WASHINGTON – For months, Russia special counsel Robert Mueller and his team have been ridiculed and undercut in the court of public opinion by none other than President Donald Trump.

On Tuesday, Mueller’s team and federal prosecutors won big in the court of law.

Within an hour, Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney and personal fixer, pleaded guilty to eight felony charges in New York, while Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, was convicted by a federal court jury on eight separate felony counts of financial fraud in Alexandria, Virginia.

Both cases grew out of Mueller’s far-flung investigation into Trump’s inner circle. And the repercussions are sure to be lasting, especially in the White House, as Mueller continues his inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible obstruction of justice by the president. 

At virtually every turn, Trump has sought to dismiss Mueller’s inquiry as “a hoax.”

And as the president arrived Tuesday evening in Charleston, West Virginia, for a prescheduled rally, he kept up the attack on Mueller and the Justice Department, calling Manafort’s conviction “very sad,” while continuing to assail Mueller’s inquiry as a  “witch hunt.”

But legal analysts said that Tuesday’s rapidly unfolding developments gave new legitimacy to Mueller’s work that even the even the most ardent of Trump supporters could not ignore.

“The saying goes that justice rides a slow horse, but it gets there eventually,” said Bruce Udolf, a criminal defense attorney in Florida who served as an associate independent counsel during the Whitewater investigation. “It got there Tuesday.”

Udolf said Trump’s vocal support of Manafort, especially while the jury was deliberating the past four days, could place him in greater jeopardy with Mueller.

Last week, as Trump was leaving the White House to spend the weekend at his golf club in New Jersey, he lamented Manafort’s plight in the midst of jury deliberations, calling him “a good man.”

“The law makes it a crime to endeavor to obstruct justice,” Udolf said. “I think – by his statements in support of Manafort – he was endeavoring to obstruct justice by attempting to influence the jury.”

Ron Hosko, a former FBI assistant director who worked under Mueller when he was FBI director, said Tuesday’s court victories have no doubt boosted Mueller’s credibility in the public eye.

While the entire case against Manafort was investigated and prosecuted by Mueller’s team, the Cohen investigation was started by Mueller and then transferred to federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

“The public now can see who the president chose to surround himself with,” Hosko said of Trump’s credibility. “These people were within the president’s circle of trust and now are facing prison time.”

He said that while Tuesday marked clear victories, there appears to be no end in sight for the larger Mueller investigation.

“We’re still left sort of hanging here, but I do think today brought us all one step closer to a conclusion to all of this,” he added.

Though the charges against Manafort were not related to Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, the case marked the first contested prosecution brought to trial by Mueller’s team.  

Even as the case against the veteran political operative wound toward trial, Trump repeatedly questioned its merit – once suggesting that the allegations against Manafort were overblown as if he were famed gangster “Al Capone.”

Though he told reporters that he was saddened by the verdict against his former campaign manager, he added that the trial “didn’t involve me.”

“This has nothing to do with Russian collusion,” Trump said. “This is a witch hunt that ends in disgrace. But this has nothing to do what they started out, looking for Russians involved in our campaign. There were none.”

Nevertheless, Trump’s profile loomed large throughout Manafort’s trial. The government’s star witness, former Manafort business partner Rick Gates, served as deputy campaign manager to Trump and later helped direct the inauguration.

During the trial, Gates acknowledged that he may have billed the inaugural committee for his own personal expenses.

While Trump escalated his attacks this week, calling  Mueller “disgraced and discredited” in a series of posts on Twitter, prosecutors did nothing to acknowledge them.

Asked late Tuesday if prosecutors would be making a statement following the Manafort verdicts, a spokesman offered a single word response entirely in keeping with Mueller’s efforts to remain out of the public eye.

“Nope,” the spokesman said.

The Manafort saga is still unfinished. His separate trial on foreign lobbying and money laundering charges is scheduled to start next month in Washington. And this time, prosecutors have even more evidence – nearly three times as much. 

More: 7 things to know about Robert Mueller, new special counsel for Russia investigation

More: Paul Manafort trial: Key takeaways as the prosecution prepares to rest

 

 

 

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Hey, Fox News, any big news going on? No? Okay. 

As you may have noticed, a lot went down on Tuesday. Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, was found guilty of eight counts of tax and bank fraud. 

Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, meanwhile, plead guilty to campaign finance crimes and stated that Trump directed him to pay off two women during the campaign to keep them quiet about affairs they had with Trump. 

While most news outlets have been airing extensive coverage of the two major cases, Fox News has predictably turned a mostly blind eye to it. 

People on Twitter responded to the channel’s reluctance to cover anything that looks bad on Trump into a very amusing meme. 

Sadly, these memes aren’t too far off from what Fox is actually airing. Twitter users noticed that the channel didn’t really touch the verdicts, opting instead to lean heavily on coverage of Post Malone’s plane and confederate monuments. 

Ok, but will we ever know if lobsters were happy that the Titanic sunk, though? Or if giraffes are just tall horses? 

Fox hasn’t (actually) covered those stories (yet), but they’re still steering clear of the actual news.

Inflation has skyrocketed, prices are at an all-time high, and the national currency, the Bolivar, has lost much of its value. Financial devastation has led to mass migration, starvation, and deadly political unrest.

President Nicolas Maduro blames it on what he calls an “economic war” against his country. His critics say widespread corruption and the government’s mismanagement are responsible.

In an attempt to solve the problem, the government has introduced a plan to curb hyperinflation.

There is a new currency, the Sovereign Bolivar, which removed five zeroes from banknotes. It is backed by a cryptocurrency, the Petro, that is pegged to the price of oil.

The government is also raising the minimum wage by 3,000 percent, raising taxes, and increasing petrol prices for some drivers.

How are Venezuelans reacting to the new measures?

Presenter: Mohammed Jamjoom

Guests:

Paul Dobson – journalist
Sonia Schott – Latin America analyst
Charles Shapiro – former US ambassador to Venezuela

Source: Al Jazeera News

Steve McClaren insists he is the right man to lead Queens Park Rangers after he was jeered by fans following a fourth successive Championship defeat at home to Bristol City.

Rangers, who lost 7-1 at West Brom on Saturday, have made their worst-ever start to a league season and sit bottom of the table, still waiting to pick up their first league point under the former England boss.

“I knew this was a tough job and it wouldn’t happen overnight,” the 57-year-old said.

“It (being booed) is society now. It’s the reaction and this is normal.

“The message to the supporters, and it’s a difficult one, is patience. Am I determined to put this right? Yes.”

Bristol City registered their first Championship win of the season as Matty Taylor’s opened the scoring four minutes before the break and Andreas Weimann added a second-half brace.

After Robins keeper Niki Maenpaa had denied Conor Washington the opening goal from close range, Taylor cut in from the right and sent a low shot into the bottom corner from a narrow angle.

Weimann was left unmarked at the back post to head in Niclas Eliasson’s left-wing cross five minutes after the break, and Josh Brownhill cut the ball back for the Austria international to tap in a third in the 90th minute.

Lee Johnson’s City were largely untroubled after taking the lead and, after taking two points from their first three games of the campaign, ended a run of seven Championship matches without a win stretching back to April.

Rangers are struggling with Financial Fair Play restrictions, having agreed a settlement of almost £42m with the English Football League for breaking rules as they were promoted to the Premier League in 2014.

But McClaren hopes the expected arrival of loan signings in the coming days will improve results.

“Believe me, if the owners could spend money they would,” he added. “But the restrictions are the restrictions.”

“We’re in the loan market and free market and the owners are very supportive of that.

“We’ve been working behind the scenes to bring signings in and we expect one or two before Saturday. I believe if we get the right players in we’ll be OK.”

Ebere Eze had spurned a glorious chance to pull a goal back with 25 minutes left, seeing his effort blocked on the line by Adam Webster after Washington had rounded Maenpaa and cut the ball back.

Victory at Loftus Road gave the Robins their first win in 16 attempts away from home in all competitions – with their previous success on the road coming at Sheffield United on 8 December last year.

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump suffered back-to-back legal blows Tuesday, a whiplash series of court dramas that threatened to consume his agenda and overshadow his efforts to help the Republican Party in the November midterm elections.

As the president flew to West Virginia for a rally, a federal jury in Virginia found his former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, guilty of bank and tax fraud. At almost the same time, longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen acknowledged violating campaign finance laws, and said that he did so at Trump’s direction.

With two former aides to the president facing jail time, observers said the outcome of the separate, high-profile prosecutions on Tuesday could represent a turning point in Trump’s presidency in which the months-long investigations into his former dealings begin to leave a mark.  

