Many people are looking at the fiasco that the Republican Party has become and are thinking that it is likely to die. I certainly agree that it probably should die, but the circumstances do not at all resemble the one time such a thing happened before, and I don't quite see how they can get there.
James Buchanan was the last Whig to be elected president, in 1856. He was an ineffectual compromise leader, and he interfered with the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case to get a decision which made just about everybody extremely angry. The abolition vs slavery tensions were high and Buchanan and his party fanned the flames. The Republicans, supporting abolition and union, were able to capture a lot of the liberals who had been Whigs, and there were a total of four major candidates for President in 1860. Lincoln won the most votes, at 39.8%, and John Bell, the nominee of what was left of the Whigs, who now called themselves the "Constitutional Union Party", got 12.6% of the votes. The Democrats were split into southern and northern, who got 18.1% and 29.5% respectively. Lincoln's famous nemesis, Stephen Douglas, represented the Northern Ds. Had the D's remained united, their candidate would have won the election, but the issue that divided them was the central one of the campaign.
The relevant points of this history for the present election are two: Both parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, were irredeemably divided. This meant that it was possible to win with a plurality without having a majority. (Demographics also meant that the second place party in votes, the Northern Democrats, received the fewest Electors, winning just one state.) This sort of four way split is entirely possible in the 2016 election. The second point was that the moribund party, the liberal Whigs, had a natural, popular and progressive successor, the Republicans, who effectively replaced them. This has no parallel in the present election. The heirs of the name (but none of the policies) of the Republican party are split into 2 groups: Trump enthusiasts and "Establishment" Republicans. Neither group is going to move wholesale to a party or candidate that is not fundamentally whackadoodle conservative. Trump's voters are unlikely to abandon him for anyone, and the establishment is faced with putting up a more acceptable candidate, who will be more conservative than Trump but not as hated as Cruz, or bowing to the inevitable and voting for Trump.
The more rational conservative alternative is the Libertarian candidate, Ron Johnson, who is benefiting greatly by the madness that has gripped the Republican Party.
The real third party proposals are all coming from the left. Bernie earned nearly as many delegates in the primaries and caucuses as Hillary and many of his fans are not quitting, saying they will vote for him or Green candidate Jill Stein. Bernie himself seems to be signalling that he will support Hillary, saying that he will work his heart out to prevent Trump from winning, but still holding out for platform planks.
So it looks like we will have 5 "real" candidates:
Donald Trump
Hillary Clinton
Ron Johnson
Jill Stein
An Establishment Republican to be named later.
If the Rs name a credible person for this last role, that person and Trump will split about 48% of the votes, and Johnson will get 1-3%. If they do not, Trump will get under 40% and Johnson will get 8-10%.
Many people will write in Bernie, but I don't think his name will be on any state ballots, so his votes will be well under 1%. He'll work for Clinton, but how enthusiastic he will be and how many of his voters will vote for her depends upon what happens in the next few weeks. The Bernie Bros are remarkably intransigent and while they may be right on the issues, it will be a disaster if they split non-wingnut vote. If they move wholeheartedly to Stein, she'll get about 10% of the votes and Hillary will get about 40%.
So there's a scenario where it's a close race between Trump and Hillary: if the Rs stay with Trump and too many progressives go to Stein.
This is dangerous. It is possible that the progressive agenda will survive a Trump victory, in a sort of Kropotinist way (i.e., Trump will make things so bad that the progressives win next time), but it's important to realize that Trump is an authoritarian who doesn't believe in civil discourse and the rule of law, and is likely to employ repressive measures to exterminate potential rival groups. If he wins, the next election may be a one candidate referendum, or it may be during World War III.
So: if you live in a state which is either hard blue or hard red: California, Connecticut, Idaho, Utah, Alabama, etc., go ahead and vote your heart. I wish I could do the same thing...I'd vote for Bernie or Jill in a flash. The electoral college gives you that option. But Washington is too close to being a swing state. Even though Hillary is at best my third choice, I must vote for the candidate that is most likely to defeat Trump.
