By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Readers, welcome back from Thanksgiving, and I hope your holiday — assuming you had one — was excellent!
Politics
2020
“Trump Counties Give Economy Strongest Marks” [Wall Street Journal]. Based on… .
“Bernie makes moves pointing to 2020 run” [Politico]. “Recognizing the senator’s post-campaign national platform and 99 percent name ID across the country — and aware that his status as a potential 2020 front-runner draws further eyeballs — his team has stopped sticking to just a few pet issues. Now it tries to inject him into as many productive national conversations as possible, sometimes with the support of his wife’s new Sanders Institute think tank.” LIke #MedicareForAll is a “pet issue.” Dear Lord. And watch that word “conversation.”
UPDATE “Bernie Sanders will Face Donald Trump in 2020 Election, Democrats Say” [Newsweek]. “Advisers to the Vermont senator also have indicated that he’s eyeing the top job. When one of Sanders’ associates was asked if his team was thinking about another run, the associate simply said, ‘Yes, is the answer.'” “But hes not a Democrat!” Yes, and your point? “Other Democratic contenders for 2020 include former Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Sherrod Brown and former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. But overall it’s a weak field, said political strategist Phil Singer, who served as press secretary on Clinton’s 2008 presidential run. ‘You have a bunch of Celine Dions but there’s no Beatles,’ he said.” Why oh why do any reporters still have Clintonites in their Rolodexes?
2018
“Voting at black colleges has tumbled. Can Dems fix the apathy in time for 2018?” [McClatchy]. “Voter turnout among the estimated 300,000 students at HBCUs fell nearly 11 percent from 2012 to 2016…. If historic trends hold, Democrats could see black voter turnout drop 30 percent in 2018, resulting in 5.2 million fewer African American voters, according to a report by the non-partisan Voter Participation Center and Democratic pollster Celinda Lake.” I remember Lake’s work against single payer; Maine had to force her to put single payer in as one of her options on a health care poll. So I’d speculate that whatever else this poll is about, it’s also about getting some consultants funding, including Lake.
UPDATE “The 3 Types of Districts that Could Give Democrats the House” [The Crosstab]. Interesting, I suppose. Do we have any statisticians in the commentariat today?
2017
“PRESENTING THE OFFICIAL STORE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY” [Democrats.org (J-LS)]. I don’t see any Clinton bobblehead dolls, so there’s that. But am I the only one who sees this merch as rather uninspiring?
2016 Post Mortem
UPDATE “Africans are being sold at Libyan slave markets. Thanks, Hillary Clinton.” [Glenn Reynolds, USA Today]. “Libya, before Clinton got involved, was comparatively stable and no strategic threat to the United States or its allies. Now it’s a shambles, with people literally being sold in slave markets.” Ugh, I’m agreeing with Instapundit. It’s been a strange year.
New Cold War
“Special counsel Robert Mueller stands on reputation that belies a record including fumbles” [Los Angeles Times]. Reasonably balanced, but with some odd omissions, including Mueller’s sleazy record of entrapment.
Realignment and Legitimacy
UPDATE “Sarah Smith Responds to Washington State Democrats’ Silence on VAN Access” [Progressive Army]. The party says you can’t get access to VAN “endorsements from 51% of the Legislative Districts and the approval of the State Party Chair.” But they’re not willing to produce the bylaws that say that.
UPDATE “Patti Solis Doyle: Drop the partisan nonsense on harassment” [CNN]. Given Solis Doyle is from HillaryLand, this is quite remarkable:
Of course, putting away my partisan hat means I have to acknowledge my own decisions over the years. I worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 and 1996 campaigns and in the Clinton White House. Like every Clinton White House staffer I know, I’m proud of my service and President Clinton’s record. Like every Clinton White House staffer I know, I never took the allegations against him lightly. But that doesn’t mean I took them seriously enough.
I lumped Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky in with partisan attacks about Whitewater and crazy Vince Foster murder plots. I saw Clinton as “the Comeback Kid” and our White House as a continuation of the famous “war room” that elected him. When it’s all “us” vs. “them” polarization, you lose perspective.
Each of us who defended President Clinton by dismissing his accusers needs to reckon with it.
I’m not sure what there is to do about Bill Clinton now.
Urge him gently under the bus? You know, like those sexist Bernie Bros?
UPDATE “The Red-State Revolt Spreads to Oklahoma” [The Atlantic]. “But the overriding factor [in recent Democrat successes] is likely a budget crisis [due to Republican tax cut nostrums] that has starved funding for Oklahoma’s schools, resulting in a teacher shortage and prompting more than one-quarter of the state’s districts to hold classes only four days a week. “The people are just not happy,” former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, a Republican, told me in a phone interview. “Government appears dysfunctional, and government officials appear unwilling to solve the problems of the state and the nation. And there will be hell to pay.” The political backlash in Oklahoma has parallels to the recent reckoning in Kansas, its neighbor to the north and another Republican-led state where deep tax cuts led to significant, ongoing budget shortfalls.”
Stats Watch
New Home Sales, October 2017: “New home sales are suddenly on fire and far surpassing the highest estimate for a second month in row” [Econoday]. “The Northeast is the standout sales region for the second month.” This is nuts. Who the heck buys a house in the Northeast in the winter?! And but: “A better than expected, but somewhat peculiar details, and note the approximate average over the last 4 months. And maybe some tax related buying?” [Mosler Economics]. This is the peculiar detail Mosler noticed: “More than two-thirds of the new homes sold last month were either under construction or yet to be started.” And: “This month the backward revisions were mixed, but the rolling averages significantly improved. Because of weather and other factors, the rolling averages are the way to view this series – and the rolling averages are about average for the levels seen since the beginning of 2016” [Econintersect].
Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey, November 2017: “The pace of Dallas factory growth, as in most other regions this month, eased back in November” [Econoday]. “Indications from the regional reports have been at or near record highs all year as have signs of strains in these reports including elevated employment readings and lengthening delivery times. Actual factory data out of Washington are only now beginning to show the acceleration first signaled by the various diffusion reports.” And: “This survey remains well into positive territory with new orders declining and unfilled orders improving” [Econintersect].
