Olympic Torch Bearer Denounces Brazil ‘Coup’ with His Buttocks teleSUR
Best joint-roller in the world earns $1000s for his creations Boing Boing (resilc)
Florida to begin aerial spraying of insecticides to control Zika Reuters (EM)
N.I.H. May Fund Experiments With Human Stem Cells in Animal Embryos New York Times. Dan K: “So basically, because one is not supposed to do too horrible things to humans (because humans might suffer, or something, or they might have standing in a court?), we take human cells and grow them in animals, and now we can do whatever we want to those chimeral beings. Extrapolating forward… one can grow near-human chimeras who, due to their technically non-human ancestry, we can mistreated to our heart’s content.” Moi: Won’t this sort of thing greatly increase the risk of diseases jumping between species?
Brexit
The recession that Brexit built Politico
Goldman warns of Brexit restructuring Financial Times
Brexit and its potential impact on international data transfers Bruegel
Sigmar Gabriel, the ‘kamikaze’ candidate Politico
China?
Ukraine/Russia
IMF-Sized Hole Too Big for Ukraine’s Central Bank to Fill Bloomberg
Turkey
U.S. Not Persuaded to Extradite Imam Over Turkey Coup Wall Street Journal. Not that I want to defend Erdogan, but if I were in his shoes, I would be acutely aware of the fact that 1. How the US applies standards for extradition are no doubt very flexible in political cases and 2. The US, a supposed ally of Turkey, looks like it is keeping its cards very close to its chest re what it has on Gulen. The flip side is Erdogan could be acting as if the US should turn over Gulen because he has been the loudest opponent to the government, and his government may not have bothered working up a decent dossier, making it easy to deny the request.
Turkey Issues a Warrant for Fethullah Gulen, Cleric Accused in Coup New York Times (furzy)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
British woman held after being seen reading book about Syria on plane Guardian (Jon M)
Trade Traitors
Grundlagenheft von Mehr Demokratie Mehr Demokratie. Major lawsuit against EU-Canada trade pact that swas supposed to be a no-brainer.
Imperial Collapse Watch
A secret group easily bought the raw ingredients for a dirty bomb – here in America Center for Public Integrity. Note that right after 9/11, there was extensive discussion as to what various types of nasties could do. A dirty bomb is basically no worse than a conventional bomb, since you can’t put enough radioactive material in it + explosive material to contaminate a large area. But if someone were to hit a transit nexus (like Grand Central) even cordoning off a small area for a while for decontamination would have a disproportionate psychological impact. And a lot of people would refuse to believe that the amount of radioactive material in the “dirty” area was not all that great and wold not pose any danger to people walking through who were told how to give it a decent berth. The scare-mongerng in this article is way way out of proportion to how “dirty bombs” work.
Terror Suspects in Europe Collected Welfare Benefits Wall Street Journal. Note now that more people are engaging in random acts of violence as a result of social isolation and economic stress (which pretty much any reader of Mark Ames’ Going Postal would have foretold, as we did), the immediate response is to depict them as a possible terrorist before facts are in. And now we have” terrorists = people getting social safety net payments” and “big social safety nets breed terrorism” as new memes.
U.S. military communications satellite fails to reach intended orbit Reuters (EM)
2016
‘Military coup’ wins poll of troops in a landslide Duffelblog (Jon M)
Why I totally support those ‘jerks’ chanting ‘No more war!’‘Philly.com (martha r)
What’s next for the Bernie Sanders revolution? The populist insurgency is ratcheting up. Defend Democracy
Clinton surges to big lead in McClatchy-Marist poll McClatchy. The details are as bad for Trump as the headline. Major losses in his core constituencies.
Clinton’s Lead Over Trump Widens to 9 Points, Poll Shows Wall Street Journal. Different poll.
‘Trump Is Cratering’: New Polls Signal Deep Trouble for Republican Nominee Bloomberg
Harvard Republican Club Will Not Support Party Nominee Donald Trump Harvard Crimson. Lambert: “Well, that does it….”
Donald Trump is alienating his own party? That’s practically American tradition Guardian (resilc)
Introducing the Donald Trump-Mike Pence divergence tracker Washington Post
Buffett rebukes Trump, questions his business skill Reuters. EM: “The biggest single individual beneficiary of the GFC-era Government bailouts of the financial sector, the one whose every equity position is guaranteed to rise sharply merely on his announcement of having taken a position, speaks about ‘business skill’!” Moi: Buffet should have gone to jail over Berkshire’s role in selling “finite reinsurance,” which is ever and always as scam, as two of his execs did.
WSU expert runs exit poll as suspicions linger over voting machines Wichita Eagle. Martha r: “Skip to end for why this statistician is conducting her own exit poll.”
Protesters allege Somerville polling firm involved in election mycentraljersey.com (martha r)
Exclusive: Wasserman Schultz says she’ll debate challenger Tim Canova Sun Sentinel (martha r), This is gonna be fun! Canova is a good speaker.
Why is AARP cozying up to the right-wing group ALEC while big corporations flee? Los Angeles Times (resilc)
Will Health Insurance Companies Succeed Where the GOP Couldn’t—in Killing Obamacare? Alternet. Totally ignored bad program design of Obamacare (most important, its deliberate coddling of incumbents) as the cause of ugly outcomes.
Most & Least Federally Dependent States Barry Ritholtz (resilc)
Editorial: Feds should stop Medicaid privatization Des Moines Register
Chicago police watchdog inaccurately reported shooting incidents: official Reuters (EM)
Ed Groups Worry Over Proposed Federal Sanctions for High Opt-Out Rate WXXI News. Agreenie: “Opting children out of standardized testing can be hazardous to the health of your local school district.”
Nixon says public defender maneuver not legal St. Louis Post-Dispatch (martha r). Follow up to our post yesterday. Note some experts disagree with the governor.
US economy: Decline of the start-up nation Financial Times. The more entreneurship is hyped, the less real people want to do it.
The Bait-and-Switch Confusopoly Economy Scott Adams (EM). Gives some insight as to how crapifiers get away with it.
U.S. Appeals Ruling Throwing Out Crisis-Era Bank of America Case Wall Street Journal. Looks like the court didn’t understand, or chose not to understand, how the origination-sales process worked.
RBS Spends ￡1.4bn on IT for Divestiture Financial Times. Clive: “… and according to a couple of contractors I know who worked there, a fair proportion of that has been pee’d up against a wall. The FT piece says as much but doesn’t give the reason: it had its pockets picked by the big IT consultant outfits and the waste-of-space outsourcers. ‘Hungry people make for poor shoppers.'”
Berkshire Said to Draw Fed Scrutiny Over Wells Fargo Investment Bloomberg (resilc)
Commodities attract biggest bets since 2009 Financial Times
Junk Bond Issuance Collapses in the US and Europe Wolf Richter (EM)
Class Warfare
Raising the minimum wage could improve public health Economic Policy Institute (martha r)
Antidote du jour (martha r):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
253 comments
Comments are closed.
RE: the polls showing Hill ahead. HRC’s friends in the media bombarded The Donald with a week of sewage-tossing for his off-the-cuff remarks re the Muslim parent with his mute wife. At least Trump MAKES off-the-cuff remarks. It’s early yet. I think Trump might lose but in losing he at least wants to publicize to the populace what a horrific prez they are getting. What does The Donald have to lose? (Aside from his life—let’s take assassination off the table, for the moment.) He can tell Mr. Priebus, Paul Ryan, and the entire crooked conflagration of bigwigs from both parties to go piss up a rope.
This notion that Mr. Trump is in his currently perilous position because of the media is absurd. I listened to the speech and the tit-for-tat followup. Mr. Trump’s comments are indefensible no matter what one thinks of the American wars in the Middle East. Indefensible and disgusting.
Mr. Trump’s responses to a series of howlers has been illuminating, and all it takes to see his instability is to listen to what the man himself says, not even how the media interprets it. We all have enough data at this point to understand he’s not working from a plan and, if elected, won’t work from any guiding philosophy other than surrounding himself with sycophants and punishing the rest — similar to HRC but more petty and on a shorter fuse. A future with HRC in the White House fills me with dread and anger, but Mr. Trump is no savior, so people around here had better start paying attention to what comes out of his mouth.
I mean Saudi Arabia just granted women the right to vote last year. Trump deserves to score the feminist point against them even in his own vulgar way.
True enough, but it’s also true that the media has put on the kid gloves with respect to Clinton. Their sycophantic coverage, which includes the non-coverage of the protests at the recent convention, ignoring the Stein candidacy (except for the occasional vaxxer smear), and you have low information left with nothing except the spectacle of Trump – which the media is all too happy to report.
Would it surprise anyone if Clinton refused to debate Trump? Or never again held a news conference? Why should she?
The fix is in. Get ready for another 8 long years of corporate rule, neoliberal warmongering and hollowing out of the middle class.
The glimmer of hope is that the movement Sanders has begun continues and grows. My biggest concern is this gets diffused by those still struggling to reform the Democratic Party from within (hopeless in my view) and those who have left for the Green Party (6 percent and climbing). In fact, one of the salutary outcomes of the Trump meltdown is that some committed LOTE voters might actually feel safe enough now to vote their conscience.
It’s not just the Green party climbing, but the other team does not rest either.
The rigging will be more refined the next time. (They do work hard too)
TPP will be here.
Will there be peace on Earth, Eurasia, the Middle East, South China Sea?
Will Trump voters fight off dying off?
Don’t the DNCLeaks essentially show that the DNC aka HRC held huge sway over the MSM? HRC now controls the DNC, and the DNC surely still controls the MSM and uses it to smear rivals (now including Jill Stein) and whitewash HRC’s crimes. HRC also appears to hold sway over the FBI and the JD. This suggests an HRC presidency will usher in even more fascistic control over messaging and the electorate.
A good point, especially given that the information is more the 2 days old (the attention span of a typical subject, the ministry assumes).
The book ‘Clinton Cash’ made me think of the same thing. Without control and cooperation (thru bribes and threats?) the Clintons wouldn’t have delivered the favors for all the billionaires and foreign governments. It almost looks like they were able to control Ozero.
……. so people around here had better start paying attention to what comes out of his mouth.
And if we don’t, we have the media to emphasize, edit, clarify, interpret, imply, overstate, repeat relentlessly and generate irrational hysteria just in case we didn’t get it the first time. They’re just “doin’ their job” and reporting the “news.”
I know that I, personally, am reassured when spooks and murderers like barack obama, robert kagan, michael hayden, leon panetta, max boot, michael morrell and madeline albright tell me how “crazy” Trump is, and how disastrous he would be for the “homeland.”
And, btw, where’s the woman of the hour been lately? Only place I’ve seen her is in the “polls.”
when spooks and murderers like barack obama, robert kagan, michael hayden, leon panetta, max boot, michael morrell and madeline albright
Hear, hear! Who could possibly with any conscience vote for someone endorsed by that gang of liars, warmongers, and mass-murderers?
Both Trump and Hillary tell people to “Vote your conscience!” I say, take them at their word and do so. For yours truly it would be Jill Stein — not perfect, of course, but courageously and openly anti-war.
