This is an artist's conception. It will be a very long time before California has anything more than that.California High-Speed Rail Authority

California’s bullet train, currently scheduled to begin operation sometime in the 23rd century at a cost of 5 trillion quatloos, is having trouble. The LA Times reports that the latest problem is that practically everyone—and I mean everyone—is suing to make sure the train doesn’t go anywhere near their neighborhood:

Over the last half-dozen years, the project has been bombarded by a dozen lawsuits and sharp protests….In the low-income communities in south San Jose, residents are objecting to the bullet train’s path, arguing that their area long has been sliced and diced by freeways….The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority requested that rail officials construct viaducts that would allow wild animals a migration path from the Diablo Range to the Santa Cruz Mountains….And the small, unincorporated area of San Martin is fighting a plan to locate the rail line along its main highway, arguing it would destroy the rural character.

Here’s my favorite quote:

Jeff Martin, an olive oil rancher in the area, said he could lose his entire 30-acre grove and new milling plant if the state decides it needs his land. “I voted for high-speed rail and I found out it is all smoke and mirrors,” he said. “This project puts hundreds and hundreds of people like me in limbo.”

This is like all those people who voted for Trump and were then gobsmacked when he tried to take their Obamacare away. I try to be sympathetic to people who don’t eat and breathe politics like I do, but sometimes it’s hard.

In a long piece for the New York Times today titled “The Lost Children of Tuam,” Dan Barry recounts the story of the Mother and Baby Home of Tuam, Ireland. During the first half of the last century, it was where women were sent who bore children out of wedlock. The mothers were generally sent home after a year, but the children stayed, most often in appalling conditions that caused hundreds upon hundreds of unnecessary deaths. And when those children died, they were considered too shameful to be buried with decent folk in the local graveyard. Several years ago, Tuam native Catherine Corless unearthed the true story of the Tuam home after years of painstaking research:

Acting on instinct, she purchased a random sample from the government of 200 death certificates for children who had died at the home. Then, sitting at the Tuam cemetery’s edge in the van of its caretaker, she checked those death certificates against all the burials recorded by hand in two oversize books. Only two children from the home had been buried in the town graveyard.

….In December 2012, Catherine’s essay, titled “The Home,” appeared in the historical journal of Tuam. After providing a general history of the facility, it laid out the results of her research, including the missing burial records and the disused septic tank where two boys had stumbled upon some bones….Her daring essay implicitly raised a provocative question: Had Catholic nuns, working in service of the state, buried the bodies of hundreds of children in the septic system?

I was in Tuam last week. During my last day in Ireland, I rented a car and made a whirlwind tour of the various towns and villages where my Irish ancestors were born. My great-great-grandfather, William Moran, was born in Tuam, and I visited to see if there was any visible trace of the Morans left. Perhaps a Moran’s Grocery or a Moran’s Tavern. But there was nothing that I could see. So I took some pictures and left.

But there were indeed Morans there. Of the 796 children tossed into the septic system because they were born illegitimate, five were Morans:

1930
Patrick Moran 4 months

1933
Bridgid Moran 15 months

1940
Martin Moran 7 weeks

1943
Nora Moran 7 months

1944
Mary P Moran 9 days

But they have a nice cathedral there.

Here’s a question for the technically minded among you.

Back in olden days (1999 or so), I always had trouble with email when I was on the road. I could receive but I couldn’t send, both in the US and abroad. My only choice was to use my internet provider’s ghastly web-based app for sending email. Web apps and built-in smartphone apps always seem to work without problems, but my normal client (Outlook at the time) was useless.

In any case, that’s in the dim past and I’d forgotten all about it. Then a friend of mine went on vacation to Ireland, and when he came back he complained that he couldn’t send emails from there. He spent an hour on the phone with Cox, our internet provider, until they evidently flipped a switch or something and he could once again send emails.

When I got to Ireland, I figured I might have the same problem, but I didn’t. I’m on T-Mobile, and it connected as soon as we landed. I sent and received email just fine on my phone. Then we got to our house in Kerry and I connected my tablet to WiFi. No problems. The Windows client worked fine. I set up the phone as a hotspot and connected to that. No problems. We flew to London and I connected to the WiFi in our house there. No problems. One way or another, I figured that Cox had changed its tune.

Then we flew back to Dublin for a few days and I sent some emails. At the airport on the last day I sent another one. But then I noticed that they were all still pending. It turns out I couldn’t send emails via our hotel’s WiFi or via the airport’s WiFi. Apparently the ability of a normal Windows email client¹ to send email depends on exactly what server I’m connected to.

