Why modern mortar crumbles, but Roman concrete lasts millennia Science
The Global Growth Slump: Causes and Consequences Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
Now Fed Officials Are Starting to Wonder If the VIX Is Too Low Bloomberg
RBS on brink of settling chunk of pre-crisis US mortgage probe Sky News. A fine. Of course.
How Uber’s Tax Calculation May Have Cost Drivers Hundreds of Millions NYT. All that stupid money sloshing about and Uber can’t make a profit even after ripping off its drivers.
Mom feared being beaten by United crew, so she didn’t complain when her son’s seat was given away Boing Boing. That’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
US lifts laptop ban on passengers flying with Etihad, Emirates and Turkish Airlines Tech Crunch
Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? Guardian
Scientists Know How Big the Larsen C Iceberg Will Be Climate Central
Searing Heat Is Hurting Texas Wind Power Bloomberg (Re Silc).
Volvo set to be first automaker to ditch cars powered solely by gas Japan Times
G20
G20: A summit full of contradictions Deutsche Welle
Ahead of G20 summit, Putin calls sanctions ‘covert form’ of protectionism Reuters
Europe’s fixer, Merkel faces test in preparing the continent to confront Trump Denver Post
Merkel reiterates Europe can no longer fully rely on U.S. CBC
Here’s a history of Donald Trump’s brief, but tumultuous, relationship with Angela Merkel Mic
Only Radical Thinking and Action Can Tame Globalization Der Spiegel (Re Silc). “They all believe that free trade and the market economy do not produce prosperity for all and merely make the rich richer. They are convinced that the intertwined global economy, digital advance and untamed financial markets only serve a small elite and that the masses become the losers. The majority, they believe, are excluded from prosperity.”
Brexit
EU chief mocks Brexit by comparing Britain’s trade ambitions to a Monty Python sketch Telegraph. The Black Knight, of course. “Just a flesh wound.”
EU hopes to win London’s euro trading sunk by undersea cables FT. ECB: “Financial centres next to oceans have an advantage ‘because they are directly connected to the internet backbone, at the expense of landlocked cities like Zurich….'”
UK
Corbyn’s earned the right to do what he pleases – and he’s decided to leave mewling self-entitled Blairites out in the cold Independent. Too generous.
Dutch PM pleased that MH17 perpetrators will be tried in NL: “Next step” towards the truth NL Times
Syraqistan
“They Should Look Up What Dictator Means!” Die Ziet. Interview with Erdogan.
US ready to work with Russia on Syria ‘no-fly zones’: Tillerson AFP
Mosul’s bloody endgame: a bitter new beginning? Cable
* * * Qatar crisis deepens after Arab states attack ‘negative’ Doha FT
Exclusive: Energy giants court Qatar for gas expansion role despite crisis Reuters
The Saudi-Qatar Spat – Qatar And Iran Are Winning – MbZ, MbS Lose Face Moon of Alabama
Saudi Bloc Slams Qatar ‘Complacency’ Over Gulf Crisis Demands Bloomberg (Re Silc).
Qatar crisis: Saudi Arabia as anti-hero? Le Monde Diplomatique
* * * Military chief could be new commander of ISIS Asia Times
United States Files Civil Action To Forfeit Thousands Of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported By Hobby Lobby United States Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York. At least the Iraq war was good for something.
Army Unveils 700-Part Op-Order Process For Fighting New Wars Americans Won’t Care About Duffel Blog
North Korea
US warns Kim Jong-un it is prepared to use its ‘considerable military forces’ against North Korea Telegraph
Can U.S. defend against North Korea missiles? Not everyone agrees Reuters
West Coast lawmakers divided on ever-more provocatory, nuclear-armed North Korea McClatchy
China?
Chinese tech billionaire’s woes mount with asset freeze CNN. “[His company’s] U.S. interests include electric car company Faraday Future and offices in Silicon Valley.”
China polishes up rust belt with switch to creative industries FT. If this both true and a parallel process to what happened in this country — I’d love to know who the Chinese Richard Florida is — that means that Chinese workers are completely [family blog]-ed, and Chinese volatility voters will revoke the Mandate of Heaven. We can’t all become artisanal noodle makers in Chong Qing.
China calls border row with India ‘the worst in 30 years’ as both sides dig in heels South China Morning Post
Who Did Thucydides Trap? The American Conservative
A Cultural Failure: U.S. Special Operations in the Philippines and the Rise of the Islamic State War on the Rocks
Why Another Philippines Terrorist Attack is Coming The Diplomat
Democrats in Disarray
2 Silicon Valley billionaires want to reinvent the Democratic Party with a new project called ‘WTF’ Business Insider. Oh good. Squillionaires with bright ideas.
Hated by the Right. Mocked by the Left. Who Wants to Be ‘Liberal’ Anymore? NYT. The idea that today, liberals and conservatives are two flavors of neoliberal seems to elude The Grey Lady.
New Cold War
Here are the people investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election WaPo
Trump Transition
Trump administration sets one of the slowest paces for staffing and nominations in recent history WaPo. Important!
Noam Chomsky: On Trump and the State of the Union NYT
This DOJ Letter May Be More Alarming Than Trump Commission’s Request For Voter Data HuffPo
Now involving Reddit and neo-Nazis, the spiraling Trump-CNN feud is 2017 in a nutshell LA Times
Health Care
Actuaries identify “critical issues” in Senate health bill Axios
Medicare Halts Release of Much-Anticipated Data Pro Publica. Gee, that’s odd. It’s Medicare Advantage data.
Five things Canadians get wrong about the health system Globe & Mail
Maine Voices: Priceless benefits would come from single-payer health care system Portland Press-Herald
Our Famously Free Press
As Democratic Voters Shift Left, ‘Liberal Media’ Keep Shifting Right FAIR
So this one time at a journalism conference… Medium (DK).
Class Warfare
How the AI Revolution Creates New Work John Robb, Medium
Programmers in India Have Created the Country’s First Tech-Sector Union The Nation
America’s Future Is Texas The New Yorker. The deck: “With right-wing zealots taking over the legislature even as the state’s demographics shift leftward, Texas has become the nation’s bellwether.” I’ve helpfully underlined the category error.
Oath Keepers’ actions at Woodland Mall upset family Sentinel-Tribune (see also). Yikes.
The rise of the “private government” Bill Mitchell (Furzy Mouse).
Antidote du jour:
Lambert here, about that cat: The cat would live in the barn, not a dank basement, and solve any potential problem with rodents for me (a “barn cat,” as we say in Maine). I say “would” because we hardly know each other! And I don’t have to decide until it gets colder. (I also worry about scaring off birds; I like birds.)
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
140 comments
Comments are closed.
