newyorker--2020-10-07--What Have We Learned in Thirty Years of Covering Climate Change?

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The book opens with a piece of mine called “ The End of Nature , ” an excerpt from a book of the same title that appeared in 1989 .
It ’ s been a while since I read the words I wrote as a twenty-eight-year-old , and it made me nostalgic to climb back inside that young and perhaps overly earnest mind .
The essay is a combination of reflection on the sadness of living in a world where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every cubic metre of the atmosphere , and of straightforward reporting about what we then knew about climatic disruption .
In the late nineteen-eighties , I could fit every scientific report on global warming on my desk .
The articles and monographs published since then would fill an airplane hangar , but what ’ s amazing is how little has changed .
Even then , we knew that the rivers of the West would be drying up , the oceans starting to rise dramatically , the ice at the top and bottom of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But we even understood many of the details .
Here is a small dry paragraph that I had forgotten I ’ d written : We knew that , but we wasted much of the past thirty years wandering down that blind alley anyway .
( Indeed , new estimates show that methane is eighty times more potent than carbon dioxide . )
The Obama Administration ’ s response to climate change was mostly about replacing coal with natural gas .
That ’ s why it was very good news last week when Joe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he would not employ anyone who had helped to lead fossil-fuel companies .
Assuming that the promise carries over to an Administration proper , it means that natural-gas advocates ( and Obama holdovers ) such as Ernest Moniz or Heather Zichal , both of whom have served lucrative terms on the boards of large fossil-fuel firms , will find themselves sidelined in the event of a Biden Presidency .
That ’ s crucial , because we need people fully committed to the task of building out solar and wind power as fast as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now than they were thirty years ago , which helps change the game .
( Indeed , news came last week that ExxonMobil , not long ago the most valuable corporation in the world , now had a market cap smaller than a big solar-and-wind company . )
As the credit-rating agency Moody ’ s pointed out in an analysis released last week , natural-gas pipelines are now an unwise financial bet , partly because activists have become adept at blocking them .
The pincers created by the confluence of cheap clean tech @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden the opportunity to move far more nimbly than any President before him .
That ’ s , of course , if he ’ s elected , which remains the first order of business .
Voting season has begun in earnest , and so here are short interviews with two women running for the Senate .
( I ’ ve had to condense both interviews for space . )
The first , Lisa Savage , is the independent Green candidate in Maine .
It is a really bad idea to vote for Green @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , especially ( as Ralph Nader and Jill Stein showed ) in a Presidential contest .
But Maine is the exception : voters there get to rank their votes , meaning that , if they ’ d like to , they can support Savage confident that , if she ’ s at the bottom of the tally , their ballot will then pass to the Democrat Sara Gideon , who seems to have an excellent shot at beating the Republican incumbent , Susan Collins .
Your version of the Green New Deal calls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in order to fund the program .
What kinds of things would that allow us to do ?
A demilitarized Green New Deal would fund projects to address the climate emergency like an actual emergency .
Federal funds now spent on building weapons systems could instead build and incentivize the purchase of clean-energy components like solar , offshore wind , tidal , or thermal systems to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions .
We also urgently need a European-style passenger-rail system for less urban areas , like Maine , to help get us out of our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for climate , because the Pentagon ’ s activities contribute greatly to global warming .
[ The former ] Republican governor Paul LePage killed an effort by workers at Maine ’ s renowned Bath Iron Works to organize around a project to build platforms for offshore wind .
But we ’ ve recently seen real conversion of federal contracting , when Bath Iron Works accepted federal funds to quickly build some machines that make a type of COVID-19 testing swab .
A Green New Deal would also be a win for jobs ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consistently shown that investments in Pentagon contracting produce far fewer jobs than investments in clean-energy manufacturing .
How has ranked-choice voting allowed you to make this kind of case , without the danger of becoming a spoiler and keeping the Senate in Republican hands ?
Ranked-choice voting is indeed a game changer .
It offers voters an opportunity to vote their values when they # RankLisaFirst and then # VoteBlueNumberTwo as a safety pick .
There has been almost no talk of a “ spoiler ” effect—and , when that is brought up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ R.C.V.
, it ’ s amazing how quickly they come around to the system once they do understand it .
No more vote shaming !
I see it energize voters whenever I ’ m out campaigning .
Maine ’ s progressive old guard has come together with a young core of Black Lives Matter supporters and Democratic Socialists to form a progressive alliance in my campaign that might otherwise have stayed on the sidelines if provided with no candidate supporting Medicare for All and/or a Green New Deal .
Meanwhile , Merav ben-David @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Exxon Valdez oil spill , has the Democratic nomination for Senate in Wyoming , to fill the seat left vacant by the Republican Mike Enzi , who is retiring .
( If she won , she would be the first woman scientist in the Senate . )
That ’ s obviously not an easy fight , but she has produced one of the finest campaign ads of this or any cycle .
What lessons—intellectual and emotional—did you take from working on the Exxon Valdez spill ?
Studying river otters following the Exxon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first to scientifically quantify the interconnectedness of ecosystems on a huge spatial scale , and to demonstrate the role animal behaviors play in connecting ecosystems .
It ’ s like the butterfly effect : disturbance in one ecosystem can have unexpected , devastating implications in another , effects that we never imagined .
That was true of the oil spill , and it ’ s true for climate change .
So that project turned me from a wildlife biologist to an integrative ecologist , but , more important , it turned me into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : it took Exxon twenty years to pay a fraction of what it was supposed to , and the local communities whose livelihoods were destroyed are still suffering today .
The fishing industry never recovered .
It ’ s a terrible lesson , but I learned that big corporations can use their money and influence , their lawyers , lobbyists , and P.R .
people , to cause an enormous disaster and walk away from it unscathed .
That fuelled my activism and drives my actions today .
Wyoming has a lot of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ constituents reconcile themselves to the fact that most of it needs to stay in the ground ?

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes. Sign up to receive future installments.
About a year ago, the editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, called to ask if I thought it might make sense to publish an anthology of the reporting on climate change that has appeared in the magazine’s pages. Since he works at a breakneck pace, that volume appears in print this week, under the title “The Fragile Earth.” It’s a wonderful book, demonstrating not only the depth of The New Yorker’s commitment to this planet but also the ever-growing sophistication with which writers have taken on this most important of topics. The dark splendor of Elizabeth Kolbert’s pieces alone is worth the thirty dollars.
The book opens with a piece of mine called “The End of Nature,” an excerpt from a book of the same title that appeared in 1989. It’s been a while since I read the words I wrote as a twenty-eight-year-old, and it made me nostalgic to climb back inside that young and perhaps overly earnest mind. The essay is a combination of reflection on the sadness of living in a world where the human imprint could be measured in every cubic metre of the atmosphere, and of straightforward reporting about what we then knew about climatic disruption. In the late nineteen-eighties, I could fit every scientific report on global warming on my desk. The articles and monographs published since then would fill an airplane hangar, but what’s amazing is how little has changed. Even then, we knew that the rivers of the West would be drying up, the oceans starting to rise dramatically, the ice at the top and bottom of the planet beginning a catastrophic melt.
But we even understood many of the details. Here is a small dry paragraph that I had forgotten I’d written:
One common suggestion is to replace much of the coal and oil we burn with methane, since it produces considerably less carbon dioxide. But . . . any methane that escapes unburned into the atmosphere traps solar radiation twenty times as efficiently as carbon dioxide does. And methane does leak—from wells, from pipelines, from appliances; some estimates suggest that as much as three percent of the natural gas tapped in this country escapes unburned.
We knew that, but we wasted much of the past thirty years wandering down that blind alley anyway. (Indeed, new estimates show that methane is eighty times more potent than carbon dioxide.) The Obama Administration’s response to climate change was mostly about replacing coal with natural gas.
That’s why it was very good news last week when Joe Biden’s transition team announced that he would not employ anyone who had helped to lead fossil-fuel companies. Assuming that the promise carries over to an Administration proper, it means that natural-gas advocates (and Obama holdovers) such as Ernest Moniz or Heather Zichal, both of whom have served lucrative terms on the boards of large fossil-fuel firms, will find themselves sidelined in the event of a Biden Presidency. That’s crucial, because we need people fully committed to the task of building out solar and wind power as fast as possible. Those technologies are much cheaper now than they were thirty years ago, which helps change the game. (Indeed, news came last week that ExxonMobil, not long ago the most valuable corporation in the world, now had a market cap smaller than a big solar-and-wind company.) As the credit-rating agency Moody’s pointed out in an analysis released last week, natural-gas pipelines are now an unwise financial bet, partly because activists have become adept at blocking them. The pincers created by the confluence of cheap clean tech and a stronger environmental movement should give Biden the opportunity to move far more nimbly than any President before him. That’s, of course, if he’s elected, which remains the first order of business.
Passing the mic
Voting season has begun in earnest, and so here are short interviews with two women running for the Senate. (I’ve had to condense both interviews for space.) The first, Lisa Savage, is the independent Green candidate in Maine. It is a really bad idea to vote for Green candidates in most races in this country, especially (as Ralph Nader and Jill Stein showed) in a Presidential contest. But Maine is the exception: voters there get to rank their votes, meaning that, if they’d like to, they can support Savage confident that, if she’s at the bottom of the tally, their ballot will then pass to the Democrat Sara Gideon, who seems to have an excellent shot at beating the Republican incumbent, Susan Collins.
Your version of the Green New Deal calls for cutting the military budget in half in order to fund the program. What kinds of things would that allow us to do?
A demilitarized Green New Deal would fund projects to address the climate emergency like an actual emergency. Federal funds now spent on building weapons systems could instead build and incentivize the purchase of clean-energy components like solar, offshore wind, tidal, or thermal systems to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. We also urgently need a European-style passenger-rail system for less urban areas, like Maine, to help get us out of our cars.
This would be a win-win for climate, because the Pentagon’s activities contribute greatly to global warming. [The former] Republican governor Paul LePage killed an effort by workers at Maine’s renowned Bath Iron Works to organize around a project to build platforms for offshore wind. But we’ve recently seen real conversion of federal contracting, when Bath Iron Works accepted federal funds to quickly build some machines that make a type of COVID-19 testing swab. A Green New Deal would also be a win for jobs; research by economists at UMass Amherst has consistently shown that investments in Pentagon contracting produce far fewer jobs than investments in clean-energy manufacturing.
How has ranked-choice voting allowed you to make this kind of case, without the danger of becoming a spoiler and keeping the Senate in Republican hands?
Ranked-choice voting is indeed a game changer. It offers voters an opportunity to vote their values when they #RankLisaFirst and then #VoteBlueNumberTwo as a safety pick. There has been almost no talk of a “spoiler” effect—and, when that is brought up by voters who don’t understand R.C.V., it’s amazing how quickly they come around to the system once they do understand it. No more vote shaming! I see it energize voters whenever I’m out campaigning.
Maine’s progressive old guard has come together with a young core of Black Lives Matter supporters and Democratic Socialists to form a progressive alliance in my campaign that might otherwise have stayed on the sidelines if provided with no candidate supporting Medicare for All and/or a Green New Deal.
Meanwhile, Merav ben-David, a climate scientist who has studied the Exxon Valdez oil spill, has the Democratic nomination for Senate in Wyoming, to fill the seat left vacant by the Republican Mike Enzi, who is retiring. (If she won, she would be the first woman scientist in the Senate.) That’s obviously not an easy fight, but she has produced one of the finest campaign ads of this or any cycle.