What’s the deal with this? Since I can always send email by connecting to my phone’s hotspot, this is no longer too big a deal. But I’m curious. Why would I be able to send emails from some places in Ireland and Britain but not others?²

¹Mine happens to be eM Client, but every other client I’ve used acts the same way.

²I’d call Cox and ask them, but I assume that would be a waste of time. I’m looking for a real answer here, not marketing gibberish.

Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has charged “at least one person” in connection with the Russia investigation, which is surprisingly quick work for a special counsel. So who is it? The speed of the action suggests to me either (a) it’s a fairly minor character or (b) it’s a major character whose actions were so obviously illegal that it didn’t take much time to build a case. The former would be folks like Carter Page. The latter would be folks like Paul Manafort or Michael Flynn.

At the moment, the only hint we have comes from the reaction of Team Trump. They must have had some inkling about what was coming, because for the past week they’ve gone nuclear. Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy are already mounting smokescreen investigations of Uranium One and the Steele dossier. The dossier investigation is an attempt to show that Democrats are the real Russia patsies, while the Uranium One investigation is part of an effort to discredit Mueller. Here’s White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on the dossier:

Clinton spokesman just said he’s “damn glad” Clinton campaign colluded w/ Russia to spread disinformation about @POTUS & influence election

— Sarah Sanders (@PressSec) October 28, 2017

And here’s Fox News providing the conservative spin on Uranium One:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is facing a fresh round of calls from conservative critics for his resignation from the Russia collusion probe….[Congressional investigators] are looking into a Russian firm’s uranium deal that was approved by the Obama administration in 2010 despite reports that the FBI — then led by Mueller — had evidence of bribery involving a subsidiary of that firm.

….“The federal code could not be clearer — Mueller is compromised by his apparent conflict of interest in being close with James Comey,” Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., who first called for Mueller to step down over the summer, said in a statement to Fox News on Friday. “The appearance of a conflict is enough to put Mueller in violation of the code.…All of the revelations in recent weeks make the case stronger.”

Trump himself, of course, has been all over this:

Workers of firm involved with the discredited and Fake Dossier take the 5th. Who paid for it, Russia, the FBI or the Dems (or all)?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2017

It is now commonly agreed, after many months of COSTLY looking, that there was NO collusion between Russia and Trump. Was collusion with HC!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2017

Nancy LeTourneau has a roundup of the whole thing here if you have the stomach for more. But the bottom line is simple: The White House, congressional Republicans, and the right-wing media are basically all hands on deck right now. The panic is almost palpable. This suggests that Mueller may have charged someone like Flynn, who’s pretty closely connected with the Trump administration. That’s my wildass guess at the moment, anyway.

Ron Sachs/CNP via ZUMA

From Michael Grimm, recently out of jail and now trying to revive his political career by sucking up to Donald Trump:

I remember saying to myself, I never realized what a large man — I mean stature-wise, he’s a big man, with massive hands. I don’t have small hands, but when I shook hands with him, the first time I shook hands with him, I realized he was a big man….I thought they were pretty big. You don’t think so? I thought he had a big, strong grip. I’m dead serious.

Uh huh.

On my father’s side of the family, my grandmother’s parents both came from the region of Ireland around Killaloe. According to family legend, the Gunsons and Canters worked as miners in the nearby Silvermines mountains before they emigrated to Colorado to work in American mines instead. The town of Silvermines is still around, though the mines finally closed down in 1958. It’s a pretty place these days.

It also provides us with our final overseas cat. This well-fed critter was not willing to come up to see me, but he was willing to sit a few safe yards away and pose for a picture. As for our American cats, Hilbert and Hopper are still fat and happy and will make their triumphant return to their rightful place next Friday.

Russian Look via ZUMA

Remember that meeting last year between Don Jr. and the Russian lawyer? It was nothing. No connection to the Russian government at all. Just an understandable interest in a bit of oppo that never panned out.

Ahem:

Interviews and records show that in the months before the meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya had discussed the allegations with one of Russia’s most powerful officials, the prosecutor general, Yuri Y. Chaika. And the memo she brought with her closely followed a document that Mr. Chaika’s office had given to an American congressman two months earlier, incorporating some paragraphs verbatim.