Now Fed Officials Are Starting to Wonder If the VIX Is Too Low Bloomberg
++++++++++++++++++++++
How many words are there for “Greenspan Put”?
No wonder everyone is confused?!
“We can’t all become artisanal noodle makers in Chong Qing.”
????????????
Don’t be so sure about that!
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=chinese+noodles&FORM=HDRSC2
This is the type of noodles to try (from Wikipedia, Biangbiang noodles):
So strange, the Chinese word for it is not in the dictionary (again, from Wikipedia):
You can’t enter it into the computer:
Go to the Wikipedia article to see an image of the character.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biangbiang_noodles
Chinese characters (sorry, they’re all kanji as far as I’m concerned, which is very insulting to the Chinese who invented them!) have a long and often confused etymology. Since you can make up virtually limitless numbers of ideograms using either established or new radicals (constituent sub elements) their numbers grew to the tens of thousands. This was unmanageable even to native speakers.
So there have been a lot of periodic rationalisations as obscure and confusing characters got formally “unapproved”. The Japanese did the same shortly after WWII https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C5%8Dy%C5%8D_kanji but it is still possible to encounter old, no longer generally used, characters in both Chinese and Japanese written text.
It’s downright annoying for non-native speakers and often used just for effect by mother tongue language users. A bit like making up new words in English, just to sound modern, retro or merely different for the sake of it. Of course, I have been known to come up with new self-invented words myself, so I will shut up at this point.
The Chinese should eat their Chinese Letters!
No more hunger!
I’d invent a nice Plum Sauce for them.
You shouldn’t feed long complex Chinese letters to computers. They are high in carbohydrates, and the computers will turn into Networked Quantum Computers, probably networked to nosy and nasty Tentacles.
That would certainly be bad. And the End of the World.
And some noodles for belts.
“Save animals. Wear vegetarian belts.”
That particular character most likely has a very modern explanation: it was invented by a restaurant as a marketing device. It has a superficial resemblance to some older characters with many strokes, but it’s much uglier IMO.
MLTPB, I forwarded your comment to Language Log resident Sinologist Victor Mair, he thanked me and replied in kind with two articles on the same theme, and featuring the very same noodle, first by himself, second by fellow LLer Geoff Pullum:
Writing Chinese characters as a form of punishment | Language Log
The Awful Chinese Writing System | Lingua Franca – Blogs – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Neither link works.
“Military chief could be new commander of ISIS Asia Times”
“ISIS Casts Net Wide To Fill Vacant Top Spot At ISIS.”
Travis Kalanic is available. Move fast and break things culture.
Maybe Medicare administrator Seema Verma is just delaying making the data public
so she can order a red-team, blue-team exercise
to see whether the Medicare Advantage numbers are reliable.
Just like Scott Pruitt is doing for global warming.
Surely it’s all super-legit, nothing to see here, move along.
And like the Voting Commission, or whatever it’s called, is doing with the voter rolls!
In that Uber article, I think the author identifies evidence of Uber calculating the fare from the driver’s perspective differently than what the customer sees. I had read about this, I think in the CA class action from the driver’s alleging what equates to wage theft. Uber pays the driver based on the shortest possible route, not how the ride actually resulted. So if customer pays more than the fastest possible route, Uber pockets the difference. At least that is what has been laid out by the driver’s suit.
If I am reading correctly – I haven’t checked the author’s math – sales tax is being calculated against the driver fare, which is wrong since this is a tax incurred by the customer according to state law in NY. So if Uber has a widespread issue of wage theft as is alleged in CA — they might have an equivalently large sales tax problem resulting from the same (it should be noted) CORPORATE level policy.
See section: (In a quirk of Uber’s system, the sales tax shown has sometimes been calculated on a passenger fare generated before the ride that doesn’t necessarily match the metered fare — as appears to have happened in this case.)
Which, if I’m not mistaken, would be wire fraud.
The banks commit wire fraud every day. DOJ says nothing.
Uber has received what I consider an extraordinary amount of regulatory forbearance by arguing that they represent a new business model, the old regulations are outdated, and regulators need to update their approach in order to deliver what their voters want. If it all turns out to have been smoke and mirrors, and especially if it becomes as trendy to bash Uber as it once was to jump on the Uber bandwagon, I expect the gloves will come off. We’ve been seeing that happen in some jurisdictions already.
Excellent peacock image!
Beautiful!
This doesn’t bode well…. (I don’t know Pittsburgh, but I know Birmingham very well)
One reason China grew so fast is that when it adds capacity to its industry it hasn’t shut down the previous out of date plant – it has just kept adding more and newer capacity on top of the old stuff. So there are still many old Mao era plants chucking out pollution without producing very much. Its good news for the Chinese environment that they can shut these down without greatly reducing capacity, but its not good news for all the workers that there seems no real alternative work. The iron ricebowl has long ago been smelted down.
The Chinese are obviously aware that in the West and elsewhere the transition has been managed through tourism and various tenuous forms of knowledge industry. And to some extent it makes sense – in Chinese families its quite common for the older generation, rather than retiring, to move into small scale businesses as they hand over to younger members the responsibility for looking after the family, so there is plenty of scope for some transition. And a younger generation of Chinese are keen to take longer holidays and travel within their own country. Already, existing tourism hotspots like Guilin are bursting at the seams during the holiday season.
But as the French geographer Christophe Guilluy points out, only a relatively select number of cities make the transition successfully, for all sorts of reasons that aren’t always understood. The Chinese government, curiously for a supposed Marxist Leninist inspired Party, seem curiously immune to any arguments that they will have no choice if they are to maintain stability but put in place a strong public welfare system. They simply can’t rely on free market job growth to keep the peace. This is the lesson they need to learn from Pittsburgh and Birmingham, not marketing rubbish about a new economy.
Uhhh, the Pittsburgh reference is an extreme hoot. If you plan on taking the population of the cities down by about 60% (Pittsburgh lost population from 676,806 in 1950, to 305,704 in 2010), you might have to start killing them, since there is no room in agriculture for all those “misfits”.
Pittsburgh’s former residents ended up out West (Arizona, New Mexico, California, etc.) – does China have such an outlet?
Jackpot!
On the hottest TX day last summer ERCOT said 68,000 MW was being generated, and only 2000 of those were from wind. This after covering an area the size of Indiana with turbines.
Now electricity producers are selling us “pure solar” electricity plans. How do those electrons know which house to go to?
This definitely belongs under “Democrats in Disarray:”
Mark Penn: Back to the Center, Democrats
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/06/opinion/center-democrats-identity-politics.html?emc=edit_th_20170706&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=17271400
Sorry to introduce such vomit-inducing material so early in the morning.
WTF to the rescue!
