Airbrush

They were already graded by their college professors. The candidate selection panel search all the universities in the nation for the best and brightest based on their college grades in relevant subjects, like economics, political science, history, etc.

A large panel of experts should NOT have any control over the candidate pool. They only exercise authority by blindly selecting candidates based on grades. They don't know any personal details of the candidates. After selecting candidates the panel has no more connection to the schooling of candidates. Surveillance is important. Total transparency at every step of the selection process is recorded, archived, and available to the oversight committee and the general public. Everybody is aware that everything is recorded, every step of the process is well documented by various sources. I want my president to be smarter than I am and well educated in relevant subjects, not an ignorant con artist who gets power by telling people what they want to hear using clever sound bites and hand gestures.

There may be humans, but they may very likely be humans that survived a dark ages after any one of a number of great perils to humanity. They would have to develop technology all over again. If there was a great dying, most people knowledgeable in industry would be gone. Nobody could figure out how to make factories work, or generate power, and certainly not design and fabricate space craft. So how long would it take for humanity to emerge from a dark ages, from living in pre-industrial conditions, to restore technology? Maybe another thousand years? But by that time there could be another disaster, sending us back to pre-industrial conditions, AGAIN.

Not at all. The best candidates in the nation, who are objectively the best performers in college in relevant subjects, are INVITED to join Presidency School. If they have a history of strange or problematic behavior, they are not invited. They are not forced to join. Many would say no thanks. It pays well, so why would a gifted candidate say no? They can at least take advantage of a great education. After they are selected as promising candidates, based on objective measures of performance in relevant subjects, they are invited to go down the path towards presidency. If they run for president and lose, they may get a job in congress and run for president in the future. Simply WANTING to be president, is not qualification enough. Great deliberation would go into selecting the "panel of experts". The experts would not get to see the candidates, or know their gender, ethnicity, religion (or lack of), political persuasion, or anything that would skew the selection process. This is to get candidates only based on objective measure of the best grades in school, and lack of misbehavior. Back to impeaching Trump, does anyone think the fact Comey would NOT confront Trump and say what Trump was proposing "pledge of loyalty to Trump" was unacceptable and stomp out of the office and report Trump to his superior, was that a mistake? No, Comey did the right thing. As a good cop, Comey kept his opinion to himself, and allowed Trump to talk and further incriminate himself over the following months. If Comey had confronted Trump that way, then that issue would have been shut down, and Trump would have gotten away with it.

A panel of experts, who are selected democratically. Transparency and objectivity in selection criteria would be paramount.

He is not going to stop being delusional. His ignorance is from delusion. He lives by himself in Trump-la-la-land. He thinks he has the world all figured out, because the yes-people surrounding him always confirmed his view, or be fired. Then he is surprised, over and over again, that reality does not conform to his delusion. The presidency should not be a voluntary position. The best and brightest college grads, as determined by a special panel of experts, should be encouraged to join presidency school. Candidates are paid well and learn the subjects important to a good president, including economics, global and domestic politics, history, law, natural sciences, debate, (what other subjects?) etc. They are kept under constant surveillance while they attend presidency school, so the unfit candidates, wackos like Trump, would get weeded out. After they are well-educated, they can run for office.

Yes, friend, this finally looks terminal, but I also thought Trump would lose the election. That is how wrong I can be.

Good observation. I was waiting for the CNN reporters to notice that after the hearing, since McCain was the LAST one to question Comey. The contortions McCain went through to come to the conclusion there was a "double standard" for Trump and Clinton seemed absurd. McCain was acting rather senile, but I had great hopes for him to contribute to the hearing. This hearing is at least another "cut" of the thousand cuts, a very big cut, it may take to impeach Trump and rid the USA and the world of this nightmare.

The way to make interstellar travel possible is by getting our act together and controlling population growth. Anything that can rob us of technology, and tie our hands, nuclear war or even conventional wars between nations, becomes more likely and more devastating the larger the populations are. Population magnifies everything: global warming and therefore reasons for nuclear war, even wars over water. The path to the stars is for us to not do anything to add to our natural perils (asteroids and supervolcanos) and harm our environment.

