Sadly, the 250th “birthday” of the United States feels less a celebration and more like a wake. I don’t know how anyone associated with Trump, particularly his enablers, can profess the ideas that are part of our founding when they are actively working against them. Perhaps we have always truly been the land of the not yet free and brave for all. I would like to see someone start leading by making strong contrast between what is happening right now and how it started. The real issue is not the individual acts, it’s the sum total of them all in context to what the United States is supposed to be about.
Throughout the extensive litigation over the AEA, in this case and others, the Trump Administration has claimed the president deserves absolute deference when he claims that an “invasion” exists. The absurd implications of this position were highlighted in yesterday’s argument, when Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Jennifer Elrod (appointed by George W. Bush) asked whether the president could invoke the AEA in response to the “British Invasion” of rock stars, like the Beatles. “What if,” she asked “the [President’s] proclamation said ‘we’re having a British invasion.’ They’re sending all these musicians over to corrupt young minds…. They’re coming over and they’re taking over all kinds of establishments.” Could courts then rule the president’s invocation of the AEA was illegal? In response, Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign admitted the government’s position would require courts to still defer to the president, and allow him to wield the extraordinary emergency powers that can only be triggered by an actual “invasion.”
In my opinion the above ought to be evidence of the problems caused by dualistic politics. When one is obliged to support a person or cause completely then there is no room for common sense, and making stuff up becomes a norm. If the President can never be wrong and if the courts cannot that the President is wrong and Congress never opposes the President then you have a Dictator.
I am really getting tired with the cold weather. We have had highs in the teens for days on end, right now it’s 13 out. The highs for the upcoming week are supposed to get to the mid 20s, which will seem warmer, but still below the average temperature of 32 degrees for this time of year.
This is probably only of interest to myself and a few others.
I spent more time today to move my Daynotes outline from Dave Winer’s oldSchoolBlog app, which is the blog CMS for Drummer, to pagePark. As I initially reported yesterday, attempts to load my OldSchool site is now returning a “The file name contains illegal characters” message, and the browser terminal shows the web server is returning a 400 status. I strong suspect that the use of my email address in the directory path of the rendered web pages is causing the problem.
To work around this I configured my instance of pagePark to render the original blog public outline but noticed that pagePark seems to have problems rendering nodes with type values. Today I decided to create a new OPML file. I copied all of the January items to it, made it public, and configured pagePark to render it instead. The direct URL is https://info.frankmcpherson.net/Daynotes.opml and I have configured my simpler forwarder URL, http://daynotes.frankm.info to forward to that URL.
In this configuration, my instance of pagePark is mirroring this new OPML file that is stored at drummer.land/frank.mcp… Note that this URL also has a “fully formed” email address in it, and thus my fear is whatever update that may have occurred on the server hosting oldschool.scripting.com might end up on drummer.land and the same problem will re-appear. I think if that happens that may break many publicly shared OPML scripts created using Drummer.
A work around that I have direct control over is figuring out a way to host the OPML file on my own server rather than on drummer.land, but right now I cannot think of a nice automated way to do that. I can download all my OPML files from Drummer to my PC but that requires manual steps. For now I will cross that bridge when I get to it.
Last week I shared a quote of James Madison in Federalist 51 that explains how the founds expected Federalism is supposed to prevent tyranny. Today I read an article that I think explains this in more detail, at the heart of it is the tenth amendment.
Something has happened with the server hosting my Daynotes site, it is running a 400 Bad Request and it looks like there has been a change blocking a GET for a URL with an email address that has been working in the past. The url is oldschool.scripting.com/frank.mcp… I have created a redirect from my own instance of pagePark so that I can access the file and this is only useful for me.
As I imagined it would be.
Finished reading: The Entity Game by Lisa Shearin 📚
I personally use tablet computers and generally promote their use. During the last couple of years I have mostly used e-Ink tablets because of their emphasis on reading and writing, which are my primary use cases. I find that writing things down by hand helps me to remember and to focus on a given topic. Vojislav Dimigtrijevc has produced a video on YouTube that provides a wonderful overview of how e-Ink tablets combine analog and digital processes, and because of that I think the video is a wonderful explainer of benefits of these type of tablets.
In 2010 I wrote this in reaction to the first iPad announcement. It really didn’t age well.
For myself, I am waiting to learn more about the HP Slate, which HP and Microsoft announced at CES. From what I can tell, it will run Windows 7 that supports touch input, however, what I really want is a slate that supports both touch and stylus (digitizer) input because I want to write notes in digital ink and store them in Evernote.
In an essay that I wrote in 2010 titled The iPhone Way, I ended with the following. Although then I was talking about Apple, what I describe has expanded to multiple companies in an apparent “soft” conglomerate headed by the Executive.
