Can you imaging Washington staff personnel thinking..

"OMG, I can't stand it much longer.  I know things that are so earth shaking that I can't sleep for fear that I might blurt out some secret in my sleep."

Who is this talking?

The staff of the Mueller investigation?  Sure.

The staff at the White House?  Even more.

The poor worker bees in both camps share this dilemma.  The Mueller staff takes great pride in keeping the secrets as hard as it may be.  The White House staff must go from fear of loosing their jobs to overwhelming shame for keeping the secrets.

It's a complicated world.  OMG.

The wall and who is going to pay for it - this was great theater during the run up to the election. It got great press and had a really cool ring to it. But that's in the past, now is time for some reality.

Mr. President, would you give me the $1.8 billion to work on the problem?

First, the boarder is 1,954 miles long.  That would mean that you gave me $921,187 per mile to secure the boarder.  This kind of jibes with what someone told me that the cost of a highway starts at about a million dollars per mile.  And of course I am ignoring an important matter, and that would terrain.  And that's why the estimates for a full wall are much more than the budget you gave me Mr. President.

The definition of a wall is that no one can get over.  A wall stops people and their belongings. So then before we talk about solutions, we should start at the problem.  Then the budget to solve.

The Border Patrol has more than 19,000 sworn agents but not all are assigned to the southern boarder.  Let's just say 10,000 are. So that's 10,000 divided by 2,000 (1,954 rounded up) or 5 men for every mile. These men are already paid for.

Envision a drone with the power to simple lift a couple of cameras, one normal, one perhaps heat sensitive or night vision capable.  These cameras are capable of sending motion pictures to a control site. At the control site we have software that is analyzing the camera data for movement or any other indication that something nefarious might be happening.

Drones would have the software capability to fly a mission, perhaps a few miles, and then go to a charging station and connect automatically.  All common software/hardware capabilities. The drones would typically fly at an altitude that would allow for a nice range of view and sufficiently high to be silent from the ground.

If we had 1,000 drones active at a given time, there would be a drone for every two miles.  There patterns of flight and timing would make it difficult to anticipate when a drown would be watching any given point, but that point could expect to be in sight every minute or two.

Drones would be able to leave their patrol pattern and follow border crossers until human patrols could get to a point for arresting border crossers.  The drone software that would balance patrols and tracking operations for 1,000 units would be an achievable task for American coders.

At these quantities, the drone described would cost about $1,000.  1,000 would be active at any time; 2,000 would be purchased for the fleet for 2,000,000.

Charging units could be built for (make it easy) $1,000 each.  One every two miles.  1,000 units plus 500 for maintenance rotation, 1,500 charging units purchased for $1,500,000.

These purchases would be open market purchases based on RFP's.  If SpaceX and the like are examples of American ingenuity, this is the obvious answer.  So let's consider some overruns and budget the $3.5 million job a $10 million.

This is a rounding error in even the current allotment for the wall.  Let's do it!

I had always thought that our president could be considered stupid, or as at least one in the cabinet says, a moron.  But both of these terms are derogatory digs when there is clinical terms that are clearly the case.

Functional illiteracy is reading and writing skills that are inadequate "to manage daily living and employment tasks that require reading skills beyond a basic level". Functional illiteracy is contrasted with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or write simple sentences in any language.   (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_illiteracy ​)

The fulfillment of this definition has been demonstrated repeated in our President's tweets and his well documented inability to read documents larger than a couple of pages such as the Presidential Daily Briefing, a document essential to the president's "employment tasks".

Attention Disability (ADD or newer ADHD) under any name describes our president my my opinion when he hears something like,  "This report does not address collusion", and understands "There was no collusion".  The president filters and modifies all words and phrases to reflect favorably on him no matter the modifications required to make that so. And when it is all said and one, he believes the modified version is true. That's the disorder.

Another strange example might be the fact that the president feels that when the FBI badly botched warning information regarding the Florida shooter Cruz was because the FBI was distracted by the Russian Investigation. Apparently the president believes that all of the 35,000 employees of the FBI are focused on him.  That is self centered foolishness.

