Sight Of 400 War Elephants On Horizon Marks Hillary Clinton’s Arrival In Swing State Onion (David L)
Shark attack saves man’s life after he discovers he has cancer Independent (Chuck L)
Coastal Commission bans captive orca breeding at SeaWorld San Diego Los Angeles Times (furzy mouse)
First ancient African genome solves migration mystery BBC (furzy mouse)
HOW ANALOG TIDE PREDICTORS CHANGED HUMAN HISTORY Hackaday (Chuck L). Hard core geekery meets war!
Terrifying Footage Shows Moment Bridge Snaps Under Hikers’ Weight Gawker (Chuck L). The bad part is that the bridge looked pretty solid.
Musk lashes out at Apple’s car ambitions Financial Times
Breast cancer cases among men on the rise USA Today
Facebook blocks breast cancer post for being ‘overly sexual’ Irish Times. This is ridiculous. Manual exams are better at detecting the truly dangerous growths than mammograms. Allan: “‘Leaning In’ apparently doesn’t include proper instruction for self-exams.”
Mark Carney: Emerging market debt is the biggest risk right now Telegraph
Lagarde open to second term as IMF chief Financial Times
Germany, the eurozone’s economic engine, is sputtering as its biggest companies struggle Financial Post
Éric Grenier’s Poll Tracker CBC. JSC: “Useful for following the numbers in the Canadian election. Their results for the unprecedented NDP victory in Alberta were quite accurate.
Sowing the Seeds of War in Uruguay Counterpunch
China?
One in three young Chinese men will die from smoking, study says BBC (furzy mouse)
Syraqistan
The Week in Review: Putin in the UN and Russian forces in Syria Une parole franche (margarita). Today’s must read.
Putin – the incredible Abou Ali Vineyard of the Saker (margarita)
How Putin will Win in Syria Counterpunch (furzy mouse). I am reminded of a line from Cate Blanchette in Elizabeth: “I do not like wars. They have uncertain outcomes.” Nevertheless. the point is that Putin seems to have a credible plan for winning and is executing well so far, which is more than the US has been able to do in our Middle Eastern nation-breaking exercises.
David Cameron on Saudi deals Channel4 (guurst)
Obama Official Says Putin’s New War Is a Sign of American Success Daily Beast. Resilc: “We must be on fourth string JV at DoS by now.”
Russia’s holy war in Syria Middle East Eye
The Future Of Saudi Arabia – Really? By Walrus Sic Semper Tyrannis
Why is the US Aiding and Enabling Saudi Arabia’s Genocidal War in Yemen? Counterpunch (furzy mouse)
Big Brother is Watching You Watch
Victory in California! Gov. Brown Signs CalECPA, Requiring Police to Get a Warrant Before Accessing Your Data Electronic Frontier Foundation
THE FBI WANTS YOUR FACE AND FINGERPRINTS WhoWhatWhy (furzy mouse). Maybe it’s time we all start wearing fake noses on a regular basis. And mole appliques.
Police State Watch
FBI chief: ‘unacceptable’ that Guardian has better data on police violence Guardian (furzy mouse). This is laughable. We are to take this consternation seriously? The FBI has access to the same public information as the media, and they have access to at least some police databases. We are really supposed to believe that the FBI can’t do better, as opposed to it is politically not acceptable for it to show how bad things are, since it has access to more data?
Trade Traitors
How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens America’s Recent Manufacturing Resurgence Atlantic (resilc)
2016
Clinton proposal calls for breakup of ‘too-big-to-fail’ Reuters. OMG, the best the pro-HFT crowd can come up with is the bogus idea that this puts Commie Clinton on a path to taxing retail trades?
My Plan to Prevent the Next Crash Hillary Clinton, Bloomberg
Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street Policy Being Shaped By Two Bankers International Business Times
Full interview: Dr. Ben Carson on the economy Marketplace. Resilc: “Glad i never had a brain tumor or went into a Popeyes.”
