Readers, I just got the cheapest possible Android phone, and so naturally I looked at the site. I had some issues with display (an ad partly overlapping the site motto). I’d like to know how widespread the problem is. Can those of you who view the side on cellphones describe your experiences in comments? Please remember to give your brand of phone and its operating system, with version! Those of you with problems can send us screen dumps via email, as well. Thank you! –lambert
Feral peacocks are attacking luxury cars after seeing their own reflections CBS
Triple Crown pushes Justify’s breeding rights fee to record $75M ESPN
Who should create money? Swiss vote promises a revolution Global Handelsblatt
12 Northern California wildfires sparked by PG&E power lines, investigators say San Francisco Chronicle. For more on PG&E and the 2017 wildfires, see NC here and here.
Fibre optic wires, servers, and more than 550,000 miles of underwater cables: Here’s what the internet actually looks like Business Insider (KW).
Venezuela’s Narrowing Options Counterpunch (GF).
Trade Tantrum
Trump yanks support for G7 statement, tweets Trudeau is dishonest Montreal Gazette
Trade-War Drums: Is Mexico Ready to Fire at the US Corn Belt? Wolf Street (EM).
Canadian PM open to compromise on disputed NAFTA sunset clause Reuters
Why Canadian milk infuriates Donald Trump Guardian (KW).
Malaysia’s Mahathir calls for review of Trans-Pacific trade pact Japan Times
The ‘West’ Is Past Moon of Alabama
Brexit
‘Extraordinary secrecy’ in Whitehall is crippling Brexit plans Guardian
Brexit trade proposals will not be published until after EU summit BBC
Northern Ireland: memory or amnesia? Le Monde Diplomatique
Syraqistan
The Left in Syria: From Democratic National Change to Devastation Verso
China
US-China: Why Taiwan is back on the agenda FT
Bad Dog robot is shocking China’s youth out of their loneliness TechNode
Playing mahjong and betting on horse racing could decrease dementia risk, Hong Kong study finds South China Morning Post
North Korea
Kim Jong-un due to arrive in Singapore on Sunday afternoon as city state ramps up security South China Morning Post
New Cold War
The giant timeline of everything Russia, Trump and the investigations PBS
Trump’s Policies Paying Off For Man Who Helped Make Him President: Vladimir Putin HuffPo. “The United States had been working on an agreement with the European Union nations, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, but that effort was abandoned after Trump won the presidency.” Good. Great!
Putin’s 2018 marathon call-in show, boiled down to two paragraphs Meduza
Trump Transition
Uncovering the new administration’s drone war policy C4ISRNET
Strange bedfellows: Trump backs Warren’s pot banking bill American Banker. Owning Sessions?
Carson backs off plan to triple rents for poorest households Politico
Democrats in Disarray
Turning Affluent Suburbs Blue Isn’t Worth the Cost NYT
Democrats Must Reject Howard Schultz and His Radical Centrist Ideology New York Magazine. “The U.S. government is not like a household or a business (although, plenty of businesses recognize the benefits of debt-financed investment) because it can print its own currency.” MMT is gradually becoming conventional wisdom. But who added that parenthetical?
Beware the Democrats and Their Good Billionaires Truthdig
Chuck Schumer is the exact opposite of what Democrats need The Week
Joe Crowley Complains His Primary Opponent, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Is Making This Race “About Race” The Intercept
Bernie Sanders Is to Deliver a Commonsense Plan to Save the Postal Service The Nation
How Good Is the Trump Economy, Really? NYT
Guillotine Watch
“She Absolutely Has Sociopathic Tendencies”: Elizabeth Holmes, Somehow, Is Trying to Start a New Company! Vanity Fair
The Rich Are Planning to Leave This Wretched Planet NYT. The URL: “pigs-in-spaaaaaace.html” (!).
‘I must be doing something right’: Billionaire George Soros faces renewed attacks with defiance WaPo
Partisan Divide on Benefit of Having Rich People Expands Gallup (UserFriendly). “Overall, 58% of all Americans agree that having a rich class is a benefit.”