So what does this have to do with third parties? The only way a third party can win if it is replacing an existing party all at once. Nobody is suggesting that the Ds are moribund, and while the Rs are doing a wonderful job of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in this election, only the Trumpsters are likely to form a new party--and they are now running the old one. We can hope that Trump's success will split the conservatives and shine light on the complete moral and intellectual bankruptcy of today's Republican party and their corporate masters, but I won't hold my breath.
18 June 2016
09 June 2016
Trump the Troll, part III
Trump has been telling us that the judge in his Trump University fraud case, Gonzalo Curiel, is a Mexican and thereby should not be allowed to judge his case. He points out how the judge has repeatedly ruled against him and that he's building a wall to keep Mexicans out. He won't quite be explicit why that would somehow disqualify him, but he's insistent.
This is obviously racist but it's something much worse. It's an attempt to intimidate the judge and tamper with the jury pool.
First, about the judge. Curiel was born in a suburb of Chicago, just across the state line in Indiana, and has a solid record as a judge. He was involved in several cases against Mexican drug cartels and was repeatedly threatened, at least one time that the FBI took pretty seriously and put him under protection for a while. His parents were from Mexico but he's shown no evidence at all of judicial bias or impropriety, and is by any reasonable standard something of a hero.
It occurs to me that the fraud case may be the explanation of Trump's inexplicable run. Trump knows virtually nothing about politics or the obligations of the office he's running for, and shows no real interest in it, other than wanting to have it. But he's a gifted pitchman and is able to get lots of naifs to eat up his every word. Nearly every day he says something that would end the career of any ordinary politician. But Trump is a TV star and has his name on a lot of real estate, which apparently is sufficient for a lot of voters.
It was probably a little over a year ago that it became obvious to Trump that the government's case that he'd committed fraud was pretty solid and that he was facing dozens or even hundreds of counts of fraud, each one of which could earn him up to a year in prison. He turns 70 next week and and is unlikely to be out of prison until he's well into his 80s. His only real chance is to undermine the process somehow--intimidate the judge or contaminate the jury pool or something. Maybe he can get a mistrial. But an ordinary hyper-rich person trying to screw with the judiciary in this way would not go over well and would probably earn him extra prison time. But by an interesting coincidence, more than a dozen people had declared that they were running for the republican presidential nomination. What if Donald joined them and made a lot of noise, especially horrible things about Mexican immigrants. What better pulpit to do things that would trigger a mistrial?
I doubt he ever thought his candidacy would get as far as it has. He knows he doesn't have the aptitude to be president and has said there are lots of parts of the job that he doesn't want to do. Since he was self funding and got a lot of free media, he knew he could stay in until the convention when his anti-Curiel schtick would be most effective, but he wouldn't have to actually run in the national. So he set about submarining his candidacy by saying horrible things. Bizarrely, his fans loved it. Maybe he could actually win. Then, they couldn't try him before impeaching him first, and he could make a deal with his VP to pardon him as soon as he left office, which would end the case. It's not quite clear how Judge Curiel is going to be able to try one of the candidates during the election.
This is obviously speculation...I have no evidence. But it fits the facts at hand.
This is obviously racist but it's something much worse. It's an attempt to intimidate the judge and tamper with the jury pool.
First, about the judge. Curiel was born in a suburb of Chicago, just across the state line in Indiana, and has a solid record as a judge. He was involved in several cases against Mexican drug cartels and was repeatedly threatened, at least one time that the FBI took pretty seriously and put him under protection for a while. His parents were from Mexico but he's shown no evidence at all of judicial bias or impropriety, and is by any reasonable standard something of a hero.
It occurs to me that the fraud case may be the explanation of Trump's inexplicable run. Trump knows virtually nothing about politics or the obligations of the office he's running for, and shows no real interest in it, other than wanting to have it. But he's a gifted pitchman and is able to get lots of naifs to eat up his every word. Nearly every day he says something that would end the career of any ordinary politician. But Trump is a TV star and has his name on a lot of real estate, which apparently is sufficient for a lot of voters.