newyorker--2020-10-07--Pence Fuming After Kamala Harris Announces Plan to Wear Hazmat Suit

SALT LAKE CITY ( The Borowitz Report ) —Mike Pence was reportedly “ hopping mad ” after Senator Kamala Harris @ @ @ @ @ wear a hazmat suit to Wednesday ’ s Vice-Presidential debate .
Harris argued that , @ @ @ @ @ feet away from Pence and protected by a plexiglass shield , she was donning he @ @ @ @ @ an abundance of caution.
” “ The White House is refusing to do contact tracing @ @ @ @ @ “ I don ’ t know where Mike Pence has been.
” Pence howled in @ @ @ @ @ move , calling the hazmat suit “ political theatre at its most outrageous.
” “ @ @ @ @ @ anyone , ” he said .
“ I am a responsible adult , not a @ @ @ @ @ with me .
”

SALT LAKE CITY (The Borowitz Report)—Mike Pence was reportedly “hopping mad” after Senator Kamala Harris announced that she intends to wear a hazmat suit to Wednesday’s Vice-Presidential debate.
Harris argued that, although she would be twelve feet away from Pence and protected by a plexiglass shield, she was donning the hazmat suit “out of an abundance of caution.”
“The White House is refusing to do contact tracing,” she said. “I don’t know where Mike Pence has been.”
Pence howled in protest at Harris’s move, calling the hazmat suit “political theatre at its most outrageous.”
“I pose no danger to anyone,” he said. “I am a responsible adult, not a child, and Mother agrees with me.”


newyorker--2020-10-07--The Coronavirus Pandemic Is Now a Threat to National Security

The military brass went into isolation after Admiral Charles Ray , the vice-commandant of the Coast Guard , tested positive for COVID-19 .
Mercifully , the Joint Chiefs immediately followed guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control—unlike others in Washington ’ s political establishment , particularly the White House .
The origin of Ray ’ s infection was uncertain , but he was at a White House ceremony for Gold Star Families who lost members in war zones—a day after President Trump ’ s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court , which appears to have been a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meeting of the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon ’ s bunkerlike center known as the Tank , where the most sensitive security issues are discussed and the gravest decisions made .
“ Out of an abundance of caution , all potential close contacts from these meetings are self-quarantining , ” a Pentagon spokesman , Jonathan Hoffman , said on Tuesday , in a statement .
The Joint Chiefs are the highest-ranking members of the military to be impacted by the pandemic , but far from the only ones .
As of Wednesday morning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the military—who put their lives at risk daily to protect the country—have been infected , the Pentagon reported on a special Web site about COVID-19 .
Almost forty per cent of the two hundred and thirty-one U.S. military installations around the world still face travel restrictions because of the pandemic .
From multiple angles , including the fact that President Trump is also the Commander-in-Chief , the coronavirus is now a genuine national-security threat for the United States .
And the rest of the world knows it .
The potential dangers abound @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to manage the COVID-19 pandemic effectively , his failure to reduce the dire economic impacts , and his propensity to inflame rather than heal the deep divisions in this country have all contributed to a perception , among allies and adversaries alike , of an America that is in crisis , if not decline , ” Michèle Flournoy , the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy , told me .
“ This perception increases the risk that our competitors may seek to take advantage of this moment to make mischief abroad .
Couple @ @ @ @ @ @ @ looking at a period of extreme uncertainty.
” So far , none of the Joint Chiefs in quarantine has tested positive , the Pentagon said on Tuesday .
Each officer also has access to fully secure communications in his place of isolation .
General Mark Milley , the Joint Chiefs chairman and the principal military adviser to the President , lives on “ Generals Row ” at Fort Myer , an Army base in Arlington , Virginia , that overlooks the Potomac River and Washington , D.C .
Yet isolation still complicates the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quarantined in quarters with a suite of communication is not the same as being in the Situation Room or the National Military Command Center with immediate access to other leadership .
The broader danger is the world ’ s perception now of America as inept and vulnerable , Doug Lute , a retired lieutenant general who was the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs and a deputy national-security adviser to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama , told me .
“ There are two things that would drive our competitors—the general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a reading that we are totally self-absorbed internally , ” he said .
“ There ’ s an overlapping of the pandemic , the protests , and now the election that amplifies that image .
In broad terms , those conditions internally will be viewed by external competitors as opportunities.
” America faces threats from a spectrum of overseas adversaries , the retired Marine General John Allen , who is now the president of the Brookings Institution , told me .
“ I ’ m deeply concerned that there will be foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to state actors , that try to take advantage of a level of duress that we haven ’ t seen for a long time .
It has not been lost on our adversaries , or those who would seek to gain ground , that the United States has consciously chosen to withdraw.
” The sense of “ sheer confusion ” surrounding American politics in 2020 compounds the temptation of foreign actors to make moves , either for their own gains or to diminish America , Allen said .
The most obvious perils are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ calculate that the White House will not counter their moves elsewhere in the world during such domestic turbulence , especially on the eve of an election , former military and Pentagon officials told me .
From Russia , President Vladimir Putin could dig deeper into Ukraine , meddle in unstable Belarus , or test the strength of the Baltic states to resist .
From China , President Xi Jinping could further threaten Taiwan , exert its claim to islands in the South China Sea by deploying equipment or personnel , or take more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries have moved steadily to deepen their presence and influence across Asia and deep into the Middle East—with its access to the Mediterranean and the West .
For Moscow and Beijing , overt challenges would be a big bet , especially with an erratic and sometimes reckless President ( currently on steroids ) in the White House .
Yet both countries will also understand that the American public has little appetite for more trauma , the military and security officials said .
“ I ’ m sure that foreign adversaries ’ intelligence services @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so that they understand exactly how disruptive this pandemic is on our national-security structure , ” the former C.I.A .
director John Brennan said on CNN this week .
North Korea and Iran may also try to exploit the moment , although both have fewer capabilities than Russia or China .
Tehran is still smarting from the U.S. assassination , in January , of General Qassem Suleimani , the head of its élite Quds Force , a wing of the Revolutionary Guards , which supports several militias that have attacked U.S. troops in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran is not done seeking revenge for the killing of Suleimani , ” Lute told me .
Tehran ’ s strength is in the proxy forces it arms , aids , and often directs across the Middle East , particularly Lebanon , Iraq , and Yemen .
Since Suleimani ’ s death , attacks by the Popular Mobilization Forces on U.S. troops and the American Embassy in Iraq have steadily escalated ; the P.M.F.
, backed and sometimes directed by Iran , is the umbrella for some sixty predominantly Shiite militias that operate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the campaign sparked a diplomatic crisis when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the Iraqi government that the United States would close its Embassy in Baghdad—one of the largest American diplomatic facilities in the world—if the government did not prevent the militias from firing on the U.S. compound and American troops based elsewhere in Iraq .
“ Our global deterrence at the high end—nuclear and conventional deterrence in Europe , Asia , and the Gulf—will not be tested , ” Lute said .
“ But there may be challenges at lower levels through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the military is also strategic .
Under Trump , the Pentagon has faced abrupt whipsaws on policy , planning , and strategic goals .
Trump has announced major decisions against the advice of the military brass and sometimes without the methodical reviews usually associated with the military .
During a three-year period , the President has threatened war with North Korea ; embraced its mercurial leader , Kim Jong Un ; held three summits with him ; travelled to North Korea ; and cancelled a fourth summit—and still has accomplished nothing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and missiles .
Trump has been erratic on other hot spots .
In April and December , 2018 , and in October , 2019 , he announced the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Syria ; hundreds are still there in October , 2020 .
He has pledged to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan by next May , whatever the state of the current peace talks , the stability of the government , or the level of violence by the Taliban .
U.S. military officials caution that “ conditions ” may necessitate a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after May .
The uncertainty surrounding national security has been compounded , a former senior official told me , by the sense in Washington that Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is essentially AWOL because he has been so sidelined by the White House .
His standing—or inclusion—impacts the Pentagon ’ s influence with the President .
The Joint Chiefs are due to end their quarantine and return to their offices well before the election .
But the United States faces an uncertain and potentially troubled period between November 3rd and January 20th .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the White House , Congress , and now the Pentagon led Leon Panetta , the former Secretary of Defense and C.I.A .
director , to warn on NPR , on Tuesday , that the scope of the pandemic ’ s spread in the capital of the most powerful nation in the world “ sends a signal to our adversaries that we are in a vulnerable state.
” More on the Coronavirus • To protect American lives and revive the economy , Donald Trump and Jared Kushner should listen to Anthony Fauci rather than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to students to conceive of appropriate school-reopening plans .
It is not too late to ask what they really want .
• A pregnant pediatrician on what children need during the crisis .
• Trump is helping tycoons who have donated to his reëlection campaign exploit the pandemic to maximize profits .
• Meet the high-finance mogul in charge of our economic recovery .
• The coronavirus is likely to reshape architecture .
What kinds of space are we willing to live and work in now ?

