Month: July 2024

Last Friday we were supposed to fly to Detroit for the wedding of a good friend. But last Friday was the Crowdstrike issue. Yikes! Our flights were cancelled and there were no others. What could we do? Simple. Throw the bags in the Tesla, head on out to Detroit, 700+ miles in either direction.

How did it work out?

Superchargers network: Fantastic. This is the first time we’ve gone more than five hours from home. Based on those drives, we were not nervous at all. And it was correct not to be nervous, there weren’t any problems. The navigation feature that plots your routes finds the correct superchargers to stop at, how long to stay there, how much to charge up, etc. It has it all figured out.

There are plenty of superchargers along the way. All of the stops were very close to the highway exits, we never had to go far out of the way. All of the stops were near grocery stores, restaurants, or malls. There was always a place to eat and easy ways to kill time. Charging added somewhere around two hours to the total driving time in each direction. If you’re nervous about the network, don’t be. Relax.

Self-driving: The full-self driving is great. Eleven hours of driving was not the slog you might think. In fact, we had a fun time because we didn’t have to pay nearly as much attention to the road. We were more physically relaxed because the driver could move their arms and legs around, it’s not as physically demanding. The self-driving is noticeably better than a year ago, we didn’t have one “What the hell is it doing!!!???” moment.

Self-parking: Self-parking is a nice little sub-feature of the self-driving package. When you are near a parking spot, you can tap on a dialog, and the car will park itself. My daughter took her drivers test last month, and one of the main skills of backing into a space is already obsolete.

Dollars: Let’s break it down. We spent about $140 in charging, for about 1,450 miles of travel. We’ll call that one dollar per ten miles. Let’s say a gas powered car is 25 miles to the gallon (it’s mostly highway driving), that’s 58 gallons needed, at about $3.50 a gallon is $203. So the Tesla is under 70% of the cost of a gas vehicle. That’s honestly worse than I expected, I thought it would be cheaper by a factor of two or three. I’ve been spoiled by the electricity costs of charging through the house. Superchargers are more expensive — Tesla charges you a premium to get the car ready quickly (roughly twenty five times faster than home charging). It would have been better if the hotel had free charging, as many do.

So on straight up energy costs Tesla wins over gas vehicles by a good margin.

But driving has other costs. Besides the energy bills, we spent $70 to stay in a terrible hotel in Dayton, Ohio the first. On the other hand we didn’t pay Delta for two flights, nor parking our car at the airport. All in all, we spent ~$210 driving our EV compared to the ~$650 we would have spent by flying. Not bad!

Joe Biden is being feted by all. What a sacrifice he has made! What a patriot! Like George Washington, Biden was willing to walk away from power for the good of the country.

I’m not as convinced, walking away from a campaign that will certainly lose isn’t seem incredibly heroic, though it’s something. The heroes are the Democrats who pushed him out, which could easily have doomed their own careers.

Let us begin with the Republican Party, and the awful dynamics we’ve watched for the last eight years. Trump would be a historical blip, except for the large numbers of Republicans who put their personal careers over their duty to their country. Nearly every one of them knew exactly how unfit Trump was for office, how dangerous he was to the country, how he should not be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. Yet, nearly every single one of them bent the knee. When push came to shove, they put their careers ahead of their country.

Liz Cheney is one of the only heroes, who did all she could. In the end it was not enough, and her political career is essentially over. She made the sacrifice. Who else did? No one. The GOP dug their own graves, one by one, as each politician sold out save their own skin at the price of letting a corrupt ignorant fool to become president. I don’t know how they can look in the mirror.

Now let us pivot to the Democratic party, and the choices for down-ballot Senators and Representatives over the last couple weeks. They knew that sticking with Biden was bad for them. But speaking up to replace Biden would also be bad for them — if it didn’t work. And it probably wouldn’t work. Of course he did step down, but that was not a likely outcome, that’s why it is a historic event. The odds were that Biden would stay in the race, he would lose, and the Democratic establishment would go after anyone who tried to get him out. For these politicians, their self-interest was to stay silent and hope Biden wouldn’t drag them down.

