The Establishment is No Longer American

The Establishment is no longer American. It used to be American, almost completely, for four decades or so but those days have passed. The Establishment is now as international as your wildest dreams.

If you hated the idea of the United States being the singular leader of the entire world, then you should take comfort in the facts on the ground of the new era. Yes, the United States---the nation, the government, the economy, the culture---is a still a huge part of how the world works, dominating it in many ways, but the Establishment itself has successfully made the transition from being Ameri-centric into one which is now fully globalist in character. It was necessary to do this, for the Establishment itself to survive beyond the era of American exclusivity (which could not be sustained indefinitely).

Whoever the President of the United States is now, he (or she)is automatically a member of the Establishment inner circle. He must be, for the system could not work without that. Moreover, the Establishment greatly respects the ability to tame and steer the great populist forces of Democracy. It is a special kind of magic to them (which is why they prefer to let populist movements play out, rather than thwart them). To make oneself POTUS by one's will, despite all that will hinder one in that goal, is to show an understanding of power and ability to wield that deserves the highest respect (at least until American-style democracy is no longer necessary). It is the Establishment equivalent of being the winning quarterback in the Super Bowl. For the time being at least, no other world leader in the Establishment arena can come close to this kind of respect.

The most important qualification for a new POTUS is a manifest understanding of the ongoing need to keep the process going of transferring world leadership from America to a world-wide system of governance, in which America is more and more akin to a province within a larger set of institutions that span both international borders (which are becoming largely anachronistic). In that way, an efficient commonwealth economic system can be achieved, in which is possible to achieve a world-wide system of taxation that provides an unified and just social welfare system across borders (important to keep the people happy in their lives, both in their material needs, and their perception of the progress towards justice around the world). Great things can be achieved. It takes an Establishment to save a Planet.

On a legal level,  this has program of internationalization has mostly been accomplished---quite successfully under the sequence of U.S. Presidents since 1989---any future POTUS needs mostly to cooperate with the existing program, and lend his or her voice of support to it.

Being U.S. President is an easy job, all in all, if you are the right kind of person. It means traveling the world a lot, meeting lots of other members of the global Establishment, and shaking hands with them. It means meeting with them, in public, and behind closed doors, and simply bouncing ideas off each other in a way that makes the other people nod along in agreement. Everyone knows what the goals all. It is just a matter of stating them in a way that is wise and thoughtful. The details will be left to others to sort out.

Most of the stress of the job comes from dealing with uneducated jackasses who just don't get it.

Last Week of the Campaign: Scooby-Doo at the Crossroads

Results of the 2016 Republican Presidential primary, after primaries of April 26 in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Trump won every county in all five states, most of them by a solid majority. He thus garnered 118 bound delegates, as well as at least 39 or 40 (depending on the source) of the uncommitted elected delegates in Pennsylvania. This gives him at least 990-1000 solid votes at this point. Even if he loses Indiana, he now has plenty of slack to put him in the "red zone" going into June 7.  His ability to get his own delegates elected at the ballot box in Pennsylvania, despite clumsy attempts by his opponents to confuse Pennsylvanians, augurs well for him to do the same in West Virginia, which will give Cruz little quarter, if the map above is any indication of trends. As many have pointed out, we are now seeing the "bandwagon" effect where the second place guy will find it harder and harder to stay up with the front runner. How many ways can one state the obvious that Cruz is finished?

Last week of the campaign. The Democratic race was over last week. It is now a matter of figuring out how to let Bernie exit gracefully.

On the Republican side, Tuesday's results in the Northeast primary finished off Cruz. There was little doubt that it would, but the magnitude of the defeat, like the results in Staten Island, were a gut punch of cold reality to the Establishment-lackey media, whom we as a people are still permitting to "set the narrative," at least this one last time in American politics (apparently it is they themselves who must ultimately declare themselves to be irrelevant).

For one more week at least, Cruz is allowed to keep leading the Cruz-aders to the slaughter of defeat, which will most likely happen in a big way in Indiana, the perfect Crossroads of America once again.

On May 7, 1800, the United States Congress passed legislation to divide the Northwest Territory into two areas and named the western section the Indiana Territory. (wikipedia).

His picking of Fiorina as a Vice President is ghastly to behold in how farcical it makes him and his campaign look (there is a reason that one does not do this, this early in the cycle). Very few people are as good at shooting their feet off as Cruz.

Donald Trump seems to have this superpower: he gets people to believe that because he himself is "making mistakes", being crude, clumsy, and offensive, etc., that they are allowed to be that way in turn, with the same loosened rules, rhetoric and behavior. Usually they are not. No matter how many mistakes Donald Trump makes, he gets his opponents to make worse ones, ones that ultimately cause their own downfall.

Cruz is a beautiful example of this. His strategy to go state to state after each primary and caucus, to do the follow-up ground work to sway the delegates back to him, via the help of party insiders in each state, would have been the perfect tactic for winning the Republican nomination up until this election cycle.

