Covid-19 in the Autumn of 2021 (part 1)

I'm not a researcher, that is not the point of this blog. But I went on a bit of a deep dive on USA's recent "crisis" in intensive care units across the land and felt like I had to post about it. 

The healthcare industry is in an all day, every day fight to manage the cleavage between supply and demand. In healthcare (unlike most other industries), optimally there will always be more supply than demand; but (just like every other industry), oversupply is wasteful and undersupply diminishes revenue. So how do we correct for undersupply? 

I wanted to see what an ICU "crisis" looked like before our current period of pandemic. I'd say it mostly looks exactly the same. And I can more or less sum up all of these papers, articles, abstracts, etc., in two phrases: we need more beds and we need more nurses. That was true in 2000, 2006, 2011, 2016 and today. 

Check them out for yourself. 

Millbank Quarterly: "The Transition from Excess Capacity to Strained Capacity in US Hospitals" (June, 2006)

"After many years of concern about excess hospital capacity, a growing perception exists that the capacity of some hospitals now seems constrained. This article explores the reasons behind this changing perception....we observed that adjustments to the supply of hospital services tend to be slow and out of sync with changes in the demand for hospital services. Those hospitals reporting capacity problems are often teaching hospitals, located near previously closed facilities or in population growth areas. These findings suggest therefore that approaches to dealing with capacity problems might best focus on better matching individual hospitals' supply and demand adjustments."

First, note that in 2006 there was no particular pandemic problem in USA. Also, note that this article is not about "strained capacity" as it is the "changing perception" of capacity. Problems aren't merely problems but the "perception" of problems. Supply and demand ebb and flow, knowing how to stay ahead of them is the fundamental task of healthcare. 

"One particular concern has been the growing number of emergency department diversions, in which ambulances are instructed to bypass particular hospitals, especially because this could have a domino effect in the community (California HealthCare Foundation 2002; Shute and Marcus 2001). Evidence of the rising rates of emergency department diversion was found in round 3 of the Community Tracking Study (CTS), which was conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change in 2000 and 2001. The CTS researchers reported that hospitals frequently were bypassed because they could not admit emergency patients due to the lack of medical/surgical floor beds or intensive care unit (ICU) beds (Brewster and Felland 2004; Brewster, Rudell, and Lesser 2001). A study of emergency room overcrowding by the General Accounting Office (2003) yielded similar findings, suggesting that strained capacity in various hospital units led to backups in emergency departments. "

Notice that strained emergency rooms were frequent occurrences in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Not a function of global pandemcis, merely a function of supply and demand.

"Two CTS issue briefs examined emergency department diversions and how their occurrence and severity had changed over time (Brewster and Felland 2004; Brewster, Rudell, and Lesser 2001). Bazzoli and her colleagues (2003) looked at the degree to which specific hospital services were viewed as constrained and what contributed to these problems. They found that those service areas perceived as highly strained were the emergency department, medical/surgical ICU beds, and general medical/surgical beds. The main contributing factors reported by the CTS respondents were nursing and other personnel shortages and an insufficient supply of beds."

The solution in 2006: more beds, more nurses. 

Biomedical Central.com: "Working With Capacity Limitations" (August 16, 2011)

"ICUs are faced with nearly the same throughput and capacity problems as the companies in our examples. The vast majority of critical care costs are fixed, resulting in substantial revenue increases with each additional patient [7]. ICUs also frequently operate at or near capacity, with subsequently large waiting times for admission [8]. Simply expanding capacity is not feasible due to space limitations within hospitals, workforce shortages, and government regulations [9]. Neither is expanding capacity necessarily desirable. As the above examples teach us, in the face of variable demand, expanding capacity can ultimately result in higher fixed costs, excess capacity, and long-term inefficiencies."

2011: Not uncommon for ICU's to be at/near capacity because there are is a latent and permanent and constant need for more beds and more nurses.

"The next step is to apply queuing theory to mathematically formulate the current process and determine the point on the utilization curve that will maximize responsiveness and productivity. Increasing capacity might be necessary to achieve optimal throughput, or might only result in excess resources. Sometimes these results can be surprising. For example, an empiric analysis of ICU readmissions in the cardiac ICU at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital found that an aggressive early discharge policy resulted in an increase in overall capacity, even accounting for the increase in readmissions [10]."

But plans for emergency overflows have already been formulated and ready to put into practice, (although sending patients home early is one of the suggested strategies).

Realias Media: "ICU Capacity Strain" (May 1, 2016)

"Intensive care in the United States accounts for nearly 1% of the gross domestic product, and it is forecasted that there will be increasing demand for this type of care in the future as the population ages.1,2 Given current projections that the supply of ICU staff and beds will be constrained rather than expand to meet this increasing demand, ICUs will be faced with the challenge of continuing care delivery under conditions of increasing strain.2 Thus, there is growing interest in studying ICU capacity strain, defined as the temporally varying influence on a given ICU’s ability to provide high-quality care for patients who are or could be cared for in that ICU on any given day.3"

Decreasing, rather than increasing, the amount of beds creates more potential revenue. And dealing with that forced decrease is the mission of future (as of 2016) health care professionals. (Wow! ICU accounts for 1% of American GDP? Is this true in other countries as well?)

PLOS.org: "Perspectives on Strained ICU Capacity" (August 22, 2018)

"Interpretation: Strain is perceived as common. HCW believe precipitants represent a mix of patient-related and operational factors. Strain is thought to have negative implications for quality of care, HCW well-being and workplace environment. Most indicated strategies “outside” of ICU settings were priorities for managing strain."

The "strain" here refers to health care workers (HCW) themselves reacting to conditions of caring for ICU patients. "Burn out" in the health care industry is the dragon that must be slayed and we've known this for years. 

North Carolina Rural Health Research Report (March, 2020)

There's a table of data about rural and urban hospitals that I found eye opening. 

In the USA (as of March, 2020, presumably) 2,169 rural hospitals and 2,367 urban hospitals. Okay, slightly more urban than rural but not a huge disparity. 

Avg. daily census: in rural hospitals is 36,615 and in urban hospitals is 350,452. Uhh...that's not even close. The urban hospitals have 10 times more daily traffic?

Total acute care beds: in rural hospitals is 99,942 (37% occupancy) and in urban hospitals is 562,492 (62% occupancy). 

The lesson here is skip the big city hospitals and go find a hospital out in the middle of nowhere--which is probably not what people in the middle of nowhere would tell you to do. But it is the urban hospitals that have the most traffic and presumably would be the most backed-up during a period of "crisis".

Fact Check.org: Hospital Payments and the Covid-19 Death Count" (April 21, 2020)

"It is true, however, that the government will pay more to hospitals for COVID-19 cases in two senses: By paying an additional 20% on top of traditional Medicare rates for COVID-19 patients during the public health emergency, and by reimbursing hospitals for treating the uninsured patients with the disease (at that enhanced Medicare rate). Both of those provisions stem from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, or CARES Act.

The CARES Act created the 20% add-on to be paid for Medicare patients with COVID-19. The act further created a $100 billion fund that is being used to financially assist hospitals — a “portion” of which will be “used to reimburse healthcare providers, at Medicare rates, for COVID-related treatment of the uninsured,” according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As the Kaiser analysis noted, though, “it is unclear whether the new fund will be able to cover the costs of the uninsured in addition to other needs, such as the purchase of medical supplies and the construction of temporary facilities.”

Either way, the fact that government programs are paying hospitals for treating patients who have COVID-19 isn’t on its own representative of anything nefarious."