State Coincident Index (last week): “Nice bounce up to 42. Note the prior, similar bounces” [Mosler Economics]. And not that I believe charts, but this is a nasty one:
Retail: “Black Friday – the world’s gluttonous orgy of excess” [Asian Correspondent]. If I shopped, and if I shopped on Black Friday, I would adopt a simple two-step strategy: 1. Purchase the loss-leader; 2. Leave.
Retail: “Amazon Merchants Continue to Find Ways to Cheat” [Bloomberg]. “Manipulation of reviews has been increasing the past several months and Amazon doesn’t appear to be fixing the problem, said Chris McCabe, a former employee who now runs a consulting business to help Amazon merchants. The gamesmanship on the site is so bad he has created new teams to help merchants fight review manipulation, he said.” This is very bad. I would urge that Amazon is, in fact, an enormous content company, and that the quality of its comments should form a large part of its valuation. And as we all know, moderation is hard…
Retail: “Why Amazon Won’t Save Your Struggling Town” [The American Conservative]. “Ultimately, true economic development cannot be bought. As Judith Schwartz explained in Pacific Standard, studies have found that when businesses are brought in with incentives, 90 percent of corporate spending still happens out of state. This attenuates local economic development by reducing the opportunity for the people supposedly benefitting from development to learn the skills of running the larger enterprise. In some cases, companies have received tens of millions in tax abatements or subsidies without providing anything more than a few part-time retail jobs.”
Shipping: “Despite all the evidence of feverish activity, ThyssenKrupp’s shipbuilding division is in a mess. Sources at the company told Handelsblatt that the division suffered an operational loss in the financial year 2016-2017, and that the dire situation is unlikely to change going forward. As a result, company sources told Handelsblatt that division chief financial officer Evelyn Müller will depart the firm by the end of the year” [Handelsblatt]. “If every dry dock in Kiel is occupied with a ship or sub under construction, how could the company be losing money? Because of technical and planning bottlenecks and delays, almost every ship is finished well behind schedule. The company actually loses money every time the Dom Perignon bottle smashes on a hull at launch. “No submarine is delivered on time,” said one source at the company.”
The Bezzle: “Uber customers torn between scandals and service” [AP]. And the hidden subsidies, did they but know it.
The Bezzle: “Your Future Commute Could Be by Taxi Drone” [Bloomberg]. Oh, please. Just stop.
The Bezzle: “How many must be killed in the Internet of Deadly Things train wrecks?’ [ZD Net]. “History tells us that technology doesn’t get regulated properly until people start to die. Why will IoT be any different?”
The Bezzle: “Sorry, Jeff Bezos. Amazon Key won’t get online retailers through the front door” [Recode]. “Although it’s hard to remember now, there was a time when the Amazon smile, the iconic Apple and Google’s quartet of primary colors inspired loyalty and engendered a sense of trust. As we happily traded away the hours in the day for more screen time and personal data for more convenience, we welcomed tech companies to claim more and more surface area in our lives. But it becomes clearer every day that these companies’ sense of stewardship and accountability did not scale up with their market caps.”
Tech: “How tech giants are ruled by control freaks” [Economist], “[Let’s consider] today’s prominent tycoons, who often hail from technology, e-commerce and media. At the moment they seem omnipotent. But many founders are gradually cashing in shares in their companies. A flurry of selling activity has been in evidence of late. On September 13th Jack Ma and Joe Tsai, co-founders of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce behemoth, said they planned to sell up to $4bn of stock by the end of 2018. Nine days later Mark Zuckerberg said he would dispose of Facebook shares worth up to $13bn by early 2019. Jeff Bezos has cashed in $2bn of Amazon stock this year. Pony Ma, the boss of Tencent, a Chinese digital giant—and no relation to Jack—intends to sell $5bn of its stock (although the timetable is unknown). The transactions add up to a tenth of the total value of these founders’ holdings in their companies. More sales can be expected.” Hmm?
Tech: “Which tech companies beat Facebook, Amazon and Netflix on the markets this year?” [Barry Ritholtz (Re Silc)]. Chart. Jack’s other company is doing rather well.
Five Horsemen: “On rumors of strong Cyber Monday sales, Amazon busts the top off our chart for the second day in a row” [Hat tip, Jim Haygood].
Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 53 Neutral (previous close: 58, Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 50 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed. Last updated Nov 27 at 1:00pm.
Our Famously Free Press
“Peter Thiel May Be Looking To Buy Gawker.com” [Buzzfeed]. Swell. Squillionaire reaches into deep pockets to fund the destruction of a news organization, then buys up the remnants and destroys the archives.
“Anatomy of a fake news scandal” [Reveal News]. Pizzagate.
New York Times History Lesson (1):
In honor of Thomas Friedman’s latest love letter to Saudi here is 70 years of the NY Times describing #Saudi royals in the language of #reform.
— Abdullah Al-Arian (@anhistorian) November 24, 2017
New York Times History Lesson (2):
a thread on actual Hitler puff pieces https://t.co/xYRl797Cnh
— Mark (@haircut_hippie) November 26, 2017
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
“Bayard Rustin was being investigated by the FBI while, unbeknownst to the Bureau, he was working for the CIA” [Muckrock].
Black Injustice Tipping Point
“Philly social worker: What court supervision is like for people who aren’t Meek Mill” [Philadelphia Inquirer].
“How slave labor built and financed major U.S. cities” [Salon].
Health Care
“How to Make a Fortune on Obamacare” [Bloomberg]. Narrow networks.
“Time is running out to lock in your Medicare coverage” [CNBC]. Neoliberal crapification. Why does “coverage” need to be “locked in,” anyhow?
“A Patient’s Journey: What Is ‘Just Right’?” [MedPage]. Interesting interactions with that quaint relic, “my primary care physician.”
Class Warfare
“Timed toilet breaks, impossible targets and workers falling asleep on feet: Brutal life working in Amazon warehouse” [The Mirror]. “There were complaints of filthy toilets and breaks still too short. One asked: ‘Why are we not allowed to sit when it is quiet and not busy? We are human beings, not slaves and animals.’ I was told by one worker: ‘I expected it to be all modern and powered by robots in here, but my eyes are wide open now.'”
“If only slavery really had been abolished” [Guardian].
“Seattle, capital of the hipster boom” [Le Monde Diplomatique].
“Facebook Founder’s Favor Comes With Complications” [New York Times].