Thank you for putting together a list of “spooks and murderers”. I am still a little shocked at Mica Bresinski on “Morning Joe” fawning over Hayden and today Morrell. I guess she hasn’t read the books on the CIA like “Failure of Intelligence” of watched “The Good Shepherd”. We are all caught on Mr Toad’s Wild Ride with the ride operator on a long lunch break. “I want to get off!”
Apple, tree….not very far.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/08/httpwwwmsnbccommorning-joewatch2016-duck-dynasty-vs-lena-dunham-election-738063427840.html
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Apologies to Carolinian; replied before reading down this far.
Anyone who uses the very Nazi-esque “homeland” loses my vote and support. That term disturbs me on so many levels, especially when coming from the mouths of outright fascists like Bush, Obama, Hillary, Kagan, etc.
Has anyone looked into what has become of the individuals involved in Operation Paperclip and their progeny? What are they doing now?
About a decade ago, I worked with an accountant who was born and raised in Nazi Germany. (She came to the States as a young adult.)
She was horrified that any American agency would be called Homeland Security. Because she had lived through that already.
I think she has serious health problems.
So do I. And, from what I’ve seen of her on the campaign trail, her health appears to be getting worse.
With that nasty rasp, she already sounds like she’s speaking through one of those electro larynx speech aids for tracheostomy patients.
But the danger for Hillary of going full digital with an electronic voice box is that the Russians could hack it.
Yesterday in Nevada being protested by animal rights protestors, please note media jujitsu to give advantage to Clinton. (Considering her usual flat footed responses, I have to wonder if they had some clue about the protest.)
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/08/hillary-clinton-surrounded-secret-service
Earlier in the week in Omaha with Buffett she announced her Middle Class tax increase plan. To sycophantic cheers…
http://www.dailywire.com/news/8050/watch-crowd-cheers-clintons-call-raise-taxes-robert-kraychik
And the same day that She and Pence rallied in Colorado, it was announced ad buys there were being cut back:
http://www.9news.com/news/politics/clinton-pence-campaigning-in-colorado/286657796
She is just chugging along. Since the media doesn’t do anything but cursory coverage of her it is hard to tell. They are too busy trying to take out Trump.
Looks like she had a stroke and that’s part of her problem. She can’t have a press conference. Stroke victims get stressed if multiple people are talking to them at the same time. Stuff getting caught in the throat, inappropriately lengthy laughs—-characteristics of a stroke victim. She can’t handle stress. She can’t be prez.
where’s the woman of the hour been lately?
She’s waiting … to become a War President. From the great Banzai7:
I loves me some Katniss in the morning.
At 12pm today, she’ll speak at the NABJ & NAHJ convention in Washington DC (the biggest annual convention of black and Hispanic reporters). Meanwhile, Tim Kaine will be campaigning in Grand Rapids, MI and Milwaukee, WI.
With a minimal amount of effort, one can find fairly detailed schedules of upcoming events (https://hillaryspeeches.com/scheduled-events/) and — thanks to the internet — information about past appearances, too. This site (http://heavy.com/news/2016/08/when-where-is-hillary-clinton-next-rally-tim-kaine-speech-date-richmond-omaha-daytona-beach-las-vegas-commerce-city/) provides a concise summary…and took me about twenty seconds to find using a Google search.
For an even more concise summary: Clinton and Kaine wrapped up a three-day bus tour through Pennsylvania and Ohio last weekend. On Aug 1st, Clinton was in Omaha while Kaine was back in his home turf in Richmond, VA. The next day, Kaine spoke at a campaign event in Daytona Beach, FL. On the 3rd, Clinton was campaigning in Commerce City, Colorado, while Kaine appeared in Greensboro, NC…and on the 4th, Clinton spoke at a campaign event in Las Vegas.
Hard to disagree with anything you say Bubba, but I think everyone misses the point. You really can’t do anything in Wasington without cooperation. If Trump is as loony as you say, we’ve got a House, Senate and the Supreme Court, not to mention the people Trump hires to run the executive branch, who will keep an eye on things. Maybe I’m not as cynical as most (hard to believe, but possible), but if our system works like it can, anything loony that Trump tries to do will be stopped in it’s tracks by enough of the others. What concerns me about Hillary is that she has just enough support to carry out the evil that she is very capable of. Critical appointments are reviewed and can be rejected by the Senate. Executive powers are reviewed and can be rejected by the courts. The only really power the president has is the “bully pulpit” and if Trump keeps on speaking as badly as he has he will be dodging shoes before we know it. My only hope is that he can win and the system will keep him from harming us while we seriously contemplate the disaster situation we face (they both suck big time and we all have to fix that) Kind of like Brexit – very dangerous move but cooler heads will prevail and move things in a better direction. To me, the issue is not what Hillary and Trump can do in isolation. The issue is can we get our government to function so that bad leaders cannot hijack the ship and sink us?
Maybe if Trump wins, Congress will yank the open-ended AUMF granted in 2001 that’s still being milked even today to bomb Libya (as pointed out in today’s Philly.com link)?
Who says short-fused loony-tunes can’t get some good done in this world? :)
I also believe that a Trump presidency would greatly weaken the office of the President…and that’s a good thing, insofar as the ability to initiate war. Still, I cannot vote for him (or Hillary).
Im with you on this. . A restatement of what i feel so far is that Clinton & Cabal ( TM dibs for a DC afterwork bar) pose a demonstratable Global Threat vis a vie a Congress that will demure to her and her fellow Neocons ( yes she is a Neocon) substituting military aggression and win-loose posturing for traditional forme of diplomacy.
To be clear, HRC will offer up her own form of domestic agenda fkups, but given the two, Global vs Domestic adverse Policy consequences, the latter variety is easier to block or unwind considering our current dysfunctional model of government
I feel Trump so far is adding up to being a politically incorrect domestic policy-centric candidate who will be checkmated on any significant redmeat PI initiative.
Domestic redmeat is what congress critters and the media prefer to posture about.. Even some of Trumps inflamatory statements unpeeled have a kernel of sense. For example, why should the US have an utterly dysfunctional immigration policy ?
Just two words: Iraq invasion.
“I listened to the speech and the tit-for-tat followup. Mr. Trump’s comments are indefensible no matter what one thinks of the American wars in the Middle East. Indefensible and disgusting.”
True. Credit where credit is due, the hillary campaign exploited a distraught Muslim-american vets parent to the full extent. I mean it was quite brilliant, use a Muslim to defend the sanctity of mid east wars, bait trump (I mean you know he is gonna respond with verbal bullying when someone calls him out person), and push some identity politics into mid east interventions. Well played.
And it speaks perfectly to dem tribalists pseudo humanitarianism, which ends at ensuring the trigger puller is a dem executive, and nothing more. (I seem to recall absolute humanitarian outrage against bush’s mid east murder spree and crickets from the same “outraged” parties during Obama’s murder spree.)
Agreed.
Brilliant and well played.
As I have always maintained, she is too smart…for Trump, sneaky smart and he reacted viscerally (that’s my guess).
In another age, another place, another smart person would have introduced Uncle Tom to further his/her cause.
But this is a different situation.
Hillary has, at best, a middling intellect, and as she clearly has absolutely no ethical framework to guide her decision making, whatever grey matter she does have is used exclusively in the pursuit of nefarious ends. She does, however, have some of the most ruthless and shameless people to have ever existed surrounding her, and they are very intent on dragging her over the finish line, and unfortunately aren’t as stupid as her.
She is, as you say, a middling intellect – although I’d prefer the term mediocre – she reminds me of the person in class who does reasonably well by regurgitating facts without having any desire or ability to come up with anything new. But that usually doesn’t matter with leaders so long as they recognise their weaknesses and appoint good advisors – FDR being an good example. But I’ve not seen yet any evidence that her team are much different from her – the smart ideas (like getting the muslim father) is the sort of thing any half decent county level political operative could come up with. They are ruthless streetfighters, but they were completely blindsided by Sanders and could only win through overwhelming resources (not to mention outright cheating). It seems to me that they are trying to take on Trump by way of lots of tactical victories without a strategy, relying on brute force to win. It may work (given their huge advantages, its not much credit to them if they do), but there seems to be no imagination or over reaching strategy to win.
I commented a while back that Clinton puts me in mind of the sort of military general (think Gen. Westmoreland in Vietnam) who has big advantages in terms of men and guns, and can keep winning (or at least not losing) so long as they can maintain that advantage. But faced with a more nimble and imaginative opponent, or a change in baseline circumstances, can find themselves facing humiliation because of a lack of a deeper strategic understanding and imagination. I think if Trump could run rings around her if he had good enough advisors. But I suspect he has himself run out of ideas and the mainstream Republican operators are no better than their Dem opponents.
I used “middling” as it brought to mind “meddling”, which is something the Clintons seem to excel at. Lest anyone think I see intelligence as a way to define the “quality” of people, I don’t, and I believe that true intelligence is really only possible once the load bearing support structure of an ethical worldview has been forged. After that, education really just allows a higher resolution understanding of the topic that has been studied, and as has often been noted among these pages, some education actually makes one dumber.
Unfortunately, most politicians seem to neglect building themselves a coherent ethical structure to build upon, most likely because they consider themselves too important for this sort of undertaking. Idiots.
They did, didn’t they?
I think it speaks more to our grotesque support-the-troops militarism, which can only be truthfully described as our national religion. Trump stumbled badly, and will not recover from his lack of piety and genuflection.
Game over, man, game over.
There used to be a large contingent of anti-war demonstrators here that would gather every Friday at noon at the busiest intersection in town to protest Bush and the war. When Obama took office they pretty much disappeared.
A savior usually is infallible.
Trump is far from that, in fact and in writing when people refer to him, here and elsewhere I have encountered.
Who is worse, Charlie Brown who keeps kicking away while believing Lucy, or Lucy who continuously manipulates and sets him up for failure?
Well, in simplistic terms, Charlie is naive and pathetic, and Lucy is a sociopath.
Charlie is one people can identify with.
They don’t identify with Charlie Brown. He keeps getting fooled, and how can a smug liberal be fooled?
After college, a few of my friends went to Europe and told their experiences during a weekend reunion at my first year roommates pare to house who moved to our college town while we were in school (his mom could cook). These two kids started to describe a three card Monte set up and how they were conned. My roommates father and I had the same “how could you reach this point and not recognize a shell game” expression on our faces. They tried to explain it looked legit because there people playing before them. These two guys were engineers, but still…it had to be a crafty game because how could I and a retired army officer (my roommates dad) recognize this grift. The old man got out a deck of cards to educate the other people there how the scam worked.
I remember vividly watching an expensively-dressed foreign businessman in his 40s or 50s in Times Square or at Penn Station in NY about 30 years ago. A black guy was doing his 3-card Monte on the typical cardboard box. The businessman played once, thinking it was a “sure thing” (the card had the corner turned down, etc) and lost $100. I remember seeing his wallet with about 8 crisp $100 bills in it. In about 8 minutes he had lost them all, due to his greed and arrogance and thinking some black kid on the street didn’t know what he was doing.
Both imperfect people. Only one has the capacity to change behaviour.
That is the tragedy of Bernie giving up and not running with the Greens. He had a greater obligation to his millions of his Supporters than He did to the the DNC and Hillary. Who knows what they said to him or had on him? It would have been a Slam Dunk for him.
Be one with the arrow, or one’s task.
