Dem
47
GOP
53
Finally done! Thanks for your patience!
M.S. in Canton, NY, asks: There is a unit of time that I occasionally used, in exasperation, when I worked full time in academia: "It shouldn't take longer to design a new teaching evaluation survey [or whatever] than it took the U.S. to win World War II." (Yes, I know that the U.S. did not win the war alone, and that other nations were in it longer. Work with me here, please.) In the same spirit, I consider it a failing of the U.S. justice system that Donald Trump did not end up in front of a jury for his actions on and around January 6, 2021, both in the federal system and in Georgia, before the election 4 years later. Do you share my judgment that it was a failing? And if so, where do you put the blame?
(V) & (Z) answer: We partly share your judgment.
On the matter of the 1/6 insurrection, we agree with you entirely. That matter should have been taken up by the Department of Justice on January 21, 2021 (or very shortly thereafter). The American people, when casting their ballots in 2024, should have known whether or not Trump committed crimes on that day. However, AG Merrick Garland wanted very badly to cultivate an "above politics" image, and so he didn't take any meaningful action on the insurrection until effectively being shamed into it by the 1/6 Committee. That meant that nearly 2 rather critical years were wasted.
On the matter of the classified documents, we disagree with you. Trump's actions in this matter did not become criminal, or at least potentially so, until a fair bit of time after he had left office. For lack of a better date, we'll say that this really became a criminal matter on August 8, 2022, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and seized the many boxes of classified materials. Special Counsel Jack Smith was appointed, and given instructions to pursue the matter, on November 18, 2022. Even if Smith had been appointed on August 9, those extra 3 months wouldn't have been enough to bring things to a conclusion before the 2024 election, especially given Judge Aileen Cannon's willingness to go rogue.
M.B. in Shenzhen, China, asks: I mean, what IS it about TCF? I cannot think of one single thing in his entire life—political, business, or personal—that was not contentious or did not cause turmoil. Even things as simple as cutting a cake (his first inauguration): He copied the cake that Obama had made (I believe the baker sued over that), then he seized a sword from a startled Marine guard and tried to cut it, but the base turned out to be styrofoam. That alone should have been an absolutely innocuous event, but it wasn't.
EVERYTHING he touches is disruptive. It's so complete that it's not even worth making a list. But I cannot think of ONE SINGLE THING that was not so... not ONE.
What is it, really? We have all found ourselves in a position where we stepped on toes, but not universally so. Is he doing this deliberately; to cause a whirlwind so he can ride it to his personal benefit? Or is he just so immersed in his own head and ideas that he has no ability to censor his own actions through the lens of how it impacts others? Or is he truly the most egocentric, megalomaniacal person to have ever walked on the planet (which would be statistically very unlikely)?
I'm serious here...it's beyond uncanny.(V) & (Z) answer: Long ago, Trump came to think of himself as a rebel, a rulebreaker, a disruptor, a guy who challenges the status quo. Most wealthy and powerful people style themselves in this manner. And such people, including Trump, work hard to promote that image, up to and including theatricality that borders on the absurd.
Why does this resonate with so many voters? That is a question that scholars will be wrestling with for generations. However, we'll give a pretty simple answer that we think gets pretty close to the bullseye. Some portion of Trump's base (the Steve Bannon contingent) believes that the whole system needs to be torn down, and rebuilt from the rubble. A much larger portion of Trump's base believes something has gone terribly wrong, either in terms of economics, or religion, or social relations, and they are weary of politicians who say they will "make it better" and then don't. So, they are willing to gamble on a guy who says he will break some things, in hopes that will ultimately result in a better situation than the one that exists right now.
T.C. in Danby, NY, asks: Donald Trump wrote, on Truth Social, "Therefore, I have ordered the Inauguration Address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered in the United States Capitol Rotunda..."
Is this his prerogative? If not, who made the decision?(V) & (Z) answer: Strictly speaking, it is not his prerogative. First of all, until noon on Monday, he has no formal power of any sort. Second, the Capitol is managed entirely by Congress. Since the rotunda is a shared space, its use for an inauguration (or for a body to lie in state, or for any other purpose) has to be approved in a joint resolution of both chambers of Congress.