“The walls appear to be closing in,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican political consultant.

But Mackowiak noted that Trump has been able to glide through difficult news cycles many times before.   

“His legal team will argue that he was protecting his family and he would have done it in the middle of a campaign or if there was no campaign,” he said. 

As the legal developments unfolded on what was arguably the most perilous day of his presidency, Trump boarded Air Force One for the trip to Charleston, West Virginia, part of an all-out political strategy to keep the House and Senate in Republican hands in the midterm elections this year.

The stakes for Trump are now legal as well as political: A Democratic-led House could start impeachment proceedings, which could lead to a trial in the Senate.

More: Michael Cohen said he paid hush money at ‘direction’ of Trump

More: Paul Manafort trial: Jury finds former Trump campaign manager guilty on 8 counts in tax fraud case

It was not immediately clear if the outcome of either case had legal ramifications for the president, who has repeatedly dismissed both efforts. But the conclusion of the two sagas involving men close to Trump nevertheless put the White House on defense politically.

“It’s obviously not a happy day for the president,” said Renato Mariotti, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor. “When you direct someone to commit a crime you are responsible for the underlying crime. Period.”

If Trump was concerned about widening impact from the downfall of his former aides he showed little sign of it Tuesday. After landing in Charleston for the rally, the president said the Manafort verdict didn’t have anything to do with him.

“Paul Manafort is a good man,” Trump said. “It doesn’t involve me, but it’s a very sad thing.”

Trump, speaking to reporters on the tarmac, declined to answer questions about Cohen.

Rudolph Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, said there were no allegations of wrongdoing against the president in the Cohen case.

“It is clear that, as the prosecutor noted, Mr. Cohen’s actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time,” Giuliani said.

Discrediting special counsel Mueller’s investigation as “rigged,” Trump has managed to parry several difficult news cycles during his presidency, maintaining a high approval among Republicans even as Democrats have blasted the president.

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty in December to lying to the FBI about his dealings with Russian agents. Deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates took a plea deal in February in exchange for testifying against Manafort.

Robert Strong, a politics professor at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, said presidents tend to rise above major scandals. The obvious exception was President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 after fellow Republicans turned on him.

“When is the breaking point for the current Republican political establishment – when will the evidence be so clear, so overwhelming?” Strong said. “I’m not sure that’s today.”      

Cohen’s guilty plea could expose the president to extraordinary legal jeopardy, implicating him in a plot to pay hush money to a pornographic actress to buy her silence on the eve of the 2016 presidential election in violation of campaign finance laws.

The plea was the latest consequence of a stunning break between Trump and his one-time fixer, who once said he would “take a bullet” for the president. The bitter split burst into view last month when Cohen revealed he taped a conversation with then-candidate Trump discussing the payment.  

While Trump continues to criticize the Mueller investigation as a “witch hunt,” the president’s fate will be determined by how the probe proceeds – and that will depend on decisions by Manafort and Cohen. Cohen’s guilty plea on charges of tax evasion, bank fraud, and campaign finance violations did not include a cooperation agreement with prosecutors.

Aside from the potential legal impact, Republican operatives noted the outcome means the White House will be forced to continue to respond to the probes rather than discussing an agenda or trying to address the headwinds the GOP already faces as the November midterm approaches.

Several Republican consultants acknowledged that the news Tuesday was not good for Trump, but said it was too early to say how it may affect voters.

Liz Mair, a Republican strategist, said “the good news” is that Trump is accused of a campaign finance violation, and “voters don’t understand campaign finance law nearly as well as they understand, say, burglary or murder or tax fraud, and they are inclined to trust Trump more than a lot of other people.”

Those are just the Republicans, however. 

“I imagine this further damages Trump and Republicans with swing voters, independents, and of course, Democrats,” Mair said. 

Democrats, including Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, were quick to argue that the turn of events Tuesday underscored the importance of Mueller’s work.

 “This verdict makes it absolutely clear that the Mueller probe is not a ‘witch hunt,’” he said. 

 

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There’s a new Tinder in town. It’s a feature called Tinder U, made specifically for users of the dating app who are in college. And the company is rolling it out just in time for the start of the new school year.

To set up Tinder U on an account, users must have an active .edu email address and be geolocated on their college campus. At launch, Tinder U will be available to iOS users who attend a four-year, accredited, not-for-profit school.