And that task is to stop Hillary’s continuation of the last 8, 16 or 20+ years. It’s not Bernie and it’s not Trump…or not just.
I’m not sure Bernie has “given up”. He’s just keeping the unholy promise he made to support the eventual nominee. The high drama of the convention is minor stuff for a guy who’s claimed to be playing the long game.
It’s not clear to me that jumping in bed with the Greens would have been a productive endeavor, Nina Turner turned them down, too. The Greens are there for a protest vote for this election, but I feel like the 3rd party to watch has become Socialist Alernative. Kshama Sawant has already won 2 elections, and the local Dems seem to have moved toward a ‘containment’ strategy against her of stopping her allies, since they couldn’t beat her directly, at least for the 2015 city council elections.
Seriously, no. Socialist Alternative will have no chance to reach a critical mass. The name has major limitations. The same applies for the Green Party. People will react reflexively against each name. I am a broken record here but I like the Justice Party for its name alone. I do not think it is a well run organization just a possible political party with an excellent name that will win many rhetorical battles with its name alone.
So many organizations get trapped in rhetorical battles. Black Lives Matter lost a lot of support when its “leaders” insisted that All Lives Matter is racist. The obvious over sight is that everyone is killed by the police.
Also, as a white man, who worked in progressive politics, I do get tired of being told that I am privileged by people in a better economic situation who were raised in better households. I get over it quickly but I am aware of these concepts. It is easier to discuss or at least say white privileged instead of discussing how each person has an inter-sectional identity that can not be defined by race alone….
The Seattle City Council is also a far cry from a Congressional, Senate, or even State House seat. I hope they are able to pull it off but Seattle is also a privileged economic zone. Once you leave the city you walk into the same zone of decay that the rest of the country faces.
Philadelphia has a similar effect although the inner burbs are much better off than Philadelphia. My experience traveling around the 5 counties of Philadelphia is dated but once you get 10-15 miles out of Philadelphia the economic drop off is noticeable. The major drivers in this area are biotech and FIRE. I assume Seattle has a similar situation except you can switch biotech for technology/app development.
Toddler is calling.
Funny that Socialist Alternative gets mentioned.
I helped set up the Louisiana Socialist Network down here in New Orleans with 3 former members of Socialist Alternative who left due to infighting.
I agree with you about the negative connotations of “Socialist Alternative” as a name for a party up to a point.
The milennials and I have very positive feelings toward “Socialism” so just cut out Alternative and you’ve got yourself a party for the future, which is what our little network is trying to accomplish here in the Deep South.
“I do get tired of being told that I am privileged by people in a better economic situation who were raised in better households.”
Privilege comes in many forms, not just monetary. Even Oprah got followed around while shopping.
And? I’ve gotten followed around before.
You act as if you it’s something that only one race experiences when that simply isn’t true.
Even Oprah got followed around while shopping.
Oh pleeease..By what Paparazzi?
I remember this story. Pretty sure it was in a Paris couture boutique. The sales staff didn’t recognize her, so they treated her with the suspicion they would any other black person, because OF COURSE no black woman could be that wealthy/we don’t want a heavyset woman with dark skin contaminating the brand/whatever implicitly racist thing was bubbling along mentally.
Look, wealthy black people get subjected to racist treatment all the time. Rich white women (other than Hillary Clinton) do not have the full range of opportunities and advantages of rich white men. The problem with this type of liberalism is they ONLY care about equality within their class.
The great thing about a primarily economically focused leftist message is that breaks through that screen of deceit. Bernie was making real inroads in bringing together poor and working class rural and suburban whites who traditionally vote Republican and poor and working class urban people of color who traditionally vote Democratic. So, of course, he had to be stopped, at all costs.
So it’s only black people that get followed in stores in Paris, right? (File under: confirmation error)
“In many ways, African Americans came to France as a sort of privileged minority, a kind of model minority, if you will – a group that benefited not only from French fascination with blackness, but a French fascination about Americanness.”[1]
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/author/tstovall/
Actually Paris has history of welcoming American blacks. I hope you don’t wring your hands too much over apocryphal stories of Oprah shopping experiences in Paris
I think Bernie just-plumb wore himself out. After all, the man is in his mid-70s.
And you can see the difference in his energy level during his 2015 and 2016 rallies. Just watch a few online videos. During last year’s events, he was on fire. This year? He came across like the smoke after the fire had gone out.
People age different.
Trump is only about 5 years younger. Do you think his energy level will be that much different in another year?
Yes I do. And I think his energy level will be a lot lower. Something about being called out as the BS artist and narcissist that he truly is.
Really? Tell me what was so terrible Trump’s first remarks. He asked why the wife hadn’t spoken, said he would have liked to hear her speak too, and that maybe she wasn’t allowed to speak. Did Trump say her husband was the reason? No. It could just as easily have been hinting at the DNC or even an immediate staging issue. When the Dems then pinned a meaning on Trump’s remarks, him shooting back made him look defensive and guilty. But his initial remark was a gaffe, not the big deal the media made it out to be.
I heard a Lucas
found dead on the bathroom floor
Wish Trump had focused more on trade deals, loss of good jobs, wars, and Clinton corruption. Maybe he did, and the media choose to censor it so I didn’t see it, but I’ve rarely seen him push these issues that some at NC say would resonate. So far it looks like we won’t get to test that theory. The media is piling on but also Trump is taking the bait and responding to punches as Team Clinton wants him to instead of staying on topics he can win with.
My guess is that Trump has two cards that have not been played but will be soon.
First the debates. It will without a doubt if it takes place be one of the greatest shows on earth. Trump who is one of the masters of reality tv will more than likely dominate Clinton and soar in popularity after the debates. That is only if Trump does not have a meltdown during the show. My guess is he will contain himself and not self emulate because he’s worked tv shows before. However this one will be live.
Second.Julian Assange is sitting on some Clinton emails that will wipe out any lead she holds to the moment. Your guess is as good as mine as to what is in them. However on the news show Democracy Now, the other day he so much as said that there was more to come. What’s in them? I don’t have a clue. I will guess that these emails will be the October surprise that will heavily damage Clinton. My other guess and I don’t like guessing especially in one of the most fluid presidential campaigns that I can remeber is that Assange has the patience to wait till Oct to reveal her emails. After all you have to be pretty patient to live in an embassy for 5 years in order to avoid extradition and arrest.
The debates and wikileaks are two events that will probaly occur and after that who knows?
Unless we are talking about Madoff’s funds, very few things in life are steady and constant…in one direction.
Within an intermediate or a long term trend, you get ups and downs. For that reason, it’s not often, though not unprecedented, that you get 12 or 16 years of one party occupying the White House.
So too will be polls in this election. The easy thing to do is to project the last week for the rest of the race.
We will see. Will this be the low for Trump and peak for Hillary?
Stay tuned.
Unless we are talking about Madoff’s funds, very few things in life are steady and constant…in one direction.
The Mississippi! Did I spell that right? I just kept adding S’es
That’s a fun idiom and the name of a great Ween song. Can anyone explain the meaning or origin? I’ve been confused about that one for a while.
I think whichever of them wins they’ll barely squeak over the finish line. They’re both utterly despised by the general public. There’s so many layers and vectors of irony in this election. The GOP has spent decades vilifying the Clintons, and now finds itself with a candidate it so doesn’t want that portions of GOP are willing to support Clinton and are desperate to reverse course. And Clinton is attempting to court voters who have been conditioned to hate her while throwing the left under the bus at every opportunity.
“I think Trump might lose but in losing he at least wants to publicize to the populace what a horrific prez they are getting.”
Which is more than Sanders ever did.
Semi-random thoughts:
So, at what point – is there a point? – would Donald Trump bail on this entire presidency project in order to avoid the total humiliation of being roundly and soundly defeated? After all his overbearing claims of his obvious superiority, and everyone else’s essential loser-ness, is he a take-my-bat-and-ball-and-go-home kind of guy?
All that being said, I also wonder about the quality of the polling that’s being done; someone posted something yesterday about an entire group being left out of the polling – the under-45s – which would seem to render the results useless – well, unless the whole idea is to lay the groundwork for a self-fulfilling prophecy: tell people often enough that Clinton has opened up a big lead, keep up the anti-Trump stories, and eventually, maybe the “real” numbers do work in Clinton’s favor.
And we’re supposed to be outraged at possible foreign manipulation of the American election process? Please.
I was going to ask, “how stupid do they think we are?” until I remembered that I already know the answer.
I think its hard to see how he could engineer a face saving way out now, even if he wanted to. Dropping out early would expose him to more ridicule than losing. Besides, if he loses he can blame corruption/the establishment/ the Mexicans, whatever.
But I think you are right about polling quality – there seems to be some very big ranges out there now which usually either indicates an electorate which hasn’t made up its mind (i.e. its very volatile), or there are forces at work which the polling companies just haven’t got a grip on yet. Given how spectacularly wrong nearly every prognosticator has been the last 12 months, I would go for the latter. The mix of major defections to third parties and a possible very low turn-out could make this the hardest race of all to predict. And add to the mix that the media are completely in Clintons court, which means that you have to assume that all polls will follow a set narrative. At the moment its ‘Trump is nosediving’, but closer to the election it could be ‘its too close to call’, to try to herd up as many anti-Trump voters as possible.
Lots of Trump supporters are just being silent and biding time; waiting for the other shoe to drop on Clinton; whether it be a provable Assange revelation or an obvious health problem. The polls appear to be questionable at best, rigged at worst. I live in a solidly Dem area, and I know no one advocating for Clinton; in fact many comments about the D’Souza doc and Clinton Cash. Even the Hispanics, many from Central America, recognize corruption as one of the reasons they fled their home country; they will not vote for it here. I seriously doubt that many Dems in this area will show up at the voting booths. Trump may even take my county which has been solidly Dem for over 40 years.
I think we have seen the Clinton has an insurmountable lead scenario played out only recently. And oddly enough it only hid the shenanigans that really let her become nominee. Something her current opponent will not be so nice about.
Here is the thing, Trump has already told you how he is going to take losing – by pulling the entire rotten edifice down around Clinton’s ears in a venue she cannot stage manage to hide the cracks.
On the Zero Hedge I did read a report that a 25 to 34 yr old group was dropped from a pol. This was in the few days after the democrat convention that helped push Hillary to a lead of 4 to 6%. I find the search function on Z H crappy, or I am not searching correctly, and have trouble things that I have read. The way the story was worded it sounded as if the polling co. did do a service to help boost Hillary and dropped the outlier age group. And am I dreaming but didn’t part of the collusion during the primaries was that polling was being skewed to Hillary? If Hillary has a lead now of 10%, maybe the pullers of the string realize that they need a 10% margin of safety.
No one has seen any Hillary signs.
She is out there…announcing her “Progressive” tax increase on the middle class.
Trump (and our economic demise) will be shoved to the back of the line…Hillary will be very busy:
*On August 8, Vladimir Putin will visit Baku at the invitation of the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev to take part in the first trilateral meeting of the leaders of Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia.
*President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan will make a working visit to Moscow on August 10 at Vladimir Putin’s invitation
…i read somewhere Putin will meet Erdogan on the 9th*
the eurasian integration (and a future seat for Turkey, alongside Iran, in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, SCO) will be topdog.