“Why a Toronto single mom felt ‘terrified’ after receiving a long-awaited Phoenix payroll deposit” [CBC]. Because an IT constractor screwed up the payroll system for the entire government. More neoliberal crapification.
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This is how it is done:
Bernie Sanders Transforms Trump Supporters Into Liberals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvNkdakBexU&t=13s
Classic Bernie….his more recent clip where he talks to the Danish guy from the Peterson Institute about healthcare during the debate with Graham-Cassidy was possibly even better.
I think the one I’m referencing was better because it looked like Bernie was being set up and he completely turned the tables.
There is no other way to go. If they cram Harris, Booker, Biden, or Patrick (or some other GOP-wolf-in-identity-politics-virtue-signalling-but-won’t-actually-improve-anything posing as a democrat) down our throats a la the empress in ’16, the response will not be like it was last year.
People are angry. People under 30 are REALLY angry.
Democrats.com: Exit through the gift shop.
I don’t find a Kali / Wasserman-Schultz / Goddess of Destruction yoga mat. Nor, and curiously, do I find the Hillaryogasutra of the 30,000 Missing Asana E-Mail Messages.
But there are a whole lotta t-shirts now that people can no longer afford a shirt with sleeves and buttons.
I wouldn’t use or wear that stuff if it was given to me.
While I do admire your principled stance, could you really resist a Hillary’s Household Helpers [TM] cleaning range “Like, with a cloth?” special microfibre duster?
Heck, I’d even do the infomercials for that one. Just so long as they got Denise Repko to cohost.
Arizona Slim: Not only has Clive hit on the wonder cleaner, but you’re saying that you’d resist a complete set of the illustrated books, “Where’s Torturememo?”
Maybe the full U.S. Senate Torture Report is in the storage room.
#resist…
shop rags, perhaps?
cloth diapers?
…
On Bernie’s appeal to the Teabillies: yes. If one avoids the Terrorwords(anything containing “social-” or “collective-“, and quite a few more.)
I conduct regular, if somewhat random, impromptu symposia in the feed store, the beer store, and even the post office.
Just about everyone around here is either republican or apolitical.
Support is high for minwage, for instance, if it’s posited as “folks who work all the time shouldn’t be hungry, etc”
Support is surprisingly high for some kind of rational healthcare…even had a guy with a civil war era dragoon pistol on his hip(!? it’s Texas) tell me that ‘”they” need to get us all some decent healthcare around here’…after I told him that i’ve been in an ER in Canada, and we’re doing it wrong.
There is universal hatred of giant supranational corporate entities.
all of these folks are potential voters…the homophobia and racist dogwhistling doesn’t really have the effect it used to, according to my field observations.
If there were some large organised group…like, say, a Party…that really wanted to win elections and help the People, they are right here.
waiting.
re: Teabilly Trigger Terms
Teabillies might not like to know that money is a social construct. The US being armed*, I would advise against risk involved in challenging anyone’s irrational beliefs, so keep it to yourself if you dwell there.
To my mind money is socialism par excellence as the take-up is almost universal and the alternatives are very inconvenient (to say the least). All the more reason to have bankers and other keepers-of-account who are stern and solid; more Sam Eagle and less the Gonzo of late.
Pip Pip!
* Are there any legal mechanisms in the law books for the call-up (or is it call-out) of the well-armed militia? This Brit would really like to know.
That’s “well-regulated.” I think we’re looking at spontaneous self-organization, here. Worked with fugitive slaves!
Regarding:”spontaneous… militia”
Your use of the word “spontaneous” reminds me that I recently listened to a “Point Of View” podcast from the BBC: “The Triumph Of Tribalism” in which the prospect of civil war in the U.S. is speculated upon. Unfortunately this concurs with my own prior views, and I scour the news websites to see if I can identify the first shots. Maybe you could start a “First Shots?” subsection to help me out.
> the homophobia and racist dogwhistling doesn’t really have the effect it used to, according to my field observations
Can you expand on that? What observations? Thank you!
More level playing field [same pit] and out of state imports.
The donkey show can’t spend all of their energy playing pin the tale on the Russians, I guess.
The stuff in that merch shop tries hard to be edgy yet ends up anodyne and nauseating. Kind of like a distillation of NPR into fabric.
This is hilarious.
Any Hillary ’08 Dem primary buttons with confederate stars n’ bars on ’em left?
Is the Democrat Store an example of their efforts to rebrand?
Democrats give a sh*t ???
Puro Democrata ?? hmmm https://twitter.com/puro_democrata
no one is in charge here, plainly. lol
I like the Thanks Obama coffee cup but they left off the fun stuff like
Thanks for obomber death health care.
Thanks for bailing out wall street and throwing Main Street under the Bus
Thanks for the never ending wars enriching the merchants of death.
Thanks for electing the trumpster.
I’m sure there’s more but we don’t want to make it to busy looking.
Obama! The Underemployment President! The Gig Economy President!
Obama: Worst cyberwarrior in history by a spectacular margin. When he said “the most transparent administration ever” we didn’t know he meant transparent to hackers working for our adversaries.
The Key to Obama is understandning that Obama has this rare gift of providing a blank canvas inside the minds of people. On that canvas people themselves are projecting their own interpretation of what is being said. Obama just creates the scene, the minds of his victims / marks runs the entire theatre performance without realising this.
Everyone simple believes Obamas words meant exactly whatever it is that they want/need them to mean at this moment – so, seeing only “themselves” projected via Obama’s craft as it were, everyone of course agrees with Obama and does not know what he actually said.
The logical counter-reaction is that blatant bull-shitter who just says whatever his situation requires to be said to benefit him at that instance, totally transparent too.
In a way, Donald Trump is the Obama Detox.
This is what happens when so much of the talent has left your party to become Independent.
Even if the talented types were there, catchy political language can’t be done without a “rage against the machine” or “change the world” mentality.
“The future is female” is actually decent but loses meaning when it was linked to a decades old DLC style philosophy. “She persisted” was good until it was adopted by the #resistance who have to explain that they are the resistance which I still assume they lifted from JJ Abrams Star Wars.
A couple of entries from “The Great Depression-A Diary” by Benjamin Roth…
November 18, 1931
Everything is still @ a standstill. The banks remain closed and business is worse if anything. We bought apples Sunday for 30 cents a bushel.
