By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Trade
“Donald Trump is a business ‘killer’ who ‘never plays by the rules’, say Chinese exporters after tariff threat” [South China Morning Post]. “US President Donald Trump is a business ‘killer’ who ‘never plays by the rules’, according to China’s manufacturers who have been left reeling by the news that tariffs will be increased from 10 per cent to 25 per cent on US$200 billion of Chinese imports into the United States. Trump issued the threat to increase the tariffs in a tweet on Sunday, changes which were confirmed US trade representative Robert Lighthizer some 24 hours later, with the new rates set to become effective at 12.01am on Friday morning US time.”
“China confirms Liu will join trade talks this week as US says tariffs will rise on Friday” [CNBC]. “Chinese Vice Premier Liu He is expected to join a delegation in the United States this week, a potentially positive sign for a trade agreement between the U.S. and China even as the Trump administration says it will hike tariffs on Chinese goods…. [T]he U.S. would reconsider the duties if talks get back on track, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also said.”
“US accuses China of backtracking on trade deal” [BBC]. “US trade representative Robert Lighthizer has accused China of backtracking on commitments in trade talks, but insisted a deal on tariffs is still possible. He said President Trump’s threat to impose new taxes on Chinese exports came after China reneged on promises.” • A translation problem?
“China vice premier going to U.S. for trade talks despite Trump threats” [Reuters]. “China’s Commerce Ministry confirmed that [Chinese Vice Premier Liu He], who leads the talks for Beijing, will visit the United States on Thursday and Friday. The ministry did not elaborate or give the expected topics of discussion. ‘Talks are by their nature a process of discussion. It’s normal for both sides to have differences. China won’t shun problems and is sincere about continuing talks,’ [Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang] said. ‘We hope the U.S. side can work hard with China, to meet each other halfway, and on the basis of mutual respect and equality, resolve each other’s reasonable concerns, and strive for a mutually beneficial, win-win agreement.'” • I wonder how to say “Please don’t feed the trolls” in Mandarin…
Politics
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51
“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune
2020
“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (RCP average of five polls). Biden up 20, everybody else down.
“*” = New candidate.
* * * Festival of Biden:
Biden (D)(1): “Cable News Is Covering Biden As Much As Every Other Democratic Candidate Combined” [FiveThirtyEight]. “According to data from the TV News Archive, which chops up TV news into 15-second clips that we access using the GDELT Project’s Television API, Biden was mentioned in more clips that any other candidate across the three networks last week, and he was mentioned almost four times as often as Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had been getting the most coverage of any 2020 candidate before Biden joined the race. For the second consecutive week, Biden, who has also been well ahead in polling and endorsements, was mentioned in about as many clips as all the other candidates combined.” • Odd!
Biden (D)(2):
If the original poster has you blocked, here is the video where Joe Biden says”I spent last summer going through the black sections of my town trying to get black men to understand it’s not unmanly to wear a condom” pic.twitter.com/tQ3s7VuHvh
— Esha ??? (@eshaLegal) May 6, 2019
Sharpton doesn’t look happy at the end…..
Biden (D)(3): In 2.0.1.8.
at a Brookings event in May 2018 Biden argued for means-tested cuts to Social Security and Medicare ht @drogon_dracarys https://t.co/2OQOFrDL1t
— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) January 2, 2019
Biden (D)(4): “Joe Biden pivots to courting black voters in South Carolina” [Morning Call]. They buried the lead. Here it is: “Biden also told donors that he’s heard from 14 heads of state from around the world who’ve voiced concerns to him about Trump. That list included Margaret Thatcher, he said, before correcting what he called a ‘Freudian slip,’ that he was actually referring to current British Prime Minister Theresa May. Thatcher died in 2013.” • Whatever that is, it’s not a Freudian slip. Can you imagine the hysteria if Sanders mixed up Thatcher and May?
Biden (D)(5): “Here’s How Deep Biden’s Busing Problem Runs” [Politico]. “Now that [Biden] has declared his candidacy for president, a number of commentators have suggested his record on busing would hurt him in the Democratic primary. But don’t count on it. School desegregation, as part of a broader suite of civil rights reforms, was once as a vital component of the Democratic Party platform. Yet since the 1970s, Democrats, in the face of concerted white backlash, have largely accommodated themselves to increasing segregation in public schools across the nation. Party leaders, even the most progressive among them, rarely propose serious solutions to this vexing problem. A sincere critique of Biden’s busing record would require a broader reckoning of the Democratic Party’s—and by extension the nation’s—abandonment of this central goal of the civil rights movement. And it’s hard to see that happening anytime soon.”
Biden (D)(6): “Critics lament Joe Biden’s support for a bill leading to Teamsters pension cuts, after he hosted his campaign kickoff at Pittsburgh Teamster hall” [Pittsburgh City Paper]. “On April 29, former vice president Joe Biden kicked off his 2020 presidential campaign with a rally at the Teamsters Temple in Lawrenceville…. ‘I make no apologies, I am a union man, period,’ said Biden. But the rank-and-file members of that Teamsters hall and others might not be reciprocating that admiration. International Brotherhood of Teamsters retirees eligible for pensions, including 17,000 in the Pittsburgh region, are feeling the pinch thanks to a law passed in 2014, which was supported by Biden. The Kline-Miller Pension Act allows multi-employer pension plans at risk of failure to reduce pensioner benefits to as little as $13,000 a year.” • Oy.
Biden (D)(7): “Joe Biden Wants To Make Donald Trump Deplorable Again” [CNN]. “‘I’ve had two people — and I think this is interesting — come up to me and say that for the first time since the election of the current president, they feel safe,’ [Teri Goodman, a Democratic activist and longtime Biden ally in Dubuque, Iowa] said. ‘They didn’t realize how stressful it’s been to witness him day after day spewing hatred … and encouraging people who would divide us as a country.’ Biden, she added, is ‘reassuring people that we’re still OK, that we can be OK again.'” • I guess brunch didn’t do it. However — and it’s very hard for me to take this seriously — there really are people out there who think this way. Perhaps this will help explain why–
Democratic primary voters are doing well personally. They are wealthy and educated. Nearly all of them have gone to college. Three in ten have post-graduate degrees, and four in ten make $100k+. A third are over 60. https://t.co/PG3mS2oI1s
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) May 4, 2019
I would bet Goodman’s two people are doing fine, just fine. Their feelings of being unsafe are just that. And they’re hardly representative of the voting population in the general; the whole primary system resembles a rotten borough.