Fuck Ben Carson GQ (furzy mouse)
Why speaker of the House is the worst job in Washington Vox
The best Democratic burns from the House GOP’s leadership meltdown Quartz (resilc)
Kevin McCarthy’s Exit Came After Personal Threat Over Affair Allegations Huffington Post
Kevin McCarthy Enters Rehab After Admitting Struggles with Nouns, Verbs New Yorker (furzy mouse)
Fed
Outsourced Monetary Tightening Menzie Chinn, Econbrowser. Important.
Quantitative frightening Economist
Fed believes economy insulated from China slowdown, documents show Washington Post
Reason for low rates is real, monetary and financial Martin Wolf, Financial Times
VW scandal: Regulators investigate second emissions software program New York Times (EM)
Qatar’s Wealth Fund Said Interested in Glencore Agriculture Sale Bloomberg
That Bill Gross law suit in full FT Alphaville
Class Warfare
The Ongoing Destruction of Public Education Charles Pierce, Esquire (resilc)
Charter School Nonsense: No, Hedge Fund Billionaires Aren’t Going to Save All the Children Diane Ravitch
Antidote du jour. I had another photo from a series sent by Diane P but neglected to include the story:
An unusual family of animals is winning hearts on Instagram. This has attracted over 77,000 followers so far by regularly sharing snapshots from the life of one man’s pets: a eccentric but tight-knit group that consists of one golden retriever, one hamster, and eight birds.
31-year-old Luiz Higa Junior of São Paulo , Brazil , tells PetaPixel that his golden retriever, Bob, is a little less than two years old. In the beginning, he just had Bob, a cockatiel and a parakeet.
“Since the beginning I put them together to see their behavior,” he tells us. “It was nice, so I decided to have them play together sometimes during my free time.”
He then added more birds and a hamster to the group, and his Instagram account has been steadily growing in popularity since. Higa’s photos show the group posing, playing, exploring, and resting together
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
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Bring back Nancy Pelosi !
Oh, okay, maybe not one of my brighter ideas…
Let’s take that “off the table.”
Tom DeLay. There’s a logic to it.
Sam Rayburn. Or, if he is too busy to be conjured, his protégé, Lyndon Johnson.
Heh, if we’re going to dig up dead people then I think the GOP should ask zombie Reagan to be House speaker.
I dunno about Reagan. He was a real ‘zombie’ for his entire second term. I’ve heard conflicting reports about if the “rainbow drug” can be administered more than once to the same “horse.”
As far as GOP deaders is concerned, how about Livingstone? He must be pretty sore still for having been bluffed out of the House by the ever resourceful Larry Flynt.
If you’re going to go all dead for Halloween, bring back Tip O’Neill.
How ’bout Broun? He would be amusing, and we would get to learn a lot about the pits of hell, so, educational!
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/08/tea-party-brings-back-congressman-crazy-to-fire-mccarthy.html
“FBI chief: ‘unacceptable’ that Guardian has better data on police violence ”
Why doesn’t Comey just hit all state and local police departments with National Security Letters
demanding the information? Problem solved.
Re the Counterpunch article…..did I wake up in the twilight zone this morning? Or maybe take a little trip through the looking glass?
On Syria? Or Yemen? Nothing very new in the Yemen article, so I guess Syria.
I’m guessing Blanchette’s Elizabeth will turn out to be right (That’s a pretty horrifying film, BTW.)
FBI chief: ‘unacceptable’ that Guardian has better data on police violence Guardian (furzy mouse).
That is one of those things were laws are passed, and than through a dizzying number of ways that government has of not doing what a law ostensibly purports to require, nothing happens. Its pretty obvious that both parties don’t want to challenge law enforcement – whether right wingers just paying lip service to the constitution being shredded, or democratic mayors who enforce some of the most onerous and repressive police policies that would have made Bull Connor proud…
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140822/07034228290/federal-law-ordering-us-attorney-general-to-gather-data-police-excessive-force-has-been-ignored-20-years.shtml
‘Uruguayan President José Mujica called Uruguay “the little Switzerland of the Americas,” while speaking in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on December 4, 2014.’