"Berenson said revenues appear to be down for hospitals this quarter because many have suspended elective procedures, which are key to their revenue, forcing some hospitals to cut staff. He surmised that potential instances of patients being wrongly “upcoded” — or classified as COVID-19 when they’re not — are “trivial compared to these other forces that are affecting hospital finances.”

It further indicates that if a “definite diagnosis of COVID–19 cannot be made, but it is suspected or likely (e.g., the circumstances are compelling within a reasonable degree of certainty), it is acceptable to report COVID-19 on a death certificate as ‘probable’ or ‘presumed.' If we think it’s presumptive … we can go ahead and put down COVID-19,” Jensen said, “or even in some situations, even if it’s negative.” He pointed to the example of a 38-year-old man in Minnesota whose death was attributed to the coronavirus even though he tested negative."

So hospitals have an incentive to call everything Covid-19. And Covid-19 causes them to hold off elective procedures (the real moneymaker for hospitals), which also causes them to cut staff. So the more Covid-19, the more hospitals...cut staff?

Also, these gov't programs that overpay hospitals to cutback on staff are really about the uninsured, right? So shouldn't we be condemning the uninsured rather than the unvaccinated? (Seems like its time to deny the uninsured service, right? Isn't that how we do things now?)

CBC: "Why Ontario Hospitals Are Full to Bursting Despite Few Covid-19 Patients" (November 2, 2020)

"The data suggests many hospitals have returned to the overcrowding levels seen before the pandemic, when CBC News revealed hospitals filled beyond capacity nearly every single day, with patients housed in hallways, conference rooms and cafeterias not as exceptional cases, but as a matter of routine."

"We're back to where we were pre-COVID with the risk of hallway health care. And you can't have hallway health care in a pandemic because of the need for infection prevention and control.""

"The increased funding to add bed capacity does not necessarily mean hospitals will hire more nursing staff to care for the additional patients, said Vicki McKenna, a registered nurse and president of the Ontario Nurses Association."

Wait....'we're back to where we were pre-Covid'? Yeah, check out the dropdown menu in there: Ontario hospitals were mostly at above 100% capacity in January 2020, before known Covid-19 cases even got to North America. WTF is going on in Canadian healthcare if the Covid-19 "crisis" is considered a return to the good times?

Sharp.com: "What ICU Capacity Tells Us About Covid-19" (December 21, 2020)

"Additionally, there might not be enough appropriately trained providers, such as ICU nurses and respiratory therapists, to safely care for a greater number of patients.

“The safety of our patients and staff is our top priority,” Jenkins says. “We separate COVID from non-COVID units to limit exposure and conserve personal protective equipment. Patients requiring ICU care require special technology, monitoring, nurses and physicians. And while there has been a significant increase in patients, there has not necessarily been a surge of health care workers.”"

"...it has become clear that the general public’s actions directly impact case numbers, hospitalizations, ICU capacity and the number of deaths we might see in the coming weeks. As such, experts are renewing their call for everyone to do their part to reduce their chance of contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to others.

“Safe, high-quality care is always the top priority of our staff and physicians, but they have grown weary and tired,” Jenkins says. “In order to break this pattern with the upcoming holidays, we need everyone’s cooperation in following the county’s guidelines of masking, social distancing and staying away from gatherings outside of your household.”"

Before the vaccine the advice was the same...as after the vaccine: social distancing is the only way to avoid the virus and masking helps to limit the spread. 

Lexington Herald-Leader: Beshear: Covid-19 Surge Means Kentucky Will 'Be Out of Hospital Capacity Very Very Soon" (August 19, 2021)

"The governor said 21 hospitals across the commonwealth now face “critical staffing shortages,” as the number of new cases and rate of Kentuckians testing positive for the virus continues to rise. To “allow for additional help,” Beshear said he signed an order on Wednesday that grants licensed health care providers in other states permission to practice on an emergency basis in Kentucky."

More beds, more nurses. 

Physicians Weekly: Covid-19 Related ICU Workforce Shortage Projected to Push Hundreds of US Counties Into Crisis (August 31, 2021)

"For these counties, the analysis recommends implementing a variety of contingency workforce strategies, including increasing patient counts per team, using float pools, and granting overtime pay."

"In a recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll, roughly 30% of healthcare workers reported contemplating leaving their profession, whereas in the Medscape National Physician Burnout & Suicide Report 2021, 42% of physicians surveyed reported burnout, with ICU physicians reporting the highest levels at 51%."

Yeah. More beds, more nurses, beware of burnout. Every study says the same thing, we've known this for years. Which begs the questions: are our hospitals actually enduring a "crisis" right now or is this simply the exact same perception of Intensive Care Units that we've long had? 

And is this the solution to the problem? LA Times (June 22, 2021), Washington Post (August 14, 2021), Advisory.com (August 18, 2021), Business Insider (September 3, 2021), Yahoo News (July 2, 2021). There are many more of these stories and I never even got off the first page of the Google search. The overwhelming lesson of all the reports cited above is that the "crisis" is an undersupply of nurses!

What do we value: nurses or the vaccine? What do we need to overcome this crisis: nurses or the vaccine? Whose medical opinion should we follow: nurses or the vaccine? 

I'm all for the vaccine, but why are we firing nurses for following their own beliefs in the face of a "crisis", when we know good and well that the "crisis" is not enough nurses? Why do we need nurses to believe what the mainstream media wants us to believe?

HHS Hospital Utilization (September 20, 2021) 

As of roughly 1pm, Tuesday, September 21, 2021 (*) of the 4 hospitals located within 5 miles of my current location (one of the hottest hot spots in the Commonwealth, I might add), one has 44% of ICU beds available, one has 10%, one has 19.6%, one has 62.5%. Granted, 10% available is probably the limit of what a health care provider would like to have (ideally, more supply then demand is desirable for positive health outcomes), but the other three available hospitals do not seem to be dangerously overstuffed. I can, of course, look to other hospitals in other places if I really wanted to worry myself but why would I? My paranoia is most naturally directed at my own safety and by extension the safety of those most immediately around me. And for now, the local hospitals seem to be bearing up just fine. 

(*) These stats are virtually identical to roughly 4pm, Monday, September 20, 2021, incidentally. This suggests that either nothing has changed or that this website is a faulty accumulator of data. 

My two cents: the "crisis" in hospitals is the inherent conflict between supply and demand which is more acute in healthcare than in other industries. I don't see anything different in fall of 2021 as in 2000, 2006, 2011, 2014, 2016, etc. 

And....what are we blaming the unvaccinated for, again? What is the problem they are creating? And bear in mind there is no way to ascertain (from this data) what types of maladies the ICU beds are currently filled with or the relative vaccination status of those people. You are free to use your ignorance to blame whoever you like for whatever you like. But, personally, I don't see anything out of the ordinary in our hospitals right now. 

Furthermore, the "crisis" was never the amount of patients but the paucity of staff. Hospitals are in perpetual crisis (re: more beds, more nurses) and if we can afford to fire nurses right now, then apparently everything is just fine...right?

Afghanistan

In 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan. Off the top of my head, I have no idea why except that the Russians have always had prickly relations with their neighbors (and Russia has a lot of them). 

It wasn't long before the Russians were bogged down in the desert, no real sense of what they were doing or why. Meanwhile, the Russian people back home were watching the clumsy carnage on their TVs and grew dissatisfied with Moscow's imperial ambitions (Afghanistan has long been considered Russia's 'Vietnam'). And, predictably, the Americans stoutly supported the native antagonists (as long as they continued the job of killing Russians, according to Charlie Wilson). The American support took the form of giving money to Pakistani intelligence to funnel to anti-Soviet warlords in Afghanistan. 