Perhaps Cruz and his followers still legitimately expects to go into the convention with a majority of support from the delegates who will attend in Cleveland. He might actually achieve this.  He was told early on, by the the higher ups,* that he had the blessing to do this. Once at the convention, the strategy goes, they can rewrite the rules. Heck, they could make it so that Donald Trump is specifically prohibited from being nominated even on the first ballot, which then goes to scratch, and the house proceeds straightway to a second follow up vote that overwhelmingly makes Cruz the nominee. Sure, Trump would sue, etc., but by then it would be fait accompli.  The public and the media always wants to move on, and the challenger never has the mojo in these cases. Not surprisingly, the 2000 U.S. presidential election remains the textbook example of how this principle works.

If this were 2012, Cruz might have actually pulled it off. But of course Cruz would not have gotten this far in the past, without Trump having blown the whole process wide open, and letting Cruz sneak in as the last one standing for the Establishment.

Because this is not 2000 or even 2012, in the end this strategy will wind up counting for nothing, except to make Cruz look like a clumsy Scooby-Doo villain.

From Breitbart.

This is the way tyrants go down, by looking foolish in the eyes of history at some point. Respectable people suddenly want to look the other way. Cruz never got the chance to be a tyrant himself, but he willingly threw himself into the role of being the point man for the Establishment, right as it was going down in flames and tightening its grip on the throat of America. In a way, he is doing us a great service by showing how it actually worked all along.


*who have now mostly cut him loose, realizing he is not up to the task.

The 41 Pennsylvanians Who Will Decide the Nomination

The real story on Tuesday will be how many of the names above are elected as delegates in Pennsylvania If all or even nearly all of them win, then Trump will likely have close to 990-1000 committed delegates by the end of the day. He will need less than 20 more to make it to the "red zone", where a California/New Jersey combination win on June 7 would seal it. Indiana on May 3 would almost certainly take him far beyond that number. Nevertheless,  because it allocates delegates proportionally to all candidates who receive a small minimum, Oregon on May 17 is a 100% fallback to get him within a few delegates of that number.

I was wrong about the Pennsylvania Republican primary in a previous post. Although it is true that 54 of 71 of its delegates available on Tuesday are unbound, they are not chosen by party insiders (like Wyoming, etc.) but  actually elected democratically, at the same time that people vote for the candidate himself.

That is, when one goes into the booth in the Keystone State, one votes for the candidate for President, but also for three delegates from one's own Congressional district (of which there are 18 total districts in Pa.).

Most importantly, the candidates for delegate in each district can openly declare whom they intend to support. Essentially they campaign by saying "vote for me, and I will then vote for candidate X at the convention."

The Trump campaign has been circulating the above graphic with 41 people it trusts to support him at the convention, even though technically they will remain unbound. Potentially all 41 could be elected from their various districts. If they do win, then Indiana on May 3 will be a reverse slam dunk for the win for Trump. Everything after that---West Virginia, Oregon, etc.---would just mean he would need a smaller portion of California on June 7 (where he is looking to sweep the state). So these democratically elected unbound delegates in Pennsylvania are yuge.

Trump is likely to blow out the state on Tuesday, and easily win the 17 at-large bound delegates. Logically---since it's the same people voting at the same time---he should sweep the slate of unbound delegates, at least getting close to the 41 listed above. To prevent this from happening, the #NeverTrump forces have to count on people not actually paying attention, and just checking off any name in the delegate part of the ballot.

That's what it has come down to for them---ballot confusion.

More and more, the actual Establishment seems reconciled to the fact that he has already won, and thus they are shifting quickly to Maximum Hillary mode, at least the ones who can stomach it.*

In the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan, one of those journalists who loves the Establishment with the adoration of a girl loving her father,  cannot in fact bear the thought of even Hillary. She can do nothing but weep for what has been lost, and feel sorrow that America ultimately could not understand that the Bush family had their best interests in mind all along.  She knows that we will miss them, once they are gone, and sees nothing but despair ahead in the wake of the Revolution of Crudeness.

The Republican Party establishment (i.e., Mini-Me)  also is slowly coming around, in its own way. The idea of actually winning an election with a popular candidate has a certain appeal to any politician, and some of them see that happening with Trump. Given that he is inevitable, they have nothing to lose in being loyal to the party.

Left out in the cold will be the Cruz-aders---the true believers of the Son of Rafael, like this poor schmuck, and other wanna-be insiders:

They are the right wing versions of the Sanders people, in that mostly they want a rebellion while simultaneously preserving the Establishment, so they can use it to reshape society for their own purposes. Once upon time, they had control of the party, because the Establishment saw them as the best way to harness the energy of opposition to the Democrats. Now they are no longer needed by anyone. Their time will not come again.

*Among other things, they will begin to lean very heavily on Sanders to call it a day.

How Green Was My Bernie

Map of the 2016 Democratic Primary results, as April 20, following the results from New York State. Hillary Clinton dominated within New York City and just up the Hudson, whereas Sanders took most the rest of the state, extending the territory of his domination from New England down to the shores of Lake Erie,as one might have expected. The population density in New York City ensured a blow out win for Hillary, despite the highly concentrated nature of her strength.*

Scorched Earth Day 2016. Sanders is done. The moral case for his campaign blew up in New York. For his insurgent campaign to work, being behind as he was, he needed to keep winning,  to keep stoking the momentum.

With New York, he failed in a big way, and now both the arithmetic and the moral imperative have left him.  His campaign already has the air of a deflated Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon.