February 25, 1933
The purchase and sale of pass books on restricted withdrawal banks has become a regular business in Youngstown. By state order it can be handled only by regular brokerage houses. The daily newspapers list quotations the same as stocks and bonds. The following was taken from last night’s Vindicator:
Pass book prices on the dollar, Last sales
Central Savings & Loan ……………..25
City Trust & Savings Bank…………..52
Mutual Holding…………………………36
Dollar Savings & Trust Co……………70
Federal Savings & Loan………………63
Home Savings & Loan…………………50
Metropolitan Savings………………….45
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is just a taste of the action, you’ll learn more about goings on during the Great Depression than anything you’d read in a history book about the subject matter. Highly Recommended!
Yes. I got the feeling I was experiencing the Great Depression firsthand.
January 12, 1933
The use of scrip or “white rabbit” money is increasing in many cities.
Real money continues to be almost non-existent.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
He is referring to what is now called ‘depression scrip’ and thousands of cities across the land issued them. It’s hard to discern what he means by “white rabbit” but i’d imagine it means people would literally pull them out of their hats perhaps?
A few examples from Ohio:
http://media.liveauctiongroup.net/i/12805/12937160_2.jpg?v=8CF0BFEE789DD60
https://www.numisbids.com/sales/hosted/archives/027/thumb01187.jpg
Thanks! Put this on my book list. My mother had many tales of the Depression and kept expecting a second one.
> The purchase and sale of pass books on restricted withdrawal banks
I don’t understand this
You couldn’t withdraw money from banks, but you could use somebody else’s money in their passbook to purchase foreclosed upon real estate that the same bank was holding and only too eager to get rid of, so in essence it was around a 50% off deal, for savvy arbitragers.
Such a bold water cooler today….
Close that strong tag, Lambert!
“If you open it, close it.” Just like my mother said!
“You emboldened me, and now you’re going to have to live with the consequences, mister.” My mother never said that. Sounds more like Susan Hayward. And, curiously, Susan Hayward was not my mother.
Susan Hayward was truly awesome as Helen in The Snows of Kilomanjaro.
Another Darryl F. Zanuck film that is somewhat similar to The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) is The Razor’s Edge (1946). However, I prefer it over Kilimanjaro for various reasons. Its storyline is more layered and convoluted. It also stars Gene Tierney, who is perhaps my most favorite actress of all-time. She could exude emotions that were both subtle and gripping like no other actress, past or present.
Comcast hints at plan for paid fast lanes after net neutrality repeal [Ars technica]
As they say in Hollywood, that was then and this is now. Or, as they say in Hollywood for ugly people,
Honesty is for fools like us nobodies I guess. I would think that they would wait until after the vote to end the maskirovka but I also guess that they think it’s a done deal, so why bother.
Can anyone tell me why these incompetent greedy heads are in charge?
Re: Tech… But many founders are gradually cashing in shares in their companies.
I can only hope they are cashing out so they can buy more bitcoins…
The curmudgeonly James Howard Kunstler observes the mighty cryptocurrency bubble:
All correct. But Bubble III doesn’t end until the last bear capitulates, and the good Dr Hussman preaches the merits of buying Netflix and Tencent on margin to make an easy ten percent per month.
One of my Faceborg friends is exhorting people to buy Bitcoins. Not that I’ve lifted a finger to do so, but there it is. A Faceborg exhortation.
Bitcoin & the other cybercurrencies seems a little similar to the depression scrip in the thread above. Money issued in limited amounts backed by bupkis, the difference being that you hoped somebody accepted your dollar from the City of Cleveland @ face value, not like you were going to get $400 in goods in exchange for it.
“Everyone can create money; the problem is to get it accepted.” —Hyman Minsky
Perhaps both the issuers and users of limited amounts of those various local depression scrips both shared the mutual understanding that the scrips weren’t backed by anything and weren’t meant or expected to be backed by anything. Perhaps everyone involved understood the value of these scrips to reside strictly in their ability to mediate local economic exchanges if local economic-activity exchangers all agreed to exchange goods for scrip for services for scrip for goods for scrip and round and round.
If the local scrips and the local scrip users kept themselves and eachother better fed, supplied, serviced, etc. with the scrips than they would have if they had relied strictly on paralyzed and immobilized American bills, notes and coins; then the scrips permitted people to do what the scrip users expected the scrips to permit them to do.
Sorry I’m late to the party but this is an excellent history of Tax Script in the USA
https://ijccr.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/ijccr-2012-gatch.pdf
Groovy link, I knew all about them from a seeing them standpoint, but wasn’t sure about the mechanism of making them money.
“Digital tulip bulbs.”
Somebody finally said it.
Farfetched financial foibles like this are 01010101derful to watch from afar up close.
RE: “How to Make a Fortune on Obamacare” [Bloomberg]. Narrow networks
Charlottesville can’t win: http://www.c-ville.com/sticker-shock-charlottesville-health-insurance-premiums-spike-highest-nation/
A combination of a contractor and a constrictor — a beast that chokes its prey to make it disgorge everything to ensure its sustenance.
Ha. I think I’ll leave it just that way.
Kernick is exactly right:
I’m sure whoever wades through the various legislation and regulation in the U. S. that’s coming in the self-driven area, you’ll find all kinds of juicy limitations on liability and responsibility-shifting.
What was it that Brunner said? “Capitalism is irresponsiblity organized into a system.”
And whatever holes are left by their government “employees” will be filled by well-planned off-loading of liability to subsidiaries like Waymo that have been given enough time and lawyer power to create a nice, dense corporate veil that would be very tough to pierce.
What’s up with that name, anyway? Waymo is better than Wayless in some contexts, but do we really need Waymo cars, especially self-driven ones?
That’s the thing. Who wants this technology?
Both of which are unique. That appears a moderately stupid remark.
There’s no Churchll’s either. It is questionable if there could be any “greats” in politics today, as they all appear to have to sell their souls to the money, to succeed in today’s US costly elections.
The Beatles production is only rivaled by Mozart. And the production was a consequence of the dynamics between Lennon & McCartney, reflected off the group as a whole.
None of them did much after the Beatles broke up. McCartney tried, but it was not the same spark.
John Lennon’s solo career was going in a very interesting direction. Had he lived, I think he would have produced some great music.