Within the larger Arab world, the fight against the Soviets in Central Asia was a righteous cause (a la the Spanish Civil War) and many Arabs dedicated themselves to going to Afghanistan and making war on the imperial infidels. These groups were called "Afghan Arabs", though they are not Afghans, and eventually they wore out their welcome in Afghanistan. By the mid-1980s, the Soviets were done with all that and pulled out. American support, too, disappeared when the Soviets left town. Soon after getting their country back, the Afghan people grew tired of these outsiders trying to show up and take credit for everything (a phenomenon seen again when the Iraqi Sunni fought against al-Qaeda interlopers after the fall of Saddam) and drove many of the Afghan Arabs out. 

Afghanistan bathed in its ability to spurn empires, recounting tales of fending off invaders going back to Alexander the Great. In the following years, the Taliban came to power. They were mostly an obnoxious religious organization with vague political (re: warlord-ish) philosophies, but since Russia and USA no longer cared, really only Pakistan was left to pay any attention. Pakistan took on the Taliban as useful idiots (well, that was the hope anyway) and more or less abetted them. The Taliban were happy to destroy religious relics and basically act like the recalcitrant dinosaurs they are. 

During this time, the most famous of the Afghan Arabs, Osama bin Laden, who went from Afghanistan to the Sudan after the Soviet retreat, returned in the late 1990s, presumably under Taliban watch.  It was from the mountains of Afghanistan that bin Laden planned and implemented 9/11.

The Americans by Xmas of 2001 were able to rout the Taliban and put "our guy" (Hamid Karzai, who is ready for a comeback...?) in power, where he stayed for almost 14 years, controlling Kabul with an iron fist and not much else. The hinterlands were never swayed by American influence but the overwhelming force did drive the Taliban underground for a decade or so. 

The recently concluded American operation in Afghanistan was a direct outgrowth of 9/11. In October 2001, USA invaded Afghanistan with three goals: 1) capture/kill Osama bin Laden; 2) crush al-Qaeda in Afghanistan; 3) push the Taliban out of Kabul as punishment for allowing al-Qaeda to plan 9/11 from its territory. Here's the thing about USA's involvement that always struck me: the Americans accomplished all three of those goals years ago....so why were we still there in 2021? 

#1 took almost a decade and took place outside of Afghanistan but the goal was accomplished. #2 al-Qaeda was well smashed in Afghanistan by 2010 and I think foreign terror influence there is currently minimal and I think likely to stay minimal (at least when it comes to attacking the West, the Afghans have bigger fish to fry). As for #3, we pushed the Taliban out of Kabul within weeks, mostly before even putting boots on the ground, and kept them out for 20 years even though they clearly make up the largest chunk of the population and basically represent the only political game in town.

The third part of the mission is where we got creeped. Pushing the Taliban out as punishment for their involvement in 9/11 is like sending your child to his/her room: is the kid supposed to stay there forever? Were we really supposed to suppress the Taliban indefinitely in their own home country? The only thing that suppressed them was the overwhelming American firepower hidden in the hills and now that that has been collected up and rotated back home, what is there to stop the Taliban? The Taliban are the bulk of the population, why wouldn't they rule the country? It is worth noting that throughout July and August as the Taliban "re-took" territory from the departing Americans, these gains did not come (for the most part) through battlefield victories. The Taliban didn't have to fight anyone to get the power back, they merely had to show up. This is a re-flourishing of culture that has been hibernating for the last decade or so.  

When Trump and then Biden negotiated their various escape plans, they talked with the Taliban because they're the only people there. USA negotiated the withdrawal with the Taliban because who else were the Americans going to negotiate with? Think of this: we worry now about the refugees pouring out of Afghanistan as the Americans leave, but there was no such worry in 2001 when the Americans invaded because those people didn't leave. They stayed and for 10 years or so they (kinda) fought the Americans and then for the last 10 years, they've just been biding their time waiting for the Americans to inevitably exit. 

The Americans have known for years that as soon as they leave, the Taliban will take back over, the Americans forces were merely a finger in the dike, not a force for nation-building. Everyone was taken aback by the sheer speed of the Taliban takeover, but no one was surprised that it happened. The question is how long was the American Public supposed to care about keeping the Taliban out of power? What was the value of a Taliban-less Afghanistan to USA? Does it matter at all? In October 2001 it was a perfectly reasonable mission but by the summer of 2021, the mission no longer served any purpose. 

I'd say it was by 2012 or so that the mission no longer served any purpose. From 2001 to roughly 2010, the Americans routinely skirmished with those militants willing to fight the American presence, which whittled down al-Qaeda and other foreign terror elements and the most militant elements of the Taliban. But after Osama bin Laden was killed in May 2011, the mission didn't have much left to accomplish. Obama declared the end of combat operations in 2014 because combat had pretty much run its course. The Americans fought everyone that wanted to fight and when that dried up, Obama was clearly ready to bring the troops back home. As we can see, the American presence in the hinterland put a freeze on activity but didn't really squash any beefs. 

Obama wanted to leave but the Pentagon suggested instead keeping the troops there. Why? Recall that in 2014 Obama was entering the final two years of his second term, which is a death knell for the Prez in DC. During this phase, the Prez is free to make all sorts of bold visionary speeches and invent all sorts of ways to lionize himself or smite his non-gov't enemies. But when it comes to actually getting shit done, a Prez in his final two years is pretty powerless, even in foreign policy. The Pentagon was not going to let an outgoing president push long term agendas. And at that time the Pentagon still liked the idea of having combat troops in forward bases because...well, the Pentagon just likes that stuff.

But I think it was somewhere around 2018 when the Pentagon decided that Afghanistan was more trouble than it was worth and began to indulge Trump's ambitions to leave. They famously dragged their feet (*), but they had already begun plodding toward the exit in Afghanistan by the time of the 2020 election. So when Biden came to power earlier this year, he picked up the exit strategy that Trump had already begun (which suggests that if Trump was President, the turmoil in Kabul would look pretty much the same as it does now) and was eager to start his Presidency with a quick and smart retreat. 

What happened to make the Pentagon prefer a lighter footprint in Afghanistan? I dunno. Perhaps the money-sucking potential of boots in country just wore itself out and supporting them was costing more than the corruption could bear. Perhaps the trade war with China showed the Pentagon that China was becoming a different sort of adversary and that positions in Afghanistan would be more of a weakness than a strength. Perhaps militant Islam of the sort that threatens the shores of the USA was just simply no longer there. Perhaps the evolution of the American military from a large standing army to drones and special forces has finally matured. Perhaps this is just a re-assessment of Central Asia security needs. Perhaps the realization that keeping the Taliban out of Kabul was just no longer necessary finally took hold. Perhaps other allies (India or Turkey, for example) were willing to take up positions in Afghanistan similar enough to the USA's that we became redundant. I dunno, pick your favorite explanation. 

At any rate, I would suggest that the mission was far from a failure. Again, we achieved everything we wanted to achieve...and then hung around an extra ten years because withdrawing was always going to be an unholy shit show. 9/11 is far enough away now to perhaps no longer recall that it was not uncommon in the American media landscape to refer to these War on Terror incursions as World War III. I would point out the American casualties in 20 years of war in Afghanistan (2,448 according to the Associated Press) aren't even as large as single days of Civil War battles, which suggests that this was not the epoch-shifting clash of civilizations that we thought we were in for at the time. Indeed, in America we've had the luxury of largely ignoring this war. Even its effect on the Arab world has been pretty minimal outside of Pakistan (though exerting no more force on Pakistan than USA already possessed). This was not World War III, it wasn't even Gulf War II. 