It was probably a little over a year ago that it became obvious to Trump that the government's case that he'd committed fraud was pretty solid and that he was facing dozens or even hundreds of counts of fraud, each one of which could earn him up to a year in prison. He turns 70 next week and and is unlikely to be out of prison until he's well into his 80s. His only real chance is to undermine the process somehow--intimidate the judge or contaminate the jury pool or something. Maybe he can get a mistrial. But an ordinary hyper-rich person trying to screw with the judiciary in this way would not go over well and would probably earn him extra prison time. But by an interesting coincidence, more than a dozen people had declared that they were running for the republican presidential nomination. What if Donald joined them and made a lot of noise, especially horrible things about Mexican immigrants. What better pulpit to do things that would trigger a mistrial?
I doubt he ever thought his candidacy would get as far as it has. He knows he doesn't have the aptitude to be president and has said there are lots of parts of the job that he doesn't want to do. Since he was self funding and got a lot of free media, he knew he could stay in until the convention when his anti-Curiel schtick would be most effective, but he wouldn't have to actually run in the national. So he set about submarining his candidacy by saying horrible things. Bizarrely, his fans loved it. Maybe he could actually win. Then, they couldn't try him before impeaching him first, and he could make a deal with his VP to pardon him as soon as he left office, which would end the case. It's not quite clear how Judge Curiel is going to be able to try one of the candidates during the election.
This is obviously speculation...I have no evidence. But it fits the facts at hand.
02 June 2016
The Third Commandment
Pennsylvania Representative Brian Sims observes that: "On the list of things that actually stop shootings in this country, I'm
going to put Prayer somewhere down around pencil shavings and Ovaltine." He later apologized to Ovaltine. I think he's still giving prayer too much credit.
A lot of people think that Prayer does no harm, and it might do good. God, after all, might be listening. Of course if he believed that gun violence was something worth doing something about and had the power to do something, why would he need the prayer? Is He such a jerk that he'll let thousands of innocents die each year and won't do anything about it unless we pray even more?
But of course it does do harm. The idea that God responds to your prayers is an example of a gambling fallacy known as the hot-hand fallacy. If your prayer works once or twice, a lot of people think that "luck is on their side", when really, it was something else...possibly random chance. But it really discredits the hard work you might have put in to develop your skill at shooting the basketball, and it especially discredits the hard work your opponent did. Perhaps most dangerous is that it might suck you into believing that the one-armed bandit is on your side. Nearly all gambling is designed so that whether you win or lose is completely unrelated to how it went last time, and outfits like the Nevada Gaming Commission work hard to make sure this is really the case. (Billiards and horse racing are exceptions, and to some extent counting cards in blackjack, but such exceptions are rare).
Moses understood this. He gave us the third commandment, about not taking the Lord's name in vain. This has nothing to do with offensive language. If you think God might actually damn someone because you asked, if you think the reason you scored the touchdown or won the roulette roll is that you been praying for it, then you've implicitly decided that God is playing favorites and that you've been picked. You are taking the Lord's name--and your whole relationship with Him--in vain. The next step is thinking that prayer gives you special privileges: that because you pray a lot, it's ok to shoot other people, for example, or it's ok to not put in your fair share of the payment at dinner.
Prayer gives a lot of people solace. If you spend some time, at the end of the day for example, thinking about your goals and what you've done towards or against them that day, it's potentially productive. It doesn't matter if the abstraction you're talking to in your mind is God or a dead ancestor or something else, what matters is that you're thinking about this stuff, and trying to make yourself better. Belief in yourself is helpful. Believing that God might step in against shootings or to help you win the game or that promotion is taking the Lord's name in vain.
A lot of people think that Prayer does no harm, and it might do good. God, after all, might be listening. Of course if he believed that gun violence was something worth doing something about and had the power to do something, why would he need the prayer? Is He such a jerk that he'll let thousands of innocents die each year and won't do anything about it unless we pray even more?