As for the rest of them? IMHO, their solo stuff is a skip.
I’ve been listening to the Beatles channel on XM way too much, and they play a lot of the solo stuff, much of which i’ve never heard, and it generally leaves a lot to be desired, as in not good.
When I was a kid, the hope was that they’d get back together eventually-but it wasn’t meant to be, and for that i’m grateful, as they will always be stuck in the 60’s, where they belong.
If Yoko Ono broke up The Beatles, then she did them a favor.
In 1970, they were well along in the process of jumping the shark.
Indeed.
But the Rolling Stones are still going strong. Even after all these years.
Go figure. I thought that the Stones would have OD-ed sometime during the 1970s.
After the apocalypse the earth will be inhabited by giant mutant cockroaches and Keith Richards as they seem to be invulnerable.
But of course! That’s our origin story: Venus on the Half-Shell.
And Keef will be riffing Start Me Up…
A couple of summers ago I put together for friends a “double album” of the former Beatles’ solo work from the early 70s. Try it sometime. FYI, there’s no one solution – the potential combos of solo work into a single album are amazing.
After the breakup, all the Beatles hit top speed as soloists as never before, especially George and Ringo.
But the dynamism of the collective sound was lost except perhaps in certain solo tracks that featured several original members.
There are at least two more “lost” Beatles albums out there from the early 1970s, but you have to put them together yourself.
We popped into a McDonalds, and they have something called UberEats, so an underpaid ad hoc taxi driver can now double as a delivery boy too!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
An increasing number of McDonald’s customers don’t just want a cheap burger and fries — they want that meal deal delivered to their door. Thanks to a partnership with UberEats, the chain is pushing further into the burgeoning delivery sphere. “It’s profitable… and right now we’re looking to expand where UberEats has expanded around the world,” CEO Steve Easterbrook said on an earnings call with investors today.
https://www.eater.com/2017/10/24/16453444/mcdonalds-doubles-down-on-food-delivery-with-ubereats
Just another example of what I call the “shut in economy.” More and more people are developing anti-social behaviors like never stepping foot outside of their homes unless they have to. I suspect that this is helping to drive the delivery boom. I am not just talking about elderly people here but also a lot of young people who exhibit signs of anti-social behavior like rarely leaving their rooms because they are addicted to screen-based entertainment. I suspect that in the future people will be so addicted to screen-based entertainment that they will just have all of their groceries delivered while they are hooked up Matrix-style to virtual reality machines or whatnot.
Yes! And unfortunately, some people just aren’t wired to be in the highly urbanized areas that our current mode of capitalism encourages. I know I’m not. Anxiety would hit me going out my front door in a crowded neighborhood I once lived in. I moved to fix that, but not everyone is privileged/lucky enough to live where I am.
The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.
You describe the Hikikomori in Japan, now.
In their rooms with screen-based entertainment???
Would they be interested in joining something like the Civilian Conservation Corps, there is one like that and they need work? I wonder, it’s not hi-tech, working with stuff like people used to thousand of years ago.
> More and more people are developing anti-social behaviors like never stepping foot outside of their homes
It would be interesting to see if there’s a correlation between “open carry” and Ubereats (and the like).
My Millennial friends do this a lot and actually one of them sent me a Whatsapp with a photo of McDonald’s food delivered by UberEat like it was a cool idea that I’d like?
They do get out though and seem relatively well adjusted. But way too into Disney for twenty something adults.
My advice to today’s parents is to ban Disney and fast food. And social media of course.
>But way too into Disney for twenty something adults.
Yeah…as a Millennial myself there does seem to be this odd tendency that I never understood or shared among my generation to embrace entertainment that is obviously geared at children. This manifests at the extreme end with the “bronies” (emotionally maladjusted adult men who enjoy My Little Pony) but among the more normal members of my generation it usually just means they enjoy Disney and cartoon TV shows a bit too much.
I remember a friend of mine highly recommending a TV show to me called “Avatar, the last Airbender”. When I found out it was a Nickelodeon cartoon I was hesitant to bother, but she insisted it was a really great show. So I watched it and well, I thought it was puerile and silly, …like a children’s cartoon. And not even a particularly well animated one (looked like a cheap knock off of anime). It was replete with childish humor and life lessons amounting to “Sharing is caring”, things obviously geared towards pre teens. It seemed like something I might enjoy if I were 11. The only problem is I was 24 at the time. She seemed dumbfounded I didn’t come out a fan of the show. Apparently though it was a highly successful cartoon, and had a devoted following of 20 something millennials. So did it’s sequel series, which was prematurely cancelled and the blowback from what I gather was entirely angry adult fans of the series.
It’s something I never understood.
my primary care physician made me laugh in a this-is-not-funny-but-rings-bells kinda way
Re Amazon–I’ve been reading Nomadland about the mostly retirement age people who travel the country by RV working seasonal jobs as campground hosts or in Amazon warehouses. When it comes to Amazon you get the strong impression that Bezos is running a crackpot version of Taylor-ism where employees are slave driven to make up for bad workflow design. For example when items arrive at the warehouse some employees are tasked with randomly placing them in bins–later to be found by pickers with computer scan guns–rather than in any set order. When things are busy they wander around trying to find an empty bin for the products even as electronic minders are telling them to hurry up.
Clearly it’s a system that could only exist in a high unemployment environment as otherwise why would anybody work there? Plus the whole concept of home delivering goods as cheaply as they could be bought in a store surely lacks sustainability and is kept afloat by Wall St mad money. One suspects that when the techpocalypse finally occurs it won’t be pretty. Perhaps Bezos can get a job in one of his warehouses.
Don’t worry about Bezos. I’m sure the government will figure out some reason Amazon’s too big to fail. Perhaps something to do with CIA cloud computing.
I would never worry about Bezos. However he does seem to exemplify many of our “think outside the box” techie elite. Sometimes when you set out to reinvent the wheel you get a square wheel.
Unlike most tech elites (Musk, for one), I don’t think Bezos drinks his own Kool-Aid. He knows his company is a long con.
The US & the SU were always diametrically opposed, so why should we be surprised we’ll end up with Amazon as an Bizarro World version of G.U.M.?
I’m kind of astonished that the Pentagon leak from Amazon cloud servers hasn’t been getting any media attention.