That said, if Trump means that he ordered Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) to make the rotunda available, and they both said, "Sir, yes, sir!" then that would probably be accurate.
D.M. in Tyler, TX, asks: In your answer to J.L. in Baltimore, about invading Greenland, you wrote that the military can only refuse an illegal order. As long as the U.S. remains in NATO, that treaty is the law of the land and it makes the promise that all member nations shall not invade each other, and it binds the member nations to attack us if we invaded Greenland. As such, as long as we remain in NATO, military officers could refuse that order as both illegal and immoral as it would violate the law by violating treaty, and it would be immoral by creating a state of war between us and all members of NATO. Of course, this assumes that the military leadership is not also in the bag for convicted felon "Agent Orange." Am I wrong about this?
(V) & (Z) answer: You are wrong about this.
We got a lot of variants of this question after last week's Q&A went live. In our original answer, we compared an order to invade Greenland to an order to gun down a bunch of protesters in front of the White House. While the latter could be refused on the basis of being immoral, the former could not.
Part of the distinction here is that there are laws, and there are laws. The United States' Uniform Code of Military Justice, which echoes the Geneva Conventions, says:
It is a defense to any offense that the accused was acting pursuant to orders unless the accused knew the orders to be unlawful or a person of ordinary sense and understanding would have known the orders to be unlawful.Murdering civilians in cold blood is clearly a violation of American law, international law, and basic morality. Any "person of ordinary sense and understanding" would know that. So, a soldier who refused that order would have much justification for doing so.
By contrast, an international treaty might have "the force of law" in the United States, but it's just not the same thing. International law does not carry as much weight as domestic law does. And breaking a treaty does not violate any particular domestic statute that is on the books in the U.S. On top of that, canceling/withdrawing from that treaty might well be the prerogative of the president, or the Congress that is giving the order to invade. It depends on what treaty we are talking about. In short, "you can't kill people" is much more a law than "Greenland is our friend."
In addition, a soldier ordered to fire on civilian protesters has the information they need to know the order is wrongful. But a soldier ordered to undertake an invasion of Greenland, or Panama, or some other nation? Perhaps there is intelligence that those nations are about to launch a preemptive strike on the U.S., or perhaps a formal declaration of war is imminent, and the soldiers are being maneuvered into place to achieve maximal success when it comes. Those are just two possibilities; there are all kinds of things a soldier/commander might not know that is important background to an invasion order. And it's just not plausible for the military to say: "Well, you have to explain it to us/justify it to us, or we're not going." If that option was on the table, then the whole point of civilian control of the military would be lost, as the military would be acting as a power unto itself.
And note, it is not just our best guess that this is the case, as this very question has been adjudicated. In 2006, 1st Lt. Ehren Watanda refused to deploy to Iraq, arguing that the war was illegal and immoral. And he lost in court; the ruling explained:
[T]he order to deploy soldiers is a non-justiciable political question... an accused may not excuse his disobedience of an order to proceed to foreign duty on the ground that our presence there does not conform to his notions of legality.Several other soldiers tried the same tack over the next few years, and they were all smacked down, too.
We understand that some readers are concerned that Trump might go off half-cocked, and order an invasion of some nation or territory unable to withstand American military might. However, hoping that the military will refuse that order is barking up the wrong tree, because that's not going to happen. If you are really and truly concerned, take note of three things: (1) Trump is almost certainly just blathering about Greenland, Panama, and Canada; (2) Even if he gets serious, he's scared to death to have any blood on his hands, and is not likely to have the fortitude to issue such orders; and (3) Even if he does try it, the political blowback, and the blowback from the international community, will be immense. He's probably un-impeachable, but if there's anything that could get him impeached and removed, this is it.
R.H.D. in Webster, NY, asks: The L.A. wildfire disaster has brought Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) into the national spotlight. He's also garnered fierce criticism for his handling of the crisis and for the mismanaging the underlying causes before it started. As one of you, (Z), lives in California, is this fair?