Sanders (D)(1): Know your enemy:
We must combat oligarchy. A new study shows that the top 10% now own 70% of the wealth, while the bottom half have virtually no net wealth at all. We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. https://t.co/jTVeLlaH9U
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 6, 2019
Sanders (D)(2): “Democratic Candidates Are Preparing For A Contested Convention — By Courting Superdelegates” [Buzzfeed]. “[A]fter helping to strip superdelegates of a significant portion of their power after his first presidential campaign, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ campaign officials are planning to take ‘superdelegates strategy seriously,’ they say, with an outreach program designed to ‘prepare for multiple convention scenarios’ — even as the candidate continues to bemoan superdelegates at his rallies. Superdelegates — the elected officials, party officers, and activists who have been given a say in the Democratic nominating system since 1982 — were stripped of their vote in the first round of convention voting last year, a move to appeal to Sanders supporters who felt the system unfairly benefited Hillary Clinton in 2016. But across the field of 21 candidates, campaigns with the resources to do so are already courting superdelegate support to prepare for the possibility of a contested convention next summer — a scenario in which superdelegate votes could come back into play.”
“Which Pollsters To Trust In 2018” [FiveThirtyEight]. • HarrisX, the latest in the “ZOMG!!!! Biden has a commanding lead!” genre, isn’t even on the list. I have a hard time getting excited about individual polls this far out, and I’m even less excited about digging into methodology. We’d expect Biden to have a core of support, from name recognition, from people who have Obama’s portrait on the wall and call him Barack, from the West Wing types who think a restoration of the Obama administration would be fine, and people who want to back a winner. And interestingly, Sanders is the second choice for a lot of Biden voters. So please, a little calmness. If anybody can do a detailed exegesis of the polling (with links) that woud be great, but otherwise, it’s just not that exciting. The very first furlong of a horse race never is.
2019
“The Democratic Party Just Ticked Off Its Youngest Organizers” [The Atlantic]. “Sixty-eight chapters of the College Democrats are urging voters not to donate to the party’s congressional-campaign arm after it instituted a new policy to protect incumbents from primary challenges. The protesting students say that the change will deter young candidates and people from historically marginalized communities from running for office. Their outrage isn’t just noteworthy because they represent younger voters in the electorate—these young people are also some of the party’s key organizers and activists. ‘As College Democrats, we did a lot of work to build the new Democratic majority,’ says Hank Sparks, the 20-year-old president of the Harvard College Democrats, which is spearheading the boycott. ‘This is a policy that’s going to silence a lot of voices like ours.’ They did do a lot of work: College Democrats help form the backbone of the party’s organizing infrastructure.” • That’s OK. They can always join the Sanders campaign. There’s plenty of space for them there.
“New York Machine Trying to Toss Kat Brezler, Organizer for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Off Local Ballot” [The Intercept]. “A textbook case is unfolding this week in White Plains, Westchester County, where New York’s Democratic machine is trying to force a progressive Common Council candidate off the ballot. Kat Brezler is a public school teacher, but the role that has her in the machine’s sights goes back to the 2018 midterms. She was a lead organizer for the primary campaign of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and if she can get a foothold in the council, she’s a potential threat to run for Congress herself. To get on the ballot on the Democratic Party line, Brezler had to turn in a minimum of 696 signatures. She submitted 1,175 signatures, 780 of which the Board of Elections found to be valid. Her opponent objected to the signatures, and Westchester County Supreme Court Judge Sam Walker threw out dozens of them after comparing the signatures collected from people on the street to the ones on their voter registrations cards, some of which are up to 40 years old. Walker also refused the campaign a handwriting expert.” • They’re gonna redistrict AOC out, sure as shootin’.
Stats Watch
The Bezzle: “Elon Musk owes $507 million to banks helping Tesla raise capital” [Reuters]. “Goldman Sachs Group Inc has $213 million in loans outstanding to Musk, while he owes Morgan Stanley $209 million, and another $85 million to Bank of America Corp . Goldman was not mentioned as a personal lender to Musk in the 2017 filing. Those loans are backed by Musk’s shares in Tesla, currently worth a total of around $8 billion. If Tesla’s stock declines, then Musk could be forced to sell some of those shares under terms of the loan, according to the Tesla filing.” • If you owe the bank $100 million….
The Bezzle: “Uber’s Big Problem: It’s a Zombie Corporation That Can’t Make Any Money” [MishTalk]. “Uber loses money at everything it does. It is also far behind Google (Waymo) in driverless technology…. As long as Uber has the confidence of investors, it can survive by raising money. But if that confidence wanes before Uber makes enough to pay interest on accumulated debt, Uber is toast. Right now, Uber is a zombie corporation, totally dependent on investors’ willingness to keep funding Uber’s cash needs.” • Capital is to important to be left to the capitalists….
Transportation: “How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country” [New York Times]. “At the heart of their effort is a network of activists who use a sophisticated data service built by the Kochs, called i360, that helps them identify and rally voters who are inclined to their worldview. It is a particularly powerful version of the technologies used by major political parties*. In places like Nashville, Koch-financed activists are finding tremendous success. Early polling here had suggested that the $5.4 billion transit plan would easily pass. It was backed by the city’s popular mayor and a coalition of businesses. Its supporters had outspent the opposition, and Nashville was choking on cars. But the outcome of the May 1 ballot stunned the city: a landslide victory for the anti-transit camp, which attacked the plan as a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.” • NOTE * Like BERN, eh? Watch this space…
Transportation: “The Fight for the Right to Drive” [The New Yorker]. Interesting. This caught my eye: “Waymo, the driverless-car firm owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has been test-driving its autonomous vehicles in Arizona since 2016. People there have attacked the cars in a variety of ways: throwing rocks; cutting tires; aiming guns; trying to run them off the road. Like the Luddites of the early nineteenth century, who brandished hatchets, hammers, and muskets and smashed the mechanical looms that were taking their jobs, these attackers seem to be expressing a visceral feeling of contempt for the promised disruptions of autonomous technology. Their distrust and resentment may be widespread. According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans say that they would not want to ride in a driverless vehicle; seventy-two per cent of the skeptics said that they don’t trust the cars, have safety concerns, or simply worry about giving up control. And yet the same study shows that two-thirds of Americans expect cars to become driverless in the next fifty years. Who wouldn’t feel resentment, contemplating a future they don’t want but is going to happen anyway?” • Wish I had some numbers on Waymo in Arizona; I’ve never seen any.
