6/27/23

 Tuesday, June 27, 2023

In bed at 10 and up at 5:50.  60℉, high of 72℉, mostly sunny.  Air quality alert; air quality index is 178, worse than yesterday, smoke from wildfires in Canada, "People with heart or lung conditions and older adults should consider avoiding all outdoor activity.  Currently UNHEALTHY,  may reach VERY UNHEALTHY or even HAZARDOUS category.  The wind is NNW at 12 mph, 2 to 13 mph today and gusts up to 25 mph.  No rain today.  Sunrise at 5:14, sunset at 8:35, 15+21.

Climate change?  How much of what we ae experiencing with our wether is attributable to climate change?  Lack of rain, increased windiness (or am I imagining this?), wildfires in Canaga blowing smoke over us. particulates, ozone?  Air quality so bad CNN featured views of Milwaukee in its coverage of Canadian wildfire effects in the United States.  

Trump's Bedminster tape.  After watching the concluding episode of Happy Valley last night, we watched Lawrence O'Donnell's show on MSNBC.  It started with Rachel Meadow and O'Donnell reveling over CNN's airing of the 2 minute audio tape of Donald Trump showing in some fashion a classified document of General Milley's contingency plan for a U.S. military attack on Iran.  The conversation was attended by much laughter by a Trump staffer and others.  And by Madow and O'Donnell.  I'm thinking Madow's and O'Donnell's mirth is uninformed about the significance of this leaked and broadcasted piece of evidence. (The NYTimes also has obtained a copy.)  I expect it to kick off a legal and political shitstorm.  Who leaked this tape and why?  How did CNN get it?   How did the NYTimes get it?  What impact will it have on potential jurors?  What does it mean in terms of Trump's right to respond to the leak in his defense and in his campaign to regain the presidency?  What will Judge Cannon have to say?  How does this leak and what may follow impact Trump's ability to get a fair trial?  What kind of investigation should be conducted into the leak and by whom?  Nothing to laugh about.

Happy Valley is over..  Alas.  Such superb acting by Sarah Lancashire, Siobhan Finneran, and James Norton.  A tour de force by creator/writer/director Sally Wainwright.  In a league with The Sopranos, The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, and few others.

Rita Burns arrives today, old Marquette pal of both Geri and me.  She was a big help to me in my Pretrial Practice class at the law school, playing the role of a client in depositions.  Fellow student of Geri in the Mediation Program in the Graduate School.

LTMW at a male goldfinch on the sunflower tube and a femal goldfinch on the niger tube. Also 2 English sparrows on the sunflower tube.  No suet is left and I'm wondering whether I should put a fresh cake out.  The suet more than anything else seems to be the reason for the swarms of English sparrows reducing the visits by other birds.

The Terror of Threes in the Heavens and on Earth: Physicists have long explored how phenomena in groups of three can sow chaos. A new three-body problem, they warn, could lead to not only global races for new armaments but also thermonuclear war.  This is a feature piece in this morning's NYT by science reporter William J. Broad, a very interesting essay.  My mother, who was not immune from some old-fashioned Irish superstition, used to tell us that "troubles come in threes." I have long kind of half-believed this, as when Tom St. John died within a year of my beloved sister's death, I wondered what the third would be.😰  The author provides an easy-to-understand example from within human families: "Notably, the jump ;in complexity] also shows up in human life as groups of three cause social complexities to soar — markedly in young families. Two siblings have one relationship. But a third child results in seven kinds of ties among the siblings — three one-on-one relationships, three one-on-two relationships and one group relationship. Parents, by definition, are outnumbered, and bedlam can ensue."  The thrust of the essay, however, is about the problems created as China becomes an atomic superpower, along with the U.S. and Russia.  Scary.  He also discussses the complexity of groups of threes in nature, the "three-body problem" in subatomic particle movements, planetary orbits, even eddys and maelstroms in fluids. tornadoes and hurricanes.  "If two of the swirling bodies get close, they move ahead in straight lines or circle each other.  “With three, things immediately get more complicated,” said Michael J. Shelley, a specialist in fluid dynamics at New York University. “They can collapse into each other. It gets very disordered and unpredictable. There’s a huge difference.”  Mom was right: troubles come in threes.

U. S. Senate, where Democracy goes to die.  For 4 months, Tommy Tuberville has blocked the promotions of 150 colonels and captains to general and admiral rank.  J. D. Vance is blocking the appointment of all Biden nominees to positions in the Justice Department.  These individual senators can do this because of the 'unanimous consent' practice in the Senate which is used for most noncontroversial business.  If one senator refuses to consent, the whole process essentially grinds to a halt, regardless of the will of the majority of senators and of the will of the majority of Americans.  One man (usually but not always a man) rule.  This practice joins with the filiburster and the 'blue slip' rules/practices in making the U. S. Senate the phenominally anti-democratic institution that it is.  

"Brian Fallon, a former aide to the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said those kinds of privileges are artifacts of a racist past, used by white Southern senators to prevent passage of civil rights legislation or nominations that might have interfered with their way of life. But lately they are being taken to new heights by the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.  “If one senator is angling to get on Fox News, it gives them an outsized power to gum up the works,” said Mr. Fallon, now executive director of Demand Justice, which advocates the installation of progressive federal judges. “This is why the Democratic Party needs to understand that reforming the Senate is a necessary step to make democracy viable in 2023.”  Reform could be accomplished with a simple majority vote, just as the filibuster was eliminated for executive nominations. Among other methods, the Senate could change the types of vacancies that require its approval to fill, or it could put a time limit on holds. There are many ways that senators could make their chamber a more democratic institution, but first they have to want to do so. For now, they would rather look the other way as extremists turn their body’s courtesies into chains."  From The High Price of Petulance in the Senate, by David Firestone in this morning's NYT.