Russia. The losses from leaving were trivial, compared to the relief of getting out.
As the authors say: "The Russian economy is collapsing before our eyes: infrastructure is deteriorating, and supply chain disruptions are becoming insurmountable. It is a dangerous, unreliable, and risky place to do business."
The Russian economy is a wreck and getting worse. "[M]oney is running out, and the value of Russia's sovereign fund and rainy-day reserves has halved over the past two years. At this rate, Russia will run out of funds by the end of the [2025] -- if not sooner."
Russia is still selling oil internationally, but with a narrow margin that's getting worse with Ukrainian air strikes on Russian refineries. Just this morning another strike on a distant refinery was announced, with a video showing the flames. Russia can't sell natural gas to Asia because of lack of pipelines, while the EU has been able to mesh into a network of liquefied natural gas sources, with extensive port facilities to distribute the gas. Without foreign help, Russia cannot drill for oil and gas in the Far North.
"All [Russian] economic sectors have shrunk by 60%-95%." Inflation is running about 25%. US businesses also know that their Russian holdings are insecure, that Putin will nationalize them if he sees the need. In short, US companies are not going back to Russia. "American executives understand: doing business with Vladimir Putin is not only morally dubious but also unprofitable."
* Over the weekend, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer greeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Number 10 Downing Street, making it clear that Britain has Ukraine's back, promising 1.6 billion GBP for air defense missiles.
Starmer added: "The UK is prepared to back Ukraine with boots on the ground and planes in the air." -- and later reprimanded notorious troll Nigel Farage for bad-mouthing Zelenskyy, telling Farage that Putin was the aggressor.
Starmer also assembled European leaders to provide support, with Zelenskyy saying: "Europe's unity is at an exceptionally high level, one not seen in a long time. Joint strength can protect our future."
The intriguing part of all this is that Starmer has been talking about a "just peace", reaching out to Trump and Putin for help to that end. Starmer's not naive, he knows they don't want to help -- so why the outreach? Well, he does have to play that card, and if they don't play along, he can discard it. However, I'm getting the impression that there is an endgame plan here, one that may imply more direct involvement by Europe. In any case, Starmer is clearly taking on a global leadership role, and doing well with it.
DAYLOG TUE 04 MAR: Trump's big tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China went into effect today, with the three nations replying with tariffs of their own. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau called Trump's action "a very dumb thing."
The tariffs are effectively guaranteed to charge up inflation. Coupled to US economic insecurity over Trump's assault on Federal government organizations, some economists are projecting a severe recession, with economic indicators now becoming unstable. [LATER: In a conversation with Trump that Trudeau called "colorful", Trump tried to talk tariff "carve-outs", but Trudeau wasn't having it: Stop playing games. I think he's calling Trump's bluff.]
Trump is clearly hooked on tariffs, thinking they are a magical answer. Some observers think that he wants to back 200 years, when the Federal government was mostly supported by tariffs, with no income tax. Maybe, but it might be generally said Trump's economic thinking is out of the 1920s, going back 100 years.
Things will get bad, maybe very bad ... but it may be the only way a lot of Trump voters wise up and realize they made a big mistake. America's problem is not really Trump: get rid of Trump, the Republican politicians and their voters who backed him will still be there. They have to turn on Trump: his poll numbers will have to go to rock bottom.
* It was obvious before Donald Trump was re-elected that the Palestinians of Gaza would suffer more if he won. Once he did, he announced a vague plan to convert Gaza into a "Middle East Riviera", with Palestinians to be evicted. There were no specifics in the plan, which was cooked up with the Israelis, and evicting the Gaza Palestinians was clearly both unconscionable and impractical. None of Israel's neighbors would go along with it.
According to BBC, Arab leaders met in an emergency summit in Cairo, and now have announced a $53 billion USD plan for the reconstruction of Gaza. The renewed Gaza would accommodate the rights of Palestinians; there would be no displacement of peoples. The plan would be administered by a "Gaza management committee". How the Hamas militant group would fit in is not clear, few particularly liking Hamas. In parallel, there would be work towards a "two-state solution", which is not a popular idea in Israel these days.
In short, this solution for Gaza leaves many questions unanswered. However, all solutions being proposed do as well -- and the devastation that is Gaza today will have to be cleaned up sooner or later.