Class Warfare
Bargaining With the Algorithm Jacobin
As rich children slim down, poor ones are getting fatter The Economist
Millennials and retirement: How bad is it? Politico. A predictably unedifying Boomer v. Millennial hatefest ensues online.
UK to force companies to justify pay gap between CEOs and staff FT (UserFriendly). UserFriendly: “ROFL the Tories are so much further left than the Democrats.”
Balancing the Benefit and the Burden of Wealth NYT. Not seeing a suicide spike among the 1%, oddly, or not.
Delta’s new uniforms are giving some flight attendants rashes Business Insider (KW). Not for the first time…
The Critic Whose Olive Garden Review Went Viral Remembers How Anthony Bourdain Spoke Up For Her Buzzfeed
Antidote du jour (via). Today’s lynx:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
239 comments
Comments are closed.
“Kim Jong-un due to arrive in Singapore on Sunday afternoon as city state ramps up security South China Morning Post”
I get a message that something on that page, likely one of the ad’s is malware. Anyone else get something similar?
Google Pixel: banner overlapped NC header for a few seconds, then repositioned below header. There was a few cm of white space, then the links were presented properly,
Iphone 6S, Safari Browser. (IOS 11.4)
Banner ad for Bitcoin (Avatrade) obscures lower 1/3 of “Naked Capitalism” title. Re-positions correctly underneath only in Landscape mode. Lots of white space (2/3rd’s of screen) follows before “Fearless commentary… etc.
Same hardware configuration, but with an Ameritrade ad in the same location, with the same overlap, on the home page. In portrait mode, once the entire page loads, the overlap goes away, and the excess white space disappears (though still a bit much after the ‘Recent Items’ list). Selecting the current ‘Links’ gets me a page with the header, 2/3 screen of white space, a narrow ad, more than 1 screen of white space, then ‘fearless commentary’, and no extra white space from there on.
Moto G5S Plus, Android 7.x.x, Firefox – works a treat, layout is fine.
I have an iPhone SE iOS 11.4, Safari browser. I also see a banner ad partially obscuring the bottom of the Naked Capitalism logo, then a loooong white space, then the list of post titles and the post. Below the post is another banner ad, 6 large empty boxes, then comments.
Three phones, moto g, droid 2, zte piece of crap, site displays properly on each.
On iphone7s on wifi (borrowed from my friend) Aloha browser – blocked ad shows white space above motto. Samsung Note4 (again borrowed) with FIrefox (with blocked images and ads) displays perfectly well with dropdown menu on top left, title and motto beow.
ZTE Blade 610 running through AF blocker plus browser.
Utterly flawless.
Android 7, SAMSUNG
Kevin C. Smith said
“Google Pixel: banner overlapped NC header for a few seconds, then repositioned below header. There was a few cm of white space, then the links were presented properly,”
Exact Same for me!
Same exact thing here, Motorola Moto z Droid phone
The ad banner overlaps NC and there’s almost a full second of scrolling down.. but the links eventually display appropriately.
Samsung S7 Edge, latest version of Android. Scrolling down appears to be the newest attempted annoyance..
HTC Desire Eye (older Android)
Banner covers bottom of header. Then there’s a large white space under the banner. At the bottom of the screen, is the motto…”Fearless commentary…” then scrolling brings up Recent items and then the article title, etc.
After the article, I get blank boxes that look like they must be side bar items. Then the comments begin.
Older, lower end Samsung phone, Android 5.1.1, Chrome. The banner ad is squeezed in between the naked capitalism header and ‘Fearless commentary’ (all vertically) with maybe one pixel of space below it. On the top it abuts the naked capitalism header directly (no white space) and obscures the lower stroke of the p. No other issues for me.
I don’t particularly care about either the title or the banner ad so I wouldn’t consider this broken, but Lambert might.
I am using a Samsung J7 (SM-J700P), software version J700PVPU2BQJ2, Android Version 7.1.1. Under both Chrome 67.0.3396.81 and Firefox 60.0.2, the initial banner ad overlaps the lower 1/3 of the site name. It eventually resets to a better position and size on the screen, but I have a remarkably long way to scroll down to get to the current post list. I’ll try to figure out how to capture all that to forward by email.