Tinder U functions just like regular old Tinder, with swiping and all. You can even toggle back and forth between the Tinder U feature and the original. When toggled on, users will see their school logo depicted as a badge on their profile image. Using this feature brings up college students in the same area, including students on Tinder who attend nearby universities. 

Reaching out directly to college-aged students is a sensible move by Tinder’s parent company, Match Group, Inc., which recently said users between the ages of 18 and 24 make up the single largest age group on the app. 

As Facebook readies its own dating feature, it’s interesting to see Tinder deploy the same strategy Facebook used, albeit in reverse order. In the early years of Facebook, users needed an .edu email address to sign up and use the service. 

Tinder U is also a potential win for the future growth of the service. In addition to tens of millions of free users, Tinder has almost 3.8 million users paying a $14.99 per month subscription for a premium version of the app. If the youngest age group becomes invested early, they could very well grow up to become paying subscribers.

Inmates in prisons across the United States are preparing to take part in a national protest aimed at bringing urgent reform to a system they say abuses and exploits them.

The National Prisoners Strike kicks off on August 21 and is expected to run for 20 days. The strike is being led by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, an incarcerated group of prisoner rights advocates, and is supported by several other pro-reform groups. The action was first called in April, following a riot at a state prison facility in South Carolina in which seven inmates died.

Among the demands of protesters are “immediate” improvements to prison conditions, that fair wages be paid to inmates for their labour, the possibility of parole for all prisoners, and the restoration of voting rights to felons. Those taking part in the strike will hold labour stoppages, sit-ins, hunger strikes and spending boycotts.

Conditions in US prisons have long been criticised by reform advocates. At present almost 2.3 million people are held in various correctional facilities and immigration detention centres in the US. Violence is a daily fact of life for many inmates, with an estimated 19 percent of male prisoners saying they have been assaulted by other inmates. Yet prisons are also a lucrative business; private prison companies routinely sign contracts with local and state authorities, despite research suggesting that inmate-on-inmate violence is significantly higher in privately-run facilities. In 2017, the Justice Department declared it would again use private facilities to hold federal inmates, a volte-face from an Obama administration directive to let existing federal contracts with private companies expire without the possibility of renewal.

Organisers of the forthcoming national strike say it will solidify and refine a spirit of protest that was shown in a national strike two years ago. In that protest, more than 24,000 prisoners in a dozen states took part. But, in the era of the Trump administration, what will be different this time? Join the conversation at 19:30 GMT to find out.

Today on The Stream we speak with:

Chandra Bozelko @ChandraBozelko
Formerly incarcerated writer
prison-diaries.com

Romarilyn Ralston @RomarilynR 
Member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, L.A. chapter
womenprisoners.org

Krystal Rountree @JailLawSpeak 
Outside representative and organiser, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak
facebook.com

Swift Justice @UNHEARDVOICES16
Cofounder, Unheard Voices
unheardvoicesotcj.wordpress.com

Read more:

Do prison strikes work? – The Marshall Project
America’s prisoners are going on strike in at least 17 states – Vox

What do you think? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

England batsman Jos Buttler said his maiden Test century was his “proudest moment in an England shirt”.

The 27-year-old, who has made six one-day hundreds, scored 106 as he and Ben Stokes helped take the third Test against India into a final day.

Buttler was recalled to the Test team in May after a 17-month absence and hit his first hundred in his 23rd match.

“It’s been a long time coming and a few months ago it was a million miles away. It’s a huge moment for me,” he said.

Buttler’s partnership of 169 with Stokes, who made 62, meant the players will be back at Trent Bridge on Wednesday morning, although India require only one more wicket with England a distant 210 runs from victory at 311-9.

England began day four on 23-0 but lost both openers within the first 17 minutes of play and were 62-4 when Buttler and Stokes came together.

Their fifth-wicket partnership began at 12:20 BST and went through until 17:30.

“It was very important for us to show a lot of character and fight and not give it to India easily and we did that really well throughout the day, even the two guys at the end there making sure we come back for a fifth day,” Buttler said.

After Buttler was dismissed, Jonny Bairstow, batting with a fractured middle finger, fell next ball, as five wickets tumbled within 14 overs, leaving last-wicket pair Adil Rashid and James Anderson to hold out for the remaining 5.4 overs.