I believe that not only do we have to get bipartisan action in congress, it must be veto proof so that the president is a non-factor..

The president asks what ever happened to “Due Process”?

He raises a question that I have been pondering for a while. I’m a believer in due process.

I’m also a fan of Al Franken.  He got into trouble.  In my mind, he was a superior comedian. Any person that presses the edges in their pursuit, go where lesser people do not. edges.  And if you are out there being the best, you can cross the line. In comedy it would be a line of good behavior.  Yes, cross the line.  I don’t think you can be the best if you don’t.  I bet Bob Hope, a superior comedian, particularly when entertaining the troops, crossed the line.

Al Franken, admitted to crossing the line and asked for due process so that we all could consider his sins.  I looked forward to due process because I also believe him to be a superior senator. I’d like to hear and consider his situation AND that of his accusers.

I was emotionally confused when another of my favorite senators, Elizabeth Warren took a stance with over thirty other democratic senators, a stance that said Senator Franken should leave the Senate without due process.  The pressure and distraction were overwhelming, and sadly, we lost a fine senator under a cloud.

My thought then is that we no longer have a “he said, she said” environment. We now have a “she said” and that alone rules the day.  Neither works very well.

Now along comes the Porter matter in the White House.  The general details and the photo have been repeated endlessly. But the last word by President Trump is, “What ever happened to due process?” This was in the face of Porter resigning and stating he wanted no further discussion.

Who can demand due process?

The President of the United States for Mr. Porter?

Can we properly hear the women who have accused the president?

Could Mr. Porter have demanded due process rather than running into the night?

Did the wives of Mr. Porter get due process when they testified to the FBI under a felony threat for lying?  (I think so.)

Can Al Franken?  (Didn’t seem like it.)

My preference would be for some kind of due process for all. If you make an accusation, swear to it under oath with the penalty of perjury.  If you make a denial, swear to it under oath with the penalty of perjury. 

Put your freedom where your mouth is.

iPut me in the column that believes that the Falcon Heavy launch on February 6, 2018 is in the top three events in our lifetime.  In no order,  

(x) The SpaceX launch and the Tesla in solar orbit;
(x) The USA landing on the moon;
(x) The worldwide understanding that the U.S. President is a pathological liar.

​An incredible time to be alive.  

​“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”  - Friedrich Nietzsche
 
“Trump is a liar, everyone knows that. But he made Paul Ryan lie. Now I can’t believe him either.” – Dave Murphy

How dare I say that Trump made Ryan lie?  Something monstrous changed Ryan. One can see in Paul Ryan's eyes that he doesn't believe himself.

The Trump-Tax plan clearly does offer very nice monetary rewords for the rich. The estate tax as a simple example will go away in 2024.  That says if the Donald can live another 7 years, his kids will reap perhaps a billion dollar tax savings in their inheritance . That's just not right.

And do I understand that the middle class can expect to see perhaps $400 a year in tax savings starting next year?  Wow isn't that great.  

The annual wage of $75,000 has been used to talk about who will get the windfall of $400. The target inflation rate for the Fed is 2%.  That means that in a typical year, what cost a dollar last year costs $1,02.  That's 2% more.  What cost you last year $75,000 assuming you spent the total earning, will cost $76,500.  (2% of $75,000 is $1,500.)  So you're going backwards just a little tiny bit slower. 

I'd rather have the $ billion. 

​​Why is Trump on TV all the time.  Look at the audience.

There are Trump followers, those that worship whatever he says, and can't  get enough of it. There are no leaders among these followers.

There are the Trump proponents who listen to the real meaning of the Trump phenomenon and mindset, and they like it.  We can find some leaders here.

There are those how hate Trump and love to watch him, in their mind, make a fool of himself.  

There are the political activists who thrive on the competition in the U.S. presidential selection process. 

There are the students of politics who are learning revolutionary processes being defined.

There are those that fear Trump

There are those that hate Trump

And after all those, there are those that couldn't care less but take care to know what's going on.

I finally there are those that never cared, or became fatigued. These are likely not to vote.

Is it a good thing? If there are more voters, it's probably good.