But of course it does do harm. The idea that God responds to your prayers is an example of a gambling fallacy known as the hot-hand fallacy. If your prayer works once or twice, a lot of people think that "luck is on their side", when really, it was something else...possibly random chance. But it really discredits the hard work you might have put in to develop your skill at shooting the basketball, and it especially discredits the hard work your opponent did. Perhaps most dangerous is that it might suck you into believing that the one-armed bandit is on your side. Nearly all gambling is designed so that whether you win or lose is completely unrelated to how it went last time, and outfits like the Nevada Gaming Commission work hard to make sure this is really the case. (Billiards and horse racing are exceptions, and to some extent counting cards in blackjack, but such exceptions are rare).
Moses understood this. He gave us the third commandment, about not taking the Lord's name in vain. This has nothing to do with offensive language. If you think God might actually damn someone because you asked, if you think the reason you scored the touchdown or won the roulette roll is that you been praying for it, then you've implicitly decided that God is playing favorites and that you've been picked. You are taking the Lord's name--and your whole relationship with Him--in vain. The next step is thinking that prayer gives you special privileges: that because you pray a lot, it's ok to shoot other people, for example, or it's ok to not put in your fair share of the payment at dinner.
Prayer gives a lot of people solace. If you spend some time, at the end of the day for example, thinking about your goals and what you've done towards or against them that day, it's potentially productive. It doesn't matter if the abstraction you're talking to in your mind is God or a dead ancestor or something else, what matters is that you're thinking about this stuff, and trying to make yourself better. Belief in yourself is helpful. Believing that God might step in against shootings or to help you win the game or that promotion is taking the Lord's name in vain.
The Worst President
America has had a few great presidents: the four guys on Mt Rushmore, plus, I would argue, FDR. But it has had a lot of really, really bad ones. In no particular order:
Warren Harding: Pushed for the deregulation that led to the bank runs and stock market collapse of 1929, triggering the Great Depression. He was involved in a major corruption scandal involving oil companies, Teapot Dome, but he died before impeachment proceedings could be begun.
James Buchanan: Elected amid the strife of the movement to abolish slavery, he was a political weakling and in attempting to take a balanced position, wound up exacerbating tensions. The Civil War would have happened eventually, but Buchanan deserves credit for making it worse.
Herbert Hoover: Had he not inherited an unstable financial bubble from his predecessors Harding and Coolidge, we'd regard him as a merely middling president. But when, amid the dust bowl, the stock market collapsed, he reacted precisely wrong, implementing extensive austerity and using weapons against veterans marching to ask for food to feet their hungry families. Had he given the veterans what they wanted and nationalized the panicking banks, it would have been much less severe than it was.
Andrew Jackson: The "Trail of Tears", the brutal removal of native Americans from most of the eastern part of the country, is the worst, but there are lots more. He was pro-slavery. He was among our worst "gold bugs": he fought the adoption of paper currency. It is particularly ironic that his image has been on the $20 bill for a long time...
Andrew Johnson: he handled reconstruction very badly, and created anger both north and south. Like Clinton's, his impeachment was mostly partisan and is not really a knock on the guy.
Zachary Taylor: Hero of the Mexican war, both parties recruited him, but the Whigs got him. His weird outsider appeal and popular acclaim gave him political traction that he didn't deserve, but he proved completely incompetent. He deserves a lot of credit for setting up the circumstances that caused the civil war, and even more credit for destroying the Whig party.
Ronald Reagan: His incessant saber rattling extended the cold war 5 or 6 years and made the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union much worse than it needed to be. Iran Contra--not the worst thing he did by any means, but it was an act of high treason, deserving of impeachment and execution. The worst thing he did though was the undermining of the bank, business, environmental and other regulation, and the deliberate sabotaging of the unions and systems of public infrastructure. For all his saber rattling, Reagan set about destroying the infrastructure and industrial base that won World War II.