Overthrowing Hillary would have to be a big deal. To do this, in any legitimate way, Bernie needed what the Chinese call the Mandate of Heaven, to allow him to invoke the moral imperative for a great change of dynasty, and for rebellion, in the face of him having lost the early primaries to her.

It will be up to a trusted Oregon senator, and Elizabeth Warren, to help Bernie transition to being a former candidate.

Camille Paglia, who sees the inevitable disaster that looms for Democrats, should they go through with the Hillary nomination, offers what appears to be the last hope to thwart Hillary: her health.

*Somehow this is reminiscent of the map of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire, in the days right before the Fall of Constantinople.

Bad News from Little Beirut: A Rovian Analysis of the Remaining Republican Primary

Results of the 2016 Republican Primary in the northeast, after April 19 New York primary. Trump (red) won every county in the Empire State except Manhattan) which he narrowly lost to Kasich. At the other end of the ferry line, he had his best showing in the entire state, winning the borough of Staten Island with 82% of the vote (My curiosity led me to find out that he carried a certain to-remain-unnamed district in the middle of the South Shore, between New Dorp and Great Kills, with almost 87%). This is probably something that gave great pause to the New York-based press,  a signal that the revolution was at their very doorstep across the harbor.

Current bound Trump delegates after winning in New York: 845 (by some reckonings)

Total number of bound delegates available on Tuesday in the "Northeast Primary": 118 (would be 172, but only 17 of the 71 delegates in Pennsylvania are bound to the winner).

Minimum number Trump will probably win, given the latest polls and trends: +110

Minimum number of bound delegates he will have a week from now: 955

Number of delegates available on June 7 in California and New Jersey: +223

Number he needs to get by convention: 1237

Number he needs to have, going into June 7, for a sweep in Calif. and New Jersey to seal the nomination for him: 1237 - 223 = 1014

Number of delegates he still needs to get, from some other state or source along the way: 1014-955=59

Number available in Indiana on May 3: 57.

The delegate slate in Indiana will be entirely Establishment Cruz supporters, but they will evidently be forced to vote for the winner of the state (likely Trump) at least on the first ballot.

Number of delegates Trump would still need to get, provided he wins Indiana: 2

The week after Indiana, on May 10, comes West Virginia (36 delegates) and Nebraska (34 delegates), Cruz is actually leading in Nebraska at this point. The Cornhusker State may be his last shot at a win.

Trump would dominate the West Virginia vote, were it held in direct fashion, but the situation in the Mountain State Republican primary is whack. Folks there apparently vote for the delegate individually by name, and the affiliation of the delegate is not necessary even known. So who knows who they will vote for. The upshot is that May 10, as far as bound delegates go, may well be a shutout for Trump. It has to be, actually, or else Trump will effectively put it away at the end of the evening on the 10th.

But if he does indeed get shut out on May 10, he may have wait another week to all-but seal the nomination, when he has the chance pick a few more bound delegates.

This should be a piece of cake because the next state, which has 28 delegates, is not winner take all. Instead it divides it bound delegates in proportion to the vote, in a very fair democratic fashion, even for the Republicans.

It's the only state this late in the calendar in the Republican primary that divides it delegates so fairly that way A candidate need win only about four percent of the vote to get his first delegate, and so on from there.

Of course, this state that votes on May 17 that divides its delegates this way is Oregon.

Oregon is the opposite of winner-take-all. The way the Oregon primary works, even if Trump were to lose the vote to Cruz and/or Kasich, so long as he didn't completely tank, and were able to pull in at least 10%, it is probable the Beaver State would wind up giving him enough bound delegates to put him within the "red zone" going into June 7, where a sweep in California and New Jersey (and even disregarding the other states voting on that day), would put him over the top.

That's providing that unbound delegates from Pennsylvania or West Virginia haven't already done so by this point, or that he hasn't won Nebraska, in which case it will have been over after May 10.

After Oregon, his opponents would have to win everything left: Washington (44 delegates on April 24), as well as the other June 7 states of South Dakota (where he is leading), Montana (where he is leading), and New Mexico (where Cruz is leading, but which is not winner take all). They would have to somehow find a week to poach delegates from Trump in California, where Trump leads in every Congressional district in the state (each one of which is winner-take-all for three delegates).

But it would not be over. From there until the convention, even the slightest defection of delegates from any other candidate would start putting Trump in landslide territory going into the last round. At that point, and all the way to the convention, it would be up to his opponents to furiously hold the line on their own guys. It would be brutal and hopeless, to prevent the leakage from their ranks. Trump would be in the catbird seat, doing the schmooze with the delegates, knowing that he would need to convince only a tiny number of them in order to win on the first ballot. He would have six weeks to do nothing else but this. His opponents know this and can see it coming. They don't see any way to prevent it.

Moreover, everything written above is pretty much the worst case scenario for Trump.

That's why even the master is jumping ship.

Always win---even if you have to change sides. Just never be on the losing side.

But the old man is too old to change. No doubt he will go down, yelling at the television, whenever that "horrible man" comes on. It will not help that Oregon, a state that he probably has little love for, may be the ones that effectively seals the deal. 

No matter how it plays out, Trump will go into June 7 still needing California and New Jersey to put him over the top. Thus the California primary is guaranteed to be contested, unless Cruz and Kasich have thrown in the towel by then (which is quite possible). The only question will be whether a victory in California barely puts him over the top, or puts him over the top in a big landslide going into the convention.