Tech: “21 years in, the only way to get effective support from Google is to have friends who work there. Going in without personal connections is like trying to get a liquor license from the Ottoman Empire” [@Pinboard]. Thread:
Hey Google friends, Tock uses GCP, we pay for support, we've got half a dozen former Google Staff SWEs, and we email a completely lucid support request, we still get level 1 dumb support questions. Is there anyway to get a flag flipped in our acct so they'll give us REAL support?
— Brian Fitzpatrick (@therealfitz) May 3, 2019
Mr. Market: “Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ surges 30% — on track for biggest jump in 7 months as stocks slump” [MarketWatch]. “The Cboe Volatility Index VIX, commonly known as the VIX and often referred to as Wall Street’s fear gauge, was on track Tuesday for its sharpest daily jump in nearly seven months amid fears of increased tariff tensions between the U.S. and China. The VIX was recently up nearly 30%, with a daily surge at that level representing the biggest since Oct. 10, 2018 when the gauge surged by about 44%.”
Mr. Market: “A business boom defies the forecasts” [The Week]. “The U.S. economy blew past expectations in the first months of 2019 in a burst of growth that feels like the 1990s, said Heather Long at The Washington Post. Last week, the government reported a 3.2 percent annualized GDP growth rate in the first quarter, energizing supporters of President Trump and his economic policies. Most of the growth ‘was driven by an unusually low trade deficit and a surge in inventories, with companies beefing up their supplies after depleting them last year.’ In addition, unemployment and inflation remain low, wages are rising, and the stock market ‘has been on a bullish ride’ that’s reminiscent of the dot-com boom 20 years ago. Tax cuts gave the economy what looked like a ‘sugar high,’ said Jon Hilsenrath at The Wall Street Journal, but now productivity and labor force gains suggest that faster growth might well be sustained.”
Mr. Market: “McKenna On Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway, and Kraft Heinz” [Re: The Auditors]. “Buffett has also chronically touted a type of non-GAAP metric he calls ‘intrinsic value.’ He defines it as the ‘discounted value of the cash that can be taken out of a business during its remaining life.’ Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger never disclose their estimates of Berkshire Hathaway’s intrinsic value, because, they say, it’s an estimate and very subjective. ‘What our annual reports do supply, though,’ Buffett wrote for the 2017 annual report, ‘are the facts that we ourselves use to calculate this value,'” • Oh.
The Biosphere
“How Carbon Farming Can Help Stop Climate Change in Its Tracks” [The Nation]. “‘How do we get greenhouse gases out of the air?’ Masters asks the people at this workshop. Our host, a rancher named Steve Charter, answers, ‘Photosynthesis.’ ‘Right,’ she says. Plants not only take in carbon dioxide but also create ground cover—and this gets carbon back in the soil… Soil microbes eat sugar. And feeding these soil microbes builds soil and sequesters atmospheric carbon in the ground ‘at a rate previously thought impossible.'” • This is a must read, and not only for soil fans.
“Start-Ups Hoping to Fight Climate Change Struggle as Other Tech Firms Cash In” [New York Times]. “Despite all the money sloshing around Silicon Valley, few venture capitalists have been willing to join him in backing companies trying to address climate change…. The start-ups face a fundamental challenge: Carbon dioxide is plentiful but lacks the chemical energy that makes fossil fuels and other materials useful for generating power. So far, no one has found an obvious way to turn capturing carbon dioxide into a profitable business.” • Once again, capital is too important to be left to the capitalists.
“Skip the insecticide this summer. Fight mosquitos with bat homes” [Fast Company]. “Summer draws nigh, which means it’s mosquito season. You have your usual arsenal of tiki torches, insect repellent oil, electric zapping lamps, and insecticide needed to fight them and the nasty viruses they carry. But there’s a more nature-friendly way to destroy these buzzing annoyances: bats, which can eat up to a 1,000 mosquito-size insects per hour. That’s what BatBnB wants you to know. The company first took shape in 2016, with some sketches and brainstorming by an Google employee and an architectural designer. Their mission: to turn bats into a pest-control weapon for homeowners by creating nice homes for them that look great in people’s yards.” • OK, OK, so you’re worried a bunch of bats from out of town will turn your bat house into a bat party house. Still, those bat houses look pretty neat! And they, along with bird houses, are something I’ve never gotten around to… I create habitat by creating a mess, because birds love a mess….
“Sand mining ‘mafias’ destroying environment, livelihoods: UN” [Reuters]. “Global demand for sand and gravel, used extensively in construction, is about 50 billion tonnes or an average of 18 kg (40 lb) per person per day, according to a report published by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)… Current legal frameworks are not sufficient, and “sand mafias” comprising builders, businessmen and dealers in countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Kenya and Sierra Leone regularly flout existing laws, said the UNEP. The science to support responsible consumption and extraction is lagging, it said, adding that new technologies and materials that can substitute or limit the use of traditional concrete are growing in use, but still limited.”
“U.S. sinks Arctic accord due to climate change differences: diplomats [Reuters]. “Scientists believe the Arctic contains around 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered reserves of oil and 30 percent of its reserves of natural gas as well as huge deposits of minerals such as zinc, iron and rare earth metals. Harvesting them remains expensive, but melting ice is making that more feasible, as well as affecting the world’s weather, and the Arctic’s wildlife and indigenous residents. [S]ources with knowledge of the discussions said the United States balked at signing a final declaration as it disagreed with wording that climate change was a serious threat to the Arctic. It was the first time a declaration had been cancelled since the Arctic Council was formed in 1996.” • Weirdly, this Pompeo quote does not appear in the Reuters report: “[S]teady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade… Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st century Suez and Panama Canals.”
“Key State Certification Denied For SW Oregon Natural Gas Export Project” [Oregon Public Broadcasting]. “Oregon environmental regulators delivered a blow Monday to a controversial energy export proposal on Oregon’s south coast, saying the Jordan Cove liquefied natural gas pipeline and terminal project falls short of meeting clean water standards.” • Excellent! Hydrocarbon projects should be opposed where encountered. Leave it in the ground!
Game of Thrones
“‘Is the Coffee Cup in Game of Thrones Actually From Starbucks?” [New York Magazine] • Digital detectives discover that it’s not a cup of coffee. It’s a cup of herbal tea, with teabag, as available from a café near the set, in Ireland.