Yes, he didn't always get his way, not during his 4-year-confinement in military academy. Only before and forever after. Was that military academy for bad little rich boys? If they misbehave they get a lecture and a slap on the wrist? Or take a lap around the track and down for 10 pushups? He did well in military school and rose to the rank of captain. ​"He attended the Kew-Forest School from kindergarten through seventh grade. At age 13, Trump's parents enrolled him in the New York Military Academy, after discovering Donald made frequent trips into Manhattan without permission.[14][15]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump Take a look in this book below, especially interesting starting on page 31 in the chapter of his early life. "By his own account, Trump's primary focus in elementary school was "creating mischief, because for some reason I liked to stir things up and I liked to test people....It wasn't malicious so much as it was aggressive" Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President https://books.google.com/books?id=x2jUDQAAQBAJ

Excellent points! Point by point, his tweets are a continuously updated roadmap to Trump's mind. It is like a diary of evidence AGAINST him. (Keep tweeting Donald!). It helps him in getting his message out to the world instantly, but it hurts him in that it provides evidence for his impeachment. About his covfefe tweet, it's not senile dementia, probably something like he was tweeting and had to go to the bathroom and accidentally brushed those keys before walking away. Or he got distracted by a story on Fox News and interrupted his tweet. Then he forgot about it until the next day. How does twitter work? If you stop typing and don't send it, and you walk away but forget you were tweeting, does the message get sent after a long time? What is weird, again, is Trump turned it into a joke and told us to "Enjoy" his baffling tweet. Trump's strange behavior reminds me of an old man who doesn't care what people think. He has always done whatever the hell he pleased. Remember he was a bad little boy who got sent to military academy high school by his dad for discipline. Combine that with his off-the-scale narcissism, which is because of the bubble of privilege he lived his entire life. He always got his way. That is hard to imagine for us ordinary people. Everyone is a little delusional in SOME ways, myself included. But Trump's ability to self-delude is off the scale. He was surprised his travel ban would be halted in court. He was surprised the democrats would complain about the firing of Comey. He was surprised that replacing Obamacare would be difficult. The list of his SURPRISE goes on and on. He reminds me of Hitler in his bunker in 1945, taking over command from his generals because he thought he could do better than they did. Then he would putter around the models of the great city he was planning to build. Yes, he would love to be a dictator. Just don't call it that. Call it "unlimited powers for a really great guy, a real WINNER".

Human history is like the stock market, ups and downs, with dark ages, but generally a little more up than down overall. We have a window of maybe a few hundred years before we inevitably fall on our knees again. Will we achieve interstellar travel before our next crash? My feeling is we may be able to send probes out to the stars, but probably never be able to send people to another Earth, and maybe not even able to receive the transmission from such probes, when they reach other Earths, because we are too busy surviving a post-apocalyptic world.

The impeachment of Trump will be a slow death of a "thousand cuts". There will be a tipping point when enough Trump followers will become disillusioned, republicans turn against him with impeachment, then Trump resigns in a spectacular rage, like a child having a temper tantrum. Today the latest cut for Trump is his withdrawal from the Paris climate deal. I would like to hear his reasons for thinking it is unfair to the USA. Before that was his "Covfefe" tweet, which I believe may be attributed to Trump's senile dimentia, which will probably become more visible over time, as the stress from constant negative media feedback wears out the 70-year-old. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/31/what-is-covfefe-donald-trump-baffles-twitter-post

I still believe it is worthwhile for humans to TRY to explore beyond the solar system. For many decades to come, all we can know is from newer, better telescopes, such as TESS and the James Webb telescopes. Then probably a few generations of telescopes after that. Then in a hundred years or so, people may start to think about getting a close up look at a large number of nearby Earth-like planets. New, unimagined propulsion methods may be able to accelerate a multitude of small probes to a significant fraction of light speed. These probes that survive the voyage of 50 years or so would probably be fly-by missions taking lots of photos and scanning to send the info back to Earth, which would take maybe another 10 or 20 years for the info to travel at light speed home, maybe by relay as mentioned above. Could we be receiving the info within a few hundred years from now? We may survive as a species for thousands of years, but humans are great at shooting themselves in the foot, e.g. WW1 and WW2. Or we can be sent back to a pre-industrial age by solar flare, and a "Waterworld" due to global warming. At that time a "space program" would be impossible.

You are making a false equivalence between the moral character of a totalitarian regime of Putin, and the moral character of the USA liberal democracy. These systems of government are not comparable.

The question is how many hundreds of years can humanity prosper, develop better technology, and avoid self-destruction, or asteroid impact, supervolcano, or other extinction level event, or even a solar event that returns us to pre-industrial times, to agriculture for survival. Forget about any missions to the stars for hundreds of years. How long can we avoid such a major event?

I read parts of your article and it is interesting. HUMAN interstellar travel is a long way off, but sending small probes at high speeds to many nearby stars with Earth-like planets is not so far-fetched. Problem is it may be hundreds of years before we get news back from such probes. But isn't it worth it?