And during that 20 years the Taliban didn't go away. They just realized they couldn't rule by force and so went into hibernation. Did the Taliban mature during that time? Well, it probably won't look like it to American eyes but I don't see how they couldn't have matured. They step into power with a brand new appreciation of foreign policy, a more sophisticated sense of controlling the media narrative and will have to serve their populace in a whole new way now that they have been introduced to the 21st century. Don't get me wrong: the Taliban are still pretty close to the bottom of enlightened thinkers but their floor has been raised whether they like it or not. 

Imagine having enough guns to be able to invade Kansas and at gunpoint force all the residents to become Duke basketball fans. Watch the Blue Devil games, cheer the wins, sing all the fight songs, all that shit, just for Duke. No Jayhawk gear is allowed (not even Wildcat gear), just Duke blue for everyone, everywhere all the time. Say, this lasts for 20 years and then you pack up your shit and leave one day. Do you think the local Kansas residents will all stay loyal Duke fans? Oh, I don't think so. 

Well that's more or less what we did to Afghanistan: we deprived them of their natural choice to run the country because those people pissed us off. So we punished them. We sent them to their room without any dinner....and how long was this supposed to last? Were the Taliban supposed to stay in hiding forever? The Americans didn't do much to eradicate them or replace them (with whom?), but merely to force them to cower for a coupla decades while heavily armed Americans wandered the countryside. We don't have to stay there forever, the territory is simply not valuable enough and the people aren't dangerous enough to warrant staying indefinitely; but there's no reason to think they're gonna sing our praises when we're gone. There was always a moment when exiting was gonna be the next step and that moment has finally arrived (well, I'd say it arrived around 2012). The Americans leaving Afghanistan is a good thing even if it looks bad on TV.

And as for the troubling exit strategy, look man, there is no exit strategy that makes for good lookin' TV. The proper withdrawal from Afghanistan (to my mind) would've been to send in an additional 10,000 troops to sweep into the hinterlands around Kabul, accumulating any American assets that would be exiting, then gathering at the south end of Kabul ready to lead a procession to the sea. Move large, move fast, gather friends, avoid enemies and talk a lot of shit. This would've been a provocative move designed to make the locals defensive rather than offensive and ideally should've minimized any reprisal as the American forces hasten to the exit. This would've been accompanied by loud angry words from the POTUS and probably even some shady misdirection on how/when the exit would actually take place, all designed to keep the timid elements from joining any kind of fray. (This would've been expensive as hell, would've really cut into the Pentagon's foreign budget, but what does POTUS care?)

Is that the plan you wanted, America? An increase in troops, six-to-eight weeks of constant war games, while your President screams bellicose words into a camera, just so that we could leave an empty crater in our wake to pretend like Afghanistan never happened...is that the plan America wanted? Because that would've looked like shit on your TV. Exits need to be hard and fast, you need to leave fire in your wake, you need the people left behind to be glad that you're no longer around. But that's not how the politics of this stuff works. Partisans nowadays are eager to look soft and sensitive rather than tough and brutal, which is theoretically better (fewer pointless deaths) but optically tougher (everything always looks like shit when you think in terms of the specific rather than the abstract).  

Biden willing to take the short term heat (personal) for the long term good (collective) is something we just don't get out of a POTUS any more. It is better to be out of Afghanistan, it is probably better to not use that level of boot-force ever again. It is time for militaries to turn into search-and-rescue teams built to save lives rather than take them. 

I am confident that six months from now we will be glad to be out of Afghanistan. I think 10 years from now we'll be glad to no longer be in Afghanistan. Hell, I think we're already glad to be out of Afghanistan--and I should've put this post up 4 weeks ago! (***) 

I think this the correct long term move for USA, for the Pentagon, for American geo-strategic thinking and for Afghanistan and the Afghan people. For Biden to shoulder the short term blame for our collective long term gain is as admirable as anything I've seen a President do in a long time. And, of course, nobody noticed.

Yes, the Taliban are still a bunch of recalcitrant dinosaurs. But they really can't be as bad as they were before 9/11. And America's defensive posture vis-à-vis Central Asia is vastly better than it was before 9/11. And oh, by the way: I guarantee the Afghan hills are still dotted with American special forces, dudes that have only learned to live that way since the Towers came down....they're still there, I'd bet my last dollar on it. This strategy is a move toward a lighter footprint, not a move toward total absence because the central Asian landmass and the Indo-Pacific is where the military stuff is headed for the foreseeable future (and ain't no way the Pentagon is gonna get left out of that!). Whatever shenanigans lay ahead for Central Asia, the Americans are dug in and ready to participate, they're just not doing it with thousands of boys in country the way we did in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The eminent British historian John Keegan once made a list of the countries he thought to be more or less unaffected by World War II: Iceland, Ireland, Afghanistan. Not a lot. And honestly I'm not sure why Iceland is on there (**). Do you understand how far from the mainstream of civilization Afghanistan really is? It is the edge of the world. Papua New Guinea--a literal Stone Age population--was way more affected by World War II than these people were. And it sums up why the Americans are eager to leave in 2021: Afghanistan is harsh deserts with harsh mountains with a harsh population still living at mostly subsistence level and that doesn't mean much to us in our digital world. 

Does it surprise you, then, that it was from this place that the plans for 9/11, the plans to bring down the western global socio-political economic infrastructure were born? It shouldn't--it should be plainly obvious that these were the people most suspicious of the coming global order. Now in 2021, World War II is finally complete. Even the Taliban have cell phones and the internet now. We tried give them the best of what we've got but the Afghan people did not want it, did not need it, did not hunger for Republican Democracy (apparently the Hamilton Mix Tape hasn't made it to Kabul yet). The technology, though, has been forced on them and they will keep it now whether they want to or not. 

In the long run, I think, the big move signaled by the American exit from Kabul is that the Americans want war through the drones, special forces, and spies, rather than regular army positions. The USA has decided to remove itself from the 21st century ground war. Currency wars, tariff wars, bond market manipulation, the endless elbowing for market share, shit talkin' politicians and (ugh!) the 24-hour propaganda machine....those are the mechanisms of future conflicts. Fewer deaths but virtually endless angst...is that better? Wars have become just too damn expensive. And rather pointless, even when they end in victory! Drone strikes have limited value in an actual war, they are much more useful as interrupters of peace than as instruments of war. 

Okay....you ready for the crazy prediction? I bet this will be a golden age for Afghanistan; don't get me wrong, it probably won't look like one to American eyes (and all we'll get is the bad news), but the Taliban are the natural leaders of that territory. The "improvements" the Americans had to offer (bicameral legislation! Judicial oversight! Citizen control of the military!) are not really all that sexy to people that will mostly never learn to drive a car. But the Americans leaving is likely something they almost all agree on. 

And I'll bet they've got a line of financing already open (w/ either China, India or some of the Gulf States (****) or all of the above). I bet their statecraft is going to be a lot more modern than it was in 2001 and a lot more sensitive to the media and int'l diplomacy. I think they've actually got a nice shot at working India and Pakistan against each other, at least for defense purposes. Slowly but surely, even Afghanistan will crawl into the light of civilization and central Asia will become an actual homeland rather than just a place for space agencies to test their Mars rovers (*****). In short, now that the Americans have come and gone, Kabul is as connected as it has ever been with as much opportunity for advancement as it has ever had. The Americans turned the lights on and then got out of the way--frankly this is one of the great days in their long history. I think this could be the ultimate unifying experience of the Afghan people.

As for the Americans, I assure you nobody will look back 6 months from now and wish that we were still in Afghanistan. Nobody. If the Pentagon doesn't want it, then you know nobody wants it. The Afghans are better without us and we are better out of their territory. The Taliban are back in charge and they know better than anyone how ruinously annoying the American military can be...and how quickly (and capriciously) it can return.