Additionally, I know the next election is 3 years away, and a lot can happen. But do you see Newsom as someone who can win the White House? I'd vote for him, but I'm concerned he'll be labeled as another left-coast liberal from the GOP and he needs to win middle America to get to 270 EVs.(V) & (Z) answer: (Z) would say it is not fair. It is very easy to say "Newsom should have done more." However, the people saying that never seem to be able to explain what that "more" might have been. Either they offer vague hand-waving, or they talk about policy decisions they do not understand (like water management) and where their facts bear no resemblance to reality. It is possible that the management of the City of Los Angeles might have done more, particularly in terms of making sure the necessary reservoirs were properly filled, but Newsom is not part of the management of the City of Los Angeles.
That said, just because it's not fair to blame Newsom does not mean this will not be an anchor around his neck nonetheless. The "left-coast liberal" thing is also a problem for him, especially—as silly as it might be—with his slicked-back hairstyle. He's a pretty skilled politician, so we'll see, but he certainly commences a potential 2028 presidential bid with some significant liabilities.
D.L. in Springfield, IL, asks: When they say a forest fire is so many percent contained, what does that actually mean? How do they quantify and measure it?
(V) & (Z) answer: Probably not what most people think. The fire department takes a map, and draws a line around the fire perimeter. Then, they figure out along how much of that line the firefighters have been able to build fire-containing barriers (sandbags, or trenches, or the like). Then, they divide the total length of the line by the amount of the line that has barriers.
D.P. in Oakland, CA, asks: Before Hurricane Katrina, the population of New Orleans was as high as 485,000; now, 20 years on, it's only 364,000. Given the already tenuous state of the California insurance industry, is there any realistic hope that L.A. won't see a similar decline?
(V) & (Z) answer: We are hardly experts in this sort of civil engineering, but we think that the dynamic will be a little different. Keep in mind that Los Angeles real estate, particularly in the areas that were hit by the fires, is very desirable. Because there are so many people who want to live in/near Los Angeles, due to weather/professional connections/family connections/etc., the city has a vast number of large, populous suburbs, many of them well more than an hour removed from the city proper. There are at least half a dozen cities that are part of the greater L.A. metropolitan area, besides L.A. itself, that have populations greater than that of New Orleans.
There will undoubtedly be people who decide this is the final straw, and who leave the city. However, their residences will be snapped up by new arrivals and/or by people who decide to relocate from the suburbs. So while the overall population of the L.A. metro area might decrease a bit over the next few years, the population of the city itself probably will not, because there's already not enough housing to meet demand.
L.S. in Greensboro, NC, asks: OK, I have to ask: If the Carters' acronym was ILYTG, why is the compact inscribed ILYTL?
(V) & (Z) answer: It's not. Because the compact is well-worn, and because the only photo out there is not very good, it looks that way. However, if you zoom in, you can clearly see that the "G" is indeed a "G."
D.S. in Inver Grove Heights, MN, asks: You wrote: "[Steve Bannon] has the power to turn [Donald] Trump's base against Musk."
Does Trump really need his base anymore? He no longer needs votes, nor cheering crowds. It seems that Trump's base has become obsolete.(V) & (Z) answer: First, Trump has a very large ego, and an even larger need for approval. He will need the cheering crowds until his dying day.
Second, he is clearly thinking about "legacy" now, as lame-duck presidents are wont to do. Whatever he hopes to achieve, he is going to need political capital. He may not need the votes of the MAGA crowd directly, but he still needs to be able to use them to exert pressure on members of Congress.
R.C. in Des Moines, IA, asks: Is there a GOP equivalent to the Democrats' Blue Dog Coalition?
(V) & (Z) answer: Yes. It is called the Main Street Caucus (MSC). However the MSC is much larger than the Blue Dog Coalition (70 or so members, as opposed to 10) and is generally less willing to break ranks with its party.
S.N. in Sparks, NV, asks: In the past, you have written that Richard Nixon was quite progressive on environmental issues. For non-MAGA conservatives today, is it possible to be both conservative and progressive on an issue like the environment, or raising taxes on rich people to fund social programs?
(V) & (Z) answer: It is possible for conservatives to have the same (or a similar) end-game as progressives, though the way they get there is usually different. There is actually an excellent conservative argument for green technology, and that is that global warming, if unchecked, is going to cost many trillions of dollars, which will be taken out of the hide of both corporations and the federal budget. So, it will be cheaper in the long run to get it under control.