You’d think it would be headline news at the Washington Post . . . Owned by Jeff Bezos . . . Who has a $600 million CIA contract for cloud services. . . Whoops! Hush that up!
Crapification of Medicare is totally on point! I had three Part D plans to choose from that carry my two generic prescriptions: Aetna, but only if I want my co-pay at Walgreens to be horrendous or a tiny co-pay if they can force me to switch to CVS; Blue Cross at over-inflated premiums and co-pays; and Cigna, which has a 2-star rating, an inflated premium if I can’t afford the deductible price of $405 and higher co-pays than generic meds deserve. And no Part D plans cover the extended version of one med, thus forcing me to wake up twice a night to take a pill!
For my dad, who got signed up for a Medicare Advantage plan a couple of years ago by his thieving caregiver, even tho the VA provides whatever healthcare he needs, the good folks at Medicare referred me to that provider to get him dis-enrolled, even tho their website says that can be accomplished during open enrollment!
Honestly don’t understand why this is so confusing and hard to accomplish. As I’ve always said, insurance is nothing but a scam – like paying protection money to the mob and getting whacked anyway.
It is my belief that most Medicare Part D participants get screwed over unless they have a diligent relative or a PCP who actually fights for the patient. Luckily for my late Mother, she had both. I know enough about the program to be dangerous for the vendors and her PCP actually cared enough to fight back as well.
So the rush window is only for whipping the Advantage (sic) customers to the private insurers as A and B get crapified by their deductibles and co-pays. And for dental and vision coverage, which the original A and B failed to include.
And the Peterson crowd still wants to kill A and B.
One of the problems I have with statistics, and with relying on numbers to support theories, is that most of the people producing or analyzing those numbers don’t understand the human aspects that motivate the results being analyzed. With regard to the Crosstab article, I know IL-06 very well. It is one of the wealthiest districts in Illinois, pure Libertarian Republicans, and probably one of the few districts in blue Illinois that Bernie Sanders would lose were he the presidential candidate. That these people would vote for Repub. Pete Roskam and Hillary is no surprise. They don’t want their gravy train upset, and, let’s be honest, in the last election, the major parties provided us with two Republican candidates–Trump and Hillary. To the voters of IL-06, Hillary was the candidate most likely to continue wealth maintenance for these voters and not upset the apple cart. The idea that IL-06 would vote for a Democrat–even a Blue Dog–strikes me as unlikely in the extreme. After all, you can paste any label you want on candidates these days, but, if you look at what the Dems stand for anymore, it pretty much comes down to identity politics as a means to maintain the cushy lifestyle of those elected to D.C.
http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/361602-congress-returns-to-nightmare-december
The debt ceiling is coming up. Funny how it is never talked about when repubs are in power…..
Will this time be different….
That the Dems (claim they) will go to the mat on the debt ceiling over the Dreamers,
rather than over the $1.5 trillion
tax cutrobbery currently being proposed,tells you all you need to know about Team Donkey’s political incompetence and/or duplicity.
That’s how the democrats work. They plan to spend the next decades proposing “tax reforms” that get people back to where they already were and preach about the value of “incremental change.”
The duopoly trap.
“The people are just not happy,” former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating, a Republican, told me in a phone interview. “Government appears dysfunctional, and government officials appear unwilling to solve the problems of the state and the nation. And there will be hell to pay.”
Duh.
RE: “Anatomy of a fake news scandal”
The writing Pizzagate is actually interesting. The unsupported assumption that it was a creation of the Russian government is bad journalism.
It’s not impossible that Russia had a hand in this election; but there is no hard evidence that that is the case (and there probably never will be when you consider the nebulous nature of proving culpability of a hack). The fact that this story breaks down the Pizzagate story so thoroughly while using it as a backboard to peddle more anti-Russian narrative is just another case of “missing the irony”. Not everyone in the US is as gullible or internet-consumed as these anti-Russia boosters would have you believe.
I’m not at all convinced pizza gate is “fake”. Have any of you seen Podestas art?! Good god
Agreed. Check out the flight manifests of convicted pedophile Jeffery Epstein’s “Lolita Express” to his “Pedo Island.” Don’t take my word for it, do your own due diligence. Also, as “Indrid” said, check out the Pedestal art collection. Pizzagate is not Naked Capitalism’s beat – I suspect they are creating some mischief by elevating the discussion, and good for them. If an iota is true, hang onto your hats!
Making no judgement re: validity of story. But this is terrible journalism:
“Long before October 28th, 2016, when Comey wrote to Congress that the FBI would be reexamining Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server, her campaign knew they had a huge e-mail problem. In focus groups, voters conflated the case with the e-mails Russian operatives had hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Podesta, her campaign manager.”
Italics mine.
Russian hysteria presented as universally accepted fact.
“It is known, Khaleesi…”
Also, “There was just more voyeuristic interest in the content of the e-mails than in how they were obtained.”
YA THINK?
The reader imagines the author taking a moment to fan herself at the audacity of the plebs.
Re: “The Red State Revolt Spreads to Oklahoma” – I began reading the piece and my spirits rose, but by its end they’d fall again.
OK is okay for husband and me. We’re retired, own a decent house here, and have no major money worries – yet. For others the state must seem like a hellhole. There’s stark contrast in our medium-small town in the south of the state. A millionaire’s row area, with McMansions (probably mainly owned by oil people – Halliburton used to be based here), contrasts sharply with many slum-like, painfully poor areas.
There’d be no hope in Hell of changing the McMansion crowd’s politics, but the poor inhabitants ought to be clamouring, begging for the policies of Bernie Sanders. Bernie did beat Clinton in our primary, for what that’s worth. They’re not though, and it’s thought to be due to a diet of Fox News, right-wing radio, and – I suspect – too much church-socialising and related chit-chat, likely coloured by the personal politics of the many church ministers. There are as many (non-tax-paying) small churches here as there were small pubs in the town in England where I grew up – on every street corner, more or less!
Things in OK have gone downhill since Mary Fallin took over as Governor. Women are thought to be compassionate. I used to consider Maggie Thatcher the exception which proved the rule, I was wrong!
My impression of Oklahoma from “just passing through” on cross country treks: sales taxes are high while public amenities are rather run down. Seems like it might not be very friendly to the precariat. Last time I was there even the freeway rest areas had been closed down except for the Welcome Centers.