I think getting out of Afghanistan is a momentous move, a brilliant move and the right move. And President Biden should be applauded for it. Of course, we're not going to do that because we prefer "optics" to "reality". And if you don't like it, let me suggest that 20 years in Afghanistan is perfect example of how gov't programs work: made sense at first, endured setbacks, had some success, lingered because no one knew how to get rid of it, then brought nothing but calamity to the guy with enough courage to actually pull the plug on it. This is what the American gov't has been doing to Americans for decades. 

The Afghans have finally had their taste of civilization. Yup....just like chicken. 

(*) This may well be apocryphal and I may well be remembering it wrong, because I can't recall which tell-all book by which author this came from. But the story goes: Trump said to the Pentagon, I want out of Afghanistan, how do we get that done? The Pentagon says come back in six months. So six months later Trump calls a press conference and announces we're completely pulling out of Afghanistan. The Pentagon says, whoa! What was that? Trump says, you said six months. The Pentagon says, no, that meant come back in six months and we'll start talking about it. Your announcement means nothing because we're not prepared to do anything any time soon. 

To me, the story illustrates the difference btw running a company and running a gov't: when CEO Trump brought in some mid-level flunky for some project, Trump knew how to treat the guy and what to expect and then how to reward or punish him in conclusion. But just because the POTUS tells the Pentagon to do something...yeah, that doesn't really mean much. The Pentagon is willing to work with the Executive, but the Defense apparatus of the USA is much larger than any one office could control, which is why the Pentagon is an ongoing concern while any given POTUS is guaranteed to be gone in 8 years. The fact that the Americans left suggests the Pentagon didn't want Afghanistan enough to fight for it (in Congressional sub-committees, I mean, not Afghan battlefields).

(**) Iceland's wartime dealings with the American Navy warped their social economy well into the 1960s, a clear and direct outgrowth of World War II.

Yes, the USSR's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan had Cold War implications, which itself was an outgrowth of WWII, but it isn't hard to imagine Russia in the 1970s blundering its way through Central Asia with or without WWII or the Cold War. 

(***) Me. The whole point of this blog is to go from the top of my head without any research. Research is fine but I've been researching these things my whole life, the point is to not distill all my knowledge for all time into one post, but rather to spit out what I think I know at any given moment. But with this post for instance, I kept re-starting it, I just kept writing the same shit over and over, such that the editing process was more of deleting rather than re-organizing. And instead of posting this in a timely manner (this was more or less done a month ago), I let it linger to a point where it barely seems relevant any more. Oh well, I can console myself that this post was never relevant and never will be, so what difference does it make when it goes up? 

(****) Did you notice that Ghani (and his helicopter of money) made it to the UAE? I dunno, man, I figured the UAE was the Taliban's new creditor, so does that mean Ghani is living in house arrest forever now? Is he a bargaining chip or a gift? Man, Ghani really needed to get to a NATO country, you'd think a helicopter of money would get you to the south of France, but I guess not. 

(*****) That's not really a joke. Seriously, Afghanistan is more a lesson in trying to control the uncontrollable from the other side of the planet. This mission will ultimately be of more use to Elon Musk than to West Point. 

Covid-19 in the Summer of 2021

Let me start by clearly stating I believe in vaccines. I believe vaccines are useful in minimizing (if not curing) the effects of disease and in relation to Covid-19, we already know very well who the at-risk populations are: the elderly (particularly over the age of 70), those with pre-existing respiratory conditions and the obese. 

Let me clearly state that I believe the at-risk populations should be getting vaccinated as quickly as possible all over the world.  And those are the only people that should be getting vaccinated. Vaccinating others serves no purpose and merely erodes the efficacy of the vaccine itself. 

It's not that vaccinating everyone is a dumb idea, it is that it is an impossible idea. There are almost 8 billion people in the world, vaxxing them all, then shutting them down for two weeks and then vaxxing them again would go a long way to eradicating the virus. That still wouldn't completely work because vaxxing and locking down could only occur on a rolling time frame, meaning at any given moment there are still billions of people unaccounted for. Oh, and there's absolutely no political will from the various factions of Earth's population that would allow this to happen. So in short: absolutely not at all possible to do and wouldn't even necessarily work if we could do it. 

Therefore a strategy of vaxxing everyone is not possible, it is not going to work, it is doomed to fail, it is built to be unsuccessful (meaning many more people living with Covid-19, whether vaccinated or not--which is what's going to happen anyway!). The virus is here to stay. No amount of immunizing is going to make it disappear. If we vaccinate everyone, then tell them to go live their lives as if they're bulletproof, that won't get rid of the virus. Indeed, it will enable it to spread (through easing of social distancing) and will encourage a more virulent strain (the virus will have to work harder once a vaccine has been introduced). 

The vaccination doesn't keep you from needing to wear the mask and social distancing. And if the point of getting vaxxed was to no longer need the mask or the distancing...well....that isn't the case. There was no reason to think that was going to be the case and now we know that it is not the case. Vaccines and masks are two different issues, one does not impact the other, which is not the bill of goods we've been sold so far. 

The idea that we have to vaccinate everyone to eradicate the virus sounds good, but we are far from being able to pull that off. This virus has only existed (that we know of) for two years and has already gone around the world now in multiple forms and currently accounts for 200 million active cases. Vaccinating it out of existence is not gonna be easy--indeed, it's not gonna be possible. Living healthier lives in relation to Covid-19 is the way to go, vaccinate those in real danger but not those without underlying conditions. 

By insisting that everyone get vaccinated--and that everyone who is not vaccinated is somehow fucking up the beautiful world of awesomeness the vaccine is supposed to provide--you are lying to yourself and to everyone else. You're creating an air of fear and paranoia, where you've tried to passive-aggressively force people into pointless behavior. We've created an impossible task and built in the mechanisms for us to point fingers at each other when it doesn't work. And that's all we've done!

This is a basic respiratory illness that spreads very quickly, it is not going away any time soon. Eradicating Covid-19 by, say, the end of 2021 is absolutely not humanly possible for a million different reasons. I don't anticipate Covid-19 will go away in my life time--and I don't understand why anyone would think that it would.

In two years there have been (according to the July 29 South China Morning Post) 4,182,008 deaths from this virus. In two years there have been (according Statista.com on July 15) 177,226,941 Worldwide Covid-19 recoveries. A lot more people (177.2m:4.1m) don't die from Covid than that do. So why are we vaccinating everyone? Just vaccinate the people that need it!

The vaccine has done a fine job of keeping serous symptoms from developing, it is doing a fine job at keeping people from dying of the virus. However, the virus itself already has 98% survival rate...the extra 1% the vaccine provides is really only for those people who are at risk. And not for anyone else. 

So why are we trying to vax everyone? Pure politics. Serves no other purpose. There's no medical reason to do anything other than vaccinate the at-risk people, keep social distancing as a basic practice and then move on with our lives. Why are we still acting like this is a dangerous disease? We've had a full year now to see that the initial introduction of Covid-19 to the Human population brought a lot of chaos and killed people already close to death but has otherwise had a fairly mild effect on our actual bodies. And that it isn't stopped by a vaccine.(*) 

Create an impossible ideal than blame your political enemies when it fails--and it absolutely will fail. That's what the current leadership has done. 

Look, man, the doomsayers (and you probably assume that I am one) will tell you that this was all a mind control game and now the Democrats have all the levers of power right as gov't spending is ramping to a new all time high, the Federal Reserve is claiming ever more powers on overnight markets, the White House is finally seemingly in lockstep with the communications tech giants and now they're hooking us on a vaccine to control us. I would agree that they've tried to do those things (have been trying with erratic success for the last 200 years), but American culture is extremely fluid and I don't think it will even take the usual 5-10 years for the next generation to pound this current mindset into the dust.