It's rather harder to make a conservative argument for opposing rich-people tax cuts in favor of social programs, since opposing the New Deal/Great Society programs is kind of the foundation of modern conservatism. We suppose the argument could be made, along the lines of "The economy does better when aged workers are retired, and the labor is being done by people who are younger, healthier and cheaper," but we don't know any conservative who is making that argument.
M.B. in Cleveland, OH, asks: I have three questions about the chart from the item "Beware the Oligarchs": (1) Timothy Mellom and Warren Stevens are listed as giving ($2,900) to Democrats. How does one give a negative amount of money?; (2) You ask, "How about Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Charles Koch and Jeff Bezos, to start with?" Well, what about them? Musk is #1 on your list; where are the others? and (3) While we're on that subject, where is George Soros? Does the super-boogeyman of the right not even qualify as one of the top 25?
(V) & (Z) answer: Mellon and Stevens didn't give negative money, per se. They each gave $2,900 to Joe Manchin, when he was still a Democrat. And then, when Manchin decided not to mount a campaign, he had to refund that money. So, their net donation to Democrats was zero, and the chart reflects that $2,900 refund.
As to your other questions, many big-time political givers do their donating through a PAC or foundation, so they do not show up in their capacity as individuals in FEC records. For example, Koch gives most of his money through the PAC Americans for Prosperity.
D.F. in Hamilton, Scotland, asks: I remember a few months after the 2016 election, there was a leaked shortlist published of Hillary Clinton's potential cabinet picks had she won.
Is there any news yet on who Kamala Harris might have tapped up as potential cabinet appointees?(V) & (Z) answer: No, and we doubt there will be. Harris had only 100 or so days to campaign, and really couldn't be spending precious time and energy on that question. Further, the Harris campaign knew that even if she won, there was a distinct possibility of facing a Senate controlled by the Republicans. So, Harris was likely going to keep some sizable number of Biden cabinet officers, since those folks were already confirmed by the Senate.
S.P. in Harrisburg, PA, asks: Hindsight being 20-20, do you believe that if the Democrats held a mini-primary after Joe Biden announced that he ended his campaign, and they selected a Democrat other than Kamala Harris, or if Harris had to make the case to get the nomination, Trump could have lost?
(V) & (Z) answer: No, we do not believe that. The tide, worldwide, was against incumbent parties in 2024. Harris ran a very effective campaign, and was able to unify the Democratic base behind her. The problem was that she didn't attract a lot of the low-information/low-interest voters. We don't see how a mini-primary would have changed that dynamic, regardless of which candidate was ultimately chosen. Further, a mini-primary might have actually cost the Democrats votes, by causing supporters of one or more of the defeated candidates to cast protest votes for a third-party candidate.
D.K. in Iowa City, IA, asks: Robert Reich hasn't posted on his blog since October 17th; do you know what is going on with him?
(V) & (Z) answer: He is still posting regularly to his eX-Twitter account, so he's clearly not ill or otherwise incapacitated.
Speaking from experience, we can tell you that it's sometimes not easy to summon up the energy to write a blog posting. That said, even when we don't feel like it, we still do it, nearly every day, because that's our production schedule. If a person does not have that expectation to motivate them, particularly after a difficult election, then it's easy to take a day, or a week, or a month off. And once you're in the habit of not posting, it's very easy to stay in the habit of not posting.
B.J.L. in Ann Arbor, MI, asks: I'm a little perplexed. I pay my mortgage like most folks, but we hear of these people first in Florida and now in California who are wiped out and don't have insurance or could not get it. Without insurance, I could not keep my mortgage. I assume that if I was living in a high-risk area and my insurance payment eclipsed my mortgage, or my insurer canceled me outright, my mortgage company would give me a very finite period of time to find a new insurance carrier or they would call in the loan. Is this not the case?
(V) & (Z) answer: If you lose your homeowners' insurance, then the lender certainly can call in the loan. That said, if you pay reliably, and are not otherwise a problem, they are loath to do so, since it's costly for them to foreclose.