I find myself living in a time when people are willing to give up control (see education in the U.S.) and freedom (see airport security) because it makes their lives easier and safer. However, by allowing other people to make decisions for you, which giving control to others is really about, is giving up freedom. When one company controls the means of how you get information, will they allow access to any information that company does not want you to see?
People who are captivated by the Apple ecosystem ought to be concerned about how cozy Tim Cook has been with the Trump regime.
Empire Falling
It can be said that much of our problems today started with what the United States did after World War II. I remember in high school history being told that the U.S. decided after WWII that it couldn’t return to it’s isolationist past, what the history teacher did not teach is how the U.S. became an empire. Today our consumption economy depends on the low cost of goods made outside the U.S., and reason why that cost is low depends on the overvalued U.S. dollar. The dollar is overvalued because it is needed by countries for trade.
Empires don’t last forever. Life in the United States is going to be very different in the future, and I fear it will be painful because Americans have been living off the privilege of this empire for so long they don’t even know how or why.
I strongly suspect that people in power, the political backers, the corporate CEOs, and the people whom they helped elect into office all know how bad things are going to get, which is why they are working so hard to get U.S. citizens fighting amongst ourselves and blaming anybody but those in power. In my opinion, this is what Trump’s efforts around crypto are truly all about.
In what world does having U.S. ICE participating in security for the Olympics in another country make sense? An obvious issue with ICE is that it’s scope and authority is way too broad.
Accountability
Turns out that when you arm a group of men who has no accountability, and the people who do the arming have no accountability, you get anarchy. The first rule of supremacy is there is no accountability of the ruling class, just appeasement. The Supreme Court institutionalized our current state in declaring Presidents have “absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.” In other words, the President is above the law.
I am sure SCOTUS would say that Presidents are accountable to Congress who can impeach them and ultimately to the citizens who cannot vote for them. These are a form of accountability, but I ask, is an act that can only occur three years in to the future truly accountability? Seems to me that for true accountability it must occur in time of closer proximity to the event at which they are to be held accountable, which I would think is the purpose of criminal courts!
To really fix what is wrong in the United States there needs to be an overturn of several Supreme Court rulings through additional amendments to the Constitution.
So far we’ve got about 2 inches of snow from this big snowstorm.
Richard Rohr, The Naked Now
The most amazing fact about Jesus, unlike almost any other religious founder, is that he found God in disorder and imperfection — and told us that we must do the same or we would never be content on this earth.
I follow Amanda Nelson on Instagram and she said something recently that I have not been able to get out of my head, which is that the United States has been in a “cold” civil war for many years. I think it obvious that what we are experiencing today has been simmering for a long time, perhaps since the end of the Civil War. I also think this “cold” civil war became more organized when Republicans and Newt Gingrich took over the House because Gingrich initiated the switch of the purpose of Congress from governing to “us versus them” in which compromise is not allowed. Since 1995 the battle lines between factions of the powerful have been clearly drawn, with American citizens as pawns.
I just took a walk outside. According to Accuweather, it’s 5 degrees but the RealFeel is 17 degrees thanks to the sunshine and lack of wind. With the proper clothes on it’s actually pretty nice given the sunshine.
James Madison, Federalist 51:
In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself. . . . It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.
Finished reading: The Gales of November by John U. Bacon 📚
It is not always the case that I have a connection to a book that I read, but that is the case with “The Gales Of November” by John U. Bacon. Many people have heard about the Edmund Fitzgerald thanks to Gordon Lightfoot’s song, The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald, but I was in fifth grade in a small town in the Upper Peninsula and had seen Lake Superior many times so I’ve always felt a small connection.
Bacon does a wonderful job of providing context, like how shipping on the Great Lakes can be dangerous and a vital part of the U.S. economy. You learn about every one of the 29 men who went down to the bottom of Lake Superior on the Fitz. And for me, I learned about the taconite pellets that I remember being carried through my home town on ore cars, most likely headed to Marquette. We would gather up some of the perfectly round, marble size pellets from the train tracks and use them for slingshot ammo.
In 2014 we visited the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point, which the Fitzgerald was desperately trying to reach on that fateful day in November, 1975. Below is a picture of the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald, it is the only item recovered and brought up from the shipwreck. The site of the wreck is considered a grave and protected by the U.S. and Canadian governments.
No other ship has gone down on the Great Lakes after the Fitzgerald, in part because of technology but largely because the pressures once put on by shipping companies toward the captains to deliver cargo on time has abated against the risk of pushing against Lake Superior when she is angry. Lake Superior is one of those few things in the world that stands up against the ego of men.