Hillary's Play

 Necho II, pharaoh of the the 26th Dynasty (c. 610 BC – c. 595 BC). He is thought to have begun the digging of the so-called Ancient Suez Canal, or Canal of the Pharoahs. The canal was intended to link the Mediterranean (via the Nile Delta) to the Red Sea. The canal was finally opened either by Darius of Persia (550–486 BC), or possibly later with the help of Greek engineers who solved certain technical issues. This small kneeling bronze statuette here is likely a depiction of him (Brooklyn Museum)  Photo by Keith Schengili-Roberts - Own work (photo), CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1665203

Hillary's best shot at this point is probably to come clean about the real advantages of electing her president.

Look, America. I feel your pain. I really do. But you must understand that whether you like it or not, the Establishment, as you call it, is a fact of life about the world, and it will go being a fact of life, whether or not you choose to blow up the American wing of it in some kind of self-destructive Tyler Durden fantasy.

That's right. A wing. That's what America has at this point---a wing within the Establishment.

Remember World War II and how it made everyone feel about America, and the goodness of its people? That was awesome, but to make it stick, more than just a few years and to actually spread that goodness, America was going to have to find a way to permanently survive as a world power in the real dog-eat-dog world of history and war, which unfortunately is remorseless, even in what we call peacetime, and is conducted with without regard to ideas like goodness and humanity, but often for very base reasons. 

It happens behind closed doors. It happens in private discussions. Very little of it actually plays out in the open air of democracy. That has always been a fact.

America, to spread its goodness, needed a class of people, of true Americans, who could not only compete in this arena of dog-eat-dog open seas and warfare combat, but dominate it.

And that's exactly what happened. America won. We won---not only World War II itself,  and the Cold War, but the real war of making American values and goodness---democracy, equality and fairness---the basis of a world culture of cooperation, one in which pain and war and want, although still around, because we live in an imperfect world still, nevertheless are receding further and further away as time goes on. If that can't be called true progress, then I don't know what can be.

The group of people, of true Americans who have implemented this goodness from you, the everyday heroes of America, into the permanent fabric of the nation and the world,  and that has made it possible to have this long prosperous wonderful peace, which we can finally solve the issues of social justice that so desperately need addressing, is exactly what you call the Establishment...

#FeelTheBust

"If Sen. Sanders does not agree with something you do, then you are a member of the Establishment." 

-- Hillary Clinton, 14 Apr 2016

Hillary is a core Establishment insider. She even has liked saying so, until now.

Bringing her down would not mean the end of the Establishment by any means. But it would put a big dent in their operation, given whoever would then wind up as President. They don't like dents.

She seems indestructible, in the way that only a deeply protected insider could be at this point in American history. Democrats cheered when her standing tough was a thumb in the eye to Republicans and conservatives. Now it's the #BernieOrBust partisans who want her to pay the price---for something.

They want her to withdraw. But it must be in a way that is graceful to Democratic sensibilities, and especially that doesn't come across as looking anything close to being an act of social injustice. 

What could do it? The bottom line is the he core Democratic Party establishment would have to give up on her. Whatever could make them switch would have to be something new and big.

It has to be a big group consensus.

If such a thing could happen, she would be forced out, and the liberals could have their dream ticket---Sanders-Warren, or something like it.

Right now I can think of only one thing that would act actually cause the party to ditch her, against her will. It is if between now and the convention, the general consensus becomes that she would lose in November.

 America's ready for it's next president to be...

If it happens this way, and they dump Hillary in July, please just remember one thing. She's going to be pissed off big time. Sort of like this guy was in 1992.

The Great Acceleration

Sumerian civilization...lasts....roughly from 3300 BC to 2000 BC...as much time as separates us from the age of Charlemagne. At the beginning comes the invention of writing, possibly the only invention of comparable importance to the invention of agriculture before the age of steam. -- J.M. Roberts, History of the World


1589 -- Galileo, age 25, appointed chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa.

c. 1603 -- Galileo invents the thermoscope, an early version of the air thermometer.

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642). Portrait by Leoni - French WP (Utilisateur:Kelson via http://iafosun.ifsi.rm.cnr.it/~iafolla/home/homegrsp.html), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=178639

24 Mar 1603 --  Elizabeth I of England dies and is succeeded on the throne by James I.

4 May 1607 -- The Virginia Company of London establishes a permanent colony at Jamestown.

3 Sep 1609 -- Henry Hudson, sailing aboard the Half Moon, reaches the mouth of the river that would later bear his name.

1617-- Giuseppi Biancani, S.J. of Bologna publishes a diagram of Galileo's thermoscope.

1619 – Galileo publishes Il Saggiatore (The Assayer), which describes his version of the scientific method, including the idea of that nature should be studied with mathematical tools rather than scholastic philosophy.  He also advocates an atomistic conception of heat, partly based on his thermoscope experiments.
 

1620 -- Francis Bacon published Novum Organum, advocating a new system of logic appropriate for the Scientific Age.

1624 -- The Dutch West India Company establishes New Amsterdam as a fur trading post at the tip of Manhattan.

1628 -- William Harvey of England publishes  Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (On the Motion of the Heart and Blood).