George W Bush: Our most incompetent and corrupt president. Rejected repeated warnings that terrorists were looking to attack, and when it came, used the attack for crassly partisan purposes. The first year of the Afghan war that ensued showed how skillful the CIA and special forces can be when they are allowed to be and how terribly impossible Afghanistan is to govern, especially from afar. He should have quit after a year instead of getting involved in the same quagmire as the Soviet Union had 20 years earlier. It makes it clear why a series of surgical strikes and indirect support, with clear commitment to not get directly involved, as was done in Kosovo, Libya and Syria, is so much more effective over the long term, although it clearly doesn't always work either. Instead, he diluted the forces in Afganistan and falsified evidence that Iraq had been involved in 9-11, and attacked a country that had been doing good work as a moderating influence in the middle east. What he got for his trouble were 5000 American dead (more if you count contractors), tens of thousands of maimed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, and a determined terrorist insurgency that is very much scarier than anything that existed before in the middle east. Never before have terrorists been even slightly competent--their few successes have mostly been luck. Daesh is something different. Torture, spying on Americans, forcing Americans to spy on their fellow citizens, stacking the Supreme Court with pro-corruption justices and more. This man and several of his inner circle should be in small concrete boxes in Belgium for the rest of their lives.
Richard Nixon: He sabotaged negotiations that would have ended the Vietnam war in 1968 for crassly partisan purposes. He naively gave full-throated support to Israel during and after the Yom Kippur war of 1974, which provoked Arab dominated OPEC to sharply reduce US oil supplies, provoking a very severe recession. His responses to the recession were just as bad, including price controls. The recession turned to inflation and went on at some level for 8 years. To try to defend against this, he and his proxies (in particular GHW Bush) put a lot of effort into strengthening relations with Saudi Arabia, for which we would pay a price later. Like Reagan, the offense that almost got him impeached was relatively minor: When some of his henchmen were caught breaking into the office of the DNC in order to dig up political intelligence, he attempted to cover it up. It turned out that this group had been doing lots of other dirty tricks at Nixon's behest.
Hiram Ulysses Simpson Grant. A brilliant general, but too much of a peacemaker. He surrounded himself with what proved to be crooks and incompetents, although there's little suggestion that he himself was a crook.
Chester A. Arthur: a Political sidekick and gofer, he was nominated for VP as a political sop for his boss, Roscoe Conkling. When Garfield was murdered by a deranged person and Arthur was elevated to the presidency, he proved relatively inactive and ineffectual, but that made him popular.
Not on this list:
Obama has been one of our very best presidents, not quite deserving of Mt Rushmore but has achieved a lot despite the most intransigent, malicious and destructive opposition since the civil war. Mitch McConnell has almost as much power as the president and he has used it almost entirely for evil.
Clinton was an above average president who held office during the rise of Newt Gingrich. His impeachment was for trivia and the American people knew that and repudiated the Rs for it.
Carter was an above average president who had the bad luck to inherit Nixon's recession and Eisenhower's Iran relationship. He was in every possible way a better president than Reagan.
Had he reacted better to the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, LBJ could have been a great president: the Great Society and Civil Rights laws were real steps forward. The Bush Supreme Court has done a lot of damage to both. LBJ was terrified that a considered response to what proved to be an imaginary attack would give the White House to Goldwater, which almost certainly would have ended in a nuclear holocaust.
Warren Harding: Pushed for the deregulation that led to the bank runs and stock market collapse of 1929, triggering the Great Depression. He was involved in a major corruption scandal involving oil companies, Teapot Dome, but he died before impeachment proceedings could be begun.
James Buchanan: Elected amid the strife of the movement to abolish slavery, he was a political weakling and in attempting to take a balanced position, wound up exacerbating tensions. The Civil War would have happened eventually, but Buchanan deserves credit for making it worse.