IF Turkey starts talking about a fast track into the SCO all hell could break lose in the West.
Establishment publications like the New Yorker have been predicting Trump’s departure from the scene for months, but, unlike the dog that caught the car, Trump may realize he has an opportunity to do what most egoists can never dream of. To be head of the most powerful country in the world, militarily and arguably still economically, is the stuff of fantasy for most, and it’s within grabbing distance for Trump.
He is astute enough to have recognized and, one might say, envied, what Sanders had — the youth of the country. It is incredibly obvious that no one has stepped in to capture their vote. If Trump were to adopt a few ideas from Sanders, such as free tuition and (this is for you, commenter PhilU) student loan forgiveness, plus a major Keynesian investment in the economy to achieve full employment (tax cuts for the rich could be part of it, but, based on 40 years of experience, not all of it), he may well win over enough Democrats to make up for the loss of regular Republicans (which looks like it is going to happen anyway).
With his lack of ties to the establishment Republicans, he doesn’t have the baggage the usual nominee is stuck with. And, since Hillary has decided to be the Republican candidate in all but name, he can run as the Democrat.
Why should the Republicans have two choices?
Since Bill Clinton changed the Democrats into a party that competes with the Republicans to represent the 1%, the 99% have been available to anyone who can speak to their issues. Sanders demonstrated this potential in the primaries, and now those 99% are available once again.
If Trump follows up on his insight into Sanders success and courts the youth vote, he can at least lose honorably, looking to the future and to investing in America’s youth. Maybe as the Republican’s Adlai Stevenson instead of their Goldwater II.
How on earth is he going to “court the youth vote”? Get a brain transplant and change his entire message? That will only serve to alienate his existing supporters.
Clinton has a railroad car (if not a train) full of problems and baggage, but America’s younger voters overwhelmingly hate Trump.
really? got a link?
Um, I am part of the youth vote (23) and I do dislike trump but that is not going to stop me (at present) from voting for him to stop a delusional neoliberal psychopath who wants moar war and to confront Russia and might as well be dick Cheneys twin. I know many other former Bernie voters of my generation who will vote for him for the same reasons or just to spite the dems.
So next time you want to speak for my generation the least you can do is provide a shoddy poll to support It (and how the Fack are they reaching us No one i know even has a landline, are they using self select Internet polls /sneer).
Hating him doesn’t translate into not voting for him.
We need a “like” button for comments. I sure do like yours.
Here’s Like #2.
And #3…
Like #4. Well said
This took me about two minutes to find (AND read):
New Poll Has Trump at 9 Percent Among Young Voters
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/08/poll-trump-9-percent-young-voters.html
“Though social media and trendy headgear are two of the core elements of Trump’s campaign, he’s performed poorly with young people for months — but a major-party candidate polling in the single digits among a huge voting bloc is still notable. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 36 percent of the 18-29 vote compared to Obama’s 60 percent, and in 2008, McCain had 32 percent to Obama’s 66 percent.” [“Landline responses combined with respondents reached through random dialing of cell phone numbers from Survey Sampling International”].
It includes a link to a March 2016 NY Times article detailing how Trump’s “performed poorly with young people for months”: the article aggregates results from a number of different polls that suggest “the Trump brand could weigh on the GOP for a generation.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/24/upshot/lasting-damage-for-gop-young-voters-reject-donald-trump.html?_r=0
All those polls (actually all the articles base their premise on one USA today poll, if you took the time to click through into the links) were taken in early March while Bernie was still in the race, prior to the convention, and the dnc email leaks. They provide no info on sample methodology either, alot has changed since then.
Ask for shoddy (and dated)polls, and you shall receive!
but they only took 2 minutes to find and read!
I also know a few in MI who will be voting this way, for same reason. Includes some young libertarians, who also know Trump is corrupt but look for gov’tal breakdown.
Edit to add: DrBob, these were Sanders voters, now looking elsewhere.
allow student loans to be eligible for bankruptcy. He can say “I’m successful and I’ve used bankruptcy and you should be able to as well.” The only people he’ll be hurting “work” at goldman sachs. If young voters hate trump, why then the exclusion of young voters from polls? If you hang around college kids who think hillary is going to get them higher pay in their professional life after college, they, like remain voters from oxford and cambridge, can’t see any alternative to globalization and hillary, but democracy is a numbers game, and that demographic (pre professional college students with mostly successful parents) is blind to the realities of the great majority of the rest who don’t support hillary. Your exceptional crowd keeps getting smaller and smaller while continuing to think they have outsized influence. The true statement in that is “Clinton has a railroad car (if not a train) full of problems and baggage”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVovq9TGBw0
Go to one of the many tent cities and ask thse people who they would vote for. It’s (probably, I’m pretty fed up with USA USA more war democrat party) the flawed stein for me, but I have never voted for a republican and I started voting in 1978. The only candidate who elicits the passionate emotion of “hate” is clinton, for trump it’s more like “WTF?” but people understand why trump.I feel sorry for all the reagan republicans who feel that they’re in the cool PC crowd now with hillary, but not that sorry, they were always basically selfish tools.
The meetup tonight in NYC skewed to old farts, but the young people there (women!) were split on Trump, which was more favorable than you’d evah expect, particularly in NYC.
Bailing–no way. How humiliating, not to mention unprecedented, would that be? This is an MSM fantasy along with all their other fantasies. Scott Adams says there’s a “shy voter syndrome” where people are ashamed to tell poll takers that they are voting for Trump.
But he definitely needs to get his act together if he’s serious about winning. The media are playing their usual game of trying to shape the election but that’s unfortunately that’s always been the case so if he is indeed a “realist” he needs to deal with it.
The media is a joke. It hides Clinton’s foot in mouth pronouncements and horrendous acts and snipes on Trump constantly … it’s repulsive (and I don’t have cable and rarely watch tv)
But. Trump has done a multitude of prior interviews where he has his act together for me to believe this buffoonery is accidental.
Maybe he is throwing the race? Maybe he never really wanted to be president, or he did want it, but now he’s changed his mind about it. I still can’t wrap my mind around why Trump, a long time billionaire mind you, would want to be president. Sure.. he’s a narcissist. I just find it hard to reconcile what Walden has rightly called buffoonery with this other picture promoted by the likes of of Scott Adams, that he’s some kind of brilliant 11ty dimensional strategist.
Also, the notion of Trump courting Sanders voters by reversing his fundamental platform of cutting whatever social/environmental programs he can get his hands on.. I just don’t see debt relief for the lazy, freeloading people as something Donald is going to be pushing for anytime soon.
If he wanted out, it would be easy. Say his family was getting death threats, that he could stand up to it but he couldn’t continue to put them through the stress as well as the risk.
The real issue may be any of (or a combo):
1. The transgressive, attack dog strategy that enabled him to slaughter the R candidates is clearly failing now, and he’s refusing to believe it and/or has not found a new strategy
2. He’s been The Man for so long and gotten away with being reactive that he finds it hard to take advice and be more measured and strategic
3. He’s internally conflicted: he sure as hell does not want to lose but isn’t so sure he wants to win.
On that point it bears considering: IF Trump bailed out before the election, would that not leave Mike Pence as the de facto GOP nominee? How would Pence stack up vs Hillary? Who would the GOP go with for VP in that case?
I suspect that the instant Trump bails out, all those GOPers for Hillary would immediately switch back to their own “side” (of the same coin). Would the loss of all of Trumps base denude the GOP electorate in November or would enough stick around to put Pence over the top? Pence CANNOT have higher unfavorables than SHillary but there wouldn’t be a lot of time in the chaos of Trump exiting for Pence to make up ground.
It appears to me that the media has decided that, as much as they detest Hillary, Trump is such a loose cannon, who cannot control his mouth, his temper or his ego to any significant degree, that they have no choice but to rescue the republic from his insanity and ensure that Clinton wins the WH.
There is no down side for the media in that scenario, because after all, once she’s elected, the real fun of pumping their own brand of steroids into the GOP’s inevitable launch of investigations, hearings and impeachment of Clinton will begin in earnest.
We may all have to go off the “news”grid for the foreseeable future, and limit our exposure to sports and weather. With luck, we will have a good start to football season, and the baseball season will end with an exciting World Series – anything to avoid the political cesspool.
In what way does the media detest hillary? It’s kid gloves all the way. They’re multinational corps and their multinational advertisers who are for clinton because globalization.
So, do you imagine, then, that when she is elected and the GOP drumbeat starts for investigations and impeachment, that the media will be offering full-throated defense of her?
I don’t.
And they sure didn’t love her when she was running against Obama, did they?
The bottom line is, the media loves it some drama – the more, the better – and all that multinational stuff won’t matter to them if they have the golden opportunity of feeding the GOP witch hunt – no pun intended.
Good God, they can’t even get through a nightly newscast without bringing us the latest weather drama – floods, fire, earthquake, whatever.
Drama gets the eyeballs and the clicks, so that’s what they nurture. And there will be plenty of it if Clinton is elected.
currently they don’t defend her, they just airbrush away the bad stuff. The investigations and impeachment talk are good smoke screens to hide how bad they’re shafting the hoi polloi. Yes to the drama and you may be right that a hillary president will make them more drama money. The multinational stuff matters to their bosses, count on it, and jamie dimon has a history of threatening to cease advertising with offenders to his kingdom, pretty sure the rest of his buddies will do the same thing.
The media will behave as in Benghazi, as in the server, as in the DHC dump: reporting HC’s responses without comment (leaving some people believing her), and reporting unpleasantries in a confusing fashion, and letting contradictions slide quietly forgotten into oblivion. While such a defense isn’t full-throated, it is (or will be) as effective as any.
i don’t think there is a “media”, there’s only the bezzle. The bezzle of course is the money, right now that is bomb manufacturing CEOs and pharma billionaires who simply must have that second private island so they flow their ad bucks and news presstitute bucks where they know they’re safe (and have you seen how much a decent butler costs these days?) In the short run we’ll be told the race is still competitive to keep ad spend and viewership up as best they can, after the election there’ll be all new bezzles, TPP industry lockups, citizen Geiger counters and fallout shelters, apps that scan your iris to make sure you’re not a Muslim. Whee this democracy stuff is fun!
We need tenured reporters as much, if not more, than tenured professors.
One call from the DNC to the head of a news organization, everyone there has to put aside the detesting for a greater cause.
The Clintons have been bullying the media successfully for decades. They get roughed up lightly once in a while, but even then, the actual facts should merit vastly harsher treatment.
And Hillary will not be impeached. Ron Paul is opposed to Republican shitshows, so he’ll make sure it doesn’t happen.
The Clintons are lucky in their enemies.
Pence and Hillary both support TPP, TTIP, TISA, etc. So that’s one area where Pence and Hillary are identical. And given the threat to American survival posed by TPP, TTIP, TISA, etc., that identicality of Pence and Clinton make them a deadly threat on that score.
If Trump/Pence were elected, how would a Trade Patriot Trump and Trade Traitor Pence get along?
It’s pretty obvious what’s happening with the media and these polls where the two candidates are so roundly detested. Whomever the media wants to lose ground gets the news coverage, while the other is largely hidden. (Can you imagine Hillary’s numbers if the current Libya bombing campaign was the lede. Or the weapons to Syria? People would be talking about her as a menace.)