“We knew the second new ball was going to be a big phase – it’s disappointing we couldn’t make it last a bit longer,” Buttler said.

“To show you can do it for your team and that you hopefully belong is maybe the biggest thing.

“I was never sure if I’d ever play Test cricket again so all those thoughts go through your head when you’re out there and start to get close [to a hundred].

“Test cricket is really tough – it tests you in all sorts of ways and this is definitely the proudest moment in an England shirt.

“Something I try and do is read the situation and play accordingly. We were just trying to work through small passages of play. You can’t [overstate] how much luck plays a part – human error, a dropped catch and I wouldn’t be sat here today.

“Trying to focus on the moment and play each ball on its merit within your gameplan is all you’re trying to do and if it means they bowl well and you play out four maidens you try and trust your defence to get you through that.”

‘That partnership can be the benchmark’

Former England captain Michael Vaughan wants the team to learn from the way Stokes and Buttler combated the India bowlers.

“They played the Test match way, with great patience, skill and discipline, the attritional way that is required in Test cricket when the ball is doing a bit – and it was doing plenty,” Vaughan told BBC Test Match Special.

“As they got more and more in and batted more and more time, the ball started to do less and they started to expand into their shots.

“I thought it was a partnership which I hope the England dressing room were studying and say ‘that’s the way we want to play’.

“England have produced it a little bit too late – they are going to lose this Test match – but I think that partnership can be the benchmark of the way that we hope England want to play their Test match cricket going forward.”

The Editorial Board, USA TODAY
Published 6:31 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2018 | Updated 6:35 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2018

Maybe Manafort hopes Donald Trump will pardon him, though that would be a naked, power-abusing act of self-preservation: Our view

One of President Donald Trump’s recent Twitter tirades against Robert Mueller snarled that the special counsel’s investigation is “disgraced and discredited.” 

By obtaining the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on eight counts of tax evasion and bank fraud, Mueller’s team again demonstrated that it is neither. In fact, Mueller’s inquiry is crucial to upholding the rule of law.

At a minimum, Tuesday afternoon’s split-screen images of two former top Trump operatives — Manafort and longtime lawyer Michael Cohen — convicted of or copping to eight counts apiece was an embarrassment to a president who promised to hire “only the best people.”

More ominously for the White House, Cohen, in pleading guilty to to bank fraud, tax evasion and campaign-finance felonies, directly implicated Trump in a federal crime: hush money payments to two women at Trump’s direction during the 2016 campaign. 

OPPOSING VIEW: Manafort case had nothing to do with Russia

Although not directly related to the campaign, the Manafort case was the first jury trial test for Mueller’s team. Any trial is unpredictable (remember O.J. Simpson’s?). Convincing 12 jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Manafort is a bona fide crook — including on five counts of tax evasion and two allegations of bank fraud — adds at least a modicum of luster to Mueller’s reputation as a credible pursuer of justice.

Commenting after the verdict, Trump emphasized that Manafort’s trial had nothing to do with alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the heart of Mueller’s mandate, and repeated his “witch hunt” mantra.

Actually, the Manafort conviction comes on top of the prosecutor’s other accomplishments since his appointment in May 2017: obtaining charges, indictments or guilty pleas for 32 other people and three Russian companies. Some witch hunt.

Given what the public already knows about Manafort’s desperate, reckless behavior before and during his tenure as Trump’s campaign chairman, Mueller would have been derelict not to press for cooperation by prosecuting Manafort’s ample crimes.

Here was a man living lavishly off tens of millions earned as a political operative for pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, hiding it from taxes in offshore shell companies. After Yanukovych was driven from power in 2014 and Manafort’s business dried up, he fraudulently borrowed millions to fuel his excesses.

By the time Trump hired him in 2016, Manafort was in dire financial straits, willing even to work for free for a dose of prestige as a top-tier political operative. Accused of owing millions to Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, Manafort quickly explored trading on his new stature “to get whole.”

As campaign chairman, he offered Deripaska — someone close to President Vladimir Putin — private briefings on the campaign. And Manafort attended the infamous June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower with Russians dangling dirt on Hillary Clinton. 

Why on earth wouldn’t Mueller want to know what Manafort knows?

Whether the convicted felon will now finally cooperate to mitigate a potential lengthy sentence in prison is an open question. He faces a second trial in September on charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine.