An experiment from Harvey's de Motu Cordis.  Sigerist, Henry E. (1965) Große Ärzte, München, Deutschland: J.F. Lehmans Verlag (5. Auflage) (1. Auflage 1958) plate 26 p 120, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4551254

1643 -- Evangelista Torricelli (age 35) at the University of Pisa invents the first Mercury barometer, consisting of a tube of Mercury in a tube sealed at one end, and with the open end submerged in a container of the same fluid. He finds the height of liquid decreases from approximately a meter to approximately 77 cm, with the height of the liquid fluctuating with air pressure.

Noi viviamo sommersi nel fondo d'un pelago d'aria. (We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air.) --E. Torricelli, 1644.  Diagram uploaded by Kilom691 - The New Student's Reference Work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6755321

6 Jan 1645 -- The English Parliament establishes the New Model Army, based on a modernized concept of using full-time professional soldiers available for deployment anywhere in the British Isles.

1647 -- Blaise Pascal of France publishes Nouvelles Experiences touchant le vide (New Experiments with the Vacuum) based on experiments with the Torricelli barometer. He demonstrates by logic that the the empty column about the Mercury must be a vacuum.

19 Sep 1648 -- Pascal sends a friend to the top of Puy de Dôme (el. 4,806 ft) with a barometer to take measurements of air pressure at the top. The results conclusively verify the mechanical theory of air.

30 Jan 1649 -- Charles I is executed at Whitehall, ending the monarchy in England.

3 Sep 1651 -- Oliver Cromwell leads the Parliamentarian forces to a crushing victory over the Royalists at the Battle of Worcester, marking a decisive end to the English Civil War.

31 Jul 1653 -- The fleets of the Commonwealth of England and the United Provinces of the Netherlands fight to a draw at the Battle of Scheveningen, in the last battle of the First Anglo-Dutch War.

Battle of Scheveningen (Slag bij Ter Heijde)(Jan Abrahamsz. Beerstraten) Beerstraaten - www.rijksmuseum.nl : Home : Info, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5032714

1654 -- Otto von Guericke of Germany invents a vacuum pump consisting of piston driven by an air gun cylinder. He uses it to investigate properties of the vacuum, and demonstrates the force of air pressure.

1659 -- Robert Boyle of England, hearing of von Guericke's pump, builds his own "Pneumatical Engine" at Oxford and uses it to study the scientific properties of air.

29 May 1660 -- Charles II proclaimed King of England in London, restoring the English monarchy, as well as the House of Stuart to the English throne.

1662 -- Boyle publishes experimentally-determined mathematical law regarding the pressure and volume of an "ideal gas."

Boyle's law states that as the volume of the gas doubles, the pressure decreases by one half (inverse proportional relationship). By Krishnavedala - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16241859

1662 -- Edward Somerset, second Marquess of Worcester, publishes a book of inventions containing his an idea for a steam-powered pump to supply water to fountains.

1667 -- John Milton publishes Paradise Lost in London.

1679 --  Denis Papin of France invents the steam digester, a device extracting fats from bones in a high-pressure steam environment, as well as the first steam-release valve.

 Steam digester by Papin. en.wikipedia - http://www.history.rochester.edu/steam/thurston/1878/Chapter1.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11079399

28 Feb 1681 --- Charles II grants a New World land charter to William Penn to repay a debt, naming it Pennsylvania in honor of him. Penn later establishes an innovative colonial government with the county commission, as well as freedom of religious conviction.

1684 -- Gottfried Leibniz of Germany publishes his first paper using calculus.

1687 – Isaac Newton publishes Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica presenting the first unified theory of mechanics, including a mathematical theory of the relation between fluid pressure and density that verifies Boyle's law and the mechanical theory of air pressure due to Pascal.

13 Feb 1689 -- William III (of Orange) crowned King of England, overthrowing James II, after successfully invading England with a Dutch Army and with the help of the English Parliament (The Glorious Revolution).

1690 -- Denis Papin of France publishes "Nouvelle méthode pour obtenir à bas prix des forces considérables" (A new method for cheaply obtaining considerable forces). He describes a theoretical design for a steam-powered piston engine that could produce useful work.

Papin design for steam-powered piston engine. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=399033

1690 -- William Penn proposes a canal linking the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers  at Philadelphia.

1694 -- William III grants the royal charter to the Bank of England, as devised by Charles Montagu.

1698 -- Thomas Savery patented a steam-powered pump he called the Miner's Friend, essentially identical to Somerset's design. It ecomes an alternative to horse-driven pumps in mines, but is limited by its use of a vacuum to draw water upward, rather than pushing it the manner of horse-driven pumps.

Savery pump. By Institute of Human Thermodynamics and IoHT Publishing Ltd. - Image copy/pasted from http://www.humanthermodynamics.com/HT-history.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7711134

1712 --  Thomas Newcomen invents the atmospheric engine, the first true steam-driven engine that delivers usable power to an external device. based on the Papin design. Hundreds are used throughout Britain and Europe Throughout the 18th century, principally to pump water out of mines. The Newcomen engine was the first steam-driven device that could push water against gravity (like horse-driven pumps) instead of pulling it by means of a vacuum (which could raise water only 30 ft). (source)

The revolutionary Newcomen Engine Design (wikipedia)

1714 --  Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invents the Mercury-in-glass thermometer with a temperature measurement scale.