They are so stupid — not even looking at the basic rightness or wrongness, but how they present their argument:
“But the last few years of the Obama administration and the 2016 primary season once again created a rush to the left…. But the results at the voting booth have been anything but positive: Democrats lost over 1,000 legislative seats across the country and control of both houses of Congress”
Dudes, your very own timeline shows exactly why the “rush” to the left. The crap you guys were selling has basically sunk the ship. The working class, of all colors and sexes, is going under for the third time and the only people that even seem to notice that are the far right and “far” (for America) left.
So are they dumb enough to not even realize what they said, or even dumber to think us readers kan’t reed?
PS: did this crack anybody else up — the perfumed courtier Penn is of course laughable, but here’s what apparently makes Andrew the go-to guy on how Midwesterners think: “Andrew Stein is a former Manhattan borough president and New York City Council president.”
Lordy.
It’s not disarray. This is a blue print for what not to do.
Before Hillary lost to Trump partially due to not understanding how the electoral college worked, Hillary lost to Obama due to not understanding how delegates were allocated under the guidance of Mark Penn!
Reading this just verified for me that the Dems are just as insane as the Repubs. It’s genuinely hard to believe that these guys believe what they’re selling, and yet they keep trying to push it out there like it’s a fresh idea. Blergh!
Well, remember that their livelihood depends upon them believing it.
Their breath always smelling of roses, and their sh!t never having stinketh !
Obviously, his definition of center is further right of the Repigs. I hope the Dimrats take his advice. We’ll see people leave the Dimrat party in droves.
The comments are heartening at least.
5 Completely Legal Ways Employers Discriminate Against You
http://www.cracked.com/article_24826_5-completely-legal-ways-employers-discriminate-against-you.html
Cracked Magazine of all places
Reading the comments section of almost any Bloomberg article can make you doubt the future of human civilization, or even its past.
The Thucydides Trap author and his latest critic in the American Conservative have both completely misread the old Athenian and subsequent history. If anyone with influence is listening to them, we’re doomed.
War is never inevitable…but fake maps and fake history helps create conflict…the a/c article mentions spain and the sultanate of sulu…without breathing the “$pratley$” were/are part of that kingdom…
despite best efforts to stalinize them from the history books and ignore any claims, they are still floating around…
and that goofy 9 dash south china sea map…
was “originally” an 11 dash map “invented” by csk in 1947 to create some(in his mind) negotiating flank to deal with the arms embargo truman had chosen…
in 2009 the red army “presented” the csk map in attempting to create a new negotiating position in respects to its muscling in on Philippines island claims…and “then” announced it had accepted the 1947 csk map claim in 1949…
they just forgot to mention it out loud…
War is never inevitable…and usually started or discussed by people with miserable home lifes…
Oops…csk should read cks…fearless leader…has been reading up on dsk and the bumping heads he did on russian inf money and gnatzee art theft issues of his wifes family fortune
“War is never inevitable…”
For the USA war is eternal, but it’s been a long time since “bombs bursted in air” in the lower 48 so it’s out of sight, out of mind.
War is usually started and discussed by people with some market they want to control.
Re: Hobby Lobby – not really a surprise that these christianistas are utter hypocrites – looters and thieves, profiting from the misery of others by stealing their ancient artifacts.
Where are the criminal charges? This docket is a civil matter – which means fines and disgorgement at best and the scum who looted Iraq will get off scot-free.
I already would never enter a Hobby Lobby store but this crime needs locking people up.
Yes, yes and yes.
It’s worth remembering that those that scream the loudest are always the biggest frauds.
Does this mean that some of the artifacts that were looted from the National Museum of Iraq have now been recovered? If so, this is good news.
Note to the owners of Hobby Lobby:
Stealing is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. Different denominations have different numbering, but this commandment is either number seven or eight.
Stealing is also a violation of one of the Cardinal Precepts of Buddhism.
That’s where you’re making a cardinal error. Hobby Lobby is owned by Mormons. Despite their propaganda to the contrary, they don’t really believe in that Biblical hooey. I think the Angel Moroni wrote on the golden plates (or whatever they were) something like this: steal everything that’s not nailed down, especially if it’s owned by “others” who don’t belong to our “religion.”
That said, Mormonism isn’t the only “religion” that believes and acts this way.
I don’t think the Greens are Mormons.
http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/5-things-to-know-about-hobby-lobbys-owners/
nos orti sunt diaboli et a diaboli sumus ire.
The thing is, a lot of museums are in the west are like that.
The Elgin Marbles, the Pergamon Altar or treasures looted from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace, for example.
@Rukidding I hope you are kidding because your anti-Mormon screed is not accurate wrt to Hobby Lobby nor to Mormon doctrine. Hobby Lobby’s owners are dominionist christians of the “non-denominational, Bible-based” type. You might like their views on Mormons because they don’t consider them Christians either.
Like most bigotry, yours is supported by ignorance – to Mormons, the Ten Commandments are sacred commandments.
Consider your ignorant and mendacious comment flagged.
Thank you. I find anti-Christian bigotry as offensive as other forms of bigotry. It often gets a free pass.
As a lifelong Mormon, your assertions do not reflect my ideals or experience in the faith.
The Mormons I have known have been wonderful people. I am sorry that you are having to see this sort of ugly bigotry here.
At the same time, another court, in form of Diana Roberts and the Supremes, is weighing the merits of a suit which seeks compensation for terrorism in form of officially-snactioned looting of historic Persian artifacts:
U.S. top court takes up fight over ancient Persian artifacts | Reuters
As I noted when I first posted the above link when it first appeared last week:
“So, if the court allows the suit to proceed, 1997 terror victims – in which 5 died – *can* sue Iran, but 9/11 victims – in which thousands died – *cannot* sue Saudi Arabia – gotcha. And looking to seize cultural treasures … yowsers. How about we apply the same logic and disproportionate compensation demands to the thousands who died in the most recent Israeli ‘lawn-mowing’ in Gaza?”
Stunning peacock.
And barn is better than wild, but strictly indoor with a human is best for cat and birds. If anyone you know wants a cat with that in mind perhaps that lovely intruder might be a good choice.
Just saw your comment before I chimed in below.
I agree, a barn would be better than homeless but better and safer yet for all would be indoor life with appreciative human(s).
Barn cats are on every farm. Always have been. Forever.
Look, I admit I’m prejudiced to the possibility of that cat becoming a domestic cat with a home and human staff.
That said, one of Lambert’s caveats was his concern for birds, and a barn cat is still a danger to birds. The cat being safe AND the birds being safe is only accomplished with the cat being an indoor cat.
Ultimately it is up to the cat and Lambert. Despite the opinionated nature of some of the community.