It’s a pleasant place, but more accurately known as “Iowa By the Sea” for its plains, cattle, beaches and absence of mountains. One can no more ski Uruguay than Mississippi.
i think the analogy was more about social protections, than about the natural environment
Prolly so. Uruguay’s social welfare state dates back to the 1920s when it was relatively rich. Both Uruguay and Argentina offer fascinating studies into what happens when European-style social guarantees collide with GDP per capita that can’t fully fund them. One predictable result is trabajo en negro, in which many work off the books without any protection.
Mississippi tried a variant, trabajo de negros, and that didn’t work out too well. It’s a shame Uruguay can’t do what Mississippi did and join a continent wide Union and sponge off of the stronger member States.
One wonders if one reason that “European-style social guarantees” face funding might have something to do with the corruption that skims so much of the wealth off so many places, not to mention the “legal” corruption of monetization and financialization. Wiki article on Uruguay is illuminating, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay, as is the general view on the level of corruption there (though somewhat dated): http://www.ibtimes.com/ngo-names-uruguay-most-transparent-country-latin-america-venezuela-most-corrupt-1494156 And of course the contagion of corruption crosses all kinds of borders, and you know our Imperial jackals and “economic hitmen” are busy all over that nation, and everywhere else in the area…
So is it a matter that the per capita GDP “can’t” fund the safety net and social decency, or that neoliberal disease that infects the rest of us, or some other item or combination of items? At least the citizens there aren’t puching a huge idiotic military machine uphill, though it is interesting that Uruguay supplies the largest contingent of soldiers and officers to the UN “peacekeeping forces.” (Why am I reminded of Castro’s Cuban troops going off to Angola to defend American mining operations there against attacks by the CIA-trained and -sponsored UNITA
moderate terroristsinsurgents, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNITA? Gotta love the Great Game in all its sick working parts…)Unfortunately the history is a lot less cheery:
… that’s the haymaker to the Haygood.
That’s always been the ruling class excuse here since as long as I can remember: “we just don’t have the money for X programme. TINA”
Yet Latin America’s GINI has consistently been the worst in the world (although improving over the last decade). And wouldn’t you know it: when GDP improved in the past but GINI stayed the same or got worse (eg Argentina 1989-1999), it was always linked with decreased “European-style social guarantees”. Thus the conclusion should be the opposite: there is no limited resources problem, rather a distribution problem.
Secondly, trabajo en negro is just a matter of governments having the will and power to enforce labour codes, something that even the “progre” govts (Lula,Kirchner,Mugica…) have done pitifully little about.
Wikileaks has published the intellectual property chapter (version as of oct 5) of the tpp
https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter-051015.pdf
here are some very useful comments from jamie love https://twitter.com/jamie_love
Thank you!
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/kevin-mccarthy-enters-rehab-after-admitting-struggles-with-nouns-verbs
A source familiar with McCarthy’s struggles, however, cast doubt on that official story. “It’s not just nouns and verbs,” the source said. “It’s adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns. Kevin’s going to be in rehab for awhile.”
…..
Members of the Freedom caucus reacted vigorously, ‘There you go again. Everybody with 3/5 of a brain knows that adverbs are part of a vast left wing conspiracy to central plan the economy and take away our freedoms – global adverbing is a myth! We will not be placated until all the vowels and consonants (and we’re talking red blooded vowels and consonants – not those wishy washy w’s and y’s) that the RINOS and Obama are so nefariously trying to take away are rightfully restored to the American people’
Antidote to cynicism is that antidote.
Caption? Bird dog?