Just as the White House became an epicenter of the pandemic and congressional negotiations on the ailing economy collapsed, the Pentagon made its own startling announcement on Tuesday. The entire Joint Chiefs of Staff—the highest-ranking officers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, and other services—went into quarantine for two weeks. These are not only commanders who control the world’s mightiest military, run wars, order bombings, and authorize special-operations raids; they are part of the most consistent and sane wing of the American government right now.
The military brass went into isolation after Admiral Charles Ray, the vice-commandant of the Coast Guard, tested positive for COVID-19. Mercifully, the Joint Chiefs immediately followed guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control—unlike others in Washington’s political establishment, particularly the White House. The origin of Ray’s infection was uncertain, but he was at a White House ceremony for Gold Star Families who lost members in war zones—a day after President Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, which appears to have been a superspreader event. Ray later attended a meeting of the Joint Chiefs in the Pentagon’s bunkerlike center known as the Tank, where the most sensitive security issues are discussed and the gravest decisions made. “Out of an abundance of caution, all potential close contacts from these meetings are self-quarantining,” a Pentagon spokesman, Jonathan Hoffman, said on Tuesday, in a statement. The Marine Corps announced late on Wednesday that General Gary Thomas, the assistant commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, had tested positive for COVID-19. Thomas, who was present at the Joint Chiefs meeting in the Tank, is the second four-star officer to report being infected this week.
The Joint Chiefs are the highest-ranking members of the military to be impacted by the pandemic, but far from the only ones. As of Wednesday morning, almost seventy thousand members or employees of the military—who put their lives at risk daily to protect the country—have been infected, the Pentagon reported on a special Web site about COVID-19. Almost forty per cent of the two hundred and thirty-one U.S. military installations around the world still face travel restrictions because of the pandemic. From multiple angles, including the fact that President Trump is also the Commander-in-Chief, the coronavirus is now a genuine national-security threat for the United States. And the rest of the world knows it. The potential dangers abound.
“This President’s failure to manage the COVID-19 pandemic effectively, his failure to reduce the dire economic impacts, and his propensity to inflame rather than heal the deep divisions in this country have all contributed to a perception, among allies and adversaries alike, of an America that is in crisis, if not decline,” Michèle Flournoy, the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, told me. “This perception increases the risk that our competitors may seek to take advantage of this moment to make mischief abroad. Couple that with the election and we are looking at a period of extreme uncertainty.”
So far, none of the Joint Chiefs in quarantine has tested positive, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. Each officer also has access to fully secure communications in his place of isolation. General Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman and the principal military adviser to the President, lives on “Generals Row” at Fort Myer, an Army base in Arlington, Virginia, that overlooks the Potomac River and Washington, D.C. Yet isolation still complicates the joint-ness of the Joint Chiefs. Being quarantined in quarters with a suite of communication is not the same as being in the Situation Room or the National Military Command Center with immediate access to other leadership.
The broader danger is the world’s perception now of America as inept and vulnerable, Doug Lute, a retired lieutenant general who was the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs and a deputy national-security adviser to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told me. “There are two things that would drive our competitors—the general sense of incompetence by the executive branch and a reading that we are totally self-absorbed internally,” he said. “There’s an overlapping of the pandemic, the protests, and now the election that amplifies that image. In broad terms, those conditions internally will be viewed by external competitors as opportunities.” America faces threats from a spectrum of overseas adversaries, the retired Marine General John Allen, who is now the president of the Brookings Institution, told me. “I’m deeply concerned that there will be foreign actors, all the way from jihadists to state actors, that try to take advantage of a level of duress that we haven’t seen for a long time. It has not been lost on our adversaries, or those who would seek to gain ground, that the United States has consciously chosen to withdraw.” The sense of “sheer confusion” surrounding American politics in 2020 compounds the temptation of foreign actors to make moves, either for their own gains or to diminish America, Allen said.
The most obvious perils are from the big powers, which may calculate that the White House will not counter their moves elsewhere in the world during such domestic turbulence, especially on the eve of an election, former military and Pentagon officials told me. From Russia, President Vladimir Putin could dig deeper into Ukraine, meddle in unstable Belarus, or test the strength of the Baltic states to resist. From China, President Xi Jinping could further threaten Taiwan, exert its claim to islands in the South China Sea by deploying equipment or personnel, or take more draconian actions in Hong Kong. Both countries have moved steadily to deepen their presence and influence across Asia and deep into the Middle East—with its access to the Mediterranean and the West. For Moscow and Beijing, overt challenges would be a big bet, especially with an erratic and sometimes reckless President (currently on steroids) in the White House. Yet both countries will also understand that the American public has little appetite for more trauma, the military and security officials said. “I’m sure that foreign adversaries’ intelligence services have their collection systems turned up high so that they understand exactly how disruptive this pandemic is on our national-security structure,” the former C.I.A. director John Brennan said on CNN this week.
North Korea and Iran may also try to exploit the moment, although both have fewer capabilities than Russia or China. Tehran is still smarting from the U.S. assassination, in January, of General Qassem Suleimani, the head of its élite Quds Force, a wing of the Revolutionary Guards, which supports several militias that have attacked U.S. troops in Iraq and Lebanon. “I suspect Iran is not done seeking revenge for the killing of Suleimani,” Lute told me. Tehran’s strength is in the proxy forces it arms, aids, and often directs across the Middle East, particularly Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. Since Suleimani’s death, attacks by the Popular Mobilization Forces on U.S. troops and the American Embassy in Iraq have steadily escalated; the P.M.F., backed and sometimes directed by Iran, is the umbrella for some sixty predominantly Shiite militias that operate in separate brigades. Last month, the campaign sparked a diplomatic crisis when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the Iraqi government that the United States would close its Embassy in Baghdad—one of the largest American diplomatic facilities in the world—if the government did not prevent the militias from firing on the U.S. compound and American troops based elsewhere in Iraq. “Our global deterrence at the high end—nuclear and conventional deterrence in Europe, Asia, and the Gulf—will not be tested,” Lute said. “But there may be challenges at lower levels through cyber or by proxies.”


newyorker--2020-10-07--Storybook Season: An Interview with Mike Schmidt

“ I ’ ve been unbelievably blessed .
My boyhood dreams came true tenfold .
Of course , every player who makes it to the major leagues would have to say the same thing.
” “ Dreams are the wonders of life .
I used to dream as a kid about Crosley Field in Cincinnati , with the terrace , where my father used to take me once or twice a year .
I dreamt of players like Frank Robinson and Vada Pinson and Pete Rose and Johnny Bench .
I mean , I ended up on the same team @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ m sure I told him , you know , kidding around , ‘ I used to dream about you , Pete !
’ I had his poster on the back of my bedroom door .
I ended up being friends with all of those guys !
Can you believe that ?
It ’ s absolutely ridiculous the way my dreams have come true.
” “ But when I ’ m playing baseball in a dream , I could never find my uniform .
You know , it ’ s always something like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find my glove .
Never .
Every ball goes through my legs .
I can ’ t run.
” “ It ’ s like this slow-motion kind of fog when I hit a ball .
You know what I mean ?
It ’ s never , like , ‘ This is a dream where I hit four home runs in a game !
’ ” “ No , no , no , it ’ s never like that !
” “ Though , somewhere around the middle of ’ 76 , I did @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In a row .
I don ’ t think too many guys have hit four in a row .
But , truthfully , there isn ’ t a lot of tension in an at-bat when you ’ ve already hit three !
Got a pretty good day going here , you know ?
Sports Illustrated put me on the cover for the first time .
You kidding me ?
The cover of SI ?
Back then ?
Wow.
” “ When I got inducted into the Hall of Fame , in ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there was Hank Aaron , Stan Musial , Frank Robinson , Johnny Bench , you know , all these older players—Brooks Robinson—I thought , ‘ I got a plaque in the same room as these guys .
Crazy.
’ ” “ Of course , this was a long time ago , because I ’ m one of the older guys in the Hall now .
”

Throughout my life, Mike Schmidt, the Hall of Fame third baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, who turned seventy-one last week, has been more than a favorite player. He’s been a philosophy, an avatar of the cool determination required to prevail in the face of fear and doubt. This season marks the fortieth anniversary of the greatest campaign of his eighteen-year major-league career, in which he led the Phillies to their first World Series victory. But Schmidt didn’t start out as a star. In 1973, his first complete season in the majors, he batted a dismal .196. He drew the ire of the hometown fans, as well as his teammates, who sometimes pretended to catch a cold from the draft of his missed swings when he returned to the dugout. During lockdown, when the 2020 baseball season was supposed to have been starting, I missed the lessons of the sport more than the game itself. I was able to Zoom into the past and reflect with Schmidt about his memorable world-championship season, and the rest of his fabled career, which began with a sneeze.
“His name was Willie Montañez. First baseman. Quite a flashy player. He was a star.”
“I was a nobody.”