So, if you are a mortgage-holder in good standing who loses their homeowners' insurance, what the mortgage holder will generally do is impose what is called force-placed insurance (also known as creditor-placed, lender-placed or collateral protection insurance) on your property. In this case, then the lender becomes your insurance provider, increasing the cost of your mortgage payment to cover the cost of the insurance (which they helpfully provide at a cost that is usually much higher than market rates). The problem here, from the homeowners' perspective, is that force-placed insurance only covers the unpaid balance on the mortgage. So, if the house is destroyed in a fire or a tornado, the mortgage-holder gets theirs, but the homeowner gets... nothing. That means that not only is the house not covered, the contents aren't either, nor are the other things that a homeowners' policy usually covers (like, if someone slips and falls on your sidewalk).
Given the issues in Florida, there are currently almost a dozen bills that have been proposed in the legislature that would require insurance companies to offer a version of forced-place insurance. The general idea is that this would be cheaper than the forced-place insurance that lenders impose. However, anyone who knows anything about insurance thinks the proposed Florida bills would be very bad public policy. First, the cost of insurance-company-offered forced-place insurance, under these circumstances, would not be all that much lower (maybe $20 or $30 a month). Second, the existence of such policies could encourage people to make bad decisions, or could cause them to believe they are properly covered when they are not. Third, forced-place insurance policies are not acceptable for Fannie Mae loans, and so "solving" Florida's problems in that way would mean that homeownership would become unattainable for those who depend on federally backed loans.
M.P. in Plano, TX, asks: As I understand it, oligarchy is the rule of a few; plutocracy the rule by the wealthy. Are those terms virtually synonymous? If not synonymous, can you give examples of when those terms applied separately in history and, given Joe Biden's farewell speech, where he raises the risk of an oligarchy (but doesn't mention plutocracy), do you think the U.S. is at risk of either, or both?
(V) & (Z) answer: The strict definition of "oligarchy" is a government in which power is shared equally among multiple people. The famous historical example is the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, which had two equal kings.
However, it turns out to be rather impractical to have a government where the buck stops in two or more places. So oligarchies, strictly defined, have been fairly rare. This being the case, the term has evolved to mean something like "a government which is not a dictatorship, but in which a very disproportionate amount of political power is exercised by a very small number of people." This is obviously the usage that Biden was employing. We think he's got a point; look how people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Tim Mellon, etc. exercise influence that is far beyond their due as individual citizens. And note that Biden is not pulling this out of thin air; the argument that the U.S. has become an oligarachy has been around since at least the Reagan years.
Quite often, it is wealth that allows citizens to enjoy undue political power, and so oligarchies are often plutocracies. Modern-day Russia, for example, is both an oligarchy and a plutocracy. However, there are other paths, beyond wealth, to attaining undue political power. For example, in the time of Oliver Cromwell, England was governed by a Council of State, where membership was afforded by military success, not by wealth. To take a modern example, Iran is an oligarchy led by people whose claim to power is based on their religious office, not their wealth. Even some elements of the Trump oligarchy, if you want to call it that, are not there because of their wealth. Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, Joe Rogan and Roger Stone all exercise a great deal of power, and none of them does so by virtue of their wealth.
R.M. in Lincoln City, OR, asks: When Donald Trump moves into the White House, will people who live nearby have to be notified that there's a sex offender living in their neighborhood?
(V) & (Z) answer: No. That requires a criminal conviction, and he was found civilly liable. Further, what he was found liable for was actually defamation. It's just that his sexual assault was a key finding of fact needed to justify the defamation claim.
J.H.C.V. in West End, NC, asks: In many states, convicted felons lose their voting rights; does convicted felon Donald Trump still have voting rights?
(V) & (Z) answer: Yes. Florida defers to local law in these matters, and New York allows felons to regain their voting rights as long as they are not incarcerated.
R.S. in Ticonderoga, NY, asks: While I grew up and live in the State of New York, my parents both were born in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I went to graduate school in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and my three daughters have all gone to college in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. What exactly is the difference between these commonwealths (along with Kentucky) and the other 46 states?
(V) & (Z) answer: There is absolutely no difference. The name "commonwealth" was adopted by these states in the colonial era (or shortly thereafter), and carried the connotation that "we are self-governing." In other words, it was just a bit of branding meant to try to attract new settlers.
G.G. in Horseheads, NY, asks: California contributes far more in federal taxes than it receives back in federal services. I see a lot of people saying California should stop subsidizing the red states if the ghouls in Congress try to tie up disaster funding.
Is there actually any mechanism for California and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) to actually do this?(V) & (Z) answer: Not at the moment, and we don't see how such a mechanism could be created.