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736) (wikpedia)

1729 -- John Allen of England describes and patents and early design for a steam powered water craft.

1736 -- Jonathan Hulls in England is granted a patent for a Newcomen engine-powered steamboat design that involves the translation of rectilinear piston-rod motion into rotatory motion suitable to power a watercraft. His early experiments on water are not conclusive at demonstrating the effectiveness of the craft.

Hulls' 1736 proposal for a paddle-tug. By Jonathan Hull - Gutenberg project, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7888637

1741 -- Benjamin Franklin invents the Franklin stove. It has a flue design that draws the heated air over a baffle, allowing for much greater efficiency in the transfer of heat into the room, and producing less smoke.

Cross sectional diagram of the Franklin stove.  Cool air enters the baffle through a duct under the floor. Smoke exits through a U-shaped duct in the floor. en: cwkmail - Google Books: John Pickering Putnam, The Open Fire-place in All Ages (Boston, Massachusetts: James R. Osgood and Co., 1881), page 50, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20078084

14 September 1758 -- General John Forbes leads a British assault on Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio River, in an attempt to drive the French out of the Ohio Country. The British forces include a contingent of Virginians under George Washington.

Map of New France in the year 1750. By Pinpin - Own work from Image:Nouvelle-France1750.png1) CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3086036

1763 -- James Watt of Scotland is asked to repair a faulty Newcomen engine belonging to the University of Glasgow.  Watt determines through experimentation that the Newcomen design is highly inefficient in fuel usage, in that about three-quarters of the energy of the steam is consumed on every cycle in the heating the engine cylinder instead of producing useful mechanical work. He sets about trying to find a more efficient engine design.

Portrait of James Watt (1736–1819)
by Carl Frederik von Breda.

May 1765-- Watt makes critical efficiency improvement to the steam engine, including causing the steam to condense in a separate chamber apart from the piston.  Among other things, this greatly reduced the coal fuel needed to produce the same power output.

19 Apr 1775 -- Thomas Gage leads British forces to a siege of Boston following the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

9 Mar 1776-- Adam Smith publishes The Wealth of Nations

May 1776 -- Boulton & Watt, engineering firm, produce their first steam engine, for the Bloomfield Colliery at Tipton, 

1776 --- Marquis Claude de Jouffroy of France demonstrates an early version of paddle steamer.

19 Oct 1781 -- Cornwallis surrenders to Washington, ending the Siege of Yorktown.

1782 -- Watt uses data from a saw mill to determine that a horse could lift 33,000 pounds the distance of one foot in one minute, establishing the unit of the horsepower.  (source)

19 Aug 1782 -- William Caldwell leads a force of about 50 Loyalists along with 300 American Indians who ambush and rout 182 Kentucky militiamen at the Battle of Blue Licks. 

15 Jul 1783 -- Marquis Claude de Jouffroy and his colleagues publicly demonstrate the Pyroscaphe, paddle steamer powered by a Newcomen steam engine. It travelled upstream on the river Saône for some fifteen minutes before the engine failed.

Model made by de Jouffroy in 1784 to show the French Science Academy the engine and paddle wheels used on the Pyroscaphe. The model is now in the National Maritime Museum in Paris.[1]
CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1156390

3 Sep 1783 -Representatives of King George III of Great Britain and representatives of the United States of America sign the Treaty of Paris ending the American Revolutionary War. The crown recognizes the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation.

Benjamin West's painting of the delegations at the Treaty of Paris: John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin. The British delegation refused to pose, and the painting was never completed.  http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002651, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=868138.

1784 -- Boulton & Watt introduce steam engine with parallel motion which was essential in double-acting engines as it produced the straight line motion required for the cylinder rod and pump, from the connected rocking beam, whose end moves in a circular arc

Parallel motion steam engine by Boulton and Watt, 1784. Diagram by Robert Henry Thurston (1839–1903) - Scanned from a paper reproduction of the original sketch.From a book published in 1878 in New York: A History of the Growth of the Steam Engine, by Robert H. Thurston, professor of mechanical engineering in the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hobroken, USA.Thurston, Robert Henry (1878) "James Watt and His Inventions" in A History of the Growth of the Steam Engine, New York, United States: D. Appleton and Company, pp. p. 119 Retrieved on 16 September 2010., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3478839

1784 --  William Murdoch introduces first model steam carriage.

Murdoch Steam Carriage. By Birmingham Museums Trust - Birmingham Museums Trust, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39237265

22 Aug 1787 -- John Fitch of Pennsylvania, using a Newcomen design similar to Claude de Jouffroy, makes a successful demonstration of a steam driven craft on the Delaware River at Philadelphia, in the presence of delegates from the Constitutional Convention. The next year he begins offering regular passenger service on the river. Fitch is granted a patent in 1791, but he is financially unsuccessfully due to patent disputes with other inventers.

14 Jul 1789  --Bernard-René de Launay, the French governor of the Bastille, surrenders to a mob of Revolutionary supporters.

1791 -- Alexander Hamilton and partners in New Jersey establish the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures, with the idea of building of mills using the Great Falls of the Passaic River.