Herbert Hoover: Had he not inherited an unstable financial bubble from his predecessors Harding and Coolidge, we'd regard him as a merely middling president. But when, amid the dust bowl, the stock market collapsed, he reacted precisely wrong, implementing extensive austerity and using weapons against veterans marching to ask for food to feet their hungry families. Had he given the veterans what they wanted and nationalized the panicking banks, it would have been much less severe than it was.
Andrew Jackson: The "Trail of Tears", the brutal removal of native Americans from most of the eastern part of the country, is the worst, but there are lots more. He was pro-slavery. He was among our worst "gold bugs": he fought the adoption of paper currency. It is particularly ironic that his image has been on the $20 bill for a long time...
Andrew Johnson: he handled reconstruction very badly, and created anger both north and south. Like Clinton's, his impeachment was mostly partisan and is not really a knock on the guy.
Zachary Taylor: Hero of the Mexican war, both parties recruited him, but the Whigs got him. His weird outsider appeal and popular acclaim gave him political traction that he didn't deserve, but he proved completely incompetent. He deserves a lot of credit for setting up the circumstances that caused the civil war, and even more credit for destroying the Whig party.
Ronald Reagan: His incessant saber rattling extended the cold war 5 or 6 years and made the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union much worse than it needed to be. Iran Contra--not the worst thing he did by any means, but it was an act of high treason, deserving of impeachment and execution. The worst thing he did though was the undermining of the bank, business, environmental and other regulation, and the deliberate sabotaging of the unions and systems of public infrastructure. For all his saber rattling, Reagan set about destroying the infrastructure and industrial base that won World War II.
George W Bush: Our most incompetent and corrupt president. Rejected repeated warnings that terrorists were looking to attack, and when it came, used the attack for crassly partisan purposes. The first year of the Afghan war that ensued showed how skillful the CIA and special forces can be when they are allowed to be and how terribly impossible Afghanistan is to govern, especially from afar. He should have quit after a year instead of getting involved in the same quagmire as the Soviet Union had 20 years earlier. It makes it clear why a series of surgical strikes and indirect support, with clear commitment to not get directly involved, as was done in Kosovo, Libya and Syria, is so much more effective over the long term, although it clearly doesn't always work either. Instead, he diluted the forces in Afganistan and falsified evidence that Iraq had been involved in 9-11, and attacked a country that had been doing good work as a moderating influence in the middle east. What he got for his trouble were 5000 American dead (more if you count contractors), tens of thousands of maimed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, and a determined terrorist insurgency that is very much scarier than anything that existed before in the middle east. Never before have terrorists been even slightly competent--their few successes have mostly been luck. Daesh is something different. Torture, spying on Americans, forcing Americans to spy on their fellow citizens, stacking the Supreme Court with pro-corruption justices and more. This man and several of his inner circle should be in small concrete boxes in Belgium for the rest of their lives.
Richard Nixon: He sabotaged negotiations that would have ended the Vietnam war in 1968 for crassly partisan purposes. He naively gave full-throated support to Israel during and after the Yom Kippur war of 1974, which provoked Arab dominated OPEC to sharply reduce US oil supplies, provoking a very severe recession. His responses to the recession were just as bad, including price controls. The recession turned to inflation and went on at some level for 8 years. To try to defend against this, he and his proxies (in particular GHW Bush) put a lot of effort into strengthening relations with Saudi Arabia, for which we would pay a price later. Like Reagan, the offense that almost got him impeached was relatively minor: When some of his henchmen were caught breaking into the office of the DNC in order to dig up political intelligence, he attempted to cover it up. It turned out that this group had been doing lots of other dirty tricks at Nixon's behest.
Hiram Ulysses Simpson Grant. A brilliant general, but too much of a peacemaker. He surrounded himself with what proved to be crooks and incompetents, although there's little suggestion that he himself was a crook.
Chester A. Arthur: a Political sidekick and gofer, he was nominated for VP as a political sop for his boss, Roscoe Conkling. When Garfield was murdered by a deranged person and Arthur was elevated to the presidency, he proved relatively inactive and ineffectual, but that made him popular.