“HBO Edits ‘Game of Thrones’ Episode to Remove Errant Coffee Cup” [Variety]. • Each day, some time each hour, brings change. One might wonder what else has been edited out. Of everything.
Neoiberal Epidemics
“Can Economic Policies Reduce Deaths of Despair?” [NEBR]. “higher minimum wages and EITCs significantly reduce non-drug suicides. A 10 percent increase in the minimum wage reduces non-drug suicides among adults with high school or less by 3.6 percent; a 10 percent increase in the EITC reduces suicides among this group by 5.5 percent. Our estimated models do not find significant effects for a college-educated placebo sample. Event-study models confirm parallel pre-trends, further supporting the validity of our causal research design. Our estimates suggest that increasing both the minimum wage and the EITC by 10 percent would likely prevent a combined total of around 1230 suicides each year.” • Note the class distinction is real (taking college education as a proxt for membership in the 10%.)
Class Warfare
“A Functional Class Framework for Modern Western Leftists” [Nina Illingworth]. • Interestingly, supports the same 0.1%/10%/90% framework many of us have been using for some time but written with a good deal of verve and detail. Worth a read.
“The hosts of capitalism’s biggest party endorse the social safety net” [Quartz]. Charlie Munger: “Now if you get a place like Denmark or Sweden or something, a lot of these modern students would like it better, free education, free medical care and so forth. And if you have to bet, the United States will be way more like Canada pretty soon, in terms of more free education at the university level and more Medicare and some kind of medicine for all. And that we can afford without ruining the productivity of the civilization.” • That’s nice, and it would certainly help if the leadership of both major parties weren’t doing everything possible to prevent it.
“Seniors owe billions in student loan debt: ‘This will follow me to the grave'” [CBS]. “Americans age 60 and older owe more than $86 billion in unpaid college loans. Forty percent of them 65 and older are in default, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Many of them now have their Social Security benefits garnished to pay off their student debt.” • Seems that would be a good campaign issue for somebody. Joe Biden, say.
Our booming economy:
Ads on urban radio station in Baltimore in past half hour: 1) house-flipping training 2) car loans for "anyone" 3) help in dealing w/ IRS 4) med malpractice 5) selling blood plasma
As @just_shelter noted in "Evicted," there's a lot of money to be made from low-income Americans.
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) May 7, 2019
Readers, what are the radio ads like in your area?
It is good to see Chris Arnade tweeting again. Thread:
In honor of International Workers' Day, a few pics of working folks I met across the country.
Starting with
Priscilla, El Paso TX. "Domestic help" pic.twitter.com/kNrL1R5OdW
— Chris Arnade (@Chris_arnade) May 1, 2019
News of the Wired
“Artist Travels To Scenic Locations Only To Paint The Pattern of His Own Shirt” [Sad and Useless]. • This is pretty great. I like the one with Monet’s haystacks.
This reads to me like it’s good film criticism, but I’ve never seen Terminator 2:
The 90s where bookended by two sci-fi action movies, both about computers/robots turning on their creators, both of which broke stylistic and technological ground and changed american film: Terminator 2 and The Matrix
— socialism with gamer characteristics (@Discourse_Stu) May 7, 2019
Nothing, yet everything:
Police detained a young man holding a blank poster in central square in Uralsk, Western Kazakhstan today. They released him shortly after as they couldn't figure out what he would be charged with pic.twitter.com/nLtIneIsr6
— Dina Baidildayeva (@baidildayeva) May 6, 2019
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but I’ve never seen Terminator 2
Worth it. I’m not sure this is what Terminator 2 was about.
It’s definitely not what Avengers: Endgame was about. I don’t think anyone who watched that movie would say Robert Downey Jr. was superfluous.
But yes, do see Terminator 2 (and the original, if you haven’t), they are both well-made and hugely entertaining movies. Skip the ones that followed, however.
The whole thread is better, but he seems to miss T2 Arnie affects John Connor as much as John Connor, the messiah, affects the other characters including the T2.
As far as the other movies, T2 is legit, but I’m not sure the ideas from T2 functionally lend themselves to world building or worthy sequels. Sarah Connor is a mother and the mother of the Messiah and saved by/through the Messiah, twice. She’s got a lot going on. Not that there is any kind of lineage between T2 and the Matrix, but the Matrix was more worthy as a follow-up than any of the Terminator movies since. Though I don’t believe they stuck the landing in the sequels. We get messiah junk all the time. Mary and Joseph, not so much, and they don’t really make choices when we get them. If you don’t follow the apostles to John Connor, there is no John Connor story worth telling.
In regards to the Marvel movies, certain characters are just fun, and they don’t generally try to be anything more than goofy popcorn movies.
A side note, but, not to be overlooked part of Terminator 2, are the Cold War overtones buried in the backstory.
Skynet launches its bid for world domination by triggering nuclear war against the Russians in an attempt to kill all the humans so it can rule uncontested.
In 1991, when the movie came out, there’s still the nagging fear of nuclear war that we thought we’d dispensed with, post-Cold War, but Terminator 2 reminds us that we’re still way too close to triggering an apocalypse to be comfortable. Even rogue software can kill us all in minutes! :)
Later on in the decade, Tom Clancy novels come to the big screen having invented or exaggerated a whole new slew of enemies for us to be afraid of, some of which get a hold of nuclear weapons, some don’t.
The nuclear weapons plot backstory thing fades by the end of the 90s when the Matrix comes out.
I haven’t seen any post “The Sum of All Fears” Clancy media, but the wiki indicates belief the movie was delayed due to 9/11 to 2002. I couldn’t finish “The Bear and the Dragon.” I assume we won.
But I wonder about Hollywood’s relationship to the U.S. military. To have tension, the MIC needs to not be invincible defenders as featured in the commercials. Its tinfoil hat territory, but perhaps, we’ve seen a decline in this post-9/11 because they are reminders of U.S. government failures. Could a film of this nature not get U.S. military advisors?
Re “The Bear and the Dragon.”. Yeah, we “won” but the book was crap. His earlier works like “The Sum of All Fears” were far superior. His later books were all “Ra! Ra! Ra! We’re Number One!” Maybe that is why he sold his name back in 2008 – out of embarrassment.