Maybe Manafort hopes Trump will pardon him, though that would be a naked, power-abusing act of self-preservation by the president. 

Trump would certainly be gloating on Twitter if there had been a hung jury on all of the Manafort charges, or if he had been acquitted. But Tuesday’s verdict shows that despite the endless chaos of the Trump administration, one small corner of government is working with cool efficiency and does its talking in the courtroom.

Mueller is building credibility, one case at a time.

Trump, meanwhile, has already shown himself to be a terrible judge of character by surrounding himself with people like Manafort and Cohen. Whether the president of the United States is also a criminal remains to be seen.

If you can’t see this reader poll, please refresh your page.

 

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Yes, it’s true: The promise of self-driving cars zooming around while their human operators doze off, read, or watch movies is not quite here yet. 

But who said that had to happen right now or we’ve missed our chance at driverless vehicles forever? On Monday, The Outline published an article titled “The self-driving car that will never arrive,” calling self-driving cars “delusional” and part of “our grossest capitalistic dreams.” It’s just the latest from those who believe driverless cars and other artificial intelligence innovations are an unrealistic pipe dream.

But innovation happens incrementally, step by step. Just because it’s not instantaneous doesn’t mean it will never happen. 

And things are happening. Right now, clunky, top-heavy sensor- and camera-loaded vehicles are carefully driving around sunny, wide boulevards of Phoenix, Arizona, or geo-fenced areas of Frisco, Texas, or highly controllable senior living communities in Florida and San Jose. Admittedly, fatal mistakes are a huge, tragic problem that set back the entire industry. But that’s not the end of the line for self-driving advancements.

Waymo is leading the charge here, clocking in 8 million self-driven miles and gearing up for a truly driverless taxi service. It’s been driving around “early riders,” like this Phoenix family, and showing how driverless can work in a world still filled with traditional vehicles. Sure, we’re given access to Waymo’s progress to whet our appetites about what could be, to keep the hope alive about a driverless future. But it’s not entirely baseless.

Lyft’s partnership with Aptiv just hit 5,000 rides in their commercial self-driving program in Las Vegas, where they charge users for a self-driven ride with a safety driver and operator up front.

Autonomous shuttle services in what The Outline reduced to a “carnival ride” — cordoned-off, safe, predictable areas — are ramping up. It’s not a futuristic utopia, but this is how we get there. 

It’s so much easier to test and put this tech on the roads that way. The soon-to-launch Waymo taxi service is a more complex version of those self-contained obstacle courses.

Ford’s self-driving report out last week clearly laid out plans to start offering vehicles for ride-hailing and delivery services in 2021. GM’s Cruise similarly has not-too-soon-but-still-coming-up deadlines. And remember, this isn’t even for mainstream use. 

No researcher, academic, or even “greedy” company spokesperson or executive I’ve talked with has ever predicted everyday consumer use of self-driving cars coming any time soon. But, “I have little doubt that self-driving cars are going to happen,” Washington University in St. Louis computer science and engineering professor Sanjoy Baruah told me last month. It’s just a matter of which company will do it first. 

Startups and researchers are well aware they’re operating vehicles mainly on highways without the complexities of urban areas and other environments.  Situations in downtown Manhattan or snowy Buffalo, New York, make it way too difficult to implement globally. We’re not there yet. We’re seeing the first uses of self-driving in taxi and fleet services. These are very much controlled by the companies themselves; no regular driver is given keys to this expensive equipment and told to drive safely.

That’s what we need to reach a new way of moving around. We’re allowed to aspire and dream big. It’s not delusional even if those aspirations are recalibrated along the way. It happens.

We’ve already got a bevy of semi-autonomous features to help society understand and accept how this tech could eventually work. Eventually. 

A Cox Automotive survey of more than 1,250 Americans released last week found that consumers want autonomous features in their cars. Collision avoidance, lane-keeping, adaptive cruise control, and parking assistance all were considered highly desirable. 

So while almost 50 percent of respondents said they wouldn’t ever buy a driverless Level 5 autonomous vehicle, the appeal of Level 2 — essentially what Tesla’s Autopilot already offers — is up 9 percent from a 2016 survey. 

Just like the naysayers of yore poo-pooing the rise of the internet, the self-driving skeptics are going to look silly as they desperately hold onto their human-controlled steering wheels. Eventually. This takes time.