Their choice was not as obvious as that faced by the GOP. But the dynamic was similar. Their own selfish interests incentivized them to allow Biden to continue as nominee even while believing he was not up for the job. That is the same choice the Republican Party failed so badly.

A few days ago, it looked as if the Democratic Party would fail it also. But they did not. Behind the scenes (and eventually openly) many pushed for Biden to step aside. Rank and file members, leadership (particularly Nancy Pelosi do not mess with her ever really), and other party elders gradually moved to push Biden out.

Again, the choice facing the Democratic Party was not as stark facing the GOP. The balance of self-interest and patriotism was not as bad as that facing the GOP, so there was not as much pressure to do the right thing. But in the end, the Democrats did the right thing for the country by removing their candidate who was not fit for the job. All those involved in making the happen should be commended.

Just a couple weeks ago I predicted that Biden would not drop out of the race. I was wrong. History is made.

I did predict that Kamala would pick up endorsements from everyone in the first 48 hours, would get to the convention fully anointed and in control of both Democratic money and delegates. Sadly, I wasn’t at a computer and only said it in a phone conversation. It wasn’t a hard prediction, little credit to be awarded.

So what happens next? The Trump campaign has been fearing this for a long time. Their campaign was explicitly built to go after Joe Biden particularly. (I recommend this interview about the Trump Campaign strategy. It is far more discipline and smart than I realized.) Without Biden, many of the GOP attacks are irrelevant or greatly weakened. While Trump was surprisingly under control during the debate (and the first fifteen minutes of his acceptance speech), he will get absolutely crushed in a debate where voters can see how crazy and old he is without Biden for comparison.

Trump will not be able to control himself for very long. As Harris starts going after him and scoring points, and his usual attacks don’t land, he is going to revert to racism and sexism. He won’t be able to help himself. I don’t think that plays well. The GOP has done a great job of working to attract minorities, he’s going to sabotage all that work. And though Harris may have been selected for VP because of her gender, and she is very vocal on abortion, she has never made gender central to her pitch, unlike Hilary in 2016.

What are the odds of her winning? I put it at 40-45%. In the end, it is hard to change the minds of voters. This will help, but the advantages are still with the GOP. Trump has been ahead for a year, and I don’t think this will help enough. Obviously I hope I’m wrong. (Quick straw poll of my political friends – all were in the 40-55% range.)

UPDATE (July 10): Well, this is what happens when you do your own take without doing enough research. Everything below holds up just fine through page six of the decision. The expectation was for the Supreme Court to lay out these guidelines and then send the case back to the lower courts. The lower courts would then determine if Trumps actions were official, presumptively official, or unofficial, and to move forward based on that determination.

Instead the court decided to rule on many of the main elements (in Trumps favor), which there was no need to do. Then they made some (crazy as heck) rules about what was official and what wasn’t. Then they said that in most of these cases, you can’t even investigate. Just insane.

I end up agreeing with just about every other pundit and columnist. The decision is terrible, and fundamentally un-American. No one is above the law, even the president. Until now.

For intellectual honesty, I leave the original post below.

---

It’s the end of democracy. Joe Biden pre-empted Jeopardy to tell us all how terrible it was. Every publication and pundit and podcast is going crazy. They’re wrong. I think the decision is perfectly correct.

The nature of that power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office. At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity.

…As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not
support immunity for unofficial conduct.

The key point is the distinction between official and non-official actions. Actions under the President’s official duties are essentially immune to criminal prosecution. The office requires wide latitude to effectively govern the nation. Sure, that makes sense.

But, unofficial actions are still up for game. Don’t ignore the second paragraph! The trick is distinguishing which is which. That’s appropriate! Everything Trump did around Jan 6 was not official actions. Campaigns (and of course insurrections) are not part of Presidential duties.

That’s the question Jack Smith should have been litigating. The question wasn’t if Trump was immune for official actions, the question was if Trumps actions were official. It was a mistake not to frame it that way in the first place. Now it has to be litigated, which will take us past the election.

There is another silver lining. Consider all the retribution that Trump has promised against Biden. With this decision Biden can’t be prosecuted by a Trump DOJ. The Supreme Court likely had this in mind as well.

All in all, a good decision.