The problem is that federal taxes do not pass through the hands of the state government. They are paid directly to the federal government by individuals and by companies. And if those individuals/companies do not pay their taxes, then they are committing a federal crime.
F.S. in Cologne, Germany, asks: There are now only three states where the two senators caucus for different parties (Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Maine). Is this the lowest number in U.S. history? If not, when was it lower? And when was this number especially high?
(V) & (Z) answer: First, we have to cut things off at 1913, when Americans started electing senators directly. Before that, they were chosen by state legislatures. And, of course, a state legislature controlled by [PARTY X] was likely to choose two senators from [PARTY X]. Between that, and the smaller number of states, there were certainly occasions in the 19th century with fewer than three split delegations.
Since 1913, however, three split delegations is indeed a low. That breaks the record of five, set during the last Congress (before Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema became independents), which in turn broke the record of six, set during the Congress before that.
And the record in the other direction is the 96th Congress (1979-81), which happened in the middle of a realignment during which New England was converting from Republican to Democratic, and the South was converting from Democratic to Republican. That Congress had, at the height, 27 split delegations.
Z.K. in Albany, NY, asks: What is the history regarding who gets chosen to appear on U.S. currency? Who do you think will be on future currency and coins?
(V) & (Z) answer: Since the Civil War era, the final decider has been the Secretary of the Treasury. That may just explain how the portrait of Salmon Chase, who served as secretary of the treasury for the first couple years of the war, ended up on the $1 bill:
Four years later, a Treasury employee named Spencer Clark was given instructions to create currency honoring "Lewis" and "Clark." Since first names were not mentioned, Clark oversaw the issue of a bill with the portrait of Meriwether Lewis and one with the portrait of... Spencer Clark. Shortly thereafter, Congress passed a law that says that to be on currency, you have to be a "notable American" and you have to be dead.
Note that while the Secretary of the Treasury gets to make the final call, it is not possible for Janet Yellen to decide to make a change, and to immediately begin pumping out new bills or coins. There are many different parts of the federal government required to approve new designs, primarily with an eye toward making sure the new designs can't be counterfeited. So, change is slow, as people who have been waiting for the Harriet Tubman $20 for multiple decades know very well. In fact, the last time a portrait on an American bill was changed was 1929.
We presume that the Tubman $20 will eventually come to pass. However, it is unlikely that any of the other portraits on paper money will be changed in the lifetimes of anyone reading this. On the other hand, the Treasury Department has had a much freer hand with coins, and has issued all sorts of $1 coins and quarters with notable portraits, including all the presidents who have died, as well as Sacagawea, Eleanor Roosevelt, Duke Ellington, Anna May Wong, Sally Ride, Helen Keller, Maya Angelou, Wilma Mankiller, Kamehameha I and the Wright Brothers.
Most of the women listed above were part of the American Women Quarters Program, which commenced in 2022, and will conclude this year. The real goal of these special issues is to get people to collect them, since if you take possession of a quarter or a dollar and don't spend it, the mint makes money (this is called seigniorage). Once the American Women series is done, we could imagine the mint featuring notable Native Americans, or authors, or musicians, or military leaders, or activists. Again, what they really want is a subject that will make people want to collect the coins.
S.S.L. in Battle Creek, MI, asks: As regards Pocahontas, my recollection from 8th grade history is that John Rolfe, not John Smith, was the beloved in question, which itself was deeply troubling for all manner of reasons. Is this correct, or was my upper-middle-class, left-leaning education from 2005 just as flawed in this regard as everyone else's?
(V) & (Z) answer: You are correct, it was John Rolfe. Disney combined the two men for storytelling purposes.
We're not sure why you describe it as deeply troubling, though. Pocahontas entered into the marriage willingly, according to the sources left to us, which was a privilege that was certainly not extended to a lot of women in that era. And she was 18, which is legal age in our time, and was well above legal age in hers.
Rolfe was somewhat cursed when it came to marriage. His first wife, Sarah Hacker, died after 3 years. Pocahontas, his second wife, died after 3 years. Then Rolfe married his third wife, Jane Pierce, and he died after 3 years.
B.S. in Springfield, IL, asks: Although I'm a long-term Civil War buff, I've never before really considered this question: What if the Confederates had never fired on Fort Sumter?