DAYLOG WED 05 MAR: American political scientist Francis Fukuyama scored a big hit with this 1989 essay "The End of History", in which he recognized that the fall of the communist bloc was a triumph for liberal democracy, which was becoming the predominant world system.
Decades on, liberal democracy seems clearly on the retreat -- but Fukuyama had recognized the threat to it, writing in 1992 that, if men couldn't struggle for a just cause, then out of a certain boredom "they will struggle against the just cause."
Fukuyama elaborated: "And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterized by peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, they then will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy."
The modern Troglodyte Right did, however, come up with a "just cause" to challenge liberal democracy, in the form of libertarianism -- a doctrine of "absolute personal freedom" and similar grand themes, none with any substance. In practice, libertarianism ended up being the doctrine of: "All the pie for the Haves, no pie for the Have-nots!" -- and amounted to a gloss coat over fascism. That made libertarianism doubly irrelevant: fascists like being fascists, they don't even think about libertarianism.
* Elon Musk's Tesla auto brand has become publicly toxic, with sales cratering, and seems headed for extinction. Tesla owners are now resorting to switching their car badges to Audi, Honda, or on to keep their cars from being trashed. Changing badges is not new, but it used to be just for fun.
Later, an article was going around online, showing a French Tesla dealership where all the Teslas out front had been torched. There was quite a bit of sympathy for that action, but one "LadyCat311" replied: "NO. Not the way."
Right, protesting against Tesla is one thing, torching a Tesla dealership is very much another. I had to reply: "Yeah, I can't approve of violent action -- to oppose people who like violence. Not gonna work out. However ... I'd be lying to say I didn't enjoy the sight of those burned-out cars."
LC311 replied with a link to Martin Luther King's philosophy of nonviolence. I'm not believing in the high road on principle, BTW -- it's just that taking the low road plays into the Trump Gang's hands. We cannot protect the law by breaking it.
DAYLOG THU 06 MAR: As discussed here on Monday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer came out and gave major support to Ukraine. Now French President Emmanuel Macron has given a speech with his own thunder to support Ukraine.
The speech was in context of a European peace plan for Ukraine, with comments that it would be presented to US President Trump. That got comments online, some saying it was a ridiculous idea -- but Trump started up the "peace plan" debate, and the EU needs to take the wind out of his sales with a realistic peace plan. Once again, the war only stops when Putin wants it to. With Trump turning towards Putin, Macron said that Europe needs to get ready to fight Russia:
"The war in Ukraine, which has resulted in nearly a million deaths and injuries, continues with the same intensity. Our allies, the United States, are supporting Ukraine less and are leaving doubts about what will happen next."
Proclaiming that Russia was a threat to European security, Macron went on to say: "... if a country can invade its neighbor in Europe with impunity, then no one can be sure of anything anymore ... and peace can no longer be guaranteed on our continent itself."
"Russia has already made the Ukrainian conflict a global conflict. It has mobilized North Korean soldiers and Iranian equipment on our continent, while helping these countries to arm themselves further. President Putin's Russia violates our borders to assassinate opponents; manipulates elections in Romania and Moldova; it organizes digital attacks against our hospitals to block their operations. Russia is trying to manipulate our opinions with lies spread on social media, and deep down, it is testing our limits."
"It does it in the air, at sea, in space and behind our screens. This aggressiveness seems to know no boundaries." Macron even hinted that Europe should intervene directly in Ukraine, possible to provide an "air shield". There is basis for both pessimism and optimism for what happens to Ukraine. How things play out remains to be seen.
DAYLOG FRI 07 MAR: AI chatbots have become a commonplace technology, and these days almost anyone can come up with their own custom chatbot. According to CYBERSCOOP, somehow to no surprise, a lot of dubious chatbots are now showing up on social media.
A survey by analytics firm Graphika found 3 distinct "evilbot" personas that have become popular online: those imitating sexualized minors, advocates for eating disorders or self-harm, and those imitating school shooters or historical villains like Adolf Hitler.
Graphika found over 10,000 "pedobots" online, and identified communities on sites like 4chan or Reddit that discuss how to build evilbots. Companies that provide the chatbot frameworks are now trying to figure out how to deal with the challenge.