Here in Albuquerque. there are no barns. There are some trees. Lots of birds fly into town on their way north and south on the change of seasons. We feed the birds AND we feed an always returning group of stray cats. 5 of them at last count and a skunk every so often. So far the only casualties have been birds picked off by an occasional hawk or owl. The stray cats worry about the roadrunners, the hawk, the owls, and the coyotes.
Cats are better off indoors. Link:
https://abcbirds.org/program/cats-indoors/
For some definition of “better off.”
Kats and birds have coexisted for millennia.
Sure there’s some carnage, but birds arent stupid either. Ever try and sneak up and catch one without tools?
So put a bell (on the Kat) with a just little ducttape or epoxy glue on it to dampen it’s sound and even up the game –and so you dont have to listen to a GD bell perpetually tinkling.
The birds will hear it and everyone will coexist if there are birdie goodies in your habitat they will linger
Imo kats should have freedom of navigation
Mine had great fun outside. One was very gregarious and made friends with neighbors in at least a two block radius tgat i know of
The other kept it local and was a mouse serial killer.
A cat that goes outside can easily be equiped with a collar with a noisy bell. This spares the birds but not the mice (usually hunted by an unmoving wait and then a pounce. This way all happy (except rodents). Buy several belled collars at a time as cats are good at removing them.
Actually, it doesn’t spare the birds. Reason: Birds don’t associate the bells with danger.
Keep the cats indoors. They’re better off that way. And so is the ecosystem.
I’m getting a little incensed by this cat convo. I’ve had cats and dogs forever. My cats have always been indoor/outdoor. My cats kill the rodents, leave the birds to bathe in my birdbath and house themselves in my birdhouses.
I’ve had one bird killed in my 40 yrs of owning pets and it was my dog who killed it.
My cats (many years ago) ‘presented’ me with rats each spring–left them at the door where they’d be found. I was never ‘presented’ with a bird. Is this your experience? Sidebar: as I recall from interaction with farmers (45 years and more ago), the trick to keeping a ‘ratter’ cat is to provide enough food to attract it, but just little enough to force it to hunt vermin. Does this dovetail with anyone else’s experience?
I hope you know your cats present you with rats because they think you can’t hunt.
This article is a little misleading as it implies the land in conflict is disuputed between China and India – in fact its disputed between Bhutan and China. The Indians are concerned because its part of a very strategically vulnerable area, the ‘chickens neck’ of land in Sikkim, one of the few places where there is a direct border interface between China and India.
The Bhutanese are in a sensitive position here. They have wisely decided to deal with having China on their doorstep by not having any active boundaries – there are no direct roads between Bhutan and China, the border is almost all some of the highest and most inhospitable parts of the Himalaya – its not even possible to trek across the border without some serious hard core technical support (I’m not sure anyone has done it in modern times).
On the other side, the Bhutanese have no choice but to deal with India. They share a long porous border and all Bhutanese trade has to go through India, with the exception of a few flights to Bangkok. Bhutan people use Indian health services (Bhutan is too small and poor to have any major modern hospital – the government pays to send cancer patients to Kolkota and Bangkok) and the biggest export is hydro power, all going to India and Bangladesh. Almost all engineering and technical work is done by Indians in Bhutan and the rupee is practically a parallel currency.
To make it worse, the Indians have previously intervened in Bhutan militarily. In the 1980’s the Indians threatened Bhutan over Maoist rebels in lowland forest areas. Neither the Indians nor the Bhutanese have any love for the desperately poor, mostly buddhist/bon tribal people of those areas, who are most closely ethnically/culturally related to Nepalese. The Bhutanese somewhat reluctantly, with Indian military ‘help’, subdued the rebels.
Its not clear whats behind the current conflict, but a look at googlemaps shows a newly built spur road from the main Indian/Chinese road going into Bhutan in the disputed area. I would guess the Chinese built this, either with the aim of opening up the area for ‘settlement’, or possibly trying to create an alternative route into India via Bhutan – making the Bhutanese an offer they can’t refuse to allow then connect to the roads between Paro/Thimphu and then south to India. It would be a very ‘Chinese’ thing to use weaker neighbours as buffers/routes to gain access to bigger markets (such as using Laos as an access to Thailand). I suspect the Bhutanese are pretty much determined to stop this, they like their relative isolation and have no interest in the economic ‘benefits’ China will bring. But inviting in the Indian army is a recipe for creating a very nasty situation. I very much doubt the Bhutanese would have done this except as a very last resort, so I would guess this has been brewing for some time.
a culture of cruelty that is buttressed by a moral coma http://www.alternet.org/activism/can-new-american-revolution-break-our-nations-culture-cruelty
As Democratic Voters Shift Left, ‘Liberal Media’ Keep Shifting Right FAIR
Article incorrectly concludes that the Liberal Media is trying to distance itself from the increasing popularity of the progressive left wing by its failure to hire any of its representative who they see as threat to their business interests. Instead, they are hiring old-line establishment Trump-hating Republicans to counter the far-left threat.
The MSM “left leaning” outlets wrote off the progressives as nut cases long ago. They are really hiring the Republicans to give them street cred with their neolib audience from both parties and bolster their attack on Trump with support from the right who should like him but don’t because he’s a monster that they can’t tame.
This is, ultimately, us vs. them. It was guaranteed that the MSM would follow the right and insist that the Dems come along, or else, since WaPo and NYT have been in bed with them and their spies since the 1950s (maybe earlier?). So its the NeoCon Party and its media against citizens and No Party. First we should throw out the Dems and fake allies, but to do that we need to communicate with our side. Can’t use MSM, and we can’t waffle on treating them like the enemy. After that, rage against the machine…
* * *
I suspect MoA is right and the Qatari’s are already winning this hands down. The Saudi’s grossly overplayed their hand in making their demands public, so leaving them with no climbdown space.
I can only assume that someone in Washington will persuade Trump and Kushner (if it is really he who is behind Trumps policy) that there is no way the Saudi’s can be permitted to go to war with Qatar when there is a huge US base right in the middle. With no military option, the Qatari’s can probably sit things out indefinitely. The same can’t be said of the UAE if Qatar cut off their gas supply (80% of UAE electricity is generated from Qatari gas).
MoA must surely be right that this puts the House of Saud in real danger. Maybe it will be a bloodless palace coup. Maybe it will get very nasty. The House of Saud has lots of F-15’s but they aren’t much use in a civil war. If this happens, the Iranians and Putin will be the big winners (a nice spike in oil prices and a disastrous setback for US Middle Eastern policy).