(V) & (Z) answer: If the Confederates had never fired on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy would have quickly collapsed.
Secession was a radical and uncertain choice, and one made by seven states that had no hope of surviving, on their own, as an independent country. The then-unseceded states of the upper South (notably Virginia) were skeptical. Many citizens within the seceded states were skeptical. If the Lincoln administration had been able to resupply Fort Sumter, at will, it would have made clear to all the skeptics that the Confederacy was not a serious or viable concern. So, the Southerners had no choice but to open fire when the Lincoln administration commenced efforts to resupply the fort.
G.M. in Laurence Harbor, NJ, asks: After reading the question from J.H.C.V. in Spokane, and your answer, I am curious to know who has given the longest inaugural address? What are some other long inaugurals? Although you folks are not prescient, or psychologists, do you think the "longest inaugural address" is due in just 9 days?
(V) & (Z) answer: William Henry Harrison's inaugural was the longest, by a fair margin. We don't actually have timings for all of the inaugural addresses, but we do know how many words each of them contained, which gives us a pretty good approximation. Harrison's address was 8,445 words; no other president has come within 3,000 words of that. Second-place William Howard Taft checked in at 5,426 words, while James K. Polk (4,801), James Monroe (4,456), Benjamin Harrison (4,392) and "Silent" Calvin Coolidge (4,054) were the other presidents to exceed 4,000 words.
It is improbable that Trump will break Harrison's record, or even that he will come within a country mile of the top five. The President-elect does not have the energy or attention span to deliver a 2-3 hour prepared speech, and an inaugural address is no time for improv. His first inaugural address was 1,433 words, and it would be very odd for him to increase that word count by nearly 600%.
P.L. in Denver, CO, asks: The question from T.C. in Burlingame, and your response regarding inaugural donations, made me wonder: Has there ever been a POTUS that was as much of a grifter as Trump? Has anyone enriched themselves from the office like him?
(V) & (Z) answer: Grifting-wise, there has been no sitting president anywhere in the same universe as Trump. First, until he came along, presidents felt an ethical responsibility to avoid profiteering, or even the appearance of profiteering. Second, even if past presidents had been inclined to line their pockets, they did not have the opportunities that Trump has. None of them, for example, owned hotels at which they could shake down foreign dignitaries and/or the Secret Service. Only a couple of them lived in the era where a prominent person could slap some cheesy product up on a website, and then watch the orders roll in.
Note, however, that we wrote "sitting president." We concede that we are not entirely comfortable with some of the post-presidential money-making techniques we've seen in recent years, like giving six-figure speeches, serving on corporate boards, signing fat podcast contracts, and the like. That's not quite as grifty as "encouraging" foreign dignitaries to stay at your luxury hotel at $1,000+ per night, but it does feel a little skeezy to us. And the amount of money that has been realized by the Clintons, the Obamas, and both Bushes in their post-presidential years is similar to the amount of money that has been realized by Trump from his grifting, if you exclude his Truth Social stock.
L.S. in Greensboro, NC, asks: You wrote, of the History Channel, that "the next time they come within a country mile of fidelity to the historical record will be the first time." I actually greatly enjoyed their series on Ulysses S. Grant, which really corrected the misassumption that he was not a very talented general. Would you mind commenting on what you specifically disliked about the series?
(V) & (Z) answer: OK, we may have been engaging in a little bit of a rhetorical flourish there. A few of the History Channel's limited series, like the ones on Grant, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, were fine. However, they tend to get drowned out by the ahistorical crap, like Ancient Aliens and Brad Meltzer's Decoded and The Curse of Oak Island.
(Z) actually likes some of the "show a historical object, talk about a historical object" programs, like Pawn Stars and American Pickers. But the documentary-style stuff is much more often a "miss" than a "hit."
M.C. in Drogheda, Ireland, asks: Could you or your readers assist me? I'd like to know if there is a term for when a commentator ostensibly supports a policy or position, but actually undercuts or undermines it with their arguments. I'm thinking of someone like The Guardian's Owen Jones, with articles like this: "Young people are abandoning democracy for dictators. I can understand their despair." There is no worthwhile "defense" of democracy in this article, it seems to me; not even a lukewarm lament. That they "understand" this fascist-supporting 'despair' is just risible.