Further though, I think the media may be testing Trumps ability to raise an spend money. If he’s tapped out or even looking like it, then they’ll want to dump him in favor of another GOPer who can come up with more. (The media of course would promise to jump start the replacement with free air time.) After all, if the GOP isn’t spending money on this race, then Hillary won’t have to, and there goes the bottom line at the networks.
Of course, if Trump is pushed out by the media, that’s pretty much it for democracy in America. It would become impossible (as Sanders learned) to run for President without first getting the full blessing of the media (which is pretty much brain dead by now ,,, see Chait, Krugman, etc.).
And then there’s still the matter of the pissed off knuckledraggers (my heroes in this). Do the elites simply think these people are going away?
It’s too late for another Republican candidate. Any media reports otherwise are just false.
What better example of humoliatio. needing to be a two way thing than The Cliiintons( ( think The Simpsons intro)
Trump in his style needs only to offer that he tried and the system was pathetically rigged, which it seems to be w/o no other irrefutable evidence rqd than Clintons felonious behaviour, as well the DNC, justic dept, FBI
After taking said irrefuteable position Trump can live out a very comfortable balance of life whereever the heck he wants. Im guessin concern about humiliation should be pretty damn low in his mind.
reading Syrian Culture book, published by a British Imprint:Thomson Airways spokesperson said: “Our crew undergo general safety and security awareness training on a regular basis. As part of this they are encouraged to be vigilant and share any information or questions with the relevant authorities. We appreciate that in this instance Ms Shaheen may have felt that overcaution had been exercised. However, like all airlines, our crew are trained to report any concerns they may have as a precaution.”
i see where corporate creation for their own demise is on track..
Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. ~1984
That story reminded me that the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was arrested during WWI when he was noticed jotting down music while near a coastal town. Somebody thought the musical notation was a code and that Williams was a German spy.
Supposedly people who played chess by mail occasionally fell under suspicion of sending coded messages in their chess games. I’m sure this occasionally happened, but I also think some accounts are apocryphal. I once read about a KGB agent who was arrested for doing this in Mexico City in 1944 — one problem with this story is that the KGB did not exist in 1944!
“was detained by police at Doncaster airport on 25 July, on her return from her honeymoon in Turkey. A Thomson Airways cabin-crew member had reported Shaheen on her outbound flight two weeks earlier, as she was reading the title Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline.”
So they saw a woman reading a book, (that’s enough right there! Who does she think she is!?) and then waited TWO WEEKS to question her? She might have had thoughts during those two weeks, smart ones!!! The nerve of some people with their reading, and thoughts, and all that crap.
ive read that too, maybe the guys involved in cryptoanalysis during ww2? but i cant find a link offhand.
Also too:
Two Muslim women who work for US government escorted off plane as they made staff ‘uncomfortable’
Wow mixed feelings there. I too would feel unsafe with a VoA “journalist” on the plane.
back in the good ol days
https://www.flickr.com/photos/sas-museum/page2
Re:Nixon says public defender maneuver not legal
That is one way to kill a re-election campaign! Too bad this is his last term and he now has zero accountability….
Just like Fokkin’ 0Bomba.
Startup nation story needs a link.
The FT is paywalled anyway.
Okay, got it.
Since small business can’t afford to cover $15 an hour wages … let’s just kill them all off. That way you can give all your money directly to the globalist.
Don’t look at what is happening on your street corner … look instead to what is going everywhere else, but.
We’ve severed the link to all politics are local and thus broke the power of “we the people”.
Just keep on voting for the lesser of two evils. The result? Well … no thank you.
Neither a Republican nor Democrat be.
This isn’t small business versus big business. It’s business. You seem to forget that WalMart is one of the biggest perps here, and it wiped out tons of the sort of small businesses you are touting.
If you can’t pay people a decent wage, you shouldn’t be in business. I’m appalled that you are arguing for labor exploitation in the name of your perceived corporate right to profit.
How in corporate hell did l miss AA? ….H5 YVES
Whatever abynormal said??
There is a lot of economic research that disproves increasing minimum wage decreases
Employment. In just a preliminary attempt I found this, which looks like a good place to start.
https://www.dol.gov/featured/minimum-wage/mythbuster
This myth is just another neo-liberal zombie idea. Let’s stomp it out.
Medicaid privatization editorial is from August 2015. Just a heads’ up.
@Carla, i keep my eyes on Iowa for how this will be locally expedited …July 16, 2016:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2016/07/16/editorial-providers-medicaid-nightmare-becomes-reality/87023948/ “The state was not prepared for this transition,” she told a Register editorial writer last week.”
oh yes they are…just don’t pay for services rendered
The DMRegister editorial is exactly right.
Kansas privatized Medicaid and the results are ugly, ugly.
From the Topeka Capitol Journal yesterday:
http://cjonline.com/news/2016-08-04/kansas-lawmakers-grill-kdhe-secretary-kancare-contractor-over-backlog-life-and-death#
The problems are getting worse.
At first it was “clearing the backlog” by using tricks to declare all those on wait lists as inelegible for various reasons.
From a June report in the Wichita Eagle:
http://www.kansas.com/news/business/health-care/article84506597.html
“When you’re in a budget crisis like Kansas, you look for every way you can save a nickel,” Kelly said. “And quite frankly, they don’t care if it’s on the backs of the disabled, pregnant women or poor children.”
Adding Brownback and the lege privatized Kansas Medicaid in 2012. Kansas is farther along this road than Iowa. Sorry Branstad has taken Iowa into this mess. I thought he had more sense.
i saw your governor foaming at the mouth, he wouldn’t be able to open schools for the fall…the propaganda out there is mojo rising
AARP BACKS DOWN FROM SUPPORT FOR ALEX!
Carla,
you will be happy to know that AARP is now backing down from ALEC membership. That was sure quick. Below is from the Politico morning feed of what is a big deal to them. The link is to a letter to AARP requesting them to NOT JOIN ALEC. Apparently, a little bit of sunshine does the trick. Eternal vigilance does pay off at times, and this seems to be one of them. The NC community has plenty of people who now or soon will depend on Social Security and Medicare and broadcasting any threats to them from here also plays a role. Yves also included an LA Times piece about AARP in the links today. You can’t hammer enough to agitate for what you want.
————————————————————————————
HOW WASHINGTON WORKS — At 3:32 p.m. Thursday afternoon, Anna reached out to AARP to ask them whether they were going to renew their membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council, a controversial conservative legislative group focus on state politics. Anna wrote that we were going to do an item about it in Playbook. Groups like AFSCME, Social Security Works, ClimateTruth.org and others were launching a campaign and had just begun circulating a letter, asking AARP to leave ALEC. At 5:58 p.m., Anna got an email from AARP saying, “We will not renew our membership to ALEC. AARP will continue to explore avenues that will enhance our interaction with organizations and elected officials that represent different perspectives in order to further the issues important to Americans 50+ and their families.” The letter that did it: http://politi.co/2aoPzzM
Read more: http://www.politico.com/playbook#ixzz4GSx6oHA4
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook
——————————————————————————————-
And this episode from the bowels of neoliberal FL, also 2015:
http://health.wusf.usf.edu/post/univita-health-losing-medicaid-contracts#stream/0
This was a Rick Scott scam, “centralizing” stuff in the hands of his cronies and skimming the money the fleeing into bankruptcy. The daughter of a woman I worked with has profound CP disabilities. Medicaid paid for home nursing (a fraction of the cost of Scott’s intended institutionalizations of all such people in Scott’s buddies’ facilities). Univita stopped paying the agency. My friend works a full time nursing job, and does all the many care tasks for her daughter all the rest of her hours. Without the 8 hours of nurse care, 5 days a week, my friend could not hold a job and pay taxes and all that. Multiple wins for the Fokkers who are eating the guys out of our mopes lives.
I compared the info in your post and link with what has been happening in Kansas.
cut and delay provider payments. √
deny home health aid reimbursment. √
deny / delay Medicaid enrollment. √
“…create a virual monopoly on the most fragile sector of Medicaid business.” √
What a coincidence.
I don’t suppose I need to point out that the privatization of Medicaid was the price paid for the Medicaid expansion of ACA AND that it is supposedly the most successful part of ACA.
As Lambert often points out just more crapification of the system…
GenForward Poll: Most young whites think Clinton broke law [AP]
Feel the Millennial-mentum.
And then there’s the 5 million people who hold, or have held, security clearances.
And the millions more whose jobs have involve(d) some kind of administrative responsibility,
who know that their work email belongs to their employer.
It’s hard to fill out a ballot when you’re holding your nose.
Apparently not:
She’s beating him 2:1 with younger voters in Pennsylvania.
Filling out a ballot while holding one’s nose may be tough, but Trump is so awful that voters, especially young voters, are quite willing to put in the effort.
While that article was updated on the first of this month, most of the data they are citing in the Old/Young category is from early in the year. In fact one of their links in the article goes to an article from February. I’m not saying that it has changed, I’m saying we don’t know that any of this still applies after the end of the Democratic primaries and the DNC email release. They may very well hate everyone equally now. Which could be why there is no recent data.
And I’m not sure what you are linking with the Pennsylvania data – the Pew Poll in Pennsylvania at the top of that page doesn’t address that and only notes the percentage of the ages represented. By the way it was largely done by phone, with no indication if it was landline based.
AH! But voters 18-29 suck at going to the polls. Hopefully they will be no-shows for Hillary…OR vote heavily for Berners down ticket to rob SHillary of a neoliberal sweep.
You claim:
but the primary source (PDF) does not break down by age. How do you substantiate the “younger voters” in your claim?
The idea young people will bother to vote for someone they don’t like is absurd. I’ve organized (been paid to organize would be more accurate) young people. They are awful, but they will check out if you don’t keep their attention. “The Emerging Democratic Majority” (2002) missed one key problem. Young people aren’t tribal aligned, and though their sympathies might align with generic Democrats such as Sanders, the modern Democrat is nothing like Sanders. People come out to vote “for” not “against.”
Non voters are not impressed by arguments about the other side being crazy when they are one bad day from being in a personal catastrophe.
I was young once.
I remember being distracted by too many must-do’s in pursuit (but not necessarily obtaining) of happiness in life.
I fully expect that low turn out is going to be the Democratic Party’s biggest problem. I think a lot of people, not just young people, will find the need to do anything else but vote. We may even make a majority of the voting public voting none of the above by not showing up. Largely because, as you say, people turn out to vote for something. While there will be people turning up to vote against Trump, I’m not sure that contingent isn’t matched or even beaten by the “never Hillary” crowd.
So the question is going to be how many people are voting FOR one of the two most hated candidates running for President since that was measured.
Trump in the primary race expanded turnout for the Repubs while Dem turnout shrank.
If NotTimothyGeithner is correct then that’s good news for Trump because Hillary is basing her whole campaign on voting against somebody.
BTW I believe Sanders won the young vote in my very conservative and very AA state versus Clinton. There just weren’t enough of them.
Those young people who voted in the primary phase were for Sanders.
Those young people who will vote in the general favor Hillary.
Are they two different sets or are they converting?
Young people in some of the current polls favor Clinton. But will they vote? Trump may yet win the “enthusiasm gap.”
