Impeachment, Day 2—Open thread and news mishmash

Today, former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch appears before the House Intelligence Committee on the second day of public impeachment testimony. If you need a refresher, she was the diplomat who was given the bum's rush out of Kyiv, with reports going so far as to state that her safety was in danger. She was deemed unreliable by the cabal seeking to gin up a Ukrainian investigation against Joe and Hunter Biden. An immigrant from Quebec, Yovanovitch is a career Foreign Service diplomat. So, obviously, a shakedown artist like Rudy Giuliani had to get rid of her to grease the skids for the Big Grift. Her testimony, much like that of William Taylor and George Kent, should be devastating. She will be another example of the best of the US government standing up to the abuses of the kakistocracy which has us enmeshed in its tentacles, temporarily.

But here are a couple of news items which have caught my eye.

Amazon will not be bullied

News broke late last night that Amazon, passed over for a $10 billion Pentagon contract in favor of Microsoft, will challenge it in federal court.

Amazon said Thursday that it will protest a Pentagon decision to award Microsoft a massive cloud-computing contract worth up to $10 billion, making clear it will fight hard against what it called “unmistakable bias” and “political influence” in the Defense Department process.

The protest, filed under seal in federal court on Nov. 8, comes after the Pentagon awarded the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract to Microsoft last month — a contract that had long been expected to go to Amazon because its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division has a formidable position and deep experience in cloud computing.

I will wager that this is a case which Amazon will win. All that it has to do is point to Donald Trump's reams of tweets castigating the tech giant, and specifically the newspaper its chairman, Jeff Bezos, owns, the Washington Post, to prove that the Defense Department was under pressure from Trump to not award it the contract. Much like Trump confessing to the Ukrainian extortion plan on the White House lawn, his own words will be his undoing. He, of course, will probably be long gone before the case is settled one way or another; others will be left to pick up the pieces due to his venality.

The Queen of the Sea is underwater

Venice has been hit with torrential deluges, strong winds, and surging tides for the past few days. As a result, the city is underwater due to the highest tides in half a century. A state of emergency has been declared by the central government in Rome, and Venice's mayor blames climate change for the tragedy his city faces.

Venice’s mayor said the damage is estimated at “hundreds of millions of euros.” Mayor Luigi Brugnaro blamed climate change for the “dramatic situation” in the historical city and called for the speedy completion of the city’s long-delayed Moses flood defense project.

The water levels reached 1.87 meters (over 6 feet, 1 inch) above sea level Tuesday, the second-highest level ever recorded in the city and just 7 centimeters (2½ inches) lower than the historic 1966 flood. Another wave of exceptionally high water followed Wednesday.

The exceptional flooding was caused by southerly winds that pushed a high tide, exacerbated by a full moon, into the city.

Although the waters have fallen from the peak reached late Tuesday, St Mark’s Square remained partially flooded on Thursday and a new peak water level is expected for Friday morning.

This will be the new normal as we face our world of rampant climate change. More and more Americans are coming to the conclusion that this is a crisis with which the world must deal. But the only way to do this is to elect representatives who recognize the urgency of the moment, and aren't in thrall to interests which seek to diminish the situation's gravity, and to undermine actions which would be unpalatable economically to them. Although the Green New Deal is just an idea with no numbers fleshing it out, it's beyond debate that we will need a global moon shot to stem the worst of the effects of climate change. Any other worthy domestic goal pales in comparison to it.

Speaking of saving the world

We are a civilization which cannot survive without ready access to cheap energy. This is what's gotten us in the mess we're in.

The holy grail of cheap, renewable, carbon-free energy is nuclear fusion.

Unlike nuclear fission, which powers current nuclear reactors, fusion recreates on Earth the processes which powers our sun and every star in the universe. The energy created is plentiful, cheap, and inexhaustible. And, most importantly, it's clean. No waste products, no threat of meltdown, and no carbon emissions.

The joke is that fusion is just 30 years away, and researchers have been saying that for the past sixty years.

But an op-ed by Dennis Whyte in the Washington Post catches us up on what's going on in the race for fusion. And it's good news.

After decades of disappointingly slow but steady progress, the race for fusion energy is now fully on, with governments, scientific institutions and private enterprises pouring billions of dollars into this potentially world-altering technology.

[...]The roadblocks have started to fall away in recent years, thanks to the use of supercomputers to model and optimize the design of fusion systems, and to a new generation of superconductors that increase the magnetic fields that contain the artificial star, thereby dramatically decreasing the required size of fusion devices. Advanced manufacturing techniques for specialized fusion materials have also been developed.

Do read the entire op-ed, and also do your own research. Cracking the fusion riddle will lead to a wholesale reordering of not just energy, but global geopolitics. So much of our foreign relations entail the need to secure energy resources. Compact nuclear fusion plants would eradicate the genesis of many of the world's conflicts. With those causes removed, we might be able to solve seemingly intractable tensions. And, of course, abundant, cheap energy will spur an economic boom the likes of which humanity has never seen. If you pray or send thoughts into the Universe, you should include the successful quest for fusion in your daily novenas.

That's it, kids. Strap in. The show's about to start.