Other takeaway–it’s really windy there!
We tend to stay away from freeways and use quieter roads on our travels – but I’m not surprised at your findings. I haven’t noticed more wind here than anywhere else – except in tornado season!
Does your unbeloved governor have a nickname that matches her, such as:
The Fallin Woman?
In our house it’s more like “that f(amily blog)in’ woman!”
It’s hard for me to believe the housing stats. Because housing is now beginning to level out in the Northwest. I have heard other areas are not doing well. So, it makes me think these numbers are being doctored.
The fake news/pizzagate stuff is surely scary, and easy to fall for speaking from experience, but there’s a lot of people getting shot every single day in America because of gang-related violence. Nobody wrings hands over people killing each other about a stolen pair of sneakers or whatever other nonsense you hear about on the 11pm news.
Re “Culture Wars”. IMO, what is being taught to our children in the schools and Universities has far more import on our future lives than the day to day “news” from the MSM.
A brave teaching assistant gets humiliated and we all grow a little more leery of speaking too freely
“The use of anonymity — in other words, cowardice — was one of the worst aspects of Wilfrid Laurier University’s ritual humiliation of a bright and thoughtful teaching assistant for the crime of WrongTeach.”
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2017/11/24/a-brave-teaching-assistant-gets-humiliated-and-we-all-grow-a-little-more-leery-of-speaking-too-freely.html
FULL RECORDING – Lindsay Shepherd Interrogated by Wilfrid Laurier University’s Gender Police
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=9YdFlKaJv4g
The recording is 43 minutes long, and chilling.
Millions of people have ended up dead, in pits, because of some inadvertent mis-step, mis-spoke, mis-dress, mis-appearence….
They went to their deaths in the Gulags, Killing Fields or Concentration Camps, having absolutely no idea of what they had done wrong?
“Hitler Reacts to Grad Student Thought Crimes”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93Qs2oiTx2Y&feature=youtu.be
Godwin’s Law in action
Yeah, whatever happened to the right to confront one’s accuser? I guess we can just disregard that since everybody knows that anonymous accusers never lie, are never malevolent, and are never psychotic, right? But I’m sure that the political commissars on campus are vigilant against just such dangers, no?
It’d be nice if this young woman had legal recourse, and the means to sue the pants off of everyone involved in this debacle. And that in the course of legal discovery, that the anonymity of her accuser were to be stripped upon penalty of contempt of court for refusal to comply with discovery by these Toronto Torquemadas. Maybe that person’s life needs to be rendered a bloody shambles, too. This seems only just.
“Toronto Torquemadas”
That’s a keeper.
‘You have a bunch of Celine Dions but there’s no Beatles,’ said the press secretary for The Monkees.
The Monkees would have been a whole lot more interesting had Charlie Manson passed that audition
re Amazon reviews: before I take the positive reviews for an Amazon product seriously I run the set through fakespot: https://www.fakespot.com. It checks all the reviews for a product for certain patterns, to see if they are real reviews. It seems to be a legit way of checking, but if course I can’t know for sure. I have definitely put in reviews for a product, when I thought that the positive reviews looked fishy, and it turned out (per fakespot anyway) that they were bogus. And last year I bought a dental guard that was such a piece of junk that I had Amazon refund my money. At that point I didn’t know about fakespot. I just went back now and put the dental guard’s glowing review set through “fakespot”, and the reviews got an “F”.
So, it seems to find fake positive reviews. But I don’t know if it weeds out fake negative reviews; when one seller tries to trash another. Per the Bloomberg article, that seems to be a big problem.
I tried fakespot.com with two products on Amazon.com.
First for a book with a 4.5 star rating (out of 5), Night Thoughts by Wallace Shawn, got a fakespot grade of “A”, reviews totally trustworthy, adjusted rating of 4.5 stars.
Second for a snow thrower with a 4.5 star rating (out of 5), “GreenWorks Pro 80V 20-Inch Cordless Snow Thrower, 2Ah Battery & Charger Included”, got a fakespot grade of “D”, an adjusted rating of 1.5 stars, totally untrustworthy.
I’ll keep trying it, might be worth it.
Inside the Revolution at Etsy
New York Times. Creative destruction worthy of a blood sucking vampire squid.
Thanks for the link. A real Blue-shirt horror story. I feel for the people who believed in Etsy.
If I read that right, the company was dead walking years ago when they let VC investors in the door. If you sell out to people who just want to crash people’s dreams into a profitable smoking crater in the ground, then that’s what will happen. Calling PE and VC investors parasites is an insult to parasites.
Suggest a slight correction. No offense intended.
Calling PE and VC investors symbionts is an insult to symbionts.
Serendipitous facts
Divining the Essence of Symbiosis: Insights from the Squid-Vibrio Model
Was Taibbi insensitive to squids when he compared Goldman Sachs to a blood sucking vampire squid? Perhaps not. A blood sucking vampire squid is not a species of squid; it is a chimera like a griffin or a centaur.
The question I suppose we might never get a good answer to is exactly what happened with Etsy? Was it a long con? Were the founders hopelessly naive? Something else? Some of the testimonials about a totally new kind of business or a whole new economy or a gift economy at scale were so sincere it pains me to recall them.
He probably did insult them. Unfortunately. But labeling Goldman Sachs and friends leaches or ticks just doesn’t have the same feel. Vampire Worms? Carnivorous Slime Molds? Blood Slugs?
Take a look at the latest episode of the BBC’s Blue Planet II ep.5 – wonderful sequence of an octopus outwitting a pyjama shark.
I just might. Some nature would be nice. Thanks.
Timed toilet breaks @ Amazon?
Do they make you swallow a bar code, so they can follow your progress on that front and make sure you’re doing your doody?
All I can say is “too stinking bad for ThyssenKrupp and their kind.” So sad and sorry that they can’t delliver high-tech working U-boats to the Greeks, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/world/europe/so-many-bribes-a-greek-official-cant-recall-all.html, and middle eastern countries, http://www.dw.com/en/israeli-police-make-six-arrests-over-thyssenkrupp-submarine-affair/a-40345408, and all those other wonderful national navies around the world. Submarines, ATTACK submarines, being sine qua non for a fully credible military, right?