In fact this is how the Republican party has been winning for the past 20 years since their voters are both older and more committed than the Dems under the demoralizing reign of the neoliberals. You can’t beat something with nothing as the saying goes and the Repubs are more than happy to deploy fake populism against the technocrats. Whether Trump represents real populism is an open question.
Everyone focuses on flip flopping Kerry, but every second the Democrats wasted on that was a waste. The people who didn’t vote didn’t care. They were disaffected and ignored by Team Blue. I firmly believe primary Kerry or Edwards would have won in 04 because they weren’t using the Clinton playbook.
Republicans say crazy things. It’s just red meat, and no, Democrats will never win rank and file Republicans. Trump’s biggest weakness with GOP voters is the movement conservatives. The GOP Id is dedicated to despising Democrats. The real conservatives don’t like Trump because he’s from New York like Bernie Sanders.
@nottim
Very true about attention issues and staying home but many of those of us (“millennials”) that put our support behind Bernie, still have a very very bitter taste in our mouths about the establishment destruction of Bernie (even though he turned into a sheepdog) on behalf of Hillary and for those who aren’t very policy focused spite can be a very strong motivator.
Will those feelings persist to November is the key though, I think if any of the election fraud lawsuits gain traction or if there are more releases from wikileaks closer to November, the spite vote could come into play among the cohort that strongly feels betrayed by the dems.
Even if we think Bernie has ended up being a sheepdog, that doesn’t mean we have to be sheep. And I don’t think Bernie set out to be a sheepdog. And if he is being one, it is somewhat reluctantly. He is keeping faith with a promise he made when he ran as a Democrat to begin with.
Tulsi Gabbard obviously feels some personal distaste for Clinton. And yet she states she is voting for Clinton. Perhaps she quite reasonably wishes to spare herself and the future good she thinks she can do in politics from the hideous intensity of the Clintonites’ Nixonian taste for revenge.
Whenever someone does something like that, it is well to remember the little poem . . .
” Could it be
that someone put
a horse’s head
in (whomever’s) bed?”
No problem! The machine will place a vote for you; it’s all worked out. How cool is that!
Most & Least Federally Dependent States: only 3 of the most dependent are blue states. Even easier to see on the chart. Most of the red dots (most dependent) are red states, most of the green (least dependent) are blue states, while the “swing states” – PA, OH, MI, FL – are in the middle.
So red states should love the federal government, no?
Or conversely, looking at those charts, which party do the poor think better represents their interests?
They do. They love the military, agricultural subsidies, and social security* of retirees which is basically the difference. They even like their national parks. The implicit message Democrats make is “let’s cut government spending for the hypocrites and give it to ourselves” ignoring those blue states are often the recipients of low cost food and bank profits from those rural areas.
Usually, I can’t stand Obama, but his red states and blue states line was nice because that retro versus metro garbage was popular then. Obviously, the army can’t drop a tank testing ground in Connecticut.
*Republican boomers and seniors fought back on Bush’s SS privatization plans.
Not sure how dependence on Federal govt is calculated but pretty sure it doesn’t include dependence on the Federal Reserve. If the latter were included, then dependence on the Fed (s) would line up pretty much as we would intuitively expect, blue states are much more dependent on the Fed(s) than red states.
Re: Stem cell research
I agree with Yves comments about disease. Why would we build cross-breeding factories for bacteria and viruses? Sounds suicidal. Of course, with any luck, we will have blown ourselves up or roasted ourselves to death in global warming by then.
As for empathy for the poor baby bunny wabbits who might suffer, I think perhaps it would be more humane to stop dropping Hellfire missiles on civilians rather then get teary eyed over a few lepus.
Why can’t we be against animal cruelty and drone warfare at the same time?
In fact if we as a culture were disgusted by one, we’d almost certainly be disgusted by the other.
I recall an interview with Michael Moore about his film “Bowling for Columbine”. More people called in to complain about the scene with a woman killing and skinning rabbits for dinner than did for anything else in the movie.
Some Americans care about both. I would guess most don’t. And if you showed them videos of each, they would be more outraged by the animal testing than by terrorists (or baby terrorists) being blow to bits.
Should we be outraged by both? Yes. But as Robert Frost said about the world ending in fire or ice, for me “either one will suffice.”
Technically speaking, the “Rabbit Lady” sequences were from Roger And Me, not Bowling For Columbine.
claim to fame–i met the rabbit lady’s sister.
Thank you.
Haven’t seen this elsewhere yet, so here it is: Is Hillary Clinton Corrupt?
As the subhead says, “An archive of financial improprieties.” Or what grandpa used to call “crimes.”
That’s a sledgehammer blow to betteridge’s law.
In other news, I reckon Jeremy Corbyn must have done OK in his hustings with owen smith, as the bbc chose to devote a whole 2 minute video (1m 40s given to smiffy) in its online coverage of this momentuous david and goliath clash, and the guardian’s article lasted about half an hour on the front page.
If the forces behind the coup were not so malign, you’d almost feel sorry for them.
Please do not link to any more of this putrid blasphemy of the first woman to be nominated for president of the united states by a major political party, and the most qualified candidate in anyone’s, lving or dead, lifetime.
No one is interested in it, and it does not matter.
Donald Trump is a crazy loon who, in addition to disrespecting a Muslim Gold Star family, has allowed himself to become an “unwitting” agent of Vladimir Putin who, if Trump wins, will use this ignorant goofball to overthrow the united states and take over Latvia and maybe even Estonia, dooming the planet.
Trump must be stopped, and all of this irrelevant information just gets in the way.
Even if all that was not true, he will always have small hands….would you want them groping the nuclear football?
omg he might drop it
heh. The Demo convention reminded me of talk show scenes in The Hunger Games. I kept expecting Clinton to end with, “And may the odds be EVER in your favor!”
all they needed was to drag out the effigy of Former President Snow for the final cherry on top!
I do appreciate the major political party qualifier. I like all the people who cracked the glass before ‘the most qualified candidate in anyone’s, living or dead, lifetime”.
Beyond all that, apparently the writer didn’t get the notice that unless you have them in a dark alley taking money for some crack legislation which is handed off there is NO quid pro quo according to our esteemed Supreme Court.
How is taking over Latvia and Estonia going to threaten the US much less overthrow it?
Floridians, after years for weed legalization…may wanna watch what they wish for when they begin spraying pesticides. but maybe not…the majority i’ve witnessed will welcome an added chemical ‘juice’ :/
Would have to read the legislation but states include local control and these little fiefdoms for CA have already written local codes to force out small farms.
The marketing on this is manipulative. It’s just like alcohol! No. It isn’t. An individual can grow/buy grapes and make wine at home or grow/buy barley, hops and yeast and make beer at home. Under the faux legalization, an individual is barred in most circumstances from growing marijuana at home and is merely allowed to possess the patented product of a corporation. Note, also the regulations are so onerous a person must use multiple expensive consultants to even apply. This is my pet peeve… it isn’t legalization, it is corporatization.
A “marijuana corporatization” initiative was defeated in Ohio recently. Many of the “no” votes came from people who wanted marijuana legalized for natural persons, not just Crony Corporate Citizens.
Perhaps Californians who wanted Free and Equal Marijuana Legalization for Natural Persons could start a movement called Pot For People, Not For Profit to defeat and destroy the Crony Corporate Legalization Initiative . . . if that is what it is.
How much time do the Friends of True Legal Marijuana have to organize and defeat the Crony Corporate Legalization initiative if they get started now?
US owns world’s biggest cyber army
Commentary: The world’s best cyber army doesn’t belong to Russia
To: DNC
From: RG
Re: Notes for Hill’s next big speech
RG: much more effective than harping on Nixon’s 5 o’clock shadow or Trump’s small hands.
Re: Gov. Nixon being appointed as a public defender.
I’m not an attorney in Missouri, so the rules there may be different than Illinois (where I have a license), but in Illinois a court may appoint any attorney, with or without his consent, to represent an individual. The Model Rules of Professional Conduct, which are the rules which govern attorney ethical conduct and are published by the ABA and mostly adopted wholesale by the states, clearly say that an attorney appointed by the court cannot seek to avoid appointment without good cause. (Rule 6.2). That being said, I cannot imagine a judge not finding good cause to avoid the appointment…
The cheetah in the antidote is quote appropriate, since the Olympic games are starting. No human sprinter can possibly compete with a cheetah. Heck, no human sprinter could compete with an ostrich, either. Sometimes we humans are very arrogant. The world champion in many sports is not one of us.
Let’s see that cheetah or ostrich run a marathon.
They aren’t that stupid.
Did you miss the item about inserting human genes into animals?
It’s equally possible to introduce the genes coding for, say, cheetah leg-muscle sprinting power into humans.
Introduction of certain animal genes into humans is going to happen, not incidentally, as therapy.
Genes that promote resistance to different kinds of cancers would be one possibility.The main cause of colono-rectal cancer, for example, is a sugar molecule in red meat, Neu5Gc, that’s present on the cell surfaces of all mammals except humans and that we can’t process well. Maybe we could introduce the relevant genes to process Neu5Gc into humans
Doctor Moreau was ahead of his time!
Olympic torch bearer. Praise to his callipygian protest. Fora Temer. Typically Brazilian—wonderful wit and incisive assessment of a situation. I have been looking into Brazilian literature, history, and music for years. There is no one like the Brazilians—who, as writers, are almost merciless at times in their pursuit of truths. I think of Clarice Lispector and Joaquim Maria Machado di Asis. And all without that history-avoiding magic realism and contemplation-of-contemplation-of-Borges-of-contemplation.
Whenever we talk loosely about people getting the government they deserve, we should remind ourselves: Brazil hasn’t had many governments worthy of the Brazilians. Maybe Kubitschek. Maybe Lula.
Unfortunately paywalled, but for those still interested in the Mussolini-and-corporatism-question:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/when-we-loved-mussolini/
Apparently Mussolini had fairly robust ties with anglo-american finance–including one J.P. Morgan–leading up to WWII.
I remember years ago in an old rental house finding a 1938 Encyclopaedia (I can’t remember which one, but it was one of the major publishers). The section under ‘Italy’ was almost entirely devoted to the praise of Il Duce who had apparently brought Italy back to its previous economic and cultural glories. Of course as is well known much of the English media (most notoriously the Daily Mail and Daily Express) were very fond of him – I don’t know about the US press, but I imagine he did impress a certain sort of proprietor.
Quoted from David Schmitz Thank God They’re on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965, p. 90.
“U.S. military communications satellite fails to reach intended orbit”
Article is a bit dated. While the main engine appears to be non-operative just the other day the satellite fired it thrusters and raised its orbit a little. In fact it has done this more than once in the past month.
Better article here:
http://spaceflightnow.com/2016/08/02/navy-looks-for-plan-b-to-salvage-its-newest-communications-satellite/
Thank goodness the rocket scientists are scurrying, trying to find a way to save the taxpayers money by saving terribly important investments in one little corner of the four-dimensional board on which the Great Game is now being played.
Bill’s always rooting for the MIC and the Empire. Squirt reaction mass out the thruster nozzles! Get that critically important command and spy satellite into a higher orbit! More money for new ICBMs! And tactical nuclear weapons! Excelsior!