+1 GS7 chrome, it’s better in opera and FF
Same.
iPhone SE, IOS 11.4. Basically, glorified iPhone 5.
Also, with iPhone 4, I used to be able to double the text size by rotating the device to horizontal. That went away at some point with a system upgrade and never came back.
The site is balky, more so than others, if my data reception is less ghan robust.
ipod touch 5, Version 9.3.5. Like iphone w/o a phone. Safari.
Initially ad partially covered the logo, then the long scroll.
Been happening with this device for around a month.
iPhone 7 plus. Everything is readable, just a long scroll, as above.
iPhone 6 Plus. Long scroll, but otherwise okay.
Somewhat related: Always been mildly annoyed by the horizontally squished antidote pictures on my iPad Air 2. I think every time.
iPhone 6S, iOS 11.4. I have all of the above symptoms except the malware alert.
Samsung S3, Cyanogen 11.x (three years out-of-date), Brave 1.0.49 or Chrome 67.0.3396.81, active Pi-Hole: no issues.
Not all that helpful, I guess. The combo of Pi-Hole and Brave leaves very little room for advertisements to slip through.
Same for chrome. Moto g4. Android 7.0
It seems like the US is collapsing internally in many regards, including infrastructure. A few days NC linked this.
http://www.governing.com/topics/transportation-infrastructure/gov-mississippi-roads-bridges-infrastructure.html
I wonder if this represents the end state of the so-called “small government” model. Basic infrastructure is falling apart. The political climate of “small government” conservatives are very averse to even raising funds to maintain existing roads and bridges. I think that left unaddressed, there will be a dramatic rise in fatalities from bridges collapsing and similar types of accidents in the coming years. The political climate is certainly not very conducive in the US to a real fix. With the middle class being destroyed, only the rich really have any taxable money.
Meanwhile, the US is likely to be overtaken by nations that do properly invest in their infrastructure, education, research, and other key areas. An example may very well be high speed rail. China for example, has made very impressive progress in a short period of time. For all the lobbying and talking about it, the US doesn’t have such a system. China, which I am not saying is perfect, is now the leader in high speed rail.
America’s education has been falling too. We’ve seen the low teacher pay articles here.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/
I doubt that these results will motivate “small government” libertarian and conservative types to invest the necessary funds to shore up the US education system, provide some form of student debt relief, or invest in scientific research.
Imagine 2 nations. One pursues the “small government” way. It has lower taxes, but it does not have universal healthcare, it has a poor education system, funding for scientific research is poor, and its infrastructure begins to decay. The other adopts a more “big government” approach, with higher taxes, but better infrastructure, a world leading education system, a high amount of GDP spent on research, and universal healthcare. In a couple of decades, the second nation will overtake the first.
There is another matter. “Small government” has become a way to deflect the real agenda, which is to cut taxes for the rich. I think that the heart of that matter is that small government has become a way to sell the idea that the rich, who benefited the most from the past contributions of society should contribute nothing to the future of that society in an appealing way to the general public.
But of course as we know, taxes are not necessary to fund federal government spending, only to cool down inflation.
Bingo. And only the Federal gubmint can CREATE money. State, county , and municipal governments are in a precariat situation (don’t say that too loudly!)
We could go private sector, go pay-go, have local or national businesses borrow from banks, privatize everything– funded through fractional reserve banking, but the pool of toll-payers would be small, and it wouldn’t pay. The top 10% can only buy so many cars, tires, dishwashers…
Rent extraction has its limits… limits to greed? No MOAR? Quel Horreur!!
Reading Hard Times, by Studs Terkel right now. Very timely…. this ain’t our first rodeo
Infrastructure, utilities, health/safety (fire/police/ national defense– not Empire building offence) may really undeniably be Utilities, and should be operated as such?
I am convinced that health care should be in that collective good / greatest good greatest number column, being an anarchic communal socialist at heart (and mind… ).