newyorker--2020-10-07--What I Like to Imagine the Construction Noise Next Door Actually Is

A man who was really into Kafka woke up one day with a blender instead of a hand .
Initially , he thought it was cool to have had an experience like that described in “ The Metamorphosis , ” but , after he went to shake hands with his boss and accidentally blended his boss ’ s hand , as well as the hands of a number of other people he met at a party , he was forced to make a living as a one-man margarita machine .
Every morning , he makes himself a margarita , just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tweens are tap-dancing with cement blocks on their feet .
This is a new viral trend that has been popularized on TikTok , as part of a larger conspiracy by the Chinese government to get revenge on me for saying that I think Uighur prison camps are bad .
Two large men are tap-dancing with cement blocks on their feet .
The viral trend outgrew its origins on TikTok and soon became an activity engaged in competitively around the globe , even eventually becoming an Olympic event .
These two large men are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emerged after a number of competitors were disqualified in a doping scandal , in which the cement blocks were injected with cocaine .
The speed at which they can tap-dance after injecting drugs into their blocks is a sight to behold , even though it doesn ’ t sound very good .
A small bird is engaging in a mating ritual .
The ritual involves flying back and forth , up and down the street , in search of the nicest car on the block .
The bird then finds a shiny metal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ uses it to key the car with a sawing motion .
Gradually , the bird etches a picture of itself having sex with another bird into the side of the car .
An opera singer who was injured in a tragic sword-swallowing accident is now able to make only this noise .
She makes it at 1 P.M. , when she wants to signal to other opera singers in the area that they should join her for lunch , if they ’ re not too busy singing opera .
Sadly , she has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ encouraging others to try her opera sword-swallowing act .
Someone watching a movie about a house being demolished thinks , Wow , the audio quality on these surround-sound speakers is great .
But then he remembers with horror that he didn ’ t actually spring for surround sound and that , in fact , his house is being bulldozed , as a result of a mixup in the local bulldozing-permit office .
Beeping from Truck Backing Up at 6:45 A.M. A robot that has just been given artificial intelligence and self-awareness is roaming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with this crazy thing we call sentient life .
At once , it knows that it is not like the other beings it passes , who stare at it in wonder and fear—but , still , it feels a communion with them .
A shared consciousness of sorts .
It falls into a reverie , disturbed only by the sunlight of a fresh morning .
When it realizes that this beauty is finite , and that once its robot body rusts and falls apart it will never get to see the sun rise @ @ @ @ @

Drilling
A man who was really into Kafka woke up one day with a blender instead of a hand. Initially, he thought it was cool to have had an experience like that described in “The Metamorphosis,” but, after he went to shake hands with his boss and accidentally blended his boss’s hand, as well as the hands of a number of other people he met at a party, he was forced to make a living as a one-man margarita machine. Every morning, he makes himself a margarita, just to get through the day.
Hammering
Two tweens are tap-dancing with cement blocks on their feet. This is a new viral trend that has been popularized on TikTok, as part of a larger conspiracy by the Chinese government to get revenge on me for saying that I think Uighur prison camps are bad.
Jackhammering
Two large men are tap-dancing with cement blocks on their feet. The viral trend outgrew its origins on TikTok and soon became an activity engaged in competitively around the globe, even eventually becoming an Olympic event. These two large men are part of an underground scene, which emerged after a number of competitors were disqualified in a doping scandal, in which the cement blocks were injected with cocaine. The speed at which they can tap-dance after injecting drugs into their blocks is a sight to behold, even though it doesn’t sound very good.
Sawing
A small bird is engaging in a mating ritual. The ritual involves flying back and forth, up and down the street, in search of the nicest car on the block. The bird then finds a shiny metal object, like a key, and uses it to key the car with a sawing motion. Gradually, the bird etches a picture of itself having sex with another bird into the side of the car.
Air Horn
An opera singer who was injured in a tragic sword-swallowing accident is now able to make only this noise. She makes it at 1 P.M., when she wants to signal to other opera singers in the area that they should join her for lunch, if they’re not too busy singing opera. Sadly, she has been ostracized by the opera community for encouraging others to try her opera sword-swallowing act.
Bulldozer
Someone watching a movie about a house being demolished thinks, Wow, the audio quality on these surround-sound speakers is great. But then he remembers with horror that he didn’t actually spring for surround sound and that, in fact, his house is being bulldozed, as a result of a mixup in the local bulldozing-permit office.
Beeping from Truck Backing Up at 6:45 A.M.
A robot that has just been given artificial intelligence and self-awareness is roaming the streets of Brooklyn, becoming acquainted with this crazy thing we call sentient life. At once, it knows that it is not like the other beings it passes, who stare at it in wonder and fear—but, still, it feels a communion with them. A shared consciousness of sorts. It falls into a reverie, disturbed only by the sunlight of a fresh morning. When it realizes that this beauty is finite, and that once its robot body rusts and falls apart it will never get to see the sun rise again, it beeps.


newyorker--2020-10-07--Eddie Van Halen’s Otherworldly Sounds

Eddie Van Halen’s Otherworldly Sounds

The guitarist Eddie Van Halen , who died on Tuesday , of cancer , at the age of sixty-five , was the sort of musician who only seems to appear once every generation : a true savant .
His aptitude felt uncanny , as if he had been touched by something extraterrestrial .
Whatever sorts of chops gets a person voted “ The Best Guitarist in the World ” by Guitar World magazine ( a discerning and perspicacious publication if there ever was one ) , Eddie had those and then some .
He understood that an electric guitar could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some of which were deep and percussive , and others that were shrieking and nearly feral .
He perfected a bespoke technique in which he tapped along the neck of his instrument , an idea he once said he lifted from Jimmy Page ’ s solo in Led Zeppelin ’ s “ Heartbreaker , ” though their styles feel distinct .
Page , who came of age listening to American blues , is a looser and perhaps gentler guitarist ; plus , Eddie didn ’ t play like anyone else .
By the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ band Van Halen , his name had become synonymous with otherworldly shredding .
When he started to rip , every guitar nerd in every small town in America stopped what he or she was doing , and whispered one word : “ Sick.
” If this all sounds show off-y or bloodless or not very fun , I invite you to revisit the video for “ Panama , ” in which Eddie , wearing a red bandana and a tank top decorated with dice , gets strung up by his ankle and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ goofy faces , taking the situation very seriously and yet not seriously at all .
When the camera cuts to the crowd , people are melting down with excitement—Eddie is ravishing them .
“ Panama ” is so extravagant—so plainly dumb , so gorgeously jubilant—that when I ’ m listening to it I often feel my leg involuntarily rising into a high-kick before the vocals even start .
The tension between what Van Halen was usually doing ( making precise , harmonically sophisticated rock music that was indebted to the Western classical canon @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing ( pounding beers , going nuts ) is part of what makes the band so compelling .
Eddie was born Edward Lodewijk Van Halen , in Amsterdam , in 1955 .
His father , a classical musician of Dutch descent , met his mother in her native Indonesia when he was on tour .
The family settled in the Netherlands but left when Eddie was seven ( in part because his mother faced discrimination there ) , and moved to Pasadena , California , where his father struggled to make money as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ job as a janitor .
Eddie and his older brother Alex were trained in classical piano , but , like many teen-agers in southern California in the early nineteen-seventies , they were utterly seduced by rock and roll .
It ’ s daunting to imagine the thousands of hours Eddie must have logged with his guitar , practicing until he couldn ’ t feel his fingers .
Nobody gets that good without suffering a little .
The brothers recruited the bassist Michael Anthony and the vocalist David Lee Roth into their fold .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-titled début .
“ Van Halen ” contains “ Runnin ’ with the Devil , ” which might be my favorite Van Halen song .
Eddie is somehow playing both lead and rhythm guitar .
Every once in a while , a recording of Roth ’ s isolated vocals drifts about the Internet , and people laugh—he is squealing like someone who has just been stung by a large , strange insect—but I think he sounds perfect .
The song itself takes what might be a lonesome lament ( “ I got no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ call real / Ain ’ t got nobody , waitin ’ at home ” ) and turns it into a celebration of freedom—the pure , easy glee of the unencumbered .
The album also contains “ Eruption , ” an abrasive , reeling , hundred-and-two-second guitar solo that can only be described as equal parts ecstatic and insane .
“ Van Halen ” reached No .
19 on the Billboard 200—a notable achievement for a hard-rock group at the time .
In 1984 , the band replaced Roth with a new singer , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rift between Roth and Van Halen remains unclear—Eddie was drinking , Roth had too many ideas about the direction of the band—though they did briefly reunite in 1996 ) .
Though Hagar was also a good-time guy , this nonetheless marked a new epoch for Van Halen .
“ Why Can ’ t This Be Love ?
, ” the first single the band released with Hagar , felt nearly ponderous in comparison to its earlier work .
Hagar was asking an earnest , vaguely melancholy question : “ Straight from my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t this be love ?
” Van Halen had never sounded quite so staid or grown up .
The band ultimately sent eight singles into the Billboard Top 20 , and sold more than eighty million records .
In 2007 , they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame .
But by the late nineties , bands like Van Halen—who mostly eschewed profundity in favor of uncomplicated pleasure —were being supplanted by the more brooding and introspective rock music emerging from Seattle .
Grunge was a pointed rebuttal to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ joy was collateral damage .
It feels worth nodding to the subculture that first nurtured Van Halen .
In the town where I grew up , there was a category of kid who worshipped Eddie—the snickering burnouts who smoked in high-school bathrooms , wore denim jackets covered with band patches , grew their hair long , and turned loitering into a kind of art .
Heshers , as they were sometimes known , tended to cruise around in either a meticulously reconstructed sports car or a dented passenger van with a bottle of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the back .
Their ethos was a distinctly eighties version of live fast , die young , and Van Halen ’ s music was a kind of cosmic accompaniment : “ We ’ re all fast breakers comin ’ out of the gate / Takin ’ chances , we ’ re the crash and burn , ” Roth squealed on “ Light Up the Sky.
” I ’ m a little too young to have known the band at its cultural peak .
Still , every time I hear a Van Halen riff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ young and broke and bored , leaning against the still-warm hood of my best friend ’ s car , trying to choke down a plastic cup of warm beer from a keg someone had hastily concealed in a pile of leaves .
Despite Eddie ’ s virtuosity , there ’ s something so innocent—close to guileless—about his music .
It was so expert and strange , it made it seem as if the world was enormous , and anything was possible .