Democracy is worth defending, and needs defenders.
A first step might be calling out crap like this. It needs a name.
Is there a word or phrase, or concept to describe this?(V) & (Z) answer: We must start by pointing out that newspaper writers do not write their own headlines. So, the mismatch between the headline and the piece by Jones might not be his fault.
That said, the phrase "red herring" applies to the phenomenon you describe here. We might also use the euphemism "talking out both sides of your mouth." Of course, we are happy to be advised, at comments@electoral-vote.com, if readers think there is an even more apt term or phrase.
K.B. in Manhattan, NY, asks: Lawyer here. (V) and (Z) have provided insightful legal commentary and I believe could have been successful attorneys.
And so I ask, had you chosen the path of legal resistance, what type of law would you have practiced and why?(V) answers: In high school and college, I had about as much interest in being a lawyer as I did in being a stockbroker or a gym teacher—which is to say, none. Knowing what I know now (and having been involved in a couple of legal cases involving who invented what, and when and whether an Internet router is a kind of computer or a kind of telephone equipment, plus having written two-dozen-odd books), I think the law is more interesting than I thought then. I would probably specialize in intellectual property law (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc.).
There is a famous case In which a photographer put a camera on a tripod in the jungle and a monkey made a selfie with it. The legal issue was: Who owns the copyright to the photo? The law says it is the photographer (i.e., the monkey) but it also says animals can't own copyrights. Fascinating.
IP is actually a hot topic now. When Google or Apple or some other company sends out bots to suck up the entire Internet and learn from it, do they have to pay someone? Who? How much? How? When someone puts a webpage on the Internet, what rights are they (implicitly) granting the readers? As an IP lawyer, that could be interesting stuff to work on.
(Z) answers: Similarly, I would choose something in the realm of communications law. It's cutting edge, it presents very interesting intellectual problems, and there is never any obligation to defend, say, a child rapist.
L.S. in Richland, WA, asks: After giving it some thought and getting nowhere, I thought I'd ask (V) to clarify the meaning of "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
At 75, I'm old enough to remember various types of audiotapes and videotapes, several meanings of bandwidth, and many '50s and '60s station wagons (in particular, my father's Dodge Dart), but I can't put them together into anything meaningful.
Unless it's the amount of space that a carful of cassette tapes played at full volume would consume in the driver's brain.(V) answers: I meant something quite specific, and it still holds. A modern Ultrium 9 tape vcn hold 18 TB (18,000 GB or 18,000,000 MB) of data. It is 11 x 11 x 2 cm = 242 cubic cm.
A standard moving company box is 65 x 35 x 40 cm, or 91,000 cubic cm. You could probably put 300 or so Ultriums in a box if you packed carefully. Then a box holds 5400 TB. How many boxes could you put in a station wagon? 10? 20? Let's be conservative and say 10. The station wagon then holds 54,000 TB.
Suppose you want to move the data from New York to Chicago. Google maps tells you to cross the George Washington Bridge and go to the I-80. Hit the gas and you are in Chicago 12 hours later. OK, you need to stop for gas and food, so call it 14 hours or 54,400 seconds. You have now moved 54,000 TB in 54,400 seconds. If you eat fast, you can probably do it in 54,000 seconds to make the math easier.
Your bandwidth is thus 1 TB/sec. That is 8,000 Gbps. (V) has a 1-Gbps fiber-optic Internet connection at home and thinks it is pretty spiffy. His friends who live in the center of Amsterdam, which was designed in the 17th century without taking fiber optics into consideration, are insanely jealous. But the station wagon has a bandwidth 8000x better!
You might think: But surely there are no practical applications of this? Wrong! Amazon used to have a huge truck called the AWS Snowmobile loaded with thousands of big hard disks (100,000 TB in total) that could be driven to a customer site. There it was loaded with the customer's data, driven to an Amazon cloud data center, and loaded into the cloud for the customer. It was eventually discontinued for business reasons. Using the Snowmobile cost $500,000/mo and most potential customers opted for much slower, but much cheaper, ways to move their data to the cloud.
And therein lies the point. Sometimes the most efficient option is not the preferred option, either due to costs, or logistics, or both.