As a chest beating self-proclaimed nation of commerce and business people, how we can defend throwing 30-40 cents on the dollar to an INSURANCE industry that adds ZERO value to the health CARE equation baffles me, but I do digress…
At the state and municipal level, they are not able to make money.
The Federal government can print currency, except for the nations in the Eurozone.
I ask naively – can’t states get around this by chartering a state bank and having said bank back bonds that can be used for infrastructure projects?
Look to the state bank of North Dakota — the only one of its kind in the U.S. Ellen Brown has written extensively about it. You can find many, many stories online, including this one: https://theweek.com/articles/777398/chuck-schumer-exact-opposite-what-democrats-need
FYI: “Timothy Canova (not Florida’s Tim Canova, who is running against Wasserman Schultz) is Professor of International Economic Law at Chapman University School of Law in Orange, California. In a June 2011 paper called “The Public Option: The Case for Parallel Public Banking Institutions,” he compares North Dakota’s financial situation to California’s. He writes of North Dakota and its state-owned bank:
The state deposits its tax revenues in the Bank, which in turn ensures that a high portion of state funds are invested in the state economy. In addition, the Bank is able to remit a portion of its earnings back to the state treasury . . . . Thanks in part to these institutional arrangements, North Dakota is the only state that has been in continuous budget surplus since before the financial crisis and it has the lowest unemployment rate in the country.”
*Sigh*
The reason ND has a surplus is the Bakken formation and the resulting oil boom. Oil jobs pay well. . ND has had a low unemployment rate post crisis. Only 4.3% at its worst post crisis and 2.6% now. Shale oil companies were expanding and therefore were paying more in income taxes The surplus has absolutely nothing to do with its state bank.
This is why we don’t link to Brown. She’s not reliable.
I am so sorry, then. Thanks for the edification, Yves. Feel free to delete my comment.
Thank you
It’s also good to remember that North Dakota’s population is a whopping three quarters of a million people.
Hard to make a case that their situation might relate in any way to Illinois or New York for instance.
Alaska hit the oil jackpot starting in the 70s. Now that their oil fields are in decline, they regularly have stories like this. http://juneauempire.com/state/news/2018-01-07/governor-says-alaska-s-deficit-will-not-be-fixed-2018
Small population states and countries that hit a resource extraction gusher look great for a while, but unless they exhibit real discipline, they run into financial issues once the gusher slows down. ND is still benefiting from the Bakken oil boom. However, the spigot on fracking could turn off relatively quickly as the wells have short lives and then they could be in financial difficulty.
ND also has to spend a lot on infrastructure as the oil drilling industry requires heavy duty roads and bridges as well as housing.
I ask even more naively, but humor me: what prevents a state-owned public bank from issuing a partially secured low-interest loan to a state-owned infrastructure company to develop public infrastructure? If the loan cannot be repaid with the current state taxation level, then the outstanding loan balance is canceled once the project – rail, or roads, or what have you – is completed. That’s new money creation, and new infrastructure. That’s how China does it, doesn’t it?
Am I naive to think this is completely possible if there is political will to do so? What would be the obstacles – and is there federal law that prohibits it?
A bank has to be careful about the size of its loan portfolio.
When a bank loans you money, they are extending you the privilege of using their money, aka “reserves”, to do your business. Any check you write that arrives at another bank ends up debiting your bank’s reserves to pay the other bank. Too much of that, the reserve account is empty, and all the checks drawn on your bank bounce.
If a private bank loans $50million to a state or anybody else they have to be prepared to fund all the transactions that occur as that money is spent.
Established banks survive this by having a wide variety of customers. On a normal day, the money spent with their depositors, coming in, approximately balances the money spent by their borrowers, going out. Banking nirvana would be when these amounts balanced exactly, and the bank wouldn’t need any reserves at all; this never happens. An interesting article by Cameron Murray sheds a bit of light on how this works.
Thanks, I’m going to mull over this.
The Bank of North Dakota has been known to do this.
However, as indicated by Y. Smith, North Dakota should not in general be viewed as a paragon of free-spending lefty fiscal virtue.