Sadly, our moderate rebel heroes of Division 30 have received a poor performance review:
With his new approach, Generalissimo Obama — popularly reputed as ‘the American Wellington’ — should have Syria’s extremists pacified before the first snow falls, with the help of our Prussian allies. :)
Spending 500,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 training scores of soldiers who last minutes, maybe hours, once crossing the Turk/Syrian border before being captured, weapons seized… and switching sides, killed or held hostage. No matter the arithmetic it’s costing millions per minute of actual deployment of these ‘moderates’.
I don’t know, I think perhaps the program should just end. All who promoted the scheme to begin with should, you know, be fired. And somebody deserves a refund!
And BTW, Killary, establishing an NFZ on their behalf is even worse.
An IRS investigation is needed for anyone involved as well as investigations for family and associates.
Ya, the dollar per soldier number for “training” screams for an audit. The “Men in Black” were funded by $800 hammers.
Ahh, the good old days! Innocence lost…
> I don’t know, I think perhaps the program should just end. All who promoted the scheme to begin with should, you know, be fired. And somebody deserves a refund!
Or we could send them all to Syria so they can fight for secular democracy alongside their moderate rebel friends.
Should be cheaper than paying their unemployment.
Maybe, Mad Max-style, we could strap one of ’em onto the front of a “smart bomb.” But I guess it would take a minimum of two, one on each wing, for the plane to balance.
Maybe Ashton Carter on the left, and Victoria Nuland on the right.
That way, the next time we blow a wedding party to pink mist, the survivors might take some comfort in the fact that matters didn’t net out quite as badly as they thought.
If you call it art, they will cut the funding.
Tell Congress that the service academies are teaching something from Commie China called “The Art of War.”
F*ck Ben Carson GQ
“Not only would I probably not cooperate with him, I would not just stand there and let him shoot me. I would say, ‘Hey, guys, everybody attack him. He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all.’ ”
…..
“I have had a gun held on me when I was in a Popeyes organization. Guy comes in, put the gun in my ribs. And I just said, ‘I believe that you want the guy behind the counter.’ ”
==============================================
Is it me….or is there a contradiction between advice given and advice taken???
There is nothing conflicting. In Carson’s first statement, he said “everybody get him” not “let’s get him.”
In both cases, Carson wants someone else to take a bullet for him.
“Some of you may die… but that is a risk I am prepared to take.” ~ cheering crowd ~
I love what Carson said when asked why he wasn’t going to visit the families of the victims of the Oregon shooting: “I’ll go see the next ones”.
Now that’s some plain speaking all right
Seems like Bob is thinking, “Take that picture before these birds s#*! on me.”
Nice breakdown of Clinton’s “evolving views” of trade pacts over the years:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ian-fletcher/hillary-promised-to-reneg_b_8267424.html
It would be nice if the moderators of the debate next Tuesday were to reference this. I would be interested in seeing how she would respond.
O’Malley was rather snippy with Hillary’s about face, and he was critical of Team Blue election strategies in 2014. Perhaps, he is looking at the prospects of the Naval Observatory residence in a Sanders administration with Bernie’s summer rise instead of serving as Hillary’s sacrifice to the left.
I think that one of the reasons that O’Malley never caught on is because his record looks a lot like Hillary’s evolution on trade bills. The guy is another DLC chameleon, and Sanders has to be aware of that. I think he was supposed to fill Biden’s new role as safety net for the establishment.
I wonder if it won’t be Sanders’ friend Lessig. Now, HIS run makes no sense at all without thinking about VP potentialities.
That’s “Navel Observatory.” This is DC, after all.
Breast cancer in men on the rise: There is a 15 part series authored by Stephen Brill regarding the marketing strategy by Johnson and Johnson: Over the course of 20 years, Johnson & Johnson created a powerful drug, promoted it illegally to children and the elderly, covered up the side effects and made billions of dollars
http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/miracleindustry/americas-most-admired-lawbreaker/
Apparently, the drugged chickens have hatched and they are showing the signs of disease.
Criky. I suppose now we are supposed to sign up for yoga class AND get a mammography.