The Cold War was much more of a presence in the original Terminator, which was also a much bleaker movie. The fear of nuclear annihilation was diminished by 1991, which was reflected in the more upbeat story arc in number 2. Both are products of their time. I agree there is no real parallel in the Matrix.
Terminator 2 is worth watching (but not the sequels) but watch the original first if you haven’t.
Re the Thrones boo boo–if you look closely at one shot in Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans you can see a Trailways bus in the background. The web is full of guides to these sorts of mistakes if one is interested. I’m not particularly, but Mann’s fine movie was shot not far away in North Carolina and I know the location.
Some might say a bigger GOT mistake was a certain mid episode plot twist….
one of the battles in Braveheart has a van in the background
Or movies supposedly of prehistory with chem trails in sky shots.
Lots of historical movies with actor/actress wearing a watch in a scene.
A long time ago Errol Flynn raised his sword high aboard a pirate ship which revealed a wristwatch.
That was a sort of sport for me watching after school western reruns for the umpteenth time. Spot all the contrails. Around the same age I realized quicksand probably wasn’t that big of a problem in adult life.
Reason# 8,345,543 to despise Trump that nobody in the “Resistance” will make a peep about – http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/trump-pardons-former-army-ranger-convicted-of-killing-iraqi/ar-AAB0tf3?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=iehp
Even if one is extremely sympathetic to the military I still don’t see how this could be viewed as a positive. Not only did this guy murder an Iraqi, he admittedly disobeyed a direct order from his superior, which I always thought was a big no-no:
Personally I find the ‘getting away with murder’ part to be horrendous as it pretty much tells the world the US has zero respect for the lives of anyone. But I would think military people might find the ‘get out of jail free for disobeying direct orders’ part to be more than a little disquieting.
Side note – in the ‘credit where credit is due’ department, at least MSN bothered to give the murdered Iraqi’s name.
I did a bit of a pantry clearout on the insanely dynamic primaries. Please refresh your browser.
Please remember: In contrast to *all* other California Democratic primaries, the presidential primary *requires* you to register as a Democrat to vote in it. Democrats! Gotta love ’em. (Looks like a way to keep Bernie’s independents, Greens, ‘no party preference’ people out to me)
https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/frequently-asked-questions/
I couldn’t find more info on the SOS site so I looked at the local SF elections and found:
https://sfelections.sfgov.org/voting-presidential-primary-elections#q11
So it at this time it may be up in the air as to if non-affiliated CA voters will need to register as D to get a D presidential primary ballot.
Why you keep making this comment, which is *not true*, across multiple sites,
despite being repeatedly told it’s false?
“No Party Peference” voters, like me, need only
request a Dem Party ballot to vote in the CA
Dem Primary. Being a registered Dem is *not
required*.
Please stop with this falsity.
““The U.S. economy blew past expectations in the first months of 2019 in a burst of growth that feels like the 1990s, ”
Bad news for the Dems. If it doesn’t crash, Trump will be a shoo-in.
pity, people don’t ask themselves, if (and that’s probably when) there’s a recession who do you WANT to be in charge? I’m thinking: maybe someone who kind of gives a damn about people’s economic struggles! If so at the least they won’t contest expanding unemployment a great deal and in fact they’ll support it, and at best they’ll do much more.
And that isn’t Trump, maybe if he’s having a good day, but he might be having a bad day which seems more common.
But good times (such as they are) are gonna last forever in these voters minds I guess ..
If a Catfood Democrat is President when a recession happens, that Catfood Democrat will do everything possible to destroy the Golden New Deal Moment, just like Obama did.
Whereas if Trump is President when a recession happens, he may turn it into a Hoover moment for himself and his Party. If that happens, Trump Term Two will be followed by a Democrat. If its a Catfood Democrat, that Catfood Democrat will work to destroy any New Deal potential just like Obama did. If the Real Democrats have been able to overpower the Catfood Democrats and get a Real Democrat nominated to succeed a self-Hooverised Trump, then that Real Democrat will at least try to realize some New Deal potential in the teeth of a bipartisan Catfood Coalition against it in the House and Senate.
Oh, wonderful. So, because Trump must be destroyed I have to hope/pray for millions of people to be out of work and unable to make their mortgage payments?
Two signs of the restaurant apocalypse. Here in Memphis a large regional bank has spent the last few years cranking out loans to restaurants, especially franchises. That is starting to dry up and becoming a drag on the bank because more and more of these loans are not performing. I heard this last week. Today, a food sales rep for a major food distributor said business is down everywhere in his region. Many down 60 to 70% from 6 months ago. It is hitting these distributors because many of these restaurants have 30 day lines of credit. 4 weeks of purchases can add up before the distributor even knows the place is out of business. Additionally, pork market shot up 20% yesterday and expected to not stop till 40%. Agriculture economy from Arkansas to Canada is a mess because of weather, plagues, and tariffs. This will hurt everything from cars to tourism. It maybe a long, hot summer.
I’m sure their names have been added to the magical dnc/dncc list and future good jobs will be withheld from them. It’s just the way they do business, nothing personal.
I know it is early, and I know that the polls are horribly flawed, but regardless, Biden being up by that much is just shocking. He has an absolutely horrible record, and it reflects the gap in regards to knowledge about his actual record among the type of people that read and post here and the general public. Many here might be paying attention, most of the public is not paying attention. The fact that Bernie is the second choice to him is perplexing, because Biden is in no way preferable on any level and secondly, they are miles apart on policy. If people were policy focused, you would expect the second choice to be in the same rough ideological area. The political system is obviously thoroughly corrupt and the media in this country owned and dominated by corporations and the rich. Those at the top spend most of their time lying to and gaslighting people, and everything is set to fall apart. People have the chance to spend a few minutes looking into his record and simply don’t, or don’t care.
Imagine Biden in office, working with “moderates” in the Democratic Party and Republicans and all the damage that would be done. Then, imagine the huge blowback from the negative impact of those policies. Maybe, not likely, they can beat Trump with someone as horrible as Biden, but Trumpism will not only be going nowhere, things will continue to get worse, which means the blowback in the coming years will be even more intense.
Looking at the environmental crisis, we need radical changes, and if we aren’t well along the way very shortly, there is going to be chaos. So, if things don’t change pretty soon, we are locking ourselves into a half decade more of either Trump or Trump and Biden? We are collectively stupid and ignorant, and we don’t seem to learn lessons either. I’m not freaking out, I had assumed that we had progressed a little bit and had reflected on the crash and everything after. I was wrong. Things can change, likely will, but Biden leading does say a lot about us, and it isn’t good.