"Plan of Mr. Fitch's Steam Boat", The Columbian Magazine (December 1786), woodcut by James Trenchard. By James Trenchard - The Columbian Magazine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006691757/?sid=34e05bc124d340189b4aa5de4485a399, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10046605

1793 -- William Blake completes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

10 Nov 1793 -- Notre-Dame de Paris is rededicated as a Temple of Reason.

1794 -- William Murdoch demonstrates his steam carriage design to Richard Trevithick.

9 Nov 1799 -- Napoleon seizes power in a coup in France, proclaiming himself First Consul of the French Republic.

29 Jul 1800 -- Robert Fulton of Pennsylvania, on commission from Napoleon, makes the first test dives of the Nautilus, his design for the first practical military submarine, at Rouen,

 
11 Feb 1801 -- Thomas Jefferson elected President of the United States by vote of the Electoral College.

18 Jan 1803 -- President Jefferson, concerned about the fact that the British were carrying on a lucrative fur trade with American Indians along the northern border, sent a special message to Congress about a proposed expedition to the West.

30 Apr 1803 -- Napoleon sells Louisiana to the United States.

Louisiana Purchase. Mapby William Morris -  CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42826877

18 May 1803 -- Britain declares war on France, beginning the twelve years of the Napoleonic wars.

21 Feb 1804 -- Richard Trevithick demonstrates the first steam-driven locomotive, which hauled a train along the tramway of the Penydarren Ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.

Trevithick's No. 14 engine, built by Hazledine and Company, Bridgnorth, about 1804, and illustrated after being rescued circa 1885; from Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XIX, No. 470, 3 January 1885. This engine is on view at the Science Museum (London). Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7423719

14 May 1804 -- The Lewis and Clark Expedition sets out from St. Louis by keelboat up the Missouri River to reach the Pacific Ocean. Instructed by President Jefferson to gather scientific data along the way, they carry three thermometers among their supplies.

The Sanders Play (Part 2---Infinitely Better Edition)

Results of the Democratic Primary as of 11 April 2016 . Clinton counties are blue, Sanders are green. From New York Times.

Up until recently the Democratic Presidential Primary this year has been inherently less interesting to me than the Republican one. This is mostly because the insurgent candidate (Sanders) has had much less of a shot at winning.

Partly this is because the Democrats are a cycle or two behind the Republicans in terms of the revolt of their base and the disintegration of the Party Establishment. Until recently the Sanders movement has seemed more a like a traditional "sheepdog" phenomenon (see The Sanders Play).

But lately Sanders seems tantalizingly close to getting to the Promised Land. His followers sense it is within reach, and thus they pushing onward with all their might. Many feel they have a historic opportunity not only to take over the Party, but to reshape America and the world on a grand scale. This is the hour of history to do it. They are full of ideas of things they are eager to change.

The problems Sanders faces going forward:

1. He got off to a slow start in the committed delegate count because of lopsided early wins by Hillary (mainly in the South), and now he has to make up a bunch of ground with lopsided wins the other direction. Unfortunately for him, the Democrats don't have winner-take-all primaries like the Republicans. The delegates in the state contests are awarded in a proportional distribution all the way to the end. This makes it hard for anyone to pull away, but it also makes it hard for anyone to catch up.  Sanders recently narrowed the gap substantially, mainly because a blow out win in Washington State. But outside of Oregon, he is not likely to have that scale of landslide victory in most of the states ahead, even if he continues his win streak against Hillary. Thus unless Hillary collapses completely, he is likely to keep creeping closer in the delegate count but only very slowly making up ground over the coming weeks.

2. Even if he does overtake Hillary in pledged delegates (say by winning big in California and other states on June 7), he will certainly not have enough delegates to get the nomination by an outright majority in the convention in July. Neither will Hillary, of course, but she would be able to do so with her superdelegates. Without a switch of huge numbers of them from her to him, she will still get the nomination. This large-scale switch is unlikely to happen for several reasons, not the least of which is that the Party owes Hillary for almost exactly the reverse scenario in 2008.

3. Hillary has nothing to lose in fighting, in that she knows that in the end the vast majority of the passionate Sanders voters will suck it up and vote for her. Most will do so with great enthusiasm by November, because they will see too much at stake in letting the Republicans win the White House. She is, after all, an infinitely better choice than anyone in the GOP. Among other things, Hillary can actually promise to give them pretty much everything they want in the area of social justice, etc. This costs her nothing to promise and even to deliver, and for a great many Democrats, this is all they need. This part of the Democratic platform is not really in conflict with the Establishment program and oftentimes quite in line with it. She can speak the rhetoric of social justice with the best of them without even disbelieving it. Moreover, she knows how the winds blow, and she updates her opinions in the correct way over time that Progressives admire. She will be on top of the social justice issues that haven't yet arrived. She can discard any previous inconvenient position, and no Progressive will hold it against her. She is one of the best ever at this.

As I've said, Sanders' people don't want to overthrow the Establishment. They want to infiltrate it, take it over, and steer it for good, as they see it. They want to purge it of the bad people. The fact that Hillary is an insider is not a terrible thing to them in itself.  It's actually useful in many ways. She has power, and she can deliver on many things.

Part of her problem has been that the Progressives expect their champion lately to have a certain economic rhetoric. The Sanders people want a candidate who will criticize Wall Street, etc., and essentially promise to make the rich pay their taxes, among other things. The ones that care about the TPP want her to pretend to be against it for a while (and then she can change her mind again because it became a "fair process" under her leadership). [The TPP  is an issue on which the Establishment simply cannot compromise.]