You can listen to Jared on the YouTube below. He starts speaking at about 2:50 into the video and speaks for about 3 minutes. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=jared+kushner+voice&&view=detail&mid=129FACF5053C23545A2F129FACF5053C23545A2F&rvsmid=E2FF558C74940DAC9DE7E2FF558C74940DAC9DE7&fsscr=0&FORM=VDRVRV He has a mellow, soft-spoken, articulate speaking style. He speaks fast, but he is talking real estate, his main work experience, not domestic and global politics. Below is from Wikipedia. Just before he entered Harvard, his dad donated $2.5 million to the university. "Jared Kushner graduated from.... high school in 1999. According to a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, he was an honors student and a member of the debate, hockey, and basketball teams.[11] Former school officials described him as a less than stellar student.[12] In 1998 [his father Charles Kushner] pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University.[13].....Kushner matriculated at Harvard College in 1999......and graduated from Harvard in 2003 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Kushner

Jared, not Jarod. Thanks. He is "senior advisor" to Trump in the manner as helper to a very needy senior citizen. Grandpa appreciates help with the new technology. But both of them wonder how the hell to make the White House functional?

I watch many hours of cable news everyday and have heard in the news from the White House many times that Jarod Kushner is ready and willing to testify about his issues with Russia. Great! When and with whom? This is from a guy who is very, very careful to not allow his voice to be heard by the public. All the public gets is seeing his pretty baby face smiling in every political meeting of significance. Like some kind of sneaky antichrist in training, Trump's loyal apprentice or "senior advisor"?

Has anyone ever heard the sound of Jarod Kushner's voice? He is probably the most senior advisor to Trump, as son-in-law. And his voice has never been heard in the media, unless you go searching the internet for him saying anything and I did find him speaking in 2015 at "MAS 2015 - Growing the Innovation Economy" on Youtube. Listen to him, does he sound boring or what? https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=jared+kushner+voice&&view=detail&mid=129FACF5053C23545A2F129FACF5053C23545A2F&rvsmid=E2FF558C74940DAC9DE7E2FF558C74940DAC9DE7&fsscr=0&FORM=VDRVRV Why does he always avoid being heard? It makes him look sneaky. And now the possibility of him trying to set up a back channel with Moscow? But don't forget that if it was NOT for the back channel between JF Kennedy and Khrushchev the Cuban Missile Crisis may have accelerated to WWIII. So it's not so bad right? What else do we need to know about Kushner? Trump obviously sees himself in Jarod since they have similar upbringings, they both inherited real estate empires. And Kushner is married to Trump's favorite daughter-wife, Ivanka, whom Trump joked about on Wendy Williams in 2013 as having sex in common with his daughter. When Ivanka heard him say it she responded by laughing, not shock or indignation! That is very telling. http://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/video/donald-trump-once-joked-he-and-ivanka-have-sex-in-common/vp-AAjrMXI

Absence of evidence means any evidence has been appropriated by the investigations and is not available to us. Will ALL the evidence EVER be available to the public? Probably not, but maybe some of it will be revealed, AFTER the investigations reach conclusions. Will the Trump administration continue to leak on the scale we have seen?

Breaking news, Jarod Kushner wanted a secret communication channel with Kremlin, according to Russian ambassador. "Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports." https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-ambassador-told-moscow-that-kushner-wanted-secret-communications-channel-with-kremlin/2017/05/26/520a14b4-422d-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html?utm_term=.83e5c496eb2c If this is true, add it to the list of reasons for impeachment, another self-inflicted wound.

I thought that a merger between a white dwarf and another star produces a type Ia supernova. "There are several means by which a supernova of this type can form, but they share a common underlying mechanism. If a carbon-oxygen[nb 2]white dwarf accreted enough matter to reach the Chandrasekhar limit of about 1.44 solar masses (M☉)[54] (for a non-rotating star), it would no longer be able to support the bulk of its mass through electron degeneracy pressure[55][56] and would begin to collapse....Within a few seconds, a substantial fraction of the matter in the white dwarf undergoes nuclear fusion, releasing enough energy (1–7044200000000000000♠2×1044J)[58] to unbind the star in a supernova.[59] An outwardly expanding shock wave is generated, with matter reaching velocities on the order of 5,000–20,000 km/s, or roughly 3% of the speed of light." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova#Normal_Type_Ia

In case Trump gets impeached, here is the order of succession: Pence, Paul Ryan, Orin Hatch, Rex Tillerson, Steven Mnuchin, James Mattis, Jeff Sessions, Ryan Zinke, Sonny Perdue, Wilbur Ross Even Ann Coulter has lost confidence in Trump. "Ann Coulter indicated on Sunday that she was poised to give up her support for the president, even before The Washington Post reported that he had leaked classified information to Russian officials. “I think everyone who voted for him knew his personality was grotesque, it was the issues,” she told The Daily Caller. “Boy, things don’t look good,” she said." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/coulter-disappointment-donald-trump_us_591a4014e4b07d5f6ba578e4?iq&ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009&utm_source=zergnet.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_1709553&ncid=txtlnkusaolp00001376