We don’t have to imagine your 2nd paragraph. It already happened when Biden was VP.
I’d like to think we’d learn our lessons too. We’ll see I guess. The one thing I find hopeful is remembering that Joe Lieberman was leading the pack back in 2004 at a similar stage in the campaign because people don’t really start paying attention until closer to the election (which is reason #1 to limit campaign season to 90 days or so). Of course Lieberman rapidly fading didn’t exactly lead to a great outcome either…
The radical change we need isn’t going to come from the voting booth anyway. As the radical Emma Goldman put it a century or so ago, if voting changed anything they’d make it illegal.
The thing is, Biden is very right wing. In fact, it seems that he was one of those in the Obama administration that was pushing for cuts to the big three and more austerity. He is very hawkish, blatantly corrupt and it is clear that he has not evolved at all. Obama, after leaving office of course, at least has given rhetorical support for single payer. Biden has no interest even in that and, again, the damage he would do would be even worse. He not only opposes single payer, he wants to cut Medicare. And I think the writers here would probably develop major health issues after listening to his ignorant drivel on deficits, public debt, spending, etc. So, things have continued to get progressively worse, and he like Trump would speed up the societal collapse. My concern isn’t over his polling right now, it is over how little people have learned, how little aware they are of the records of these people and how easily people are mislead. I see little reason to have faith in the Democrats. They settled on a horrible candidate in 2016, largely could not be reasoned with, and most of them are paralyzed by fear of four more years of Trump. What they aren’t thinking about is what four to eight years of Biden would do. I would hope, after the decades long stagnation, systematic corruption and what happened in 2016 that those horribly flawed and biased polls.would show Bernie in the lead, cause what we are facing is obvious. But, I probably was giving older Democrats too much credit. They largely intend, it seems, to vote us into the abyss. Again, I know it is early, but these polls at least give us a glimpse into how some segments in that party are thinking, and it is depressing.
I know that some of the polls that have showed Biden far ahead of Bernie have had a very flawed methodology. They egregiously under sample younger voters, who are far less likely to support Biden. The CNN poll fell into this category and at least one other poll that only sampled people with landlines! I’m not sure why pollsters would think this is kosher. It is clearly tendential and leading. Maybe they would say that because the electorate has skewed older for some time now, this is a reasonable adjustment. Of course, that would be horses&*%.
I’d be interested in knowing how things were in the 30s or 60s (and other eras) in terms of age and voter turnout.
It feels like we can fast forward past a lot of sound and fury and arrive at the ballot box with the choices being Biden and Trump. Thinking man’s question: hold your nose and pull a lever, or just go home and take a powder?
I would see it as a replay of the last election and take the same course of not voting for either one, again
Might actually have to vote for Trump…just to hammer home the message to the neoliberals.
Evidence of Biden wanting to means-test Social Security and Medicare should be weaponized and disseminated to every middle-age person and upper-middle-age person so that can know what a threat and a menace he is to their survival.
If Biden is the D choice, I’m voting for Trump.
As I live in CA, it is a protest.
AS an aside, why did Trump move the US embassy to Jerusalem and Recognize Israels’s hold on the Golan Heights?
IMHO, It’s about the Benjamins in his reelection fund.
The polls are complete garbage. Low sample size, very dodgy biased demographics (50+ at the expense of 30 & under). They are a waste of time designed to suck the air out of the room and prevent coverage of Sanders.
What you say is true, but let’s not over exaggerate.
The CNN poll with Biden up by 30+ points is junk. MorningConsult’s weekly poll has him +20, he has been bouncing around +10 to +15 or so for the last few months.
Biden got a boost, for now. But remember, easy come, easy go at this stage.
All the Democratic base is going to hear is “he’s going to put a stop to Trump and make us feel safe again.” Safe from what is never explained (and as an act of politics, deliberately left for the listener to fill in the blanks in order to avoid committing to anything), nor is the plan of action described. Apparently merely existing is enough.
safe from Russians! Influencing our politics!
(as if there was anything left to influence after the corporate money had bought up the politicians)
That’s so very true! Without all that nasty old ice, permafrost and polar bears blocking our view of jools, rare earths, gold, caviar, 6′ Uzbek nymphs, methane geysers and clathrate mines Rooski communism’s too inebriate to develop, we’d best protect ourselves, by spreading the benefits of Democracy before Putin gets all paranoid and spreads more derision or corrupts our elections?
https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/climate-change-book-end-of-ice
Grant, I had some frustration with the higher-than-expected spike in the polls for Biden, but I paused for a minute or two and thought about it…
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/05/links-5-7-19.html#comment-3148466
To comfort yourself, have a look at what Sanders did when he plugged away for a year from Feb 2015 to Feb 2016. Give the man time to do his thing.
https://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-national-democratic-primary
It’s a long, long campaign season.
Agree Biden is a horrid human being. The fact that he gets any air time, any support, is beyond me.
Regardless, you are right. We are discussing an election which is less than 2 years away. Yet, we might only have 2 years before cities and countries face real environmental disasters. Think Katrina x 10 – It will be our inability to feed our populations which will trigger massive, global, social unrest. I don’t expect to live more than 2 years based on what I see happening in the world.
The military and police will only hold order for so long.
Of course I thought that Trump would implode a long time ago, so what do I know, but somehow, I don’t see Biden’s support continuing. I think that Biden will take down Biden.
Re: The Fight For the Right To Drive
“Like the Luddites of the early nineteenth century, who brandished hatchets, hammers, and muskets and smashed the mechanical looms that were taking their jobs, these attackers seem to be expressing a visceral feeling of contempt for the promised disruptions of autonomous technology.”
No, it’s not like “Luddites.” It’s like people that have been the victims of unaccountable and crapified automation for the last 30 years.
“Please hold, the next available operator will be with you shortly.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t recognize that selection. This call will be disconnected.”
People’s “adaptablility” is not to blame. At some point sh – – is sh – -, not progress.
A favourite old joke:
I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my father, not screaming with fear like his passengers.
Ha, reminds me most people age out of being able to drive anyway.
I mean if you live long enough into a nice old age, there is a good chance you really won’t be safe to drive, something American society has no real answer for. How the heck are old people to get around without endangering others? Autonomous vehicles would be better. As would other solutions.