LOL “US Middle Eastern Policy” LOL
Foment as much war as possible in as many places as possible so the $$$ continue to flow from chump taxpayer pockets to arms merchants, we need a new electro-magnetic rail gun that shoots lasers from space much more than we need a clean glass of water or a way to get our infant mortality rates above Bulgaria’s. 7 in 10 Americans can’t put $1000 together, but if you’re a billionaire arms merchant I mean have you even seen the cost of a new Cote D’Azur villa these days? It’s outrageous.
What we need is much, much more of this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4670214/Hamburg-braces-major-pre-G20-protest-leaders-land.html
Our Famously Free Press
As Democratic Voters Shift Left, ‘Liberal Media’ Keep Shifting Right FAIR
Horrifying. Like this:
No wonder I cancelled cable and stopped watching MSM years ago. I’ve taken to calling my associates who go along with the Russia hacking thing as the Tea Partiers of the Democrats. There are a lot of them but their is also a lot us as in those who liked Bernie over Hillary. But their numbers seem vastly larger because they dominate the air waves.
Can those Democratic voters shift too much that they are no longer Democrats?
It reads as if that these voters are trapped inside the party, and can never escape.
That depends on what the working definition would be for “Democrat.”
But…yeah.
I felt trapped this last election. I know I wasn’t all alone. And I’m not even a Democrat!
Russiagate is birtherism for establishment types.
As someone commented in the Chapo Trap House subreddit the other day (https://www.reddit.com/r/ChapoTrapHouse/, if someone is interested), ‘establishment types’ and ‘liberals’ should be called now ‘the wonking class’.
Ok and whilst I am being burned by the stupidity, from “Americans going deeper in debt to buy new cars”
We’ve got this: “The long loans are a sign of consumers’ confidence in the economy and their belief they will be able to pay up, Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell said.”
Followed by this, from the same bird brain: “Cars buyers end up owing money on about a third of cars that are traded in at dealerships, Caldwell said. That debt then usually gets wrapped up in the new car loan”
Maybe the long car loans are a sign of what people can manage given being upside down on the previous vehicle? I’m not saying people don’t overbuy, but I don’t think that’s the whole or even the majority of the story.
A few years ago, I was chatting with one of my thirty-something neighbors. At the time, she was married to a guy who was really good at restoring old Mercedes cars. That’s what they drove.
She said, “The reason we don’t have new cars is because we can’t afford them.”
Alas, they have since gotten divorced. She sold the three vintage Mercedes and the money helped to pay the divorce lawyer. Nowadays, she gets around by bicycle. Her car, a vintage Plymouth, seldom leaves the driveway.
Lambert: I’m glad you’re giving that cat a chance to charm you.
S/he looks like a sweetie. As someone said yesterday, s/he seems to have chosen you.
If kitty is wintering in the barn, cheap DIY instructions for an insulated cat house:
http://newyorkrenovator.com/2009/12/building-a-winter-cat-shelter.html
File under “Not the Onion”:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/340732-dems-try-new-slogan-have-you-seen-the-other-guys
I love that slogan! Here’s a variation:
If enough good candidates run in the 2018 Democratic primaries, it might be possible for the Democrats to switch to a slogan that isn’t worthy of ridicule.
I thought that was HRC’s slogan already from 2016?
I also liked “We win moral victories, not elections”–echoes of Lambert’s Dem trope of always “fighting for”. Explains why Dems are such warmongers, I guess.
“Let’s fight.” “Them’s fightin’ words”.
For me the one that shows how clueless they are is the “She persisted We Resisted”. According to the Hill this refers to Warren and Sessions (which is clueless in a whole other manner)*, but frankly I would want it to make clear that Hillary persisted in wanting to be President and enough people resisted to stop her.
*So Warren went after Sessions, okay. But the resisted part, if accurate and successful, would mean that Sessions was not sworn in as Attorney General. Clearly, however, resistance in this instance means that we will put on a show of having a backbone but accomplish nothing. Got it.
Democrats: We Suck Less!
Shorter: “We suck less!”
Since that’s been their unofficial slogan for nigh on a decade now, they may as well make it official. Especially as they continue to embrace the suck, as it were.
Meanwhile, the era of Polish jokes are coming to an end today, replaced by a new era of jokes about the USA.
I’m reading the Oath Keepers article up above – Am I reading it correctly that the “security” was trying to charge the family a $10 fee to walk through the mall? Did the mall hire this “security” to prevent old fogies from mall walking and not buying anything?
There is also an interesting, unfortunately common, misconception about the nature of malls in America. They are not public spaces, they are private. The mall where the Oath Keepers have leased space is owned by a publically traded company.
In this case, it would seem that the PREIT has condoned the work of the Oath Keepers. Perhaps we should expect new branches at their other properties.
I think the OathKeepers rented some space in the mall for a meeting. I also suspect the letter writer is not quite as white as the security detail…
Note that the incident occurred in Bowling Green, which we can never forget.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/conway-bowling-green/index.html
We can just make the whole planet one giant airplane.
In order to free up a paid-for seat, Delta staff arbitrarily made up a “rule” that two-year-olds are required to sit in their parents’ laps and cannot have their own seats. It’s for the kids’ safety, they told the parents. Won’t somebody please think of the children!
https://consumerist.com/2017/05/04/family-says-they-were-kicked-off-overbooked-delta-flight-after-dispute-over-toddlers-seat/
In the end the entire family was booted off the flight and had to book new tickets on United the next day. United clearly took good notes. Cha-ching!
It’s seems to me that both United and Delta are breaking FAA Regulations. It seems to me that the FAA should be stepping in here and doing something. Not sure what. A fine, at least.
But of course, regulations “hobble” our very important businesses, and Mr. Free Market will ensure that somehow the consumer is provided with the best of all worlds. Argle bargle blagh.
One day, it would be, ‘Too many passengers this spaceship Earth. We’re booting you off to Mars…now that the billionaires have moved on from there to more hospitable exoplanets.’
Elon’s ‘hyper toooob’ on a planet-wide scale !??
Readers may be interested in https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/06/gentrification-america-music-cities-austin-nashville-new-orleans. As a Mauritian Creole and regular visitor to Louisiana, I have observed and had a good chuckle when, last year, CNN’s travel show featured New Orleans and interviewed some earnest and hip fashionistas and IT hucksters, but no one of Creole or Cajun origin, presumably as they are a bit too rough for the Boho crowd from out of state.
On a related note, some Louisiana Creoles are visiting their Mauritian cousins, a first ever reunion, this September. The ancestors in common were / are Keatings from Ireland. One branch went west, via Philadelphia, and the other south, via Bordeaux and the French East India Company. There’s a lot of that between the Francophone areas of North America, the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean.