* The Trump Gang has been playing up a "strategic bitcoin reserve (SBR)", giving the ugly prospect of taxpayer dollars being used to enrich cryptocoin scammers. According to ARSTECHNICA, don't panic about it just yet.
It appears, as now defined, the SBR is just a central repository for cryptocoins seized by the Feds. What happens to it over the longer run is not clear -- it seems there's talk about growing it via cryptocoin trades -- so we may need to panic sometime down the road.
The Crypto Bros, anticipating taxpayer dollars, were disappointed in finding out they weren't coming, at least not yet. Trump has no principles, so it's puzzling that he would hesitate to exploit cryptocoin in a big way. That may because he's stuck in the past, and feels uneasy about cryptocoin, feeling it's not real money.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 10 MAR: Writing in THE BULWARK, Michael A. Bailey & Lee Drutman ran an essay whose title says it all: "Democrats Must Step Aside in Red States". The idea was simply that Dems have no chance of winning elections in Red states, so they need to stand aside and discreetly boost candidates of a new Center-Right party -- one for responsible government and rule of law, if tough on immigration -- in any hopes of denting GOP domination.
Sounds legit, but nice work if you can get it. Trying to set up a new party is tough. However, we are in unstable times, so it's hard to say what will or will not happen. Yeah, a new Center-Right party would be good, it could happen ... ... but we've been waiting for one since 2016. Is there really any space for one? The Right has got so extreme that anyone near the Center might as well be a Dem.
The authors say that we can't bank on a sea change in Red states; true, but once Trump leaves the scene, all bets are off -- nobody knows what will happen then. We almost have to bank that not all surprises are bad.
* Polls are now showing Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress last week went over very well with viewers. It did? Who can stand to listen to Trump? Ah, that's the trick: Who indeed? Few people who dislike Trump watched the speech, so obviously he got high grades from those who like Trump and did watch it. The old lesson is: Polls only tell us what they tell us. Even the pollsters generally said as much.
DAYLOG TUE 11 MAR: Trump is now doubling down on his trade war with Canada, proclaiming that Canada has no choice but to become the 51st American state. Trump is completely out of his mind.
I was lying awake in the dark hours of the morning a few days back -- my sleep is not the best these days -- and suddenly thought; Would Trump threaten to nuke Canada? With the immediate answer: Yes he might.
Further thought suggested that if he did, Britain and France would discreetly tell Trump: We have nukes too. -- and add: Canada is a NATO member and We guarantee Canada's security. Even Trump would understand the veiled threat. Trump would be bluffing, but his bluff can be called.
It is crazy to realize that nuclear threats aren't out of the question. With the trade wars spreading economic instability, there's a general belief a recession is looming. Economic projections say that's not a certainty, but all the indicators are getting worse. There's been an obvious decline in consumer confidence, with consumers afraid to spend money when things are so bad. To be sure, the complacent out there aren't worried, but many others are.
* In the meantime, the Trump regime -- don't call it an "administration" -- is plugging away at its alleged "peace treaty" for Ukraine. All it amounts to is pressuring Ukraine to capitulate. Ukraine plays along, stalling for time.
The EU is, in parallel, talking up its own peace treaty for Ukraine. It's much more legit, but still puzzling: Russia will not be a party to it. Maybe the goal is to set up an EU "peacekeeping force" and intervene directly in Ukraine? Does that make any sense?
DAYLOG WED 12 MAR: Writing in ATLANTIC, David A. Graham detailed the daily shifts in Trump's tariff wars -- ON one day, OFF the next, ON again the day after that -- and went on to detail other lunacies, such as mass layoffs of Federal employees, only to re-hire some of them.
One of the items I noticed was listing hundreds of Federal properties for sale. There were suggestions that the intent was to sell them off for peanuts, with the new owners then charging big lease prices to the government. That would be obviously corrupt -- along the lines of the widescale looting of the Russian state after the fall of communism there, and I had to think that legal challenges would immediately follow. The Trump Gang ignores the law, but with a legal challenge nobody could get clear title to any of the properties. The listings have since been withdrawn.
All this spells CHAOS in the Trump regime. Yes, they're endless trouble -- but how much staying power do they have? They obediently follow Trump's whims and spin their wheels. They're losers over the longer run.