The contemporary crop of cultural controllers are all about paranoia, never ending grievance and rewarding laziness. This is the most myopic, selfish, humorless batch of humans ever created in the Western world and at the moment they are ascendant (the coming January 6th Hearings will likely be their peak, I would suggest). But they represent all that is backward in American culture. America is about the go-getters, the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the daredevils, the mavericks, the thrill seekers, the people with new ideas. This reliance on the past and on passive-aggressive social control is fruitless and 100 liberals in a room together will never agree on anything. So the idea that this current Democratic control will lead to some dystopian future doesn't really worry me. (**)

The next batch of young people will see how the media manipulated demonization of Trump is merely a gutless power grab by people that have no vision of the future, only complaints about the past, and by people who claim to be experts when they display no skills or abilities (most of all they don't understand how medicine works--and they are proving it right in front of us all day long!) The anti-anti-Trump reclamation may take a while. Unfortunately, Trump himself is still around blocking the Republican Party like a kidney stone and until he's gone, the right is still just a turtle flipped over in the sun. But the Democratic Party is a bunch of fascists (***) and soon even the dutifully vaccinated will realize that the vaccination served no purpose other than that to minimally weaken their sense of self-control.  

But if we just vaccinate the people that are at greater risk of dying (re: treat this vaccine like every other vaccine) from the virus and allow the rest of the population to absorb the virus itself, then the at-risk people are safer and the virus needn't mutate. Meaning, next year's vaccines could steadily chip away at the virus while continually providing more assurance to the rest of the population. Herd immunity is going to happen eventually--no matter how far off into the future our bureaucracy tries to push it. 

We haven't made people safer. We've maximized political control and nothing else. The game we're playing now of pretending like everyone is going to get vaccinated (****) is not going to work. But, of course, that powers that be will just blame (insert: your particular political bullshit here). That plan is not feasible for a million different reasons, so pretending like that's what we're doing is just straight up foolishness. Eradicating the virus through mass vaccination is not a worthwhile policy. Herd immunity will save us....eventually. If we can only survive the herd-drivers currently calling the shots. 

The vaccination doesn't keep people from getting and passing on the virus! The vaccination isn't doing what you think it's supposed to do! The vaccination doesn't make it safer to not wear a mask or stay socially distanced! You can blame your political enemies all you want, they are not the source of the frustration. 

If you need the vaccine, by all means go get it! Your personal health may be impacted, you can't let politics stop you from being smart! 

But if you don't need the vaccine, then why are you getting it? And why on earth are you so convinced that everyone else needs to get it?

(*) Now, the idea that the vaccine itself creates variants is a bit like the "lab leak hypothesis" in that it doesn't need to be true. Viruses create variations naturally just as the Earth produces viruses quite naturally. Covid-19 did not need to be bred in a lab (whether it was or wasn't) because the Earth has already produced tons of viruses in the past and will produce more. Likewise, vaccinating everyone may produce even more vicious variations, but doing nothing at all may have produced vicious variations, as well. I don't see the overly aggressive vaccine rollout as a smoking gun. But I also don't see how it helped anything. All it can do is water down the efficiency of the vaccine. 

(**) Well, except that they are trying to get us addicted to a vaccine instead of just absorbing the virus that has already penetrated every nation on earth. Like many medications, once you take this vaccine you're basically addicted to it for life. And you will need boosters once or twice a year for the rest of your life: the numbers are pretty clear that the vaccines and the virus itself wear off after 4-6 months. Now if you have underlying conditions, then this is a lifeline. But if you don't, this is just unnecessary medication and warping your immune system to match the vaccine's version of Covid-19 every year for the rest of your life becomes a less good idea the longer you live. If you follow the gov't plan, you'll be on the gov't plan for life (that's the Democrat vision of public service). So far the vaccine (like the first taste) is free....but for how long....?

(***) As per Wikipedia: "Fascist movements advocate a form of democracy that advocates the rule of the most qualified, rather than rule by a majority of numbers." Only a matter of time til smart young political science kids realize that this is the action performed by Super-Delegates within the Democratic Party, the Party that wanted Bernie instead of Hillary in 2016 and anyone instead of Biden in 2020. Most good liberals I know pride themselves on being smart and informed, though it's always amazed me they've never grasped that their own Party is specifically designed to thwart the majority of its followers. Any minute now...it's gonna dawn on them...any minute now...

(****) I am a smoker, I am prone to respiratory infections, my lungs are the weakest part of my body. That said, I am otherwise in excellent health for my age, I exercise regularly, eat pretty healthy, socially I'm already comfortably distanced and thinking that I would be in the 98% of people who survive their encounter with Covid-19 does not strike me as hubris or tempting fate. I never stopped wearing the mask deciding some time ago that I'll wear it at least until summer 2022 regardless of what anyone else is doing. I like the mask, I'm a big fan of the mask, and I don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks, I'm keeping it when in public for the foreseeable future. Getting vaccinated wouldn't change that. Getting vaccinated would merely take me from a 98% chance of survival to a 99% chance and while some people need that extra marginal lift, I do not believe that I am one of them.

BBC News on American Voting Rights

BBC News: Voting Rights: How the Battle is unfolding across the US

According to the BBC, "At the centre (sic) of this national debate is a question of what is the greatest threat to American Democracy. Is it the security of an election process that in 2020 relied heavily on early and mail-in voting?"

No. That was never the problem. The problem is American politicians poke each other and position themselves behind minimal details rather than actually taking the act of voting seriously. Voting is the core of citizenship, connected directly to the Revolution, the Declaration, the Constitution, all that, it is the very center of your existence as a citizen.  You should be vigilant to changes in the system, against advantages and disadvantages. But you should also keep an eye on which crises are just babble for TV cameras and which present actual problems to solve. 

The Democrats and Republicans will likely spend the next two years going to war over 'voting rights' to distract the American people from what voting rights actually are or need to be. They're going bare knuckle over a semicolon on page 56 of some obscure Act instead of actually making voting more convenient and effective for the widest possible pool of citizens. The parties are just looking to put on a good show, some philosophical red meat that makes us feel like the politicians are fighting for us when in reality all they're doing is distracting the masses.

We just had an election where more people voted in more ways than ever before....the voting system has never been better. Imperfect since birth, but not bad and continuing to improve. The political outcry is because the parties need outcry, and where there is no outcry, the parties are expert at creating the appearance of a philosophical battle when actually they're fighting over something insignificant or tangential. 

Manipulative political bickering is the only problem with voting rights Americans have ever experienced. The Dems are making a vague grab at continually federalizing the workings of civic society and maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. If they pull it off, maybe it'll make a difference in our lives, maybe it won't. The talk will continue, though, and when a scoundrel needs a refuge, expect big talk about high falutin' gibbery like the failure of democracy. 

BBC: "Or is it a system, corrupted by the influence of big donors and powerful interests, that makes voting more difficult than necessary, particularly for historically disadvantaged groups?"

Big donors? Powerful interests? Restrictions on voting are now and have always been the result of the political parties and no one else. The government gives the citizens the right to vote because it wants the People to vote, to participate in the civic order. It is the political parties that carve up the People into sub-groups (some intentionally disadvantaged), for their own purposes. 