….In the past week, Ms. Veselnitskaya’s allegations — that major Democratic donors were guilty of financial fraud and tax evasion — have been embraced at the highest levels of the Russian government. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia repeated her charges at length last week at an annual conference of Western academics. A state-run television network recently made them the subject of two special reports, featuring interviews with Ms. Veselnitskaya and Mr. Chaika.

The matching messages point to a synchronized information campaign. Like some other Russian experts, Stephen Blank, a senior fellow with the nonprofit American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, said they indicate that Ms. Veselnitskaya’s actions “were coordinated from the very top.”

That’s from the New York Times. But we all know there’s nothing there. The real story is that Democrats paid a British spy for some tittle tattle that they never ended up using. That’s the real scandal, right?

Along with Hillary’s emails, the Clinton Foundation, and Uranium One, of course. When will the media ever start paying attention to that stuff?

Donald Trump wants some money to pay for his infrastructure ideas:

President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser raised the possibility of increasing the federal gasoline tax next year to help pay for the administration’s $1 trillion infrastructure plan, U.S. Representative Tom Reed said. National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn brought up the fuel tax as a way to help fund promised upgrades to U.S. roads, bridges and other public works during a meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers dubbed the Problem Solvers Caucus on Wednesday, said Reed, a New York Republican who is co-chairman of the caucus.

Republicans mostly seem to be pretty lukewarm to the idea, but they shouldn’t be. Here’s the gasoline tax over the past 70 years:

An increase of five or ten cents would get the gas tax back to where it’s historically needed to be to properly fund road and highway maintenance. More than that might allow us to build new stuff, as Trump wants. Unfortunately, Republicans don’t recognize that inflation exists if the topic happens to be tax rates. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of this happening unless Trump himself gets out and starts getting big cheers at his rallies for the idea.

Emily Bazar reports on the current state of Obamacare in California:

If the comments on Covered California’s Facebook page are any indication, you’re all suffering from acute health insurance confusion:

“I wanted to sign up again this year … I’m hesitant now because of what Trump has done. Should I still consider?”

“Does the removal of subsidies mean we might lose our premium tax credits during the year?”

“So you’re telling me that [Trump’s] executive order didn’t do anything? I am so confused.”

This is all deliberate. Calculated and deliberate. Lots of people are confused, just the way Donald Trump intended, and they have only six weeks to figure out what’s going on. Many will just give up. Many will try to get help but won’t be able to because of cutbacks in the navigator program. Many will decide to take care of it at the end of the year and then discover to their horror that they’ve missed the signup deadline.

In other words, many people’s lives will be wrecked thanks to the vengeful manipulations of the halfwit in the White House. He may not know anything about anything, but he has an animal instinct for screwing people over. Welcome to 2017.

Here’s the latest from the world of internet bubble-osity:

This company added the word “Blockchain” to its name and saw its shares surge 394% https://t.co/oYWaWhrZQK via @lisapham pic.twitter.com/1YnMpgIFwG

— Bloomberg Markets (@markets) October 27, 2017

Bloomberg provides the details:

A British company that has been investing in internet and information businesses is having its best day on record.

On-line Plc jumped as much as 394 percent on Friday after announcing plans to change its name to On-line Blockchain Plc….“Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are a new and exciting area we have been working on for some time,” the Essex-based company said in a statement on Thursday. “We feel the time is right to re-name the company to reflect these developments, where we believe the future growth will be in our sector.” The shares pared gains after the company published a follow-up release on Friday, cautioning investors that the development of its blockchain product is still at an early stage.

Ah yes, early stages indeed. Here’s what the company said this morning:

As announced yesterday, the Company has worked as an incubator and investor in internet and information businesses and the Company has been investigating the development of potential applications and customer markets. In particular, the Company has focused on information technology where On-line’s links with ADVFN provide an opportunity to develop a Blockchain-based product to support financial website users’ ratings of information contributors using token-based applications.

Shareholders should note that the while the Company has identified an initial product, the Company’s development of a Block-chain product is still at an early stage of investigation and development, and its current plans envisage that the first application will only be tested early in 2018.

Roger that. But it dampened enthusiasm only a bit:

From Thusday to the close of Friday, the stock tripled in value because it’s “investigating” an extension of its product line that would use “token-based applications” to help web commenters on financial boards more reliably rate “information contributors” (i.e., fellow commenters).

This is just one report from the world of penny stocks. It probably doesn’t mean anything. But for those of us of a certain age who used to work in the tech industry, it brings back memories.