I realized just how much progress China had made earlier this year when bloomberg ran an article pointing out how china moves a us-sized population (300M+) each year from the coast, back to the ancestral villages in the interior for the chinese new year holidays.
Apparently, a decade ago, it was only around 200M-ish, but the high-speed rail network has been expanded hugely.
It takes a month. Chinese manufacturing was shut down for the month of February so the workers could go home.
“Progress,” eh? How much energy does it take to move that many people around, so they can get out of the polluted cities and slave labor factories, back to home towns that thanks to industrialization and government policies, no longer provide enough sustenance to Keep Hong Down On The Farm?
Choices, choices.
Only if your social score* is acceptable can you get on the train.
*Social score – brought to you by technology and more progress (in a direction you probably won’t like…that’s an Oliver Wendell Holmes quote…it’s not how fast you are going, but what direction – I hope this one is mis-attributed like so many others I have done so).
It takes a lot less energy than us car-loving-higway-driving-white-fever-free market-freedom loving people drivinh several hundred miles over a three day weekend. At least the poor in China have a cheap mode of transportation, unlike AMTRAK.
Remember that China’s industry growth and its pollution are driven by consumers in the US and Europe chasing cheap goods.
I think China’s new rail into Tibet is strictly for their own benefits…not directly to with the US or Europe.
The mass-mainstream American consumer did not begin mass-majority chasing cheap China crap until the International Free Trade Conspiracy President Clinton got Congress to pass MFN for China so he could sign it. That permitted the mass dismantlement of American Industry, the mass-packing of that industry into crates, and the mass shipment of those crates to China for re-mantlement in China. After enough millions of Americans had been mass-jobicided and then rehired ( if lucky)j at Walmart wages to go with the new Walmart China Prices, cheap goods were the only goods those millions of Americans could afford.
The Free Trade Conspirators and the De-Protectionists created this problem. When cheap goods were not allowed into Europe and America, so that there were no cheap goods for the EuroAmerican consumer to chase, the EuroAmerican consumer did not chase cheap goods.
If you want the EuroAmerican consumer to stop chasing cheap goods, abolish Free Trade, restore Protectionism, and make it a Federal Prison Hard Time crime to import cheap goods into EuroAmerica. When there are zero cheap goods for EuroAmericans to chase, then EuroAmericans will stop chasing cheap goods. If you really want to support solving the problem, that is what you will support doing.
+1
Oh noes, we cannot stop or even throttle back the massive and inevitable Flow of Holy “Trade!!!!!” It is the life’s blood of the whole world!!!
It’s the life blood of the rich rentiers.
Salon article explains a lot about politics / financial weirdness.
https://www.salon.com/2018/06/09/how-the-greek-debt-crisis-exposed-the-global-economy-as-a-giant-con-and-led-to-donald-trump/
Long read, but worth the journey.
great read!
+1
And may I add that the US president is now in the process of trying to wreck the economies of the EU, Canada and Mexico by getting rid of all tariffs, offering “free” trade” (carte blanche) and no restrictions on US interests. When the US has the biggest economy (and military) in the world, what do you think will happen to economies that are 1/10th of theirs? We will become the feudal slaves supplying the biggest country with anything it wants from us. What a future we have in store for us!
Really solid article.
Thanks BK – I read it and it’s a really good article!
more spending is not enough to guarantee better infrastructure, education etc. Rent seeking and corruption has to be reduced to increase productivity in govt pampered sectors.
healthcare is a case in point.
I am an civil engineer retired from Caltrans, the transportation agency of California. Last year I had the job of preparing a cost estimate for a project that would add a turn lane to SR116, a two-lane Highway in Sonoma County. The project included the replacement of a very small Bridge. Of course the turn pocket somehow required the addition of a traffic light and sidewalks. Because the bridge went over a creek, there were also a lot of environmental considerations and restraints on the construction window. The sidewalk required railings and the traffic light poles and standards also brought of course a lot of architectural add-ons, like staining all of the metal, which required that all of the railing and lighting standards be fabricated and then shipped to the stainer and then shipped back to the project, which increases the complexity of this project by a lot, especially considering the environmental limitation on the construction windows.