Without the least bit of self-conscious irony, the shipbuilders to the last big German Empire thing can brag,
“Virtually no shipyard the world over has more experience in the design and construction of non-nuclear submarines than ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems with its Operating Unit Submarines (Kiel). The Operating Unit is a partner of the German Navy and has also delivered submarines for coastal and blue water deployment to the navies of 19 other countries.
Decades of experience as well as continuously introduced innovative ideas and concepts are the basis for the success of the submarine shipyard based in Kiel. Like the HDW Class 209, which can be found in every ocean in the world. No other class of submarine has been built more often since World War II. Now the HDW Class 212A and 214 submarines have entered new dimensions. https://www.thyssenkrupp-marinesystems.com/en/submarines.html
Speaking of U-boats “built in Germany,” there’s the recent “tragedy” of the loss of vessel and crew by the sinking of the TR-1700-class ARA San Juan attack submarine, with the following snippet from a “War is Boring” post:
“San Juan’s retrofit included replacing the diesel-electric engines, batteries, and the navigation radar. However, ongoing economic problems and budget shortfalls contributed to the upgrade dragging on twice as long as originally scheduled. The Argentine military is in effect a jobs program, with a disproportionate amount of funding spent on personnel.” https://warisboring.com/what-happened-to-argentinas-missing-submarine/
The U-boat and other Krupp-class companies have been raking in the warbucks since the end of at least the 19th century. “That which cannot sustain, will not…”
Interesting….Trump’s rightwing base is as outraged about the net neutrality decision as much of the left is–say it will just help Trump opponents like Comcast.
https://theintercept.com/2017/11/27/net-neutrality-trump-breitbart-julian-assange-kim-dotcom/
Pretty good item about Seattle in Le Monde.
Wish they’d found space to include some statistics about offshore money spilling in to buy up properties, which are promptly up-zoned for future rent extractions as the ‘ballardisation’ process proceeds apace.
The point that cities can attract talent, however, is one that we don’t see often enough.
Arguably, Seattle is reaping the benefits of people seeking opportunity.
However, the final points about the more rural regions to the east of Seattle needs more detail; he’s missing the server farms powered by Columbia River dams (a federal government project originating in the 1930s), which is making those smaller, more rural cities a quirky flavor of Internet-connected hipsterism, all on their own.
Yep. Seattle has priced me out.
I’ve been a resident for 30 years, but no longer. Who wants to live in this city when it takes you 30 min just to get to the freeway? Glad I had some years here before Bezos ruined it
David Wilman’s article at the LA Times on Robert Mueller avoids any mention of the fact that numerous people with experience in the bioweapons area have pointed out that Bruce Ivins didn’t have the means to generate the anthrax powder used in the 9/18 and 10/9 anthrax mailings to press outlets and the Congress (respectively).
In fact, there were three FBI investigations – the first one was shut down around Dec 2001 (probably because they were doing too good of a job, and had demonstrated the anthrax could not have come from Iraq, despite Bush Administration claims), the next one focused on the bogus Hatfill case, and the final one, the Ivins claims, have not held water either. In reality, the case remains open and the perpetrators remain unknown.
re: New Home Sales, October 2017: “New home sales are suddenly on fire and far surpassing the highest estimate for a second month in row” [Econoday]. “The Northeast is the standout sales region for the second month.” This is nuts. Who the heck buys a house in the Northeast in the winter?!
October’s temperature variation from normal: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-content/sotc/national/grid-temp/tave-anom-201710.gif
SoftBank Bids to Buy Uber Shares for 30% Less Than Current Value [Bloomberg]
Like Uber for knife catching. Or Juicero for dead cat bouncing.
Good grief, that’s some quality mind f@@@ing right there.
Yes, I can’t understand why we haven’t already adopted it….
Give it some time. This might be the beta testing.
ROFL the gateway pundit appears to be trolling my twitter for stories.
https://twitter.com/UserFrIENDlyyy/status/934650737686077440
Districs that could give…
Diverse Democratic Partisanship:
AZ-02, CA-10, CA-21, FL-26, FL-27, NY-24, TX-23
These districts voted Democratic at the presidential level since at least as far back as 2008. They have a more diverse Demographic profile (47% hispanic, 44% white 5% black) and swung 25% away from their Republican representatives since 2014.
https://www.scribd.com/document/122027790/NY-24-Demographics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York%27s_24th_congressional_district
The numbers aren’t matching up. 28k vs 685k for hispanic vs non hispanic.
Can’t find dem only numbers, but I’m not sure it would make much difference.
opinion only- The district isn’t going to flip, no dem with a chance yet. It is capable of flipping, but for not for at least two of the reasons listed. Not sure about the swing against the R. It may be tainted by the horrible former rep Buerkle(RRR), and redistricting.
Obama appointed Buerkle to the Consumer Products safety commission. She was upgraded to the head of the agency by Trump.
Her first question, and now standing policy, was “how is this going to effect business?”
I have a question. Is there any evidence that Bitcoin is being used for purchasing physical gold?
The piece re Etsy, linked in Craig H’s above comment, is certainly nothing new.
It reminded me of when Knight Ridder’s Silicon Valley, San Jose Mercury News did a late 1990’s, three part investigation into the Page Hill Road, Palo Alto [1], CA Mega Law firm, Wilson Sonsini. Wilson Sonsini LLC was, and still is with impunity, horridly screwing engineer founders in yet to be punished (puny “settlements” don’t really count) illegal conflict of interest scenarios by also representing (AND ALWAYS FAVORING) the infamous Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park [1], CA VC firms (Al Gore and Colin Powell are among those Partners in crime).
While Knight Ridder certainly had it’s huge faults (e.g. destroying Gary Webb regarding the Dark Alliance series, and, not questioning the likes of Google, et al), what followed, with Dean Singleton’s predatory purchase, in the early 2000’s, put an absolute muzzle on Silicon Valley critique.
Capitalism is, and always has been, toxic, its beginnings were reliant on SLAVERY, and still are. Enormous profits cannot be made without massive suffering, degradation, theft and death.
[1] Page Mill Road, in Palo Alto, and Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, neighbor and embrace Stanford University and it’s Hoover Institute, which has always been (via the US DOD) supportive of the horrid technocracy we are witnessing.