Not on this list:
Obama has been one of our very best presidents, not quite deserving of Mt Rushmore but has achieved a lot despite the most intransigent, malicious and destructive opposition since the civil war. Mitch McConnell has almost as much power as the president and he has used it almost entirely for evil.
Clinton was an above average president who held office during the rise of Newt Gingrich. His impeachment was for trivia and the American people knew that and repudiated the Rs for it.
Carter was an above average president who had the bad luck to inherit Nixon's recession and Eisenhower's Iran relationship. He was in every possible way a better president than Reagan.
Had he reacted better to the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, LBJ could have been a great president: the Great Society and Civil Rights laws were real steps forward. The Bush Supreme Court has done a lot of damage to both. LBJ was terrified that a considered response to what proved to be an imaginary attack would give the White House to Goldwater, which almost certainly would have ended in a nuclear holocaust.
Interstates and Superchargers
Here's a list of major highways in the US Interstate Highway System and how well they are presently covered by the Tesla Supercharger network. The Interstate system is intended that "major" roads are multiples of 5: even numbers east-west, and odd north-south, with connectors in between, and bypasses and spurs having a leading digit (bypasses even, and spurs odd.)
I-5: Fully covered, Canadian border to the Mexican border
I-10: Largely covered, but there's a big hole from Tuscon, AZ to San Antonio, TX
I-15: Fully covered L.A. to Pocatello, ID, but from there to the Canadian border is challenging
I-20: Spotty coverage. It's not a transcontinental: it only goes from West TX to SC. It should be called I-14.
I-25: Good from its northern terminus in WY, but stops at Albuquerque.
I-29: Is an important road in the midwest, running from Louisiana (where it's called I-49) to Winnipeg with a big gap in Arkansas with the renaming at Kansas City. It has 4 superchargers. It needs a dozen.
I-30: This is really just a spur, from Little Rock to Dallas. No coverage. It should be called I-335.
I-35: Almost complete, San Antonio to Duluth, with just a couple of gaps
I-40: Almost complete, L.A. to Raleigh, NC, with a big gap from Oklahoma City to Nashville
I-44: the old route 66 is almost complete, Chicago to L.A, with just a small gap in MO.
I-45: despite its name, it's a spur, not an interstate at all: it's completely supercharged, Dallas to Houston. It should be called I-314
I-49: Is called I-29 north of Kansas City.
I-50: no such road. They may have been worried about confusion with US-50. US-50 is a true transcontinental, Ocean City, MD, to San Francisco. It shares its route with I-80 and I-70 for part of the way and is well supercharged in those places, but not otherwise.
I-55: Almost finished Chicago to New Orleans, with one charger needed near Memphis, TN
I-60: No such road. US-60 goes from L.A. to Norfolk, VA. I-10, I-44, I-64 share parts of its route.
I-64: spotty coverage, St Louis to Norfolk, VAI-65: Almost finished Chicago to Mobile, AL
I-70: The first supercharged transcontinental. Fully covered, DC to Utah, where it splits into I-80 to SF and I-15 to LA
I-75: Almost completed Southern Florida to Michigan, with northern MI the only gap.
I-80: About half completed, but there are a few big gaps. As a transcontinental, they are redundant with I-70, but Southern WY, NB, IA, and Northern PA are unserved, and would be by finishing I-80.
I-85: A stub, from AL to NC. Fully covered.
I-86: Southern New York. unserved.
I-90: Fully covered.
I-94: Is the northern route, connecting connecting Billings, MT to Chicago through Minneapolis, Fargo, Bismark, etc. It needs a half dozen more superchargers.
I-95: Fully covered.
US-101: Fully covered, San Diego to Ukiah, CA, No coverage at all north of there. Two SCs in Eureka and Crescent City have been planned for over a year, but no construction at all. 101 in Oregon is well covered by Aerovironment's CHAdeMO. update: Eureka is started and Seaside, OR is open, and there appear to be plans for Lincoln and Coos Bay, OR.