Hope I’m not being a pest but I wrote quite a long post that found its way into moderation. All good, just thought I’d mention it. Apologies if I am out of line here.
low integer,
Is that your long post at 2:41?
No. It was a two and a half thousand word post, and it must have broken some rule or other regarding commenting at NC, though I tried to be clear that some of the post was purely speculative.
In any case my apologies to Yves and Lambert if it was in fact considered out of line.
‘Some people consider articles longer than 700 words to be long-form, whereas others think that articles have to be in excess of 1,800 words to be considered long-form. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that long-form content refers to articles of around 1,200 words or longer.’
Yves has been known to give gentle encouragement to folks to initiate a blog that they themselves may love and nurture. r/getmotivated
It’s pretty clear to me you are an honest broker of your ideas and no troll.
I’m not looking for recognition. Not starting my own blog and understand if my post was too long to get airtime. All good.
My primary motivation is extending my personal understanding of whatever the fuck is going on in this fucked up world.
I think this will be my last post here. I imagine I will still read here from time to time though. Just don’t let your US bullshit leak any further in Australia’s direction, fuckers.
I should apologize for this and I do, but the truth is it fucking pisses me off seeing what your country is doing to the world, I know it is not within any one individual’s control yet the bigger picture is your fucking nation is out of fucking control. Sort it out and stop being such pussies. It is fucking disgraceful.
Please disregard these posts. I’ve been drinking and got rejected by a girl earlier, actually her friend burnt her and me by inserting herself into the situation, and in general I’m a bit pissed off about my stupid life. Apologies to all, in the end we are all much more similar than different and I am just having a shitty day. Peace to all and my apologies for my shitty temper.
Btw not that I think anyone is reading this but it really sucks being rejected by a member of the opposite sex and I hope anyone who read my above comments can forgive me for lashing out. I imagine there is someone out there for everyone, but I’m feeling pretty lonely lately.
(Ugh, that looks so weak when I look at what I just wrote but it’s true. I suppose life was never meant to be easy.)
Rejection sucks. And it never gets any easier, although from personal experience I can say that over time you can learn to control your instinct to lash out willy nilly. I just hope you don’t get enough practice to get there.
I also wish to apologize for my country. We are a destructive force right now although not largely as a will of the people, only those that the ‘leaders’ choose to count.
(And a great deal of my vehement response to Barack Obama is that I hated that I felt I owed the world an apology for us during George W. Bush’s term. Obama rejected every chance to correct things, but choose to continue being the neighbor from hell running roughshod through everyone’s gardens and breaking the windows or even burning down the homes of the one’s he/they didn’t like. And did it, even though there was much work that needed to be done here which they ignored or outright rejected correcting. I shouldn’t still be apologizing for failed destructive policies that rightfully would have been shitcanned years ago.)
So thanks for letting me lash out.
We are a destructive force right now although not largely as a will of the people, only those that the ‘leaders’ choose to count.
Thanks for the reply. I am accutely aware that your above statement is an accurate description of the state of play and I am very sory for momentarily choosing the easy way out by both making a lazy generalization and directing my unrelated annoyance towards the NC crowd.
Peace and my sincere apologies.
Btw thanks for the article on trolling. Take care y’all!
“N.I.H. May Fund Experiments With Human Stem Cells in Animal Embryos”
I’m adding this to the list of: elongating mice spines, lamenting the inability to change snakes’ DNA, and changing mouse fur colors, (my personal favorite). Will science never cease to be wonderful?
CRISPER CRITTERS !
You spliced one too many “e’s” into your text string – CRISPR!
Not to worry–we are reliably assured and comforted that CRISPR is just a process found in nature. Of course, so are fission and fusion reactions… and vast extinctions of capstone species…
Trying to shark-jump the Genesis myth, I guess.
A City of Empty Towers
What Seattle Can Learn from Vancouver’s Real-Estate Crisis
Rather than call Vancouver and Seattle neoliberal cities, wouldn’t it be better to call them Cental Bank cities. Or are central bankism and neoliberalism one and the same?
re Rubbish Bank of Scotland
i know a few people who have contracted there and it’s the same old story: they hire a bunch of day-rate contractors and consultants to their mismanaged project, those contractors and consultants get frustrated after a few months and leave (right around the time they start to learn the stuff) and new ones are brought in. what you get is a permanent, expensive, knowledge vacuum.
The problem begins when people within the company make too optimistic prognoses for the completion of a system transformation. [an interesting tangent would be to explore the incentives a project manager has to be over-optimistic when reporting to the senior managers.] it could be transforming to a new regulatory framework (e.g. basel 3) or harmonising two huge legacy systems in the aftermath of a m or a. As a result, the company decides against bringing in the permanent employees required to pull it off, convinced that the project is a temporary project, and relies on consultants and contractors to do the job instead. RBS is not the only company to have fallen into this trap (insurer aviva is another to have shot itself in the foot over its internal model), but they’re a poster child.
It never ceases to surprise me the amount of organisations that prefer to use consultants and outsourced expertise in setting up and running their core IT systems. I’d love to see a cost comparison (surely someone must have done it) that accurately measures the number of false starts, wasted consultants hours, etc. If IT is fundamental to the running of a large organisation it seems crazy to me not to have a fully staffed up section capable of setting up and running the necessary systems with consultants only used for the most specialised of work.
I suspect that one reason why companies selling IT products are so huge, while its been notoriously difficult to find evidence of productivity gains directly created by the use of IT is the colossal waste involved in outsourcing.
Ditching full time employees and replacing them with contractors makes the accounting look good NOW.
The costs and screw ups caused by using contractors doesn’t hit the books for a couple of years.
Hence, the finely honed skill of the 21st Century exec, of moving on to greener pastures before chickens come home to roost.
Which goes along with the view that if a 100 man/hour project can be completed by ten guys in 10 hours, 100 contractors can complete it in an hour.
It’s been repeatedly demonstrated that a small group of people who really know their stuff, will always beat a group three times as large that doesn’t
Our IT group was on site and our offsite activities were for backup. We didn’t want to take on a type of remote supply-chain risk for our mission-critical services, and benefited from having a capable and loyal staff. The slight savings was dwarfed by the potential catastrophic consequences of a crash and lack of direct control over solutions.
Younger person challenging two older persons for legislative seat in VT. Sounds like a Bernie-type guy.
“Clark said he did not believe the two incumbents were “actively bad legislators” or personally responsible for Montpelier’s culture, but he did consider them out of touch with young people.
“They do lack that connection to younger voters by virtue of either not growing up here or not growing up here recently — not being young, poor or disaffected,” Clark said. “Try as they might, they are outsiders to the struggles so many people are facing today. Young adults are some of the most vulnerable, but people of all ages are struggling.””
Disaffected?
Hoo-boy. That word fits one of my VT cousins to a tee. A 30-year-old whose major goal in life is playing video games while couch-surfing from one friend’s house to another.
Yes, he has a job, but it’s a dead-ender. He’s capable of doing a lot better but can’t/won’t/I’m not sure. A real sad case in a family of go-getters.
“He’s capable of doing a lot better”
That’s not the same as having the opportunity to do a lot better. It’s easy to point to the few openings for good jobs while ignoring the 500 qualified people competing for each one. Only one will be hired, most likely someone with some sort of connection.
There are very valid reasons to use human stem cells in nonhuman animals (for research and medical purposes). There are, naturally, some potential dangers (evolving zoonotic viruses that will jump species from the nonhuman to human animal).
Pigs are especially strong for this sort of thing. VERY similar to humans in anatomy/physiology to begin with, you could grow human-compatible organs in them for transplant rather easily. Such hybrids also allow for research on human biology that cannot be done on humans directly.
The danger, of course, are pig viruses evolving ability to infect humans. Potentially worse, endogenous viruses (we ALL have them…some are still active in many animals, including humans, to varying degrees) might make a jump and carry nasty side-effects to anyone who receives a chimeric organ. Get a new liver that is loaded up with pig endogenous retroviruses…a potentially nice way to ruin humanity’s day (or year, or decade, century, existence).
Pigs are also intellectually and psycologically almost identical to humans.
At least some of them
Which is why I give more credence to Eugene McCarthy’s ape-boar backcrossing theory (“MFAP”, as liberal Church of Scienceology blogger PZ Evans indelicately put it) over the Progress Monkey myth.
Madd Addam was an instruction manual…….
…those pigoons are really smart !
now how cool is this!! but will the paintings be revalued at Triple the price :/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/05/science/degas-hidden-portrait.html
In 2008, a researcher in the Netherlands used an advanced X-ray technique to show that Vincent van Gogh’s 1887 work “Patch of Grass” was actually done over an earlier painting of a woman’s face. The practice is thought to have been common for van Gogh, with an estimated one in three of his earlier paintings overlaying older works. Now, using a similar scanning technique, researchers in Australia are reporting in the journal Scientific Reports that they have uncovered the striking face of a woman that lay hidden beneath Edgar Degas’ “Portrait of a Woman” for 140 years, reports the New York Times. The painting had actually been criticized as long ago as 1922 for its discoloration, reports the Guardian.
Researchers think the face belongs to one of Degas’ favorite models, Emma Dobigny, and that it’s only possible to see because the paints Degas used over it were so thin. The scanner employs a narrow, brilliant X-ray beam a million times brighter than the sun that’s generated by a machine called a synchrotron, which is a type of particle accelerator. The technique forced atoms in the paint to fluoresce and reveal their elemental makeup. Mercury sulfide, for instance, provides the vermilion that colors the model’s cheeks and lips, while iron and manganese hint at Degas’ use of umber for brown hair. The image is so high-res that it even shows the imprints of the paintbrush bristles within each stroke. One researcher says when he first saw the scan it was “one of the most exciting times in my scientific career.”
Okay. I take it all back about science. Science is great! But a buyer would not be able to see both of the paintings they’d bought. It would just be about the idea there was a second Degas under there. Would people pay for that?
yes sweetie, and plenty wannabe’s would pay even more for a whispered rumor…
So that and 3D printing should give us Asimov’s perfect art copies. I’ll have to go reread how it ends.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-unveils-12-person-economic-120530897.html
Yikes, Trump economic team announced. It’s as bad as you’d figure it’d be. John Paulson is on board so he can help engineer another round of massive insider fraud to trash the country and make himself a bundle?
Why is a smart guy like him not betting on both sides? (Or maybe he’s got money on Hillary too.)
Publicly though, this is his one big trade this election….shorting Hillary.
Hey at least no Rubin or Summers. Things are looking up.
However if he goes all tax breaks to the “job creators” in his upcoming speech that would be very bad.
Black Lives Matter protest sparks traffic chaos outside Heathrow
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/05/black-lives-matter-protest-sparks-heathrow-traffic-chaos
Speaking of traffic, is it regressive that a parking ticket should be 10 or 20 times the local min. wage?
Why can’t it be like $2 or so per ticket (with discount for fuel efficient delivery trucks)?
because then they might be able to pay it, and what happens to the extra fine money and judgement money and penalties and interest?
Versus TeleSur headline: Black Lives Matter Protest in UK Blocks Heathrow Airport Road.
Gotta love the images invoked by The Guardian: ‘sparks,’ incendiary, flames, hot, burning. ‘Chaos,’ mobs, out-of-control, thuggery, lawlessness.