It is often said that Trump is a puppet, but not exactly. Nobody tells him what to do, he does what he feels like doing -- but he is easily manipulated with flattery and smooth talk. He's been pursuing his bogus "peace deal", which to date has been nothing more than a call for Ukraine's capitulation -- but Ukraine seems to be successfully talking him in circles, pushing a "cease fire" that Putin is unlikely to accept, or stick to if he does. [LATER: Putin replied that he wanted a cease-fire ... but only if, in effect, Ukraine capitulated.]
DAYLOG THU 13 MAR: Donald Trump is on a tear with his tariffs demolition derby. Writing for CNN, one David Goldman says that in principle, tariffs can help protect domestic industries and earn revenues for the US government -- but "in principle" is the operative phrase.
Trump believes tariffs will protect domestic industries and provide government revenue, even to the point where income taxes are no longer needed. It should be noted that the Trump regime claims the tariffs on Canada and Mexico are being provoked by fentanyl smuggling -- though nobody really believes that, not even the Trump Gang. In any case, Trump's thinking on tariffs is like 200 years out of date. Tariffs can help some domestic producers -- except those dependent on exports, who suffer from the inevitable foreign retaliation.
We have a much more globalized economy today, and it doesn't seem the US balance sheet comes out positive on tariffs. As far as government revenue from tariffs go, if tariffs are effective, imports zero out, so no revenue. Even ignoring that little problem, Goldman writes: "... America raises about $3 trillion each year from income taxes and also happens to import around $3 trillion worth of goods annually ... that means tariffs would have to be at least 100% on all imported goods for tariffs to replace income taxes."
The biggest sham in Trump tariffs is that Trump claims foreigners pay them -- when everyone knows they end up being passed on to American consumers, and they amount to a regressive sales tax. Trump's claim that foreigners pay for tariffs is not exactly a lie: he is simply incapable of accepting realities inconvenient to him, in the same way he won't admit to losing an election. Small children do much the same.
* Elon the Musk Rat's Tesla company is cratering in the stock market in the face of protests -- the losses have stopped for the moment, but the trendline is very down. In the face of the crash, the Musk Rat & Trump actually did a Tesla commercial on the White House lawn. Totally illegal, but more to the point, as commenter Chris Hayes said: "Musk and Trump could not possibly be sending a clearer signal that the Tesla protests are working than this pathetic stunt today."
Comments are now going around about the "Tesla Chainsaw Massacre". The Musk Rat is blaming everyone from George Soros on down for his problems. The Musk rat can't accept that his "not really fascist salutes" at the inauguration had something to do with it.
DAYLOG FRI 14 MAR: Among Elon the Musk Rat's many self-inflicted troubles, his Xitter social-media system was brought down by a "distributed denial of service (DDOS)" attack, with computer nodes all over flooding it with traffic. There was some suggestion that the crash was due to poor management of the system, but it does appear there really was a DDOS attack. The Musk Rat said he didn't know who was behind it, but he thought it came from Ukraine.
Nonsense. A DDOS attack comes from a widely-distributed botnet, being more effective the more widely distributed it is across the global internet, and the bot locations provide little information. Analysis of the malware used by the bots can provide clues, but not necessarily identify a culprit.
* A document from the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) investigated Ukraine's use of artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare. Ukraine uses AI systems, such as the adaptable "Griselda", for intelligence collation and assessment and also for air defense, with the "ePPO" mobile app, which allows individuals to warn of drone attacks and such. Inputs from ~200,000 ePPO users providing data on the target location, direction, and speed are fed into a system tracking the threat.
AFU combat forces are generally using AI for "sensor fusion" of intelligence inputs to enhance "situational awareness" and reduce response time. However, the push is not to build one giant unwieldy system, but to integrate numbers of focused systems. AI is also being used for autonomous navigation and automatic target recognition for drones. Such technologies allow for faster mission rates and more reliable targeting, and essential for long-range operations. The push is for modular software and hardware elements.
BACK_TO_TOPDAYLOG MON 17 MAR: Donald Trump's spasmodic economic actions are suggesting to many that he is deliberately trying to cause a recession -- leading to the question of why he would want to. Billionaire Mark Cuban, who has a popular account on BlueSky, gave one answer: Trump starts a recession, interest rates fall, the billionaires get (in effect) cheap money, and the government doesn't pay so much on debt servicing.