Despite Eddie Van Halen’s virtuosity, there was something innocent—close to guileless—about his music. Photograph by Bob Riha, Jr. / Getty
The guitarist Eddie Van Halen, who died on Tuesday, of cancer, at the age of sixty-five, was the sort of musician who only seems to appear once every generation: a true savant. His aptitude felt uncanny, as if he had been touched by something extraterrestrial. Whatever sorts of chops gets a person voted “The Best Guitarist in the World” by Guitar World magazine (a discerning and perspicacious publication if there ever was one), Eddie had those and then some. He understood that an electric guitar could generate an extraordinary range of sounds, some of which were deep and percussive, and others that were shrieking and nearly feral. He perfected a bespoke technique in which he tapped along the neck of his instrument, an idea he once said he lifted from Jimmy Page’s solo in Led Zeppelin’s “Heartbreaker,” though their styles feel distinct. Page, who came of age listening to American blues, is a looser and perhaps gentler guitarist; plus, Eddie didn’t play like anyone else. By the nineteen-eighties, as part of the hard-rock band Van Halen, his name had become synonymous with otherworldly shredding. When he started to rip, every guitar nerd in every small town in America stopped what he or she was doing, and whispered one word: “Sick.”
If this all sounds show off-y or bloodless or not very fun, I invite you to revisit the video for “Panama,” in which Eddie, wearing a red bandana and a tank top decorated with dice, gets strung up by his ankle and then later his midsection, grinning and making goofy faces, taking the situation very seriously and yet not seriously at all. When the camera cuts to the crowd, people are melting down with excitement—Eddie is ravishing them. “Panama” is so extravagant—so plainly dumb, so gorgeously jubilant—that when I’m listening to it I often feel my leg involuntarily rising into a high-kick before the vocals even start. The tension between what Van Halen was usually doing (making precise, harmonically sophisticated rock music that was indebted to the Western classical canon) and what its audience was usually doing (pounding beers, going nuts) is part of what makes the band so compelling.
Eddie was born Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, in Amsterdam, in 1955. His father, a classical musician of Dutch descent, met his mother in her native Indonesia when he was on tour. The family settled in the Netherlands but left when Eddie was seven (in part because his mother faced discrimination there), and moved to Pasadena, California, where his father struggled to make money as a musician, and eventually took a job as a janitor. Eddie and his older brother Alex were trained in classical piano, but, like many teen-agers in southern California in the early nineteen-seventies, they were utterly seduced by rock and roll. It’s daunting to imagine the thousands of hours Eddie must have logged with his guitar, practicing until he couldn’t feel his fingers. Nobody gets that good without suffering a little. The brothers recruited the bassist Michael Anthony and the vocalist David Lee Roth into their fold. In 1978, Van Halen released its self-titled début.
“Van Halen” contains “Runnin’ with the Devil,” which might be my favorite Van Halen song. Eddie is somehow playing both lead and rhythm guitar. Every once in a while, a recording of Roth’s isolated vocals drifts about the Internet, and people laugh—he is squealing like someone who has just been stung by a large, strange insect—but I think he sounds perfect. The song itself takes what might be a lonesome lament (“I got no love, no love you’d call real / Ain’t got nobody, waitin’ at home”) and turns it into a celebration of freedom—the pure, easy glee of the unencumbered. The album also contains “Eruption,” an abrasive, reeling, hundred-and-two-second guitar solo that can only be described as equal parts ecstatic and insane. “Van Halen” reached No. 19 on the Billboard 200—a notable achievement for a hard-rock group at the time.
In 1984, the band replaced Roth with a new singer, Sammy Hagar (the precise mechanics of the rift between Roth and Van Halen remains unclear—Eddie was drinking, Roth had too many ideas about the direction of the band—though they did briefly reunite in 1996). Though Hagar was also a good-time guy, this nonetheless marked a new epoch for Van Halen. “Why Can’t This Be Love?,” the first single the band released with Hagar, felt nearly ponderous in comparison to its earlier work. Hagar was asking an earnest, vaguely melancholy question: “Straight from my heart / Tell me, why can’t this be love?” Van Halen had never sounded quite so staid or grown up.
The band ultimately sent eight singles into the Billboard Top 20, and sold more than eighty million records. In 2007, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But by the late nineties, bands like Van Halen—who mostly eschewed profundity in favor of uncomplicated pleasure —were being supplanted by the more brooding and introspective rock music emerging from Seattle. Grunge was a pointed rebuttal to hedonism and excess. The eradication of joy was collateral damage.
It feels worth nodding to the subculture that first nurtured Van Halen. In the town where I grew up, there was a category of kid who worshipped Eddie—the snickering burnouts who smoked in high-school bathrooms, wore denim jackets covered with band patches, grew their hair long, and turned loitering into a kind of art. Heshers, as they were sometimes known, tended to cruise around in either a meticulously reconstructed sports car or a dented passenger van with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s rolling endlessly around the back. Their ethos was a distinctly eighties version of live fast, die young, and Van Halen’s music was a kind of cosmic accompaniment: “We’re all fast breakers comin’ out of the gate / Takin’ chances, we’re the crash and burn,” Roth squealed on “Light Up the Sky.”
I’m a little too young to have known the band at its cultural peak. Still, every time I hear a Van Halen riff, I find myself thinking about being young and broke and bored, leaning against the still-warm hood of my best friend’s car, trying to choke down a plastic cup of warm beer from a keg someone had hastily concealed in a pile of leaves. Despite Eddie’s virtuosity, there’s something so innocent—close to guileless—about his music. It was so expert and strange, it made it seem as if the world was enormous, and anything was possible.