Manufacturing consent in action.
Scott Adams “bait and switched” because he couldn’t order a 2016 model year truck in July?
Hate to tell u this dude, but model year changeover has existed for a long time. Along with “late availability” of some options.
The reality is that some guys want weird options, vehicles that dealers will never be able to sell, if the buyer walks away.
Like a truck with no a/c, crank up windows, and green with a blue interior.
In March, I located a car optioned exactly the way I would have ordered it. (Well,almost…….it has a few options that I probably wouldnt have ordered, but I like now that Ive had the car a few months). The OEM websites all have search features to help cull the herd, and the handiest feature of all is the “View Window Sticker” options.
But yeah, his general point is valid. When 2-3 massive conglomerates own 90% of the market, your choices fall off rapidly, along with customer service.
Example: cellphones service providers. They only vary slightly in the actual level of suck.
I think his broader point is less about monopolies, but that increasing ‘choice’ along with an apparent increase in information through internet purchases are having the perverse effect of encouraging companies to game the system rather than provide better value.
An example would be travel websites. At first they seemed amazing – being able to compare dozens of hotels, car hire companies, airline options etc., from the comfort of your armchair at home. But instead of creating a highly competitive market, they have encouraged companies to game the system – lure the buyer in, then hit them with hidden costs or false ‘upgrades’. I used to be an avid user of online booking and aggregation sites when planning any journeys, along with Tripadvisor, etc., to judge the best place to stay/eat, etc. But I’ve noticed in the last year or two a distinct ‘crapification’ of these services, as Yves would put it. I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that they offer nothing over the old fashioned method of having a travel agent you trust, and asking them to do your booking and planning, and using a reputable travel guidebook to do the rest.
“They only vary slightly in the actual level of suck.”
+1000
I would state it thusly: They all suck the most – they just get there in different ways
Michigan, for one example, has banned direct auto sales, meaning that the useless misery vectors heretofore called “dealerships” are guaranteed a cut of the action and misery. It would all be so much easier if one could go onto the manufacturer’s website and get some of the benefit of this “mass customization”. Automotive inventory only serves to give the looting professional classes something to do.
Recession in China?
They are also going after their generals, one with millions of cash at home (cash not illegal yet over there) – it’s not 100% over, so it bears watching.
It pays to be cautious in interpreting Chinese anti-corruption crackdowns. Often they are little more than covers for old style purges. The new leadership is definitely trying to get rid of the more overtly corrupt practices, but in reality they have no interest in eliminating a system that has made them rich and powerful. Real corruption will become more embedded in the system while the more obvious forms of baksheesh will be eliminated.
There is already a classic series of sci-fi stories about this – The Instrumentality of Mankind by Cordwainer Smith.
There is another related conundrum – isn’t a fetus a collection of human cells as well, grown in a human animal?
At some point, the argument will be made. How do we respond to that?
Re: Goldman warns of Brexit restructuring Financial Times
Because I couldn’t read the article, I will say, “Whatever Goldman recommends, do the opposite. Whatever Goldman thinks is best, is probably only best for them.”
Re: Grundlagenheft von Mehr Demokratie
So I notice that our PM is a lover of trade deals and will probably support CETA, TPP, etc. Here’s hoping they both wither on the vine. The idea that a trade deal can overrule parliamentary decisions is a very good reason for a lawsuit. I wish Canada had the cojones to do so.
He’s got bigger issues on his plate, such as defending Latvia. (No, really.)
Maybe the grateful Latvians will erect a Trudeau statue in Riga.
Show up with a little maple leaf flag on your backpack, and they’ll shower you in rose petals and buy you a beer.
re: “Ed Groups Worry Over Proposed Federal Sanctions for High Opt-Out Rate”
“King said in July that schools where fewer than 95 percent of students take the tests should be labeled as low-performing and possibly face fines or even a takeover.”
Which raises the question: “takeover” by whom? By charter schools? In NY, Gov Cuomo and Mike Bloomberg are big charter school proponents. And King?
“King has focused his career on narrowing the achievement gap and ensuring that all students have access to great teaching. He co-founded Roxbury Prep, a top charter middle school in Massachusetts, and was one of the leaders of Uncommon Schools, a network of high-performing charter schools in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.”
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/ny-education-commissioner-john-king-join-education-department-senior-advisor
The NY lege just released charters from the regulations and standards that apply to public schools.
https://dianeravitch.net/2016/06/19/new-york-legislature-frees-charter-schools-of-regulations-and-oversight/
US Govt supported carpetbagging.
adding:
“Moreover, that study also found that Roxbury Preparatory Academy – a school that’s been praised for its students’ academic performance and one that was co-founded by King himself – boasted a suspension rate of 40 percent, the 12th highest-suspending school in Massachusetts….”
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-06-28/education-secretary-to-charter-schools-rethink-school-discipline
US Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. addressed the National Charter School conference and offered help and resources.
“In an effort to shine a light on best practices in school discipline, the Department has supported the creation of a suite of resources by the National Charter Schools Resource Center to help charter school leaders as they rethink discipline practices. These resources include a toolkit for practitioners, a set of case studies that chronicle many of the choices and implementation dynamics experienced by charter school leaders, and a compendium of professional development tools….”
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/secretary-king-calls-charter-schools-lead-rethinking-student-discipline
If I were being foily I’d wonder if kicking out 30-40% of students “improves” test scores against Public schools.
It certainly puts the fear of authority=God into the students, preparing them for a cruel life of zero excuses, contingent everything and a Permanent Record. Not that I’m being foily.
Heads up for Chicago and related areas; Chicago Police warn of trouble erupting after they release footage of police officers abusing the body of Paul O’Neal.
Keep a low profile!
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/08/05/activist-says-paul-oneal-videos-show-officer-stomping-lifeless-teen/
“…one can grow near-human chimeras who, due to their technically non-human ancestry, we can mistreated to our heart’s content.” Moi: Won’t this sort of thing greatly increase the risk of diseases jumping between species?”
Here is yet another example of self-destructive liberal angst. Like many other unfairly maligned activities (CO2 emission, wars, untested drugs), genetic tampering will actually provide economic stimulation by creating an urgent need for entrepreneurs to form companies to fix the catastrophic fallout. The more problems we create, the more opportunity to form companies to fix them, the better off the Economy! Another instance of a failure to appreciate the magic of the marketplace.
Saw another Trump car sticker while I was out today. And at the feed store, a lady looking to be in her 80s asked me about my little ABC car poster. She was horrified, then I started to explain why(thanks, NC!). She agreed with me on all of it and chimed in “and Vince Foster-the Clintons just rub them out! And Benghazi!”. I explained to her about the Libyan weapons transfers and she knew about that, but then said “But …The Donald! He’s crazy!”. I told her I just couldn’t vote for HC, that Trump hadn’t killed anyone yet, that maybe there would be a hung Congress, that I thought it was the best way to burn down the Dems and start over. She saw my point and agreed. She said she is concerned about who he is surrounding himself with, and I countered with who HC is surrounding herself with-point made. She said it was killing her(having to vote for HC). I said a lot of ex-Bernie people were switching to Jill Stein, and she asked “Who?” so I explained. She had never heard of her and didn’t realise the Greens even existed. She said she would look into her, but then said “Yeah, but a vote for her would be like a vote for HC”. She realised what a pickle she’s in and I shrugged and said “I know, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.” She ended by saying she will probably just stay home(VT voter) and not vote at all.
I’ve just watched the whole of the recent Clinton interview on Fox on YouTube. A few thoughts:
In general she looks contemptuous towards the interviewer, and combined with what is clearly a designed to be a flattering camera and lighting setup, gives off quite the psychopathic impression.
She really comes alive when defending the President’s ability to override congress and enact Executive powers.
She is always qualifying her statements in ways that if one really drills down into the semantics gives her a lot of wiggle room.
Watch the little smirk that she cannot hide while she is saying that her heart goes out to Pat Smith, the mother who lost her son in Benghazi and personally blamed Clinton for it in a speech at the (cough) Democratic (cough) convention. This is psychopath behaviour. She also smears the mother as being irrational and tries to say the interviewer doesn’t understand the bigger picture.
When the interviewer starts hammering her about the emails, and won’t let her get away with saying Comey said she did nothing wrong and told the truth, her extreme contempt for the interviewer is evident. Just try pausing the video while she is talking and look at a few of those expressions. Comey’s statement is inserted into the interview so she is caught red handed lying. She then uses the big picture distraction again and deflects the blame to her technical staff, as if she is not responsible for her own judgement.
She just lies and lies and spins and lies and refers to what someone else said with her own bit of spin thrown in or selectively refers to bits of information to purposely obscure the greater context and then proceeds to lie and spin. She is just shameless.
Adding: Wow. Just saw the Paul O’Neal shooting footage. These police should be immediately tested for steroids.
“She just lies and lies and spins and lies … she is just shameless.”
After 68 years of practicing 10 hours a day — totaling about a quarter million hours of mendacity — it is no longer a facade. It’s internalized. It’s who she is.
Hillary’s successful sociopathic transition — already largely completed by her early 20s — is difficult for healthy personalities to understand, as it is literally unimaginable to them.
And they say it only takes about 10 000 hours of practice to get really good at something! She has reached the status of grandmaster liar, and she still refuses to stop practicing! That is some serious dedication.
As any Zen quoting guy will tell, the ultimate is to be one with the task at hand.
Be the arrow.
ALL police should be frequently tested for steroids, to say nothing of other drugs. Don’t mind if they’re stoned, but meth could be a real problem, and they’re prime candidates for that, too. To say nothing of having so many drugs pass through their hands.
Is nobody else bothered by the fact that “an overwhelming majority” of active duty and recently retired armed forces members, all of whom have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution, favor a military coup over any electoral result? Should we perhaps require that they actually read that which they swear to uphold?
It is a ‘humor’ site. If you go to the Quinnipiac page there is no such poll to be found there. I admit I was somewhat buying it until they had one quote of an officer calling soldiers stupid.
Oops. Thanks! Sign of the times that I could think it real. Nothing seems impossible any more.
Bitcoin exchange Bitfinex may have lost $63 million to hackers.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3103487/e-commerce/bitcoin-exchange-bitfinex-may-have-lost-63m-to-hackers.html
and
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/bitcoin-value-falls-off-cliff-after-58m-in-btc-stolen-in-hong-kong-exchange-hack/
So, the internet’s speed, reach and ability to execute end runs around settled law has a down side? I’m shocked, shocked!
Following up on a discussion of GMOs and their possible hazards, I think yesterday – I couldn’t find the link for this, so I’m posting it now:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/37082-how-one-gmo-nearly-took-down-the-planet
Klebsiella bacteria that could have sterilized most soils. A very near miss, and a perfect example of the reason for the precautionary principle. The law of unintended consequences: there always are some.
Lambert: Ref human/animal hybrids, you should read the stories by Cordwainer Smith, who was actually a Foreign Service officer who was terrified his identity might become known. The Ballad of Lost C’Mell describes the achievement of personhood by the “underpeople,” those of human appearance whose ancestry were animals.
I have read Norstrilia, which is terrific (and whose premises seem to have heavily influenced Frank Herbert’s Dune)