The Republicans and the Democrats are two extremely wealthy corporations that have colluded together to keep everyone else away from the forces of actual power (re: gov't spending). Most of their collusion revolves around making sure the People never challenges their duopoly over gov't power. (FWIW, the American People seem to love the 2-party system; hell, even through all my complaining, I must admit it has been remarkably stable for multiple centuries and that ain't bad. But I still can't help thinking the endless political bickering is to alter capital flows to partisans rather than citizens and...well, not much else. It's all about the money and just the money--and these are the guys that print the money) 

BBC: "The Democratic effort at national voting law centres (sic) around passage of the 'For the People Act'...(which) would guarantee that voters can receive a mail-in ballot if requested, mandate a minimum of 15 days of early voting before every federal election, require paper ballots and set standards for voting machines."

1) Mail-in ballot. The first (and only) time I voted was 1992. I voted by mail-in ballot. I can only speak for Fayette County, Kentucky in 1992, but as for as I know, mail-in ballots are always available if requested. And if they've ever not been available, you should've complained to your representatives. 

2) 15 days of early voting. I don't really understand what this means. Election Day is election day, early voting is fine with me, but the votes would sit uncounted (right?) until Election Day. Election Day is an end point, not a beginning point, there has to be an agreed-upon moment where the voting comes to a close, but what difference does when we start the vote? How does it work? (I don't get why this is important)

3) Paper ballots. Uh oh, here's the problem--should be a problem for Liberals more than Conservatives! Once you mandate a specific form of ballot itself, then you cut off any evolution of what ballots can be. As we move further and further into the digital world, paper ballots themselves will become (already are, actually) obsolete and wasteful. And this will LIMIT rather than expand the range of voting population. 

If Democrats were really looking out for the American people (which, of course, they are not) they wouldn't be putting forward such a short sighted proposition. Republicans, too, should run screaming from this kind of Federal control but they won't, because they're Republicans (rather than rational thinkers). Paper ballots are fine, but other types of ballots may benefit the citizenry, too, so why create limitation rather expansion? The Left will continually applaud themselves for giving away rights, but the Right is too stupid to keep it from happening because both think of their own Partisan advantage rather than the welfare of the American populace. The Citizenry isn't advanced by this waste of effort, our choices are delineated and neutered.  

4) Standards for voting machines. Voting itself is county by county--which is why this bill is either utterly pointless (applies only to federal guidelines, of which there really aren't many) or incredibly important (amazing attempted power grab at centralizing voting which has hitherto always been very local). I think its the former rather than the latter. Politicians love to blather about stuff designed to be insignificant knowing full well its just a (micro) money-sucking tool and not an actual (macro) evolution of the social order. For the Feds to grab control it means they'd have to grab it from a million little fish out there, but those fish are gonna bite back. There's a reason why voting is extremely local--and extremely not Federal--in USA: even piddly politicians don't like giving up their power. And hanging chads is their super power. 

BBC: "It would prohibit states from disenfranchising felons who have completed their sentences and enact new restrictions on undisclosed 'dark money' contributions."

1) Disenfranchising felons should never have been authorized by any legislature or accepted by any judiciary. What jurisdiction has the right to permanently limit Constitutional rights to citizens? I support not letting inmates vote, violent crimes should come with cessation of some Constitutional rights while incarcerated. But once the sentence has been served, why should the State exert any cessation of Constitutional opportunities of the Citizen? By what authority is Constitutional protection stripped from a citizen? Why would past criminal activity ever be a consideration to remove natural born rights? 

We're treating this like the gov't is granting us a right, when in fact the hope here is that it stops removing this right. Liberals, Libertarians and Conservatives alike should be in support of this. How it took 200 years to get here (and I don't know that this will be reversed) is shameful and irritating. 

2) Restrictions on 'dark money' contributions is, to my mind, a "campaign" issue rather than a "voting" issue, but I don't make the issues. I'm not opposed to restricting dark money, though I doubt any of the current Our Gang could actually craft something useful. It seems to me the proper reading of Citizens United v Fed Election Commission is that political contributions should be more documented rather than less but I don't know that it has played out that way. As long as all contributions are documented and made public, I'm cool with it. (Don't get me wrong, I'd never give a politician any of my money, that's absurd and I'm skeptical of anyone that would give their money to these most horrible people in our society, but if people wanna give their money to hucksters, liars, fools, and soothsayers, they should be free to do so) 

"Dark" Money doesn't necessarily mean illegal contributions, sometimes it can mean out of state contributions or obscure sources which may or may not be illegal, so dumping potential criminal activity right in a patch of legal activity is an intentional obfuscation. Legislators know very well they're stirring the pot by leaving future arguments built into the laws they write.

BBC: "Many new voters would be automatically registered under the legislation, which also requires tech companies to disclose information about political advertising, create new government support for small donor-funded candidates and seek to end practices of "gerrymandering" voting maps for partisan advantage."

1) Automatic registration. Yes, this is how it should always have worked, tied to taxation (re: the annual piece of paperwork all citizens are expected to submit). The reason it doesn't work that way (and never has) is because the political parties don't want it. It is the political parties--and only the political parties--that limit voting opportunities in USA. Always. Again, this is an example of the politics making voting harder rather than easier and the Partisans have been getting away with it for centuries. (Bet you a dollar this provision is left out)

2) Tech companies disclose advertising. Yeah, whatever. Trying to get "information" from a tech company is like an orphan asking for more: you'll look really sympathetic when you don't get what you want but that's as good as its gonna get. This is just vague puffery that looks like an opportunity for politicians to make vague future wars on each other through trying to manipulate the tech industry (who will likely be one step ahead of the politicos for the foreseeable future). Any and all of that makes me wanna barf. 

3) Gov't support for donor-funded candidates is something that already happens, right? Remember when Obama turned down gov't sponsorship in 2008 because his donations were so high? This already happens when the parties leave certain candidates out of the big money. Whatever, just another way to funnel federal monies straight into Partisan bank accounts. Serves no other purpose. I see no benefit to the Citizenry, merely Public monies going to Party interests. 

4) "Gerrymandering" *exasperate shrug* You realize that most voting blocs of citizens don't live in a rectangle or a perfect circle, right? The sheer bizarre shape of a voting district probably has more to do with physical landmarks (mountains, highways, etc) than political chicanery; indeed, weird shapes should be expected. Every 10 years as per the Constitution, the Congressional districts are re-drawn and the Party in power at that time has the power to make it so. This is how it has always worked since 1790. Each party has put their grubby fingerprints on the drawings numerous times over the years, there is nothing new about it or out of the ordinary about it. And the weird shape of the map is not a smoking gun. 

If we endeavor to change this system, the worthwhile change would be to convene a private body--outside of Congress (or State Legislatures)--every 10 years to perform this task. Okay. First, that requires Congressmen to give up their grubby powers and hand it over to a bunch of outsiders (yeah, that ain't happening). Even if that did happen, what rationale for voter re-districting would this independent body take up? What is the proper way to draw districts? Yeah....there is no answer to that question. Even an independent body would likely draw it up based on partisan voting patterns because, well, what else is there? 

For example, if a large city has a cluster of African-Americans, is it advantageous to the local African-Americans to be lumped together in one district that they could then politically dominate? Or better to be divided across 3-4 districts, to ensure African-American representation across a range of seats? What's better for African-Americans in that scenario? I dunno, how would anyone know that? We would only know over time if creating an African-American dominated district is better than creating a wider dispersal of African-American constituency--and even then, whose opinion determines what is "better"? What "advantages" this population and what "disadvantages" them? I dunno. How would anyone know? Only time will tell if any given policy ever does any of the things that it's supposed to do. I vote for empowering the citizenry against unnecessary gov't spending at all times. How does that effect re-districting?