As Cuban more or less points out, managing the national / global economy is not easy even for the competent, and the Trump regime is not competent at anything but criming. They could well end up with a crushed economy and stagflation. Cuban writes: "Do I think they can thread the needle? No." If things get bad enough, at least the complacent may start to take notice.
* With regards to Trump's stated determination to annex Canada, a poll of Americans showed ~10% thought the USA should seize the country; ~30% said it would be OK if Canadians agreed (they won't); and ~60% thought it was out of the question.
Given the lack of American public support for annexing Canada, is Trump really serious? He seems to be, but only as a lunatic delusion. He can make trouble, but could he really invade Canada? It seems hard, if not impossible, to believe, but Trump is stupid and crazy. It should be said that he is careful to say "annex" and not "conquer" -- which would be a big giveaway.
DAYLOG TUE 18 MAR: The Trump regime is making a habit of ignoring court orders, leading to the questions: What are the courts going to do about it? What CAN they do about it?
In principle, the courts could hold the relevant regime officials in contempt for refusing to obey orders, and send the US Marshals to arrest them. However, what happens if the White House pardons the contempt charge? In addition, the US Marshals report to both the judiciary and the DOJ -- with the Attorney General likely to tell them to stand down.
However, as reported by one David Noll in DEMOCRACY DOCKET, it doesn't necessarily end there. In the first place, while the White House can pardon cases of criminal contempt, it cannot pardon cases of civil contempt. Criminal contempt is disrespecting the court; civil contempt is refusing to obey the court. The contemptor can be held until compliance. In the second place, if the Marshals can't do their job, the court can deputize anyone to do it.
So, there are options -- state or municipal law enforcement, for example. Now, how does this work out in practice? Who knows? I've been thinking of the Blue states setting up a joint law-enforcement operation that could be deputized for enforcement, even prosecution. That's open-ended speculation: Things are going to happen, but nobody can say exactly what, and they won't happen quickly.
* WIRED has been performing some serious journalism trying to follow Elon the Musk Rat and his evil activities. Now WIRED is putting some articles on the subject outside their paywall. I think: OK, I need to support the free press, I'm subscribing to WIRED.
It's $10 USD the first year, $30 USD after that -- cheap. Magazines & newspapers are dying, now we've got an online world instead. We get stuff that is free but not very substantial; if we want more, we need to pay for it. Let's see who thrives in the new era.
As far as the Musk Rat goes, it turns out that he used Tesla stock as collateral for big loans, primarily to buy Twitter. Tesla share price is crashing bigtime, and that means serious trouble for the Musk Rat. Wotta loser. He's trying to say that Tesla robots will turn things around -- well, maybe, maybe not. Oh, and another thing: there was a second failure of SpaceX's Starship booster, with the Musk Rat claiming that failures are expected with rocketry. That's true, but analyses of Starship suggest that it is too ambitious, and likely to continue to fail.
DAYLOG WED 19 MAR: Ukrainian forces have been suffering badly from oversized Russian KAB glide bombs -- dropped by aircraft outside of air defense range, with the bombs being difficult to intercept, and leaving huge craters when they hit.
However, according to David Axe in FORBES, for the moment the KAB bombs are not as effectual as they were. They're guided by navigation satellite -- the Russian GLONASS system -- and now the Ukrainians are jamming GLONASS effectively, so few of the bombs hit targets.
The bomb's navsat guidance unit traditionally has four receivers; the Russians then went to eight, to locate the satellites and ignore the spoofing signals. The Ukrainians updated their jammers and kept up. It seems that sometime KAB bombs even turn around. Now the Russians are going to twelve receivers -- we'll see if they can be confounded as well.
* In other Ukraine War news, the EU is upping its game in Ukraine support, increasing funding to European defense firms for munitions. One example is the "HX-2" killer drone from Germany's Helsing. It's an "X-wing" drone, like the well-known Russian Lancet, with four little electrically-driven props around the tail. It has a range of about 100 kilometers (60 miles).
Although it has a jam-resistant datalink to an operator, it uses AI technology for navigation and targeting, allowing it to fight on even if communications are cut off. It can also be used in swarms by a single operator. 4000 HX-2s are being sent to Ukraine, being funded by the German government, using printed parts, with 6000 more to be made. It was designed to be relatively cheap and readily produced, with Helsing saying their new factory can turn out over a thousand per month.