newyorker--2020-10-07--The Contested Afterlife of the Trump-Alfa Bank Story

Since then , Alfa Bank ’ s lawyers in the United States have carried out an aggressive campaign to uncover the identity of the sources who gathered the D.N.S .
logs , filing lawsuits and serving subpoenas on some of America ’ s leading computer experts , some of whom helped decipher the logs for The New Yorker .
Two lawsuits—filed against “ John Doe et al.
, ” the unidentified scientists who discovered the seeming evidence of communication—claim , without offering evidence , that malicious people doctored the data , in an effort to smear Alfa Bank and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s legal efforts are proceeding in parallel with the Justice Department and its allies in the conservative press , who have waged a relentless campaign against American intelligence and the F.B.I .
for what they describe as a malign effort to concoct a false story about Russia ’ s efforts to help Trump in 2016 .
In recent weeks , scientists and others quoted in my story have been summoned to testify to a grand jury impanelled by John Durham , the U.S. attorney appointed by Attorney General William Barr to investigate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It is unclear whether lawyers for the Justice Department and Alfa Bank are working together , but they share an interest in pursuing people who have investigated Trump ’ s ties to Russia .
“ There ’ s a unity of purpose , ” one lawyer involved in the litigation told me .
Alfa Bank ’ s relationship with Trump is opaque , and official documents resulting from a series of investigations and counter-investigations into Russia ’ s interference in the 2016 election offer few decisive conclusions .
In the special counsel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Petr Aven , the chairman of Alfa Bank , testified that he tried , at Putin ’ s suggestion , to open a private channel to the incoming Trump Administration .
Mueller ’ s report didn ’ t mention the Alfa Bank data , but one issued this summer by the Senate Intelligence Committee did .
It said that , although investigators did not conclude that the data necessarily reflected communication , they also “ could not positively determine an intent or purpose that would explain the unusual activity ” ; it added @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the Trump Organization “ were not consistent.
” In 2019 , an inspector general examining the origins of Mueller ’ s investigation wrote , “ The FBI investigated whether there were cyber links between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank , but had concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links.
” An American official who helped investigate Russian interference confirmed that the F.B.I .
had looked at the data , with help from outside analysts , but said that its efforts were not extensive .
A different American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues , told me he believes that the F.B.I .
and other intelligence agencies never thoroughly investigated the computer traffic—in part , he suspected , because U.S. officials may have been wary of revealing how they had collected the data .
“ This evidence is very tangible and real , ” the official said .
“ It seems possible that the U.S. government decided not to pursue this because it did not want to expose an important source and method for intelligence gathering.
” Alfa Bank ’ s suits against “ John Doe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Skadden , Arps , Slate , Meagher & Flom , one of the country ’ s largest law firms .
In 2018 , a Skadden lawyer named Alex van der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to investigators looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election ; he is the son-in-law of German Khan , one of Alfa Bank ’ s founders .
The suits were filed separately in Pennsylvania and Florida , where the businesses that managed the servers linked to the Trump Organization were situated .
The filings charge that a group @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sophisticated cyberattacking scheme to fabricate apparent communications.
” The suits say that the attackers used a method known as spoofing , in which they sent e-mails made to look as if they were from the Trump Organization to Alfa Bank , whose servers responded by looking up addresses for the sender .
These attackers , the suits contend , alerted other scientists to this spurious evidence of communication , and the scientists tipped off the press .
Alfa Bank ’ s lawyers maintain that the operation was carried out by “ a well-trained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cyberattacks committed against Alfa Bank , continues to exist today , and carries out cyberattacks against a range of targets.
” The group ’ s goal , they say , was “ polarizing the U.S. public by pitting the predominant political parties against one another.
” If the bank ’ s lawyers are right , the plot was extraordinarily abstruse .
In their telling , sophisticated operatives used their computer expertise to create a cryptic and hard-to-prove appearance of connection between a Russian bank and a marketing firm linked ( but not closely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the foresight to set up this hoax and carry it out months before the first news stories inquiring into Trump ’ s connections with Russia .
Alfa Bank appears to believe that a computer scientist whom I spoke to for my piece in 2018 , and identified as “ Max , ” helped to carry out the plot .
In our interviews , he rejected the idea of falsified data , saying , “ If we were going to lie , then we would have made up a much better story than this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a Republican , gave a strikingly different account of his motivations : he and a group of like-minded scientists had noticed the unusual traffic as they investigated whether Russian agents were trying to hack prominent Republicans , as they had hacked prominent Democrats .
Another computer scientist , who identified himself as “ Tea Leaves , ” gave similar interviews for a Slate story , from 2016 , about the communications ; Alfa Bank ’ s lawyers apparently believe that he is also among the alleged conspirators .
To uncover the identities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawyers have served subpoenas on many of the scientists who reviewed D.N.S .
records for The New Yorker , including Steven Bellovin , of Columbia University ; Jean Camp , of the University of Indiana ; and Daniel Kahn Gillmor , of the A.C.L.U .
Alfa Bank ’ s lawyers have indicated in court documents that they also intend to subpoena the records of the Democracy Integrity Project , a nonprofit run by Daniel Jones , a former investigator for the Senate Intelligence Committee who helped decipher the D.N.S .
records .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ computer data , phone logs , and e-mail records , along with any information they may have about Max or Tea Leaves .
None of the scientists I interviewed in 2018 claimed to know the identities of the people who discovered the unusual communications ; when I reached out to them recently , they declined to speak to me .
But other computer-science experts told me that they were angry about the legal action .
One suggested that Alfa Bank ’ s lawyers were mounting an assault on academic freedom .
Another , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are trying to intimidate people.
” Bush told me that he never closely studied the data and knows nothing about who found it .
Alfa Bank may also be using less formal methods to discover the identities of the people involved in the story .
Last year , Daniel Hoffman , a former Moscow station chief for the C.I.A.
, requested a meeting with me , during which he asked me to introduce him to Max .
Hoffman neglected to mention that he is a member of the advisory board for B.G.R.
, @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington .
( Hoffman said later that he wanted to interview Max for a news story that he planned to write . )
This year , Alfa Bank commissioned a New York-based production company to make a documentary film intended to “ understand what really happened.
” A researcher for the company asked me and Jones , the former Senate Intelligence Committee investigator , to talk about what we had learned .
The documentary was never made .
Alfa Bank ’ s principals—Aven , Khan , and a man named Mikhail Fridman—are personally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Washington that had hired Christopher Steele , a former British intelligence agent , to investigate Donald Trump ’ s relationships in Russia before the 2016 election .
The dossier that Steele assembled claimed that Aven and Fridman had been close confidants of Vladimir Putin since he was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg , in the nineteen-nineties , when they sent him “ large amounts of illicit cash.
” Steele has been criticized for sloppy tradecraft , but much of the information he recorded has been neither proved nor disproved .
Aven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ information in the dossier about the bank and its principals is false and defamatory .
They have sued Steele , as well as Buzzfeed , which first published the dossier .
They also served a subpoena on Jones , the investigator , asking for all his correspondence with Fusion .
( Alfa Bank has also sought to subpoena Fusion ’ s executives , in connection with the John Doe lawsuits . )
For those defending themselves against the lawsuits , their attorneys ’ power of discovery would give them extraordinary access to Alfa @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Khan , and Fridman claim that they do not control their own documents at the bank and can not produce them .
( Public records show that together they control more than sixty per cent of the bank . )
The three men also say that they are not public figures , and are therefore entitled to stronger protections against defamation .
They made a similar argument in a U.S. court two decades ago , and it was thrown out .
But the federal judge presiding over their Fusion libel case , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ far , and so the suit is likely to drag on—a situation that Aven , Khan , and Fridman can afford more easily than the founders of Fusion can .
According to Forbes , the three bankers are believed to have a combined net worth of about thirty billion dollars .
“ They could spend a million dollars a day on this and not even notice , ” the lawyer involved in one of the cases said .

Two years ago, I wrote about a mysterious series of computer contacts between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, one of the most powerful financial institutions in Russia. For four months, during the summer before the 2016 Presidential election, two servers registered to the bank repeatedly looked up the address of another server, maintained by a mass-marketing firm for the Trump Organization. Thousands of these lookups, which typically precede communication, appeared in logs of the Domain Name System, a global database of online addresses; the traffic was noted by a group of prominent computer scientists with unusual access to those records. But the D.N.S. traces were inconclusive and required sophisticated analysis. The Trump Organization and Alfa Bank denied that they had been communicating at all, and the episode remained a mystery.
Since then, Alfa Bank’s lawyers in the United States have carried out an aggressive campaign to uncover the identity of the sources who gathered the D.N.S. logs, filing lawsuits and serving subpoenas on some of America’s leading computer experts, some of whom helped decipher the logs for The New Yorker. Two lawsuits—filed against “John Doe et al.,” the unidentified scientists who discovered the seeming evidence of communication—claim, without offering evidence, that malicious people doctored the data, in an effort to smear Alfa Bank and the Trump campaign.
Remarkably, Alfa Bank’s legal efforts are proceeding in parallel with the Justice Department and its allies in the conservative press, who have waged a relentless campaign against American intelligence and the F.B.I. for what they describe as a malign effort to concoct a false story about Russia’s efforts to help Trump in 2016. In recent weeks, scientists and others quoted in my story have been summoned to testify to a grand jury impanelled by John Durham, the U.S. attorney appointed by Attorney General William Barr to investigate potential criminal conduct in the Russia probe. It is unclear whether lawyers for the Justice Department and Alfa Bank are working together, but they share an interest in pursuing people who have investigated Trump’s ties to Russia. “There’s a unity of purpose,” one lawyer involved in the litigation told me.
Alfa Bank’s relationship with Trump is opaque, and official documents resulting from a series of investigations and counter-investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election offer few decisive conclusions. In the special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report, Petr Aven, the chairman of Alfa Bank, testified that he tried, at Putin’s suggestion, to open a private channel to the incoming Trump Administration. Mueller’s report didn’t mention the Alfa Bank data, but one issued this summer by the Senate Intelligence Committee did. It said that, although investigators did not conclude that the data necessarily reflected communication, they also “could not positively determine an intent or purpose that would explain the unusual activity”; it added that the explanations offered by Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization “were not consistent.” In 2019, an inspector general examining the origins of Mueller’s investigation wrote, “The FBI investigated whether there were cyber links between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, but had concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links.” An American official who helped investigate Russian interference confirmed that the F.B.I. had looked at the data, with help from outside analysts, but said that its efforts were not extensive.
A different American official, who deals regularly with national-security issues, told me he believes that the F.B.I. and other intelligence agencies never thoroughly investigated the computer traffic—in part, he suspected, because U.S. officials may have been wary of revealing how they had collected the data. “This evidence is very tangible and real,” the official said. “It seems possible that the U.S. government decided not to pursue this because it did not want to expose an important source and method for intelligence gathering.”
Alfa Bank’s suits against “John Doe” are being handled in part by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, one of the country’s largest law firms. In 2018, a Skadden lawyer named Alex van der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to investigators looking into Russian interference in the 2016 election; he is the son-in-law of German Khan, one of Alfa Bank’s founders.
The suits were filed separately in Pennsylvania and Florida, where the businesses that managed the servers linked to the Trump Organization were situated. The filings charge that a group of unknown persons “executed a highly sophisticated cyberattacking scheme to fabricate apparent communications.” The suits say that the attackers used a method known as spoofing, in which they sent e-mails made to look as if they were from the Trump Organization to Alfa Bank, whose servers responded by looking up addresses for the sender. These attackers, the suits contend, alerted other scientists to this spurious evidence of communication, and the scientists tipped off the press.
Alfa Bank’s lawyers maintain that the operation was carried out by “a well-trained and well-funded group that existed before the cyberattacks committed against Alfa Bank, continues to exist today, and carries out cyberattacks against a range of targets.” The group’s goal, they say, was “polarizing the U.S. public by pitting the predominant political parties against one another.” If the bank’s lawyers are right, the plot was extraordinarily abstruse. In their telling, sophisticated operatives used their computer expertise to create a cryptic and hard-to-prove appearance of connection between a Russian bank and a marketing firm linked (but not closely linked) to Trump; they had the foresight to set up this hoax and carry it out months before the first news stories inquiring into Trump’s connections with Russia. Alfa Bank appears to believe that a computer scientist whom I spoke to for my piece in 2018, and identified as “Max,” helped to carry out the plot. In our interviews, he rejected the idea of falsified data, saying, “If we were going to lie, then we would have made up a much better story than this!” Max, who describes himself as a Republican, gave a strikingly different account of his motivations: he and a group of like-minded scientists had noticed the unusual traffic as they investigated whether Russian agents were trying to hack prominent Republicans, as they had hacked prominent Democrats.
Another computer scientist, who identified himself as “Tea Leaves,” gave similar interviews for a Slate story, from 2016, about the communications; Alfa Bank’s lawyers apparently believe that he is also among the alleged conspirators. To uncover the identities of Max and Tea Leaves, the lawyers have served subpoenas on many of the scientists who reviewed D.N.S. records for The New Yorker, including Steven Bellovin, of Columbia University; Jean Camp, of the University of Indiana; and Daniel Kahn Gillmor, of the A.C.L.U. Alfa Bank’s lawyers have indicated in court documents that they also intend to subpoena the records of the Democracy Integrity Project, a nonprofit run by Daniel Jones, a former investigator for the Senate Intelligence Committee who helped decipher the D.N.S. records.
The subpoenas demand access to the scientists’ computer data, phone logs, and e-mail records, along with any information they may have about Max or Tea Leaves. None of the scientists I interviewed in 2018 claimed to know the identities of the people who discovered the unusual communications; when I reached out to them recently, they declined to speak to me. But other computer-science experts told me that they were angry about the legal action. One suggested that Alfa Bank’s lawyers were mounting an assault on academic freedom. Another, Randy Bush, said, “They are trying to intimidate people.” Bush told me that he never closely studied the data and knows nothing about who found it.
Alfa Bank may also be using less formal methods to discover the identities of the people involved in the story. Last year, Daniel Hoffman, a former Moscow station chief for the C.I.A., requested a meeting with me, during which he asked me to introduce him to Max. Hoffman neglected to mention that he is a member of the advisory board for B.G.R., Alfa Bank’s lobbying firm in Washington. (Hoffman said later that he wanted to interview Max for a news story that he planned to write.) This year, Alfa Bank commissioned a New York-based production company to make a documentary film intended to “understand what really happened.” A researcher for the company asked me and Jones, the former Senate Intelligence Committee investigator, to talk about what we had learned. The documentary was never made.