The Party in power gets to be in charge of the process, how else would it work? Why would we have imbued Congress with these primary powers if we did not expect them to adjudicate things amongst themselves? "Amongst themselves" means majority power in the House with some minority powers in the Senate. This is one of those rubber to the road moments, this is just how the process works, trying to change that is a feudal process--indeed, what exactly is there to 'change'? 

The debate is a non-starter and in this case the solution is just a new version of the same problem. The system we call "gerrymandering" is what it is. It is inherently politically corrupt in the sense that everything the gov't does is corrupt. We could call it something else but getting rid of the reapportionment of Congressional districts is not gonna happen--and that's all 'gerrymandering' is. So what is it you think you're trying to get rid of by 'banning' it? (And how do you plan on 'banning' it?) 

As for as I'm concerned, any move of Congress is a no-win situation, we're all disadvantaged every time any of them do anything. Occasionally the agglomeration of sheer gov't waste creates enough detritus to power the economy, I am for empowering the citizen to be the most in control of his own destiny; preferably with the aid of (rather than threat from) the gov't (but figuring out how to do that is rather complicated). 

BBC: "Democrats have since turned their focus to updating the Voting Rights Act, a 1960s-era law that has been curtailed by the Supreme Court over the past decade."

What the Supreme Court pointed out was that the Voting Rights Acts was basically defunct because it hadn't been updated (or actually employed) since 1972. The Supreme Court didn't 'curtail' anything, it pointed out that the Act had not been properly maintained and was basically null and void on its own. It showed clearly what needed to be changed for re-submission to the legislature, which could have happened without much effort at any point since that decision was handed down. Instead, the Dems have not bothered to re-write or re-submit the bill because claiming victimhood is politically more palatable and blaming the Supreme Court for something that clearly hasn't been important since 1972 is easy money to a politician. 

BBC: "Democrats counter that the confidence of the public has been damaged by the unsubstantiated allegations made by Trump and others after November's balloting."

Even in foreign lands the prevailing narrative is Trump is responsible for all ills. Not at all. Voting rights improprieties in USA go back to the 1780s--probably earlier. I guarantee this problem is older than Trump--there are multiple amendments to the Constitution on this very topic, voting rights didn't just appear ten minutes ago. 

Do you understand what you're doing when you blame Trump for everything? You're getting further from ascertaining the real problems that need solving and engaging in empty cult of personality uselessness designed to keep the masses--even the educated fancy pants masses--from really absorbing what their gov't is, what it does and can do and how it interacts with the citizenry. 

Hurling mud is the easiest form of rhetoric and Trump is the muddiest target America has produced in ages. That's not a defense of Trump, it is a call to ignore the sideshow and the demagoguery that comes in his wake. But none of this started with Trump, he is just the most convenient distraction for Partisans to wave in front of the American People. 

"Taxation without representation is theft!" was one of the battle cries of 1776. The understanding is clear: taxation is a fact of life but representation needs to be demanded. The colonists of the Eastern seaboard were tired of being made to pay for British imperialism, especially since it no longer served colonial interests. 

The ability to choose our own leaders is what it means to be an American, the ability to remove them when they have failed us is the purest, best power the American people have. And protecting that power should be our foremost concern because it so primary. 

But once you actually elect the leaders, they combine around their own necessities, the necessities of representing. An infrastructure of gov't sets in quickly (just ask George Washington, that dude hated being president). The power of the people to choose their own representatives fades once the representatives themselves create their own power blocs within the façade of gov't. 

A corporation becomes prominent when it serves the needs of the consumers, it will make whatever adjustments the consumers demand in order to maintain its position. But when the corporation gets big enough, it moves on to its own concerns and consumer influence becomes more of a suggestion than a motivating force. Political philosophy is just a consumer good, like bicycle tires or yogurt. You buy it off the shelf--it's called 'retail politics' for a reason. And the exotic partisans have 'boutique' issues, the consumer relations of the game itself are built right into the language. 

When set against each other politicians are generally more successful at playing a negative game as opposed to a positive one: loving your favorite candidate isn't nearly as important as hating the opposing candidate. Here the partisans keep the people divided, using hatred as animus, and now using the tool of voting to injure each other. Voting is is presented as a weapon rather than a right and thus some people must have their weapon removed. 

Voter suppression is always and only a function of political will, what else could it be? Who else can manipulate the levers of democracy except the politicians? Politicians are just entertainers, they say what the paying-est people want to hear in order to keep their jobs. And by driving each other from the marketplace, they injure the Citizenry's right to choose. And by pretending to fight for those rights, the Citizens are meant to feel protected when in fact they're more in danger than ever. 

Okay, so Major League Baseball decided they didn't like Georgia's voting laws, so they abruptly moved the All-Star Game from Atlanta to Denver. Okay, so what is Colorado doing that makes their laws so clearly better than Georgia's? I dunno, we never had that debate. All I know about the odious Georgia laws is that you're not allowed to give water to someone standing in line. I have no idea why giving water to someone waiting is a threat to democracy, but then again I have no idea why people stand in line to vote. Seems like we're fighting over a symptom rather than the disease. I'm guessing most all the people in those lines would have cell phones, no? Why doesn't everyone just hit a button on their phone in the privacy of their home weeks ahead of the election if they want? And if you say, 'that method of voting wouldn't be secure enough!' I would say, 'as opposed to what? What is the form of voting that is infallible?' 

Major League Baseball is trying to convince us that our current system is dangerous enough to not even deserve an exhibition baseball game in Atlanta! Well, what the fuck could be so different about voting on an app? If the point is to make things easier to vote--something I firmly believe in--then why aren't we voting on our phones yet? If you think its because paper ballots are safer....why do you think that?

The politicians are using the most dire language to describe the most mundane elements of our freedoms. And the People have become so use to pointless political blather that no one is even bothering to notice the deception the partisans are trying to pull over on us. The problems with voting are the same problems we've had for decades: that the politicians occasionally remove rights from us and then try to convince us they're doing it for our protection. 

The technology rules us, not the politicians. The technology rules the politicians, too. We need to get right with the coming technology and we need the gov't to protect us. And that's precisely not what its doing because the Partisans need to keep us unprotected for their benefit. They're pretending to fight for you but the Parties are fighting for themselves; they, like the gov't, are planning on out-living you. They are doing whatever it takes to keep the Citizenry ignorant of the future. When it gets to the level of something as basic, as primary as voting rights, then it's clear to see the Democrats and Republicans are using our rights as bargaining chips. This is a game to these corporations and the citizenry are the tokens.

The political parties are the scourge of our nation. They're more or less in an intertwined death struggle that's dragging us further from our Constitutional rights. You can pick your favorite one, but why bother? They're both foul, they're both self-interested, they both live on ignorance and manipulation--and the nicest thing I can say is that they're both much too inefficient to actually be as bad as they could be. 

Voting is the same problem it always was. The details are just a part of someone's self-aggrandizing narrative. How hard is it for you to vote? If it is hard in any way, you should stampede to your local, state and federal representatives at least to register complaint. Try to live from your own experience rather than imagining yourself (or others) as a trending statistic. All the Republic asks of its citizens is for each one of you to be you. When it comes to your relation to voting, remember it belongs to you, it cannot be taken from you, though the Partisans will endeavor to make you work for it while pretending to serve you. 

Your right to vote is clearly laid out in the Constitution therefore--think about it!--no law on voting rights can expand the Constitution. Therefore any law on voting rights--put forth by any party in any place at any time--can do nothing but LIMIT voting rights. As a citizen you should be wary of anything related to "voting rights" because it can only be about limiting rights, not extending them. 

The partisans know that this is a phony debate that can only end up worse for the citizenry. You may think you're on the right side of this but I assure you there is no right side of this debate.