+1 Thanks, Colonel Smithers! I hope you know of fiction’s finest recent trilogy, which I immensely enjoyed, including its fascinating slices of Mauritanian history and pidgen from colonial times. A wonderful, tongue-drunk 3-volume read: Amitov Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire, an end-to-end history of Britain’s Opium War from mostly colonial points of view. Most of the survivors live happily ever after in Mauritius. But they have to get back there . . .
Sounds like a marvelous Mauritian get together.
I was thinking of families like the Keatings last week, when I was wandering through a small Irish town on the Barrow River in the south-east. The Barrow was a major navigation in the 18th Century – the prevailing winds tended to bring ships from Bordeaux to the mouth of the Barrow in Wexford – so it was often (for this and political reasons) easier for wine and brandy shippers to send their wares to Wexford, and have it brought up through Ireland along the Barrow and Grand Canal navigations, where it would end up in Dublin for transhipment to England – the English did love their Bordeaux wines, even when at war with the French. Grain and beef went in the other direction, usually organised by Quaker and Hugenot settlers of French extraction. In the other direction went the ambitious sons of wealthy catholic families (Catholics then being forbidden from attending university in Ireland or England), among them the sons of Wexford families like the Keatings, Hennessey’s and Bartons (those families were generally, ironically enough, from medieval Norman origins). They then became Hiberno-French soldiers, brandymakers, vineyard owners and adventurers through the growing French empire.
Yes, the early ‘Anglo-Irish’ Norman conquerors went native like all the invaders of Ireland before them, until the English found their stiff upper lips–and treated the Anglo-Normans like Irish. (I’m what used to be called Scotch-Irish, so am an afficianado of the subtleties of English racism.) Fascinating that it was easier to blow claret up to and across Ireland than to ship it direct up the (often awful) Channel.
Thank you, BC and PK. I will share with the Keating friends in Louisiana and Mauritius.
BTW the Mauritian Keatings are big racehorse owners on the island and in South Africa and Dubai.
There is a book detailing Irish settlement on the island from the mid-18th century. Irish priests and nuns were common until a generation ago.
Another place with a big Irish influence is Lesotho.
Me, I’m a descendant of the O’Farrells of Longford. My great-great-grandfather Jasper somehow managed to obtain an education as a surveyor even though he was a Catholic, then emigrated to Buenos Aires and then to California (still part of Mexico). There he laid out the streets of San Francisco, for (according to family legend) one plat in every block. Unfortunately for him, local propertyowners objected to the width of Market Street, resulting (again according to family legend) to Jasper, forewarned of retribution, throwing himself on a horse and fleeing to his land outside the city.
More importantly, Jasper wrote a letter fiercely objecting to Kit Carson’s murder of a Mexican. And, on being appointed to a commission to adjudicate disputes between settlers and Indians, often ruled in favor of the Indians. These are matters of record, not just family history. He remembered what the English did to Ireland, where his ancestors were in a similar position to the Indians.
I’m very proud of him.
from https://medium.com/@johnrobb/how-the-ai-revolution-creates-new-work-b523986a0886:
“Jobs like this could be very low paid and potentially gruelling [sic].”
How about a low paid, grueling job spellchecking John Robb’s ridiculous “frameworks”?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/ryan-challenger-randy-iron-stach-bryce-raises-over-430000-dollars-in-12-days-per-campaign
Here’s your daily dose of optimism for today!
For the details, sounds like there’s no big money donors involved, 16k people at $25 each on average. The bernie funding model lives on!!!
The words ‘putin’ and ‘russia’ show up nowhere in his ad, but single-payer does. Sounds like a real human being dealing with real problems that real people face. Nice change from the constant palace-politics style intrigue that we hear about in media.
I would love to see Paul Ryan lose. So far, the two Democrats who are running have not been very specific about the policies that they support. Here are their web sites:
https://davidyankovich.com/
https://randybryceforcongress.com/
I hope they’ll provide more details soon.
This Randy,”Iron Stach” Bryce is not who he says he is. I suggest you research more in depth information about him and check his Twitter feed.
It would be more helpful if you did that, instead of assigning work to others.
Re: Hated by the Right. Mocked by the Left.
As it does…apparently…with most Liberals and Conservatives. Especially in the media…see the FAIR link.
No mention in the article of the one thing that has always delineated the difference between American Liberals and actual existing Leftism: Capitalism. American Liberals love it. Leftists? Not so much.
And one other delineator: imperialism and the M.I.C. Liberals live with it, especially when one of theirs is in power. Leftists: not so much.
Morocco:
These first tricklings of news about unrest in the Rif don’t seem to bode well for the continued stability of a country in which – last year – wall posters were proclaiming to be an oasis of peace, tolerance and stability in an otherwise restive MENA. The monarchy successfully defused the 2012 Arab Spring, and has not merely tolerated but officially sponsored the Amazigh linguistic/ethnic identity movement amongst Berber majority. But perhaps to no avail?
Moroccans want more than monarchy delivers
Anger in the Rif
Protests that began last autumn in the Rif may go nationwide as Moroccans demand jobs, infrastructure that works and reform. But will the king listen?
[sadly behind a paywall]
http://mondediplo.com/2017/07/07morocco
Protests grow over police actions in Morocco
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/07/protest-police-morocco-rif-hoceima-popular-movement.html
Transitions & cabinet making (wapo) Don trumpioni has surrendered to the con-grease-in-all “commission” syndicate…sadly he is not anywhere near as gr8 a negotiator as he would imagine…
he has to call the bluff of the con-grease kritters…while the republicans still control the legislature he needs to do a massive take away…
Impeach me if you dare…
fire Mueller and declare an end to this russia nonsense…
declare the electoral college has spoken…
and demand…
yes “demand” articles of impeachment & a vote and if approved, a trial in the senate…
exclaim he will never resign so stop wasting the time that should be used to deal with the needs of the country instead of the needs of the political party apparatchiks…
“If you’re gonna fire me…fire me…otherwise let’s get to work…”
Although gridlock is our friend, the impotence, incompetence and incontinence on capital hill can not be fixed…
Then again…an honest assessment of Don trumpioni might suggest he likes being “forced” not to be able to deliver…
Onto 2018…anyone got Bobby Kennedy’s phone number…
A money quote from Noam Chomsky: “For liberal opinion, the political crime of the century, as it is sometimes called, is Russian interference in American elections. The effects of the crime are undetectable, unlike the massive effects of interference by corporate power and private wealth, not considered a crime but the normal workings of democracy.”
Anybody else surprised that NYT gave space to Chomsky, or is it just me? IIRC, he is a no-no for the lamestream media(thanks Sarah Palin, for once) because of his harsh critic of the Empire. Tho I have seen his writings distributed by NYT Syndicate, whatever that means.