One in three young Chinese men will die from smoking, study says
I’m no fan of smoking and/or big tobacco. I do believe that’s an industry that killed alot of people for profit. But boy does this study scream of affirming the consequent. Smoking can cause disease and death (probably as much from the pesticides and processing than the smoking of the tobacco plant itself). Chinese men smoke and are dying of “smoking related” illnesses. Therefore, they are dying from smoking.
I saw nothing in the study that broke down mortality rates from “smoking related” illnesses by geographical location or job/income. My guess is simply living and working in a basically unregulated industrial revolution city center will be bad for your lungs. Also, if your job is shoveling whatever miraculous-but-deadly product they are manufacturing in China these days, Seems your chances of getting lung cancer are higher than the guy with his feet on the desk smoking in the corner office upstairs.
This same (false) logic was and is used to defend asbestos lawsuits: Hey, that guy smoked, it couldn’t have been the asbestos he inhaled every day without protective gear that caused his lungs to fill up with blood!
Let us also not forget the Japanese paradox. Japanese men smoke. Alot. Why don’t they die off in droves from lung cancer? Studies have shown that environmental factors may be to blame for the low rate among Japanese men as compared to American men.
Sure seems to me this study is a cheap and easy way to lay the blame for massive societal issues (China’s incredibly dirty air and poor working conditions) at the doorstep of an already-known bad guy while avoiding discussion of the real culprit(s).
Nice catch. I don’t know if the skew in results interpretation is as intentional as you suggest – sometimes ax-grinding in a study is just ax-grinding – but I think you’re right about failing to account for contributing factors.
I don’t know if the skew in results interpretation is as intentional as you suggest – sometimes ax-grinding in a study is just ax-grinding
Agreed 100%.
That stood out to me as well. In fact, I’ve read a lot of articles about the air pollution in China comparing it to everyone smoking X packs of cigarettes per year.
Bridge collapses:
Wow New Zealand treats their engineers like the US treats its bankers.
Wikileaks has published the intellectual property chapter of the tpp agreement
https://wikileaks.org/tpp-ip3/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter/WikiLeaks-TPP-IP-Chapter-051015.pdf
Thanks!
SABMiller Targets More Cost Savings in Takeover Defense
A virtuous circle:
QE N => free money for takeovers => target companies cut costs (read: fire workers) as defensive moves
=> lack of demand since fired workers can’t buy stuff => economy threatens to contract => QE N+1
Yep, rinse and repeat.
Nicely done.
“Lack of demand” since fired workers can’t buy stuff.
We do everything to get rid of that ‘lack of demand’ – giving money to the rich to trickle down (not), government spending on military, proposing government spending (domestically this time) because no private sector demand (read ‘no working people’ spending – because they have no money)…more trickle down, this time public trickle down.
We (the nabobs) will try anything except the radical (so they say, radical, dangerous, risky, unthinkable, nuclear option) idea of giving money directly to the people.
Cut out the middle man.
Go with the one-step math proof (an analogy from the other day) – give $$$ to those in need, directly and immediately.
“We (the nabobs) will try anything except the radical (so they say, radical, dangerous, risky, unthinkable, nuclear option) idea of giving money directly to the people.”
That would be to admit the money system is crooked and we can’t have that, can we? /sarc
Still, it was a Republican, GW Bush, who came up with stimulus checks while a Democrat wouldn’t dare for fear of being called a “bleeding heart liberal?”
Deficits matter when a Democrat is in the White House…
deficits matter when it’s something the powers that be would rather not pay for.
Actually, that was Bernie’s brainchild.
Thanks for that info.
Sorry, make that “financially irresponsible”
Looks like another self-licking ice cream cone.
To be fair, some of the money sloshes over to Silicon Valley, so we get unicorns like Uber whose frothy valuations depend not on profits but on the prospects of screwing their workers, or entering markets by breaking the law (Uber; AirBnB), or through tax evasion (Amazon; Etsy).
“Nevertheless. the point is that Putin seems to have a credible plan for winning and is executing well so far, which is more than the US has been able to do in our Middle Eastern nation-breaking exercises.”