It is like Luddites because that was entirely their justification for their actions-the point you stated about social crapification etal. Luddites have been misrepresented as being fearful of technology for technology’s sake. What they were fearful of, and with good reason, was the use of technology in the hands of the capital class and how it’s implementation would undoubtedly be used to further marginalize already marginalized laborers. There’s books about this out there. I think I found a reference of it in The Invention of Capialism.
One striking consequence of the Industrial Revolution was the increase in income of labourers compared to skilled workmen. I dare say that was exactly the problem that worried the Luddites.
Mike Pompeo asked about 3 million Muslims in concentration camps in China, calls them “re-education camps” and lowers number to 1 million (3 million and “concentration camps” were used in *a Pentagon report* on the issue) as he lies right to your face:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_CsFF6FmQk
Kudos to the interviewer. I’m guessing she’s not long for CBS with that attitude towards the powerful.
re: Biden(2), (3),and (4)
Watching Biden (3) after watching watching Biden(2) it seems clear Biden has more than lost a step. Almost like watching Reagan in his second term. Biden(4) fits this idea. imo.
Re mosquitoes/bats
Bats eat insects.
A bat could eat 6000 mosquitoes in a night if it a) ate only mosquitoes, and b) ate all night. Neither behavior is found among bats in the wild.
They eat what they come across until they’re full and then return to their colonies to minimize predation.
In fact, because mosquitoes tend to stay close to the ground and bats tend to fly up rooftop level & higher, mosquitoes likely make up a very small portion of a bat’s nightly take.
The ‘I want it now’ generation may be disappointed in their bat houses — it can take several years for bats to find and colonize a bat house, even if it is correctly installed (and that’s a whole other challenge). From the online looks of them though, they appear to have been built using the current best knowledge about what makes a bat house desirable to a bat.
I’ve had 2 large bat houses on the side of my barn for 4 years, ideally located, and they remain empty – though there’s lots of competition from more natural living space (as the realtors say, “Location! Location! Location!) (this is upstate NY, where there has been a huge dropoff in the bat population).
I built lovely bat quarters before trying (in the dark of night) to banish them from my barn’s woodwork and plug their gaps. 15 years later my barn loft is littered with steel wool the bats laughed at and dropped out of the way when they went back to bed. They’re not flying rodents, they’re flying hogs.
We seem to have had a bat decline as well. I wonder if it could be related to a decline in nocturnal insects–something that occasionally gets talked about around here.
Unfortunately there’s been no decline in mosquitoes. My back yard always has swarms of them in the summer. I refuse to use insecticide even as neighbors call in the eradicators..
RE: “Goldman Sachs Group Inc has $213 million in loans outstanding to Musk, while he owes Morgan Stanley $209 million, and another $85 million to Bank of America Corp .”
II’d bet Musk has mulled over whether or not to run for President.
re: “New York Machine Trying to Toss Kat Brezler, Organizer for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Off Local Ballot”
the revenge of Crow Jowley
I do look forward to further humiliations of the establishment.
Safe from Bernie’s unkempt hordes of tax-hiking socialists, they mean.
Joe Biden is as comfortable as Trump is sending aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf. That’s not making ANYONE safe.
Oh it’s probably making the Iranian rulers safer in their jobs.
I think we need to stop worrying about Biden and other conservatives–no they are not “centrists” because centrist try to resolve the differences between left and right, i.e., they moderate left-wing demands for more egalitarian policies with the needs of the ruling class. The Democratic Party is, largely, a right-wing party because it demands no change and represents almost totally the interests of the ruling class and their managers.
Sanders and others are trying to wrest complete control of the DP from the conservatives which may happen in the primaries and failing that we will surely be waiting for the end of the world.
Along these lines I have been contemplating planting a large amount of carnivorous plants especially as the area I live in has swampy soil (thin layer of soil above clay which keeps the water on-top of the ground in a lot of areas) and most carnivorous plants like swampy soil. Even putting aside the better environmental impact of it all I find a lot of the carnivorous plants are actually quite beautiful like the Sundews some of which also have pretty flowers, and I have always been partial to the beauty of pitcher plants.
Sadly while these will get rid of a lot of things, mosquitos just aren’t interested in their bait and lures so they don’t really help with that. If I were to do another start-up I might try to genetic engineer some carnivorous plants with some proper mosquito luring capabilities – but I am pretty sure the social backlash to “GMO + carnivorous plant” will have people with pitchforks at my door in record time – so maybe not.
As an aside, for indoor use I have been interested in those XL pitcher plants that at least occasionally eat rodents. Sadly no one will send me any as they are critically endangered. But if they could be demonstrated to work for good pest control indoors as house plants their endangered status would probably turn around really quickly.
Ooop, wrong rodent eating pitcher plant, I was thinking of this one.
Re: “Police detained a young man holding a blank poster in central square in Uralsk, Western Kazakhstan today. They released him shortly after as they couldn’t figure out what he would be charged with pic.twitter.com/nLtIneIsr6”
But they had to have been given the orders that anyone even thinking about protesting anything needed to be “put in their place.”
That’s “just following orders” and all the brain deadness it entails.
Unless you could read Kazak, you missed the tiny heading at the top:
“Lost–Imaginary friend”
You asked about radio ads. My area is the southeast, but I drive often and extensively through there and parts of the midwest and mid-Atlantic. I don’t remember hearing any ads about selling blood plasma, or a lot about car loans (independent of touting cars themselves, of which I do hear quite a few); but the ones about “house-flipping training,” “help in dealing w/ IRS,” and “med malpractice” (by which I understand lawyers looking for clients) unquestionably predominate. I hear a fair number of radio ads for the lower-end chain restaurants, too; also some for walk-in medical services (indicating failure of the ‘mainstream’ health-insurance system?).
Radio is for the rich…The true poorman’s advertising medium is power poles, as all you need is paper and a stapler. Around Tuscon the ad one sees all the time is
“We buy diabetic strips”. Very short expiration date, unused expired ones are bought cheap and resold in Mexico.
Another people’s medium is the good old fashioned bulletin board along with Craigslist.
[T]he top 10% now own 70% of the wealth […]. That does not sound that far off from a Gaussian distribution. Think a pile of sand at the bottom of hour-glass where 68% of the sand [$] falls within one standard deviation from the center spout, where the Platonic Big Kahuna wants it all to pile up. Now imagine the sand represented desire and its impoverishment. This is a pyramid of need, where most people end up wanting for at least one necessity. Cold, yes, but not a dysfunctional system. This is a system performing at optimum efficiency consumerism. This is a democracy of customers, a machine, where rational choice governs a collective debt load stretched to the limits of a cog / mark’s ability to perform. Similar to the Church deciding how much original sin could lay on a typical parishioner’s conscience. [Answer: lots.]