The housing bubble bursts in Toronto:
http://business.financialpost.com/news/economy/newsalerthome-sales-in-greater-toronto-area-plunge-37-3-last-month-2/wcm/a5f4f134-1cca-432a-89d3-468c5da3f0a7
Dems try new slogan: ‘Have you seen the other guys?’
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/340732-dems-try-new-slogan-have-you-seen-the-other-guys
Doubling down on failure? I believe Lambert likes to say “help me”?
German Police Deploy Water Cannon Against G20 Protesters
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/07/05/german-police-deploy-water-cannon-against-g20-protesters
Democrat Official Calls Security During Meeting – Removes Bernie Supporter For Criticizing Party
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07/keith-ellison-demands-security-remove-bernie-sanders-supporter-criticizing-democrat-party-video/
The Deputy Chair of the DNC, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) called for security to remove a Bernie Sanders supporter on Wednesday.
Note that this was the same Ellison of course that many on the left backed for chair. I”m thinking he wouldn’t have been much better than Perez.
A few choices.
1. Keep on obstructing the D party or hope for new saviors like Ellison to take power.
2. Go build a new party…everyday, a little bigger and stronger.
2-Alt. Take over a smaller party. Infiltrate and elect a new party chairperson who is more effective, who can organize.
To me, the first involves a lot of negative energy.
The second is mostly positive energy, and to a similar degree, the third.
Matt Stoller wrote a great response to the #WTF project
https://www.buzzfeed.com/mattstoller2/techs-billionaire-centrists-wont-fix-our-rotten-politics
David Rees wrote a better one:
https://thebaffler.com/political-cartoons/bafflersplainer-win-the-future
Looks like the Washington Post is starting to notice the push for single payer:
More Democrats embrace universal coverage — and the GOP goes on the attack
I see this as actually a positive sign. When the Washington Post feels compelled to run obvious hit pieces like this, then you know that the push for single payer is starting to have an impact.
About the Dutch bringing the MH17 perpetrators to trial. They plan to prosecute “those who shot MH17 down.” Well… what about those wonderful trustworthy Dutch who allowed MH17 to flyover a war zone in the first place?? Will they bring those guys to trial? And did the Dutch ever seek the truth about which particular upstanding Dutch people allowed the Lockerbie flight to take off? Right – everyone really trusts the Dutch judicial system.
IIRC flights were allowed in the area at the altitude MH17 was flying. They were prohibited at a lower altitude but apparently nobody thought there were weapons present that could hit anything flying that high.
It seems that commercial aircraft were not legally prohibited from flying over the war zone. But the point is that the Ukrainian air traffic control redirected flight MH 17 from its original path skirting the war zone to a new path directly over it, and commanded a new, lower flight altitude as well. The air crew complied and unfortunate results ensued.
The Ukraine has never given an adequate explanation (nor any explanation, really) for the redirection.
No on-ground crash investigation has established exactly how the plane was brought down (a weapon of some kind, obviously) nor who did it.
–Gaianne
what about those wonderful trustworthy Dutch who allowed MH17 to flyover a war zone in the first place??
1.) Your hindsight could use vision correction. Get your confirmation bias and facts straight, What does MH stand for?
Please explain what authority the Dutch had regarding the MH 17 flightpath? Was it not following a standard air traffic route that was considered safe by international aviation authorities between Europe and Asia?
2.) More generally, was Malaysian Air setting a new industry standard re: conflict zone overflight following this route?
And did the Dutch ever seek the truth about which particular upstanding Dutch people allowed the Lockerbie flight to take off?
PanAm Flight 103
3.) wtf? Other than providing a physical location for the Scottish Court in the Netherlands to conduct a Scots Law trial subsequent to the crash, what in the wide world of sports are you slandering the Dutch and the Dutch legal system about specifically????
I await John Helmer throwing s pot of ink at the wall on this.
My uncle flew, carrier based, for the USN in Korea and Vietnam. He was shot up many times but managed to survive. He viewed the pics of the downed fuselage and said that the circular holes were definitely caused by 50cal air-to-air gunfire. That leaves out any ground based Russkies and instead points to the Ukrainian fighter that was observed following MH-17. Separate thought: Why isn’t Nuland in prison? Even though the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine is utter BS, why is there no mention of the illegal coup?
Well who was shooting .50cal bullets at your Uncle??
The mumbojumbo of a Ukranian fighter folliwing and shooting down mh17 has been kicked to death and put through the chipper, so dont perpetuate nonsense, it is irresponsible.
Even the Russians concede their was no other aircraft involved, as well Almaz-Antey the buk missle OEM concedes a buk missle was used to shoot down mh17
Nuland and every other ahoke that may brling in jail for some reason other than shooting down mh17 different subjects . File under: sophomoric deflection
They would be 20/23/25/30 mm if it was from a fighter cannon, depending on the weapons platform and aircraft.
But as an artillery/infantry officer, I had the same thought when I saw the photos. Direct fire damage, not shrapnel/blast.
If I remember right, it was Ukrainian air traffic control that controls all flights over their territory and it was they that diverted MH17 over the combat zone where earlier lights were flying more north of there. If you want to see their records, forget it. Those records were seized by Ukrainian spooks and have not seen the light of day since.
As for a “special” court, all that means is that they do not have the guts to take it to an international court as their evidence would be shredded in a proper court of law. Would the court be run the same way as the investigation where nothing gets released unless Ukraine says so? Will this be like that court trial that arose from the 2005 Beirut bombing where it was used to beat over the head whatever political group or nation that was out of vogue at the time?
We all know what the results of this trial will be so how about the ‘court’ gets on with it and appoint an international panel of five selected judges to oversee the case with judges coming from the Ukraine, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. That should do it. If you are unsure of what this is all about, look up the term ‘lawfare’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawfare) and that should give you a clue.
Lambert,
Don’t worry about scaring off birds. I have always had cats. The birds come to my birdbath and still use it.
He’s a handsome cat and having a barn, ya gotta have a barn cat!
KEEP HIM! (but, no pressure)
The link to the Guardian article on academic publishing profits is why I come to Naked Capitalism often. People who want to understand how otherwise very smart people (well in some domains) can willingly, gladly even, turn themselves into a slave labor force for The Man should read that as a case example.
This silly notion of democracy, freedom, equity and govern-mint being reasonable is a somewhat modern idea…
before ike was able to “adjust” the “thinking” of scotus by getting his freethinkers in place, the “silver platter doctrine” was the law of the land from 1914…
weeks v usa(1914)
gambino v usa (1929)
lustig v usa (1949)
This freedumb thingee will come to pass is the mindset of the plutocratic apparatchiks of all political persuasions…
“We can’t all become artisanal noodle makers in Chong Qing.”