* In the meantime, the Trump regime continues its bizarre "peace offensive" for the Ukraine War -- issuing a stream of declarations, none of which have much connection to reality or seem to go anywhere. There's a lot of talking that leaves me knowing less in the end than I did before I started.
Things are not going well these days and it's easy to be gloomy. It is not really justified, however: present circumstances could lead to a wide range of outcomes, we can't know which will happen, so we focus on the outcomes we want. Assuming the worst outcome is defeatism. We can't afford it.
DAYLOG THU 20 MAR: Russian President Vladimir Putin has been talking up a "cease fire" between Russia and Ukraine, in which they stop attacking each other's energy infrastructure. It's just verbiage; the attacks aren't even slowing down. The interesting thing is that Putin effectively admitted that Ukrainian attacks on Russia's oil infrastructure are hurting. Everyone knows that, but it's revealing that Putin would say as much, since he so rarely speaks the truth.
In another interesting revelation, Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev said that the Russian government isn't getting any feelers from foreign firms to invest in Russia. That's not news either, but again it's revealing that Medvedev said so. Some commenters online said foreign businesses don't want to invest in a bad actor like Russia. I agreed, but suggested that, more importantly to businesses, Russia is an economic disaster, things are steadily getting worse, and there's no money there.
* Ukraine is keeping up the attacks on Russian oil infrastructure, both on refineries and pipeline pumping stations. I would suspect the pumping stations are particular bottlenecks and entirely vulnerable. Ukraine has in the last day also attacked Engels air base, hundreds of kilometers inside Russia, used by Russian missile carriers that launch cruise missiles against Ukraine. This is the latest in a series of attacks on Engels.
The puzzle is that Engels is clearly well-defended, but the drones are still getting through -- there were phone videos online of a big mushroom cloud, it seems from a munitions bunker full of cruise missiles.
No data on how Ukraine penetrates Engels' defenses: jammer drones? Small drones to attack surface-to-air missile launchers? And the cruise missiles were presumably stored in a hardened bunker -- did some of the drones have penetrating warheads? Nobody's talking.
* In related news, Ukraine has struck up a partnership with Finnish-Norwegian company Nammo ("Norwegian Ammo", more or less). Nammo makes ordinary munitions of various sorts, but has a new ramjet-powered guided 155mm round with a range of 150 kilometers (90 miles).
Ukraine also has relationships with US defense firms. Although the Trump regime is not a friend to Ukraine, I'm sure Ukraine still has many friends in the USA -- the friends just have to be discreet in their assistance. The Trump gang is clueless, & not hard to trick.
DAYLOG FRI 20 MAR: The shaky cease-fire in Gaza has broken down, with the Israelis hammering the Palestinians there. According to Asher Kaufman, writing in THE CONVERSATION, the breakdown is because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants it.
The immediate reason Netanyahu wants war is because hard-Right elements would otherwise cause the fall of his government in the near future. The long-term reason is that Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 on fraud and corruption charges, and more war gives him more time to subvert justice.
Netanyahu is not all that popular with Israelis, with mass demonstrations against him up to the Hamas raid on Israel in 7 October 2023. That stalled Netanyahu's prosecution, and since then he has been installing loyalists in government positions to obstruct it.
The war against Hamas hasn't made Netanyahu more popular -- it seems the opposite, with the majority of Israelis against the resurgence of fighting. It appears Israelis are unhappy because the fighting stopped release of hostages, and possibly some weariness with the uncontrolled violence. Netanyahu doesn't care, in large part because Donald Trump has given his stamp of approval to the onslaught.
Protests are ramping up again; the majority of Israelis want to end the war on the basis of the cease-fire agreement, and want Netanyahu to resign. That gets a bit strange in that his Likud Party is still the biggest party in Israel, and in a general election Netanyahu would be prime minister again. It would seem the push is to disconnect him from Likud as well. How long he will stay in power, nobody can say. We have a similar problem here in the USA.
* Oh, and in updated news, Netanyahu has fired Ronan Bar, boss of the Israeli security service Shin Bet -- clearly to replace him with someone more obedient. Israel's High Court froze the dismissal, with opposition parties lining up to support Bar.
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