newyorker--2020-10-08--Wall Street May Be Warming to the Possibility of a Biden Presidency

One interpretation is that the markets were reacting to yet another reversal on Trump ’ s part .
Just hours after publicly abandoning the bipartisan talks , he called on Democrats to pass some individual spending measures , including another bailout for the airlines and a twelve-hundred-dollar cash payment to low-income and middle-income Americans .
But this theory doesn ’ t account for the fact that many Wall Street analysts had already discounted the possibility of a big stimulus being passed before the election .
For months , it ’ s been clear that a significant number of Senate Republicans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and it never seemed likely that Mitch McConnell , the Senate Majority Leader , would agree to pass a broad spending bill with Democratic support .
When Trump called off the talks , he was bowing to this political reality .
So what was driving the market action on Wednesday ?
In the past few days , a raft of new state and national polls have indicated that Joe Biden is running well ahead of Trump .
If Biden goes on to win the White House , and the Democrats also gain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggests is a genuine possibility—a Biden Administration would almost certainly push through a big stimulus package , which would give a much-needed boost to the economy and corporate earnings , at least in 2021 .
“ I think that the market is finally working out the idea that a Democratic sweep is the best outcome for economic growth , certainly for next year , ” Ian Shepherdson , the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics , told me , after the stock market closed on Wednesday .
“ There will be more stimulus under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will be targeted stimulus .
And then , of course , you ’ ve got Biden ’ s Build Back Better thing , which is a multitrillion-dollar program .
The two things together are going to be far bigger than any possible tax increase.
” Other analysts agree that a Biden Administration , especially with a Democratic sweep , would have positive implications for the economy .
“ All else equal , such a blue wave would likely prompt us to upgrade our [ growth ] forecasts , ” Jan Hatzius , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Monday , in a letter to the bank ’ s clients .
“ The reason is that it would sharply raise the probability of a fiscal stimulus package of at least $ 2 trillion shortly after the presidential inauguration on January 20 , followed by longer-term spending increases on infrastructure , climate , health care and education that would at least match the long term tax increases on corporations and upper-income earners.
” The Goldman Sachs circular echoed an earlier analysis by Mark Zandi and Bernard Yaros , two economists at Moody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of different scenarios for the post-election period and concluded that the economic outlook “ is strongest under the scenario in which Biden and the Democrats sweep Congress and fully adopt their economic agenda.
” I spoke with Zandi on Wednesday , and he said that the precise size of a Biden stimulus package would likely depend on the makeup of Congress and the state of the economy after the Inauguration .
“ I think they ’ d get at least the $ 2.2 trillion that the Dems want now , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to flag , as I would expect , without additional support , in that kind of environment they could decide that we need a much bigger , more fulsome package ” —perhaps as large as three trillion dollars .
Even at $ 2.2 trillion , a Biden stimulus would amount to more than ten per cent of the G.D.P .
That would make it the second-largest stimulus in U.S. history , second only to the one Congress enacted earlier this year , in the CARES Act and other emergency-spending bills .
With interest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inflation rate very low , and plenty of spare capacity in the economy , an increase in federal spending of this magnitude would significantly raise output and employment so long as the pandemic was brought under control , Zandi argued .
“ If you get a vaccine , or whatever , and we are on the other side of that , and you throw in a three-trillion-dollar package , I think you get to full employment by spring of 2022 , instead of winter , 2023 , ” Zandi said .
“ That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stressed groups , and take the edge off the social unrest and the political discord.
” Of course , making economic projections is a risky proposition in any circumstance , let alone during a pandemic .
Given uncertainty about the path of the virus and other variables , including consumer psychology and the global economic outlook , actual economic outcomes are likely to differ significantly from any predictions that are made today .
At this stage , though , the most striking development is that Wall Street is taking seriously the prospect of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possibility of an end to political gridlock on Capitol Hill .
And the initial reaction has been positive .
“ What markets care about now is : Who is going to be most competent dealing with COVID and the aftermath , and who is going to offer the most stimulus ?
” Shepherdson said .
“ The bottom line is that House Democrats have passed a three-trillion-dollar stimulus , most of which I think will be enacted if we have a blue sweep.
” Between now and January , the stock market could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a Democrat-controlled Capitol Hill .
And the polls could still swing back toward Trump before November 3rd , in which case Wall Street would pay more attention to him again .
Right now , though , investors and analysts are starting to look beyond this Presidency and focus on the next one .
And some of them like what they see .
Read More About the 2020 Election • The fall and rise of Kamala Harris .
• When a sitting President threatens to delay a sacrosanct American ritual like an election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understand the path Donald Trump has taken to the 2020 election , look at what he has provided the executive class .
• What happens if Trump fights the election results ?
• The refusal by Mitch McConnell to rein in Trump is looking riskier than ever .
• Sign up for our election newsletter for insight and analysis from our reporters and columnists .

On Tuesday, Donald Trump called off negotiations between Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill over a big preëlection spending bill, which many economists view as essential to bolster the coronavirus-stricken economy. But, on Wednesday, which Trump spent tweeting while in the White House, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than five hundred points, its biggest jump since July. What’s going on?
One interpretation is that the markets were reacting to yet another reversal on Trump’s part. Just hours after publicly abandoning the bipartisan talks, he called on Democrats to pass some individual spending measures, including another bailout for the airlines and a twelve-hundred-dollar cash payment to low-income and middle-income Americans. But this theory doesn’t account for the fact that many Wall Street analysts had already discounted the possibility of a big stimulus being passed before the election. For months, it’s been clear that a significant number of Senate Republicans would refuse to support such a package, and it never seemed likely that Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, would agree to pass a broad spending bill with Democratic support. When Trump called off the talks, he was bowing to this political reality.
So what was driving the market action on Wednesday? In the past few days, a raft of new state and national polls have indicated that Joe Biden is running well ahead of Trump. If Biden goes on to win the White House, and the Democrats also gain control of the Senate—which the current polling suggests is a genuine possibility—a Biden Administration would almost certainly push through a big stimulus package, which would give a much-needed boost to the economy and corporate earnings, at least in 2021. “I think that the market is finally working out the idea that a Democratic sweep is the best outcome for economic growth, certainly for next year,” Ian Shepherdson, the chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, told me, after the stock market closed on Wednesday. “There will be more stimulus under Democrats than Republicans. I think it will be targeted stimulus. And then, of course, you’ve got Biden’s Build Back Better thing, which is a multitrillion-dollar program. The two things together are going to be far bigger than any possible tax increase.”
Other analysts agree that a Biden Administration, especially with a Democratic sweep, would have positive implications for the economy. “All else equal, such a blue wave would likely prompt us to upgrade our [growth] forecasts,” Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, wrote on Monday, in a letter to the bank’s clients. “The reason is that it would sharply raise the probability of a fiscal stimulus package of at least $2 trillion shortly after the presidential inauguration on January 20, followed by longer-term spending increases on infrastructure, climate, health care and education that would at least match the long term tax increases on corporations and upper-income earners.”
The Goldman Sachs circular echoed an earlier analysis by Mark Zandi and Bernard Yaros, two economists at Moody’s Analytics, which examined a number of different scenarios for the post-election period and concluded that the economic outlook “is strongest under the scenario in which Biden and the Democrats sweep Congress and fully adopt their economic agenda.” I spoke with Zandi on Wednesday, and he said that the precise size of a Biden stimulus package would likely depend on the makeup of Congress and the state of the economy after the Inauguration. “I think they’d get at least the $2.2 trillion that the Dems want now,” he said. “If the economy starts to flag, as I would expect, without additional support, in that kind of environment they could decide that we need a much bigger, more fulsome package”—perhaps as large as three trillion dollars.
Even at $2.2 trillion, a Biden stimulus would amount to more than ten per cent of the G.D.P. That would make it the second-largest stimulus in U.S. history, second only to the one Congress enacted earlier this year, in the CARES Act and other emergency-spending bills. With interest rates in a historic trough, the inflation rate very low, and plenty of spare capacity in the economy, an increase in federal spending of this magnitude would significantly raise output and employment so long as the pandemic was brought under control, Zandi argued. “If you get a vaccine, or whatever, and we are on the other side of that, and you throw in a three-trillion-dollar package, I think you get to full employment by spring of 2022, instead of winter, 2023,” Zandi said. “That would make a huge difference to very stressed groups, and take the edge off the social unrest and the political discord.”
Of course, making economic projections is a risky proposition in any circumstance, let alone during a pandemic. Given uncertainty about the path of the virus and other variables, including consumer psychology and the global economic outlook, actual economic outcomes are likely to differ significantly from any predictions that are made today. At this stage, though, the most striking development is that Wall Street is taking seriously the prospect of a Biden Administration, together with the possibility of an end to political gridlock on Capitol Hill. And the initial reaction has been positive. “What markets care about now is: Who is going to be most competent dealing with COVID and the aftermath, and who is going to offer the most stimulus?” Shepherdson said. “The bottom line is that House Democrats have passed a three-trillion-dollar stimulus, most of which I think will be enacted if we have a blue sweep.”
Between now and January, the stock market could have second thoughts about a Biden Administration and a Democrat-controlled Capitol Hill. And the polls could still swing back toward Trump before November 3rd, in which case Wall Street would pay more attention to him again. Right now, though, investors and analysts are starting to look beyond this Presidency and focus on the next one. And some of them like what they see.
Read More About the 2020 Election