But this is a style of rhetoric on which Hillary simply cannot deliver because of her background and history. It would be too awkward for her. She looks awful doing it, even if her backers gave her carte blanche to trash talk them. No one believes her on this.

But as hopeless as it seems, there is an excellent and easy way for Hillary to make this type of populist economic rhetoric part of her campaign in the general election, and still appear very genuine.

She can recapture nearly all of the Sanders support. She just needs a strong VP surrogate out on the trail to give these" Sanders" kinds of speeches, and to stir these types of large crowds.  She needs someone on her ticket who speaks of Revolution but also has a track record of working within the Establishment to achieve goals. The solution is simple:

It began at the Moda Center...

The Clinton-Sanders ticket will make history---part female, part socialist, part Jewish---from New York and Vermont, and heavy on the New York part. It could be, as the song says, a Wonderful World.

Would Sanders accept? How could he not? Would he rather see the VP slot go to someone else, and lose the bully pulpit at this historic comment? Would not all his supporters agree that it is infinitely better than his not being VP?

It could certainly be an awkward speech at the Democratic Convention, when Vice Presidential nominee Sanders officially endorses Hillary Clinton as President. But folks will get over it.

Some Sanders people will turn away in disgust, but most won't. The unity ticket will bring nearly all the passionate support of the current Democratic Party coalition (except perhaps Black Lives Matter. The Clintons have a history of throwing the black base to the wolves once their votes are locked down, and it never hurt them before).

Sanders partisans who "fought in the trenches" can feel like their earlier intense efforts paid off. They can look forward with justification to the idea that their champion will have a strong voice in policy in the new Hillary Clinton administration.

In public at least, Clinton is capable of learning how to "feel the Bern." She will embrace the idea of "Uncle Bernie" at her side, and joke that he is there to make sure she she remains honest and on track towards certain types of Progressive goals. Why not? Hillary's got equal pay as an issue, all to herself.

Meanwhile Clinton's actual opinion of Sanders, like so many other things about her and her husband, would be an undiscussed open secret, one which Democrats would know about but would ignore out of convenience, in the way they are used to doing.

Electorally, Sanders on the ticket would completely blunt any Nader-like third party movement that could cost the Democrats critical votes in a close election. It's the strongest Democratic ticket by far against Trump-Kasich or something close to it. That's why it's going to happen. [The intelligent among the Sanders supporters realize that in the end he is probably not going to be on the top of the ticket, so they avoid and openly discourage too much criticism of Hillary Clinton. They don't want to poison well too much for when the inevitable reconciliation must happen.]

On the other hand, Hillary is still acting as if she will have a completely free hand strategically to choose someone like this obscure guy as VP at the convention. He is no doubt part of a general strategy to appeal to a certain segment within the Democratic base. He's an junior Establishment insider-in-the-making (for they must always be planning for the next wave). In her mind, if she chose him, she would be all-but appointing him as future president in the year 2028 or 2032.

If so, she would not want to change such a long-term plan. Her campaign strategy plan is no doubt a collection of the most beautiful PowerPoint presentations ever created by man, woman, or otherwise. Many hours of thought and meetings have been condensed into the wisdom they contain. Moreover, the Establishment is short on new generation talent and needs to grow some heirs ASAP. Biden was a dead-end, almost literally. They can't waste the VP slot on a doofus like Sanders who only leads to bad things. [Not to mention his supporters wouldn't care a whit if she were impeached. They would cheer it on!]

Like all true insiders to the Establishment, Hillary Clinton is brutal of temperament and unforgiving of dissent. By accounts of people who have been around her, including her bodyguards,  she treats her underlings like dirt. That's actually one of the ways insiders know each other, namely by this ability to act like a Pharaoh.

Much more than money, this attitude is what determines class. It comes across as psychopathy, but the elite believe it is a necessary evil, to be this way. To the Establishment, this is the only way to become the kind of person who can concentrate all his or her energies on being a guardian in the global age. Mere mortals, who have undergone the struggle to live a decent life, have too much empathy for people who serve them. They can't cut it as Pharaoh.  One must be bred and trained in this attitude for a long time. In their mind, they make the sacrifice of looking like assholes to us, so that they can keep the world running for us to enjoy. It's the way things have to be.

Statue of Hatshepsut, fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. She was chief wife of Thutmose II and succeeded him to the throne in 1478 BC. Statue on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
By Postdlf from w, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=895004

Sanders' problem is that Hillary is especially thin-skinned, even for a globalist. To her, it matters greatly that he has insulted her. She no doubt hates his guts. She no doubt would decree that he will never be allowed to be an insider, even if he wanted. To her,  it is a sign of bad character that he doesn't want to be an insider.  It means he is uninitiated to the way things really are. It means he's a freakin' rube.

It would be humiliating for her to offer him the slot, when she already has a plan to give it to someone else.

In any case, if he is chosen as her VP or not, his supporters will eventually suck it up and vote for her in November. They will rally to the Progressive Pharaohess.

But will she suck it up at the convention and give her one meaningful vote to the man who could actually give her a fighting chance against Trump/Mr.X in November?

What an election it's going to be!***



***in this or any other scenario of how it actually winds up playing out.