This reality is the result, not of the interests of the many being ignored, but the result of a system that indulges the democratic will of the many to purchase at any cost. A place where the masses really have captured the levers of power with their unconscious desire to submit, to be useful. Only we as components of a system, from within a system, find the results strange and alien. –From the WaPo editorial, “[W]e still don’t fully understand the surge in economic inequality of the past three decades. The populist temptation is to blame greed, but this is not a satisfactory explanation because greed is hardly new.” –My fear is that distribute and re-distribute, the capital still flows from coffers at top of the hierarchy, down the mountain, bifurcating until it is gone. We don’t organize Capital, it organizes us around it. Much in the same way, office cubicles are designed for the PC’s and files, the drones are an afterthought bolted to the screen. Which is the reason Capital has been such a formidable opponent, defying smarter men with better intentions who wield higher concentrations of power in all types of cultures.
https://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/story/news/world/2019/05/07/bubonic-plague-deaths-marmot-meat-mongolia-spark-quarantine/1126785001/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There really isn’t much to eat in the Sierra Nevada, and marmots tend to be the slowest 4 legged creature and relatively easy to catch/kill compared to any other denizen, but no, even if I was starving, wouldn’t go there, no thanks.
“here is the video where Joe Biden says”I spent last summer going through the black sections of my town trying to get black men to understand it’s not unmanly to wear a condom”
and
“Sharpton doesn’t look happy at the end….. ”
that is hilarious!!
Hard to believe but on that performance, it could be that this upcoming primary will be even more entertaining than Trump’s annihilation of the establishment Repug’s in 2015/2016.
Remember li’l Marco… low energy Jeb … little Hands
Where the rubber meets the campaign trail…
Hillary almost jumped in to add something, but she stopped herself short, and did her usual bobbing German Sheppard head on dashboard act.
I want to see video of Biden mansplaining to young African Americans about condoms.. if it did happen it would be pure comedy! There is no way that he did this, someone needs to call him out on this tall tale.
At least he didn’t claim to do it while under fire from Serbian snipers.
I wonder if he came away humbled by their primitive yet beautiful culture?
Is there such a thing as reverse-blacksplaining? Or would that be called whitesplaining?
Biden’s new book : ‘Whitesplainin like ME’
whitemansplainin’
Ha ha on Clinton … And the Obama head drop …. Biden totally clueless …. pure gold.
@kirstymayfield … a billion hits on YouTube …
Lobbyists are now “activists”… okay.
Bribing is an activity…
the newly-released sandra bland video is worth watching and filing under Black Injustice Tipping Point
https://twitter.com/leslieleeiii/status/1125795784463667203
Just for some fun:
Hey, Game of Thrones fans. Did you like the “just don’t call it product placement” product placement in your period piece?
Just employing the use of anachronism, ala Shakespeare. Think Cleopatra desiring a game of billiards or Caesar and clocks. I’m sure the fine quality timepieces on stage had makersmarks viewable to the front row theatre-goers. :)
Biden (D)(5): “Here’s How Deep Biden’s Busing Problem Runs” [Politico].
This article is classic misdirection and is paradigmatic of how Biden’s record will be “contextualized” by the press.
Biden’s horrible policies will be depicted as having been more or less inescapable at the time, hence not something for which voters can or should hold Biden himself accountable.
The press will omit that in the case of nearly every policy it is simply not true that it was inescapable, as there were at least some Democrats opposed to it. (Like Bernie Sanders, for instance.)
Biden’s flaws will be made the flaws of a generation of Democrats and therefore not truly his own. At the same time, Biden will be described as having outgrown his entire record and as coming to embrace the new, “diverse” and more “inclusive” Democratic Party.
This is the play. Watch for it.
That’s bascially the play they used, successfully, with Biden’s groping and hair-sniffing problem: “The times have changed and personal boundaries are different — I need to respect that.”
I remember they redistricted out Alan Grayson (formerly D-FL); I don’t think Florida Republicans liked his “Don’t get sick and if you do, die quickly” appraisal of the Republican non-plan for healthcare (still their plan). Not that Establishment Democrats liked him, either.
Union Plans Picket Of Joe Biden Fundraiser Hosted By Kaiser Board Member
The Falwells wanted to keep “a bunch of photographs, personal photographs” from becoming public, Cohen told Arnold. “I actually have one of the photos,” he said, without going into specifics. “It’s terrible.”
Falwell, president of Liberty University, one of the world’s largest Christian universities, said someone had come into possession of what Cohen described as racy “personal” photographs — the sort that would typically be kept “between husband and wife,” Cohen said in the taped conversation.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-falwell-exclusive-idUSKCN1SD2JG
I wonder if this is connected to the pool boy Jerry Junior loaned money to.
Elizabeth Warren reading the Mueller report out loud:
“Warren reading the Mueller report into the congressional record is like a 4 year-old’s crayon drawing of Gravel reading the Pentagon Papers into the congressional record. Russiagate has made everything stupid.”
https://twitter.com/caitoz/status/1125886753229819904
In regards to bat homes: the county I live in has lots of bats. And lots of rabies in the bat population.
Nobody in my State in Oz would ever home them due to fear of Hendra virus or Lyssavirus and people have died from them. Here is an article on what one problem with bats is-
https://www.livescience.com/26898-bats-host-human-infecting-viruses.html
My new favorite website
https://joebiden.info/
Thanks for this link!
“Always read the small print”: a case study of commercial research funding, disclosure
and agreements with Coca-Cola [Journal of Health Policy]
Abstract of and link to unpaywalled article:
It’s the Real Thing™ – and you don’t need to know about certain other real things.
Snopes goes to bat for Biden-
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-biden-no-empathy/
In essence, Biden says that kids had it tougher back when he was younger. As the Scotsman said: ‘I ha’ ma’ doots!’
You were lucky!
An absolute classic that. I have a copy saved to my computer.
Bat houses. Good link. May have to find time to build one or two of these as I have bats in the evenings but would like to encourage more to hang around.
Where in space is Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster now? https://www.theinforadar.com/2019/05/where-in-space-is-elon-musks-tesla.html