newyorker--2020-10-08--How to Vote by Mail

How to Vote by Mail

We just want to officially state that “ voting by mail is easy !
” is what we would have said every election up till now .
This special year , we ’ ve designed a handy guide to help you participate in democracy via mail .
Step 1 : Fill in your absentee-ballot application .
You can access this on the Internet .
If you don ’ t have the Internet , congratulations !
It was a huge mistake and we all regret it .
Step 2 : Send in your absentee ballot application .
Previously , you would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but our boss ordered us to fill all the mailboxes in your neighborhood with Flintstones Vitamins .
So go to UPS and tell them that you want to send your application to your voting authority .
That ’ ll cost fifty-six dollars and it won ’ t get there till next Wednesday .
Decide against it .
There really should be some sort of affordable , public alternative for delivering parcels .
Step 3 :  Call your mom at home to see whether she can pick up your ballot .
Step 4 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she ’ s talking about Barb ?
Indulge her .
Say things like “ No .
Yeah .
Uh-huh .
Uh-huh .
No , right , that ’ s totally uncalled for .
Uh-huh .
Yeah .
Who does Barb think she is ?
No , you ’ re right .
Barb ’ s the best.
” Step 5 :  Mom ’ s got your ballot .
Ask her to mail it to you .
She says that she can , but it ’ ll take five months because they ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cars you power with your feet .
( Also , we postal workers are not allowed to wear shoes anymore , because our boss says , “ Being barefoot never stopped Fred and Barney from doing a good day ’ s work.
” Our boss learned all his business ideas at a weekend conference , in the nineties , where everyone did a ton of cocaine and watched the John Goodman/Rick Moranis “ Flintstones ” movie fifty-four times . )
Step 6 :  Mom says that she can FedEx your ballot , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it won ’ t get there till next Friday .
Ask Mom to pay for it .
Listen to Mom talk about Barb ’ s son , Freddie .
She says that he ’ s single .
And that he ’ s got his own company .
He started it with his friends .
They ’ re doing very well for themselves .
It ’ s something to do with consulting or something like that .
Tell your mom you ’ re an artist and that ’ s why you left and don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ your home town , dating a consultant .
Mom says that Barb ’ s son travels for work a lot .
Step 7 : Wait for the FedEx envelope to arrive .
Step 8 : Wonder whether you ’ re supposed to tip the FedEx driver .
Decide that you should , because of the pandemic .
Step 9 :  Leave for two seconds to go to the ATM .
Step 11 : Travel thirty blocks to the nearest FedEx office to retrieve your ballot .
Step 13 : Consider mailing it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our boss decided to replace half our workforce with robots wearing French-maid outfits .
That conference really awoke some kind of Hanna-Barbera thing in him .
Step 14 : Consider flying to your home town to hand-deliver the ballot .
Look up how much it would cost .
O.K.
, absolutely not .
How can they be charging so much in the middle of a pandemic ?
Step 15 :  Decide to mail yourself home .
We can ’ t lose your package if you are the package .
Step 16 : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Instead of a big box , you ’ ll have to mail yourself in an oversized “ pic-a-nic ” basket .
Our boss asks us to pronounce it like that .
Purchase a cartoonishly large picnic basket with a bow on it .
Step 17 : Don ’ t forget to buy stamps !
They all have Snagglepuss on them .
Remember Snagglepuss ?
Yeah , the pink lion .
Tiger ?
Liger ?
He ’ s on all the stamps now .
Step 18 :  Get in the enormous picnic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Don ’ t worry , the basket is full of liverwurst and some kind of biscuits that fill you with energy .
Step 19 :  You ’ ve been loaded onto a strange vehicle , maneuvered by a dastardly man and his laughing dog .
You travel for weeks in what seems like a series of wacky races across the nation .
Step 20 : After many days , the basket is finally opened .
You have arrived .
But this doesn ’ t look like your mom ’ s house .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s because it is .
Our boss made us relocate post offices to abandoned fairgrounds and old manors on the edges of towns .
Then , he asked us to dress up like spooky mummies to scare off anyone who wanted their mail .
And he would have gotten away with it , too , if it hadn ’ t been for Freddie and his friends and their dog that smelled the liverwurst !
They ’ ve rescued you .
He goes by Frederick now .
He ’ s kind of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ascot .

Hello, Citizen! It’s us, your friends at the United States Postal Service. You might have read the news about how our mail-sorting machines have been dismantled and how our boss replaced our mailbags with a “Flintstones”-style prehistoric pelican that carries your letters in its mouth pouch and says, “Eh, it’s a living,” every time we put a letter into its bill. And, don’t worry, they’re all true.
We just want to officially state that “voting by mail is easy!” is what we would have said every election up till now. This special year, we’ve designed a handy guide to help you participate in democracy via mail.
Step 1: Fill in your absentee-ballot application. You can access this on the Internet. If you don’t have the Internet, congratulations! It was a huge mistake and we all regret it.
Step 2: Send in your absentee ballot application. Previously, you would have done this through the mail, but our boss ordered us to fill all the mailboxes in your neighborhood with Flintstones Vitamins. So go to UPS and tell them that you want to send your application to your voting authority. That’ll cost fifty-six dollars, and it won’t get there till next Wednesday. Decide against it. There really should be some sort of affordable, public alternative for delivering parcels.
Step 3: Call your mom at home to see whether she can pick up your ballot.
Step 4: Chat with your mom. Now she’s talking about Barb? Indulge her. Say things like “No. Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. No, right, that’s totally uncalled for. Uh-huh. Yeah. Who does Barb think she is? No, you’re right. Barb’s the best.”
Step 5: Mom’s got your ballot. Ask her to mail it to you. She says that she can, but it’ll take five months because they’ve replaced all the U.S.P.S. trucks with cars you power with your feet. (Also, we postal workers are not allowed to wear shoes anymore, because our boss says, “Being barefoot never stopped Fred and Barney from doing a good day’s work.” Our boss learned all his business ideas at a weekend conference, in the nineties, where everyone did a ton of cocaine and watched the John Goodman/Rick Moranis “Flintstones” movie fifty-four times.)
Step 6: Mom says that she can FedEx your ballot, but it’s seventy-two dollars and it won’t get there till next Friday. Ask Mom to pay for it. Listen to Mom talk about Barb’s son, Freddie. She says that he’s single. And that he’s got his own company. He started it with his friends. They’re doing very well for themselves. It’s something to do with consulting or something like that. Tell your mom you’re an artist and that’s why you left and don’t want to be stuck in your home town, dating a consultant. Mom says that Barb’s son travels for work a lot.
Step 7: Wait for the FedEx envelope to arrive.
Step 8: Wonder whether you’re supposed to tip the FedEx driver. Decide that you should, because of the pandemic.
Step 9: Leave for two seconds to go to the ATM.
Step 10: Miss the delivery.
Step 11: Travel thirty blocks to the nearest FedEx office to retrieve your ballot.
Step 12: Fill out your ballot.
Step 13: Consider mailing it back, but bear in mind that our boss decided to replace half our workforce with robots wearing French-maid outfits. That conference really awoke some kind of Hanna-Barbera thing in him.
Step 14: Consider flying to your home town to hand-deliver the ballot. Look up how much it would cost. O.K., absolutely not. How can they be charging so much in the middle of a pandemic?
Step 15: Decide to mail yourself home. We can’t lose your package if you are the package.
Step 16: Go to your local post office. Instead of a big box, you’ll have to mail yourself in an oversized “pic-a-nic” basket. Our boss asks us to pronounce it like that. Purchase a cartoonishly large picnic basket with a bow on it.
Step 17: Don’t forget to buy stamps! They all have Snagglepuss on them. Remember Snagglepuss? Yeah, the pink lion. Tiger? Liger? He’s on all the stamps now.
Step 18: Get in the enormous picnic basket and wait to be mailed. Don’t worry, the basket is full of liverwurst and some kind of biscuits that fill you with energy.
Step 19: You’ve been loaded onto a strange vehicle, maneuvered by a dastardly man and his laughing dog. You travel for weeks in what seems like a series of wacky races across the nation.
Step 20: After many days, the basket is finally opened. You have arrived. But this doesn’t look like your mom’s house. It looks like a disused fairground. That’s because it is. Our boss made us relocate post offices to abandoned fairgrounds and old manors on the edges of towns. Then, he asked us to dress up like spooky mummies to scare off anyone who wanted their mail. And he would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for Freddie and his friends and their dog that smelled the liverwurst! They’ve rescued you. He goes by Frederick now. He’s kind of cute, even though he wears an ascot.