US-1: For a lot of its route, it's close to or shares it's route with I-95. I found no place south of Maine where a US-1 Tesla traveler would have to drive far for a supercharge, or for that matter any place east of the Appalachians. Northeastern Maine and northern New Hampshire are a problem
US-2: Much of the northernmost transcontinental route is uncovered, except for where it crosses another route, which is rare.
US-61: New Orleans through Minnesota, is now largely supplanted by I-55. The Music Highway. The crossroads where Robert Johnson purportedly sold his soul to the devil is at Clarksdale, MS.
I-5: Fully covered, Canadian border to the Mexican border
I-10: Largely covered, but there's a big hole from Tuscon, AZ to San Antonio, TX
I-15: Fully covered L.A. to Pocatello, ID, but from there to the Canadian border is challenging
I-20: Spotty coverage. It's not a transcontinental: it only goes from West TX to SC. It should be called I-14.
I-25: Good from its northern terminus in WY, but stops at Albuquerque.
I-29: Is an important road in the midwest, running from Louisiana (where it's called I-49) to Winnipeg with a big gap in Arkansas with the renaming at Kansas City. It has 4 superchargers. It needs a dozen.
I-30: This is really just a spur, from Little Rock to Dallas. No coverage. It should be called I-335.
I-35: Almost complete, San Antonio to Duluth, with just a couple of gaps
I-40: Almost complete, L.A. to Raleigh, NC, with a big gap from Oklahoma City to Nashville
I-44: the old route 66 is almost complete, Chicago to L.A, with just a small gap in MO.
I-45: despite its name, it's a spur, not an interstate at all: it's completely supercharged, Dallas to Houston. It should be called I-314
I-49: Is called I-29 north of Kansas City.
I-50: no such road. They may have been worried about confusion with US-50. US-50 is a true transcontinental, Ocean City, MD, to San Francisco. It shares its route with I-80 and I-70 for part of the way and is well supercharged in those places, but not otherwise.
I-55: Almost finished Chicago to New Orleans, with one charger needed near Memphis, TN
I-60: No such road. US-60 goes from L.A. to Norfolk, VA. I-10, I-44, I-64 share parts of its route.
I-64: spotty coverage, St Louis to Norfolk, VAI-65: Almost finished Chicago to Mobile, AL
I-70: The first supercharged transcontinental. Fully covered, DC to Utah, where it splits into I-80 to SF and I-15 to LA
I-75: Almost completed Southern Florida to Michigan, with northern MI the only gap.
I-80: About half completed, but there are a few big gaps. As a transcontinental, they are redundant with I-70, but Southern WY, NB, IA, and Northern PA are unserved, and would be by finishing I-80.
I-85: A stub, from AL to NC. Fully covered.
I-86: Southern New York. unserved.
I-90: Fully covered.
I-94: Is the northern route, connecting connecting Billings, MT to Chicago through Minneapolis, Fargo, Bismark, etc. It needs a half dozen more superchargers.
I-95: Fully covered.
US-101: Fully covered, San Diego to Ukiah, CA, No coverage at all north of there. Two SCs in Eureka and Crescent City have been planned for over a year, but no construction at all. 101 in Oregon is well covered by Aerovironment's CHAdeMO. update: Eureka is started and Seaside, OR is open, and there appear to be plans for Lincoln and Coos Bay, OR.
US-1: For a lot of its route, it's close to or shares it's route with I-95. I found no place south of Maine where a US-1 Tesla traveler would have to drive far for a supercharge, or for that matter any place east of the Appalachians. Northeastern Maine and northern New Hampshire are a problem
US-2: Much of the northernmost transcontinental route is uncovered, except for where it crosses another route, which is rare.
US-61: New Orleans through Minnesota, is now largely supplanted by I-55. The Music Highway. The crossroads where Robert Johnson purportedly sold his soul to the devil is at Clarksdale, MS.
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