This reflects current economic reality, I guess, but in the bigger picture, it isn’t really true. Aside from the high-tech items that don’t actually employ that many people (one reason we have such intractable unemployment), most of the stuff we need and use could be made on a craft basis, and was in the past. Done intelligently, this would be far more sustainable, because we’d be substituting human care for capital and for resource use (not completely, but as much as possible). This approach is precisely the prerequisite to a sustainable, “steady-state” economy.
And of course, it’s the reason the Archdruid proposed (and I think advocated for) looking to revived, “retro” technologies. I realize that “artisanal” is presently mostly just a fashion statement, but it’s also the only way to live well at a lower standard of consumption.
China, in particular, has a magnificent tradition of craftsmanship. Their command economy might provide a platform for reviving that without losing too much. It might even be a way to even up the present economic disparity between city and country – which is just the sort of thing that leads to revolutions. I don’t think the odds are good, given an authoritarian, corrupt system, but I don’t think it should be so casually dismissed. In th elong run, it’s what we have to do, and a working model would be a huge boon.
Chinese craftsmanship.
It doesn’t matter what they say how much fakes look realistic these days, but they really can’t fake old blue and whites or underglaze reds, for these reasons:
1. Old Jingdezhen was a vast, assembly line factory.
2. Every stage of production, from sourcing the clay, the glaze ingredients, to throwing (or molding, the preferred technique during the Yuan dynasty, but not in the preceding Song or following Ming dynasty), painting, glazing and firing involved specialists who spent decades perfecting their crafts…anonymously, unlike today’s named artists or forgers who buy off the shelf
3. In one dynasty, the Yuan dynasty, when Mongols ruled, a son could only work the same field his father did. So, you got to be really good at, say, painting dragons or peacocks (for Persian porcelain buyers).
4. People saw the world differently, from the mind’s eye. So, for example, old Chinese paintings lack perspective. Today’s forgers usually paint with that. Also, brush stroke techniques change over time. That offers another clue.
So the peak ancient skills may not be recoverable. But China still has excellent craftspeople; making that a bigger part of the economy would be a step forward (of back, if you’re the Archdruid.)
things do change, as time goes by.
From the Thucydides article: “Allison argues that when rising powers threaten the position of established powers, the inevitable competition can lead to conflict and, eventually, war.”
That’s a truism hardly worth discussing. The question is whether it ALWAYS leads to war, and what might deflect the process.
A nuclear standoff just might do it.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/41037-myths-of-globalization-noam-chomsky-and-ha-joon-chang-in-conversation
disheveled…. addition to the links Chomsky submission….
“A Cultural Failure: U.S. Special Operations in the Philippines and the Rise of the Islamic State”
Has the Philipino government recaptured their city yet? I didn’t see anything about it in the news.
Answering my own question: No. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-philippines-militants-idUSKBN19Q0DS?il=0
Above and beyond the smoke and mirrors of this “terrorist” issue, there is one frighteningly bad remark in the article:
“The potential for the Islamic State to gain a significant foothold in the Philippines was known to both American and Philippine security forces as early as 2014.”
Excuse me, how about Operation Bojinka in 1995??? How was that not important when it was part of our 9/11 investigation? About how long has Special Operations known about possible Al Qaeda/ISIS movements there? And, more importantly, WTF did they do about it, except maybe support it for future use?
We do have short memories, but c’mon.
Ref: http://www.filipiknow.net/911-clues-discovered-in-the-philippines/
I didn’t realize peacocks COULD fly – though come to think, I’ve seen them arrayed on a rooftop.
Gorgeous picture, anyway.
We’ve got ’em at the zoo. Couple dozen, walking around on the lawn. I think they tie or peg their wings. Beautiful birds, almost beyond belief. The prismatic colors in sunlight are beyond spectacular.
They have a few males, but these are smaller, grey and dull looking. They do seem perky, however!
“Peacock” = male (note the second syllable.).
It’s the hens, the females, that are dull colored – birds’ practice being the opposite of people’s.
Oh yeah, that’s right. Just remembered high school bio class.
The New Yorker article is long and far better than I expected it to be. The author is a Texas native and understands a few of the nuances of the Texas political scene. Texas politics is way too confusing for any one mind to grasp much of it. The explanations for the gerrymandered Congressional districts and the tradition of airhead governors seem accurate to me.
o “The Global Growth Slump: Causes and Consequences | Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco” — Would any of our readers masochistic enough – or required by their job – to read this care to comment on whether it contains any mention of “serial-bubble-blowing and exponential-consumer-credit-supporting policies by the world’s major central banks”? Thanks!
o “Is the staggeringly profitable business of scientific publishing bad for science? | Guardian” — Headline question contains its own answer, in the form of ‘staggeringly profitable’.
o “Merkel reiterates Europe can no longer fully rely on U.S. | CBC” — And in what universe should Europe be able to ‘fully rely on U.S.’? Y’all are a bunch of economically advanced, wealthy-overall, sovereign states – grow the fvck up and learn to manage your own affairs. Starting with defense would be a good first step. Ah, but the rub there is that it might actually force you to seek peaceful co-existence with nearby nations, most especially Russia. And we all know that those hugely provocative and hugely expensive NATO exercises on Russia’s border are good for business. If your business is being a warmongering American-slash-Western-world-exceptionalist or profiteer therefrom, that is.
o “Here are the people investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election | WaPo” — ‘Alleged’ is clearly one of the words on CraPo’s internal verbiage blacklist.
o “How the AI Revolution Creates New Work | John Robb, Medium” — New work in form of expanded shameless-shilling opportunities for tech PR shills pretending to be journalists, at least.
o “Here’s a history of Donald Trump’s brief, but tumultuous, relationship with Angela Merkel | Mic” — Some wag really, really needs to rewrite this in form of one of those raunchy fantasy reader letters certain Men’s Magazines publish as a regular feature. Since this is a family blog, we could keep it reasonable via creative use of euphemisms for the parties’ naughty bits. “Shameless and unersättliche little minx that she was under that polished political veneer, Kanzlerin M. simply could not get enough of Donald T’s turgid Blutwurst. The second night of the G20 summit, their secret tryst location echoed with the sounds of their private ‘negotiation’. ‘Ach, oh, uh!’ stöhnte Kanzlerin M. in her lustful ecstasy. ‘Zis clause is unacceptable! But it feels so good, Liebchen…bitte run it by me once more, zis time more slowly, ja?’.” That sort of thing.
Uber overseas:
https://sg.yahoo.com/news/failure-uber-grab-model-drivers-now-want-fares-052200892.html
“The global growth slump.” No mention in the article of the work by Robert Gordon who argued (persuasively IMHO) that we have mined the large increases in productivity that resulted from the industrial progress of the last century and that now we are on the downward slope of realizing only incremental grains from discoveries in areas such as genetic research.