The spectacle of our Noble Peace President having a public sad because Russia is bombing Obama funded ISIS terrorists instead of hospitals and doctors like he is, is enough to make your cheer Putin. Check out this Zerehedge article saying Russia could upend the U.S. as the power in the Middle East with a Russia/Syria/Iran/Iraq alliance:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-09/obama-folds-white-house-weighs-syria-retreat-it-ends-training-moderate-rebels
You might say Russia has done more in 1 week to fight “terrorism” than Obama has the entire year (yes I know what is really going on is Obama isn’t fighting terrorism he’s funding and supporting ISIS and terrorism becaue regime change in Syria).
“Outsourced Monetary Tightening Menzie Chinn, Econbrowser. Important. ”
Except not. The 10 year treasury is 2.1% and the dollar is strong in FX. That means although central banks are dumping record amounts of treasuries, the world is happy to pick them up at high prices. Otherwise we would have higher rates and a weaker dollar in FX.
Nothing new. See Triffen Dilemma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
Outsourced Monetary Tightening. Yeah we get the point. Sales of treasuries by foreign central banks reduce cash in the world economy. An increased supply of treasuries, however, increases the opportunity for collateralized lending, aka private money creation. So maybe it is a net wash. Or even possibly actual monetary easing, so long as central banks can be counted on to buy all those treasuries back in a pinch. Not exactly a big risk.
Yikes, cubed. I’ve been on many footbridges that make that look like the Golden Gate. I would have been sauntering along without a care in the world. Their next crossing will have them consulting their probability tables and crossing 1 at a time.
Appeared to be only 3 or 4 people. Heavy packs, though.
The Marketplace interview with Ben Carson. Stunning.
How can he believe that he should run for president?
Looks to me more like he’s running for Princeps.
I’ve pointed out this whole government run like a business thing, businesses don’t hire people with no experience in or qualifications for a job (carson for prez that is). There’s some leeway and a lot of gray area and of course incompetent people get hired, just not those whom nothing in their experience would suggest they should be hired (carson has no political experience not even mayor of a small town). So should government be run like a business or not? Make up your mind.
Hacker News has a link to a Bloomberg View article by Matt Lavine that flat-out obfuscates the nature of High-Frequency Trading.
HFT firms would find it harder to take advantage of the obscure nature of their behavior if it weren’t aided and abetted by the exchanges and financial media.
Exchanges benefit because HFT transactions account for the majority of trading volume which in turn provides the illusion of healthy market operation, and of course the HFT firms pay for the privilege of deep access to the exchanges systems.
How do I know this is true?
The following is an excerpt from one of my FDL/Shadowproof posts.
I know it’s true because the guys who design and build the systems’ software have explained its effect;
Um, that is what Matt Levine is in the business of doing….but thanks for the alert. Will check it out.
RE: How the Trans-Pacific Partnership Threatens America’s Recent Manufacturing Resurgence
Job-Free Zone coming up! Way to go Barry!
” Maybe it’s time we all start wearing fake noses on a regular basis. And mole appliques. ‘
Don’t forget the giant eyebrows.
It’s a whole new look.
Don’t have a link, but a while back somebody published example sof face painting that would foil recognition software. Very dramatic. Fun to imagine streets full of people who look like that.
Yes, I like the idea of monster eyebrows. But I’m not sure they do much to fool face recognition software. I think the points they look for are eye location and width, cheekbones, noses, and mouth size and placement relative to chin. I recall the makeup one had stuff on the cheekbones to make it hard to read how they were planed. Oversized sunglasses plus a fake nose should so a lot, as would a mustache or beard that made it harder to tell what is going on with a man’s chin (and then you get into women costuming themselves as men more often…apparently Madonna would do that from time to time to hide from paparazzi, and I’d bet she was not alone).
Laugh out loud on this; “…I’d bet [Madonna] was not alone.”
Impossible to not smile after looking at that photo. Brilliant!