Anyway, I cost estimated the project at seven and a half million dollars. That does not include the design work, nor the construction oversight, it includes only the actual Construction of the turn pocket project.
Now that I’ve moved to Uruguay I am motivated to change my state of residence to Florida, as I am unwilling to pay taxes in the state of California after having seen how wastefully they are spent.
It really is a shame, the infrastructure in the US needs to be upgraded, but there is so much profit to be made from each project, but I don’t see how the US can afford the current crop of “job creators”.
What aspects of that project did you view as wasteful? Sidewalks, traffic lights, and environmental protections don’t seem extravagant to me. What is the distinction you draw between an appropriate project and a wasteful one, given the example you provided?
The question is not intended as sarcasm. 7 million dollars is a ton of money. What part did you feel was misspent or should have been done differently?
altandmain: Think of it this way. The “small government” types often want to devolve responsibilities to units of government that can’t handle anything larger than paving some asphalt roads. How much leeway and leverage does a county in Illinois with 10,000 people have?
It is no accident that among the major buildings in NYC after the American Revolution was the customs house, including the giant version, built in 1902, now a branch of the National Museum of the American Indian. (And note that “national museum” here means federally sponsored.) The Feds also sponsored the building of the Erie Canal, which promoted settlement of upstate New York and the areas bordering the Great Lakes. The Feds also sponsored the interstate highway system, and if Chicago’s Skyway is any indication, that will soon be privatized.
Small may be beautiful if its purpose is maintaining a single high school, which is what many of the townships in the Great Lakes States do. But beyond that? The “small government” types are trying to destroy effective government. And at the local level in the U S of A, government is often fragmented among a village / city, township, park district, school district(s), and the county’s administration. Compare the Italian comune (also used in France, I believe), which handles all local matters, including administration of schools, naturalization of new citizens, cultural activities, and even ownership of local museums. We wouldn’t want to allow effective local government, now would we?
I remember when Ronald Reagan shifted federal funds to state and local governments, saying that they could better spend the money, rather than the federal government doing it. The media cheered. What could go wrong?
What could and what did happen was that austerity was built into the process. I know of no organization that objected. But built into that plan was the fact that it would be easier for the feds to reduce that amount each year. Also the locals w/o fiat money could not increase the amt spent on their pet projects.
Now 30+ years later we are paying for that change.
Anyone remember the phrase “unfounded mandates”? Conservative heads used to explode when social engineers tried to devolve costs onto small governments. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40957.pdf
What a difference a few decades makes…
Everything in the future is unfunded.
We can’t even consume today’s production (capacity) with today’s income, let alone future consumption.
Money creation funds the future.
Quick correction, DJG: The Erie Canal was not financed by the Federal Government, but by the State of New York (under Gov. DeWitt Clinton). Nevertheless, I think your larger point stands (NY was and is a huge and powerful government!).
For what it’s worth, our New England towns with Town Meetings seem to work pretty well, and are actually quite similar to Italian communes in many ways. There are problems, of course, but direct democracy has its benefits in terms of actually being a member of the local micro-legislature.
I have, to some extent, been successful talking to my US rellies and to Cdn friends and neighbours, when the “balance the budget, govt is like a household” argument is invoked or implied, by pointing out that a family that did not feed their children properly, did not educate them, take them to the doctor when they were ill, did not provide warm clothing or repair their house to make it safe and comfortable, that would be considered a bad family, with irresponsible parents. It doesn’t work every time, but it has caused some rethinking that I know of, and I hope maybe more as the seeds take root.
This avoids the MMT argument, which is a bridge too far for a lot of people, and it highlights that even at the state/provincial and local levels, govt spending is a choice. If there is a will, a way will be found, whether MMT or (gasp!) higher taxes.
I’m sorry but at the provincial and local levels government spending is not a choice because the revenue comes from taxes; it is only at the Federal level that the household equivalency cannot be made. If the province spends like it can create money, it will increase its deficit and eventually will have to be bailed our or go bankrupt. Be careful what you say to others.
MMT is NOT difficult to understand; it just takes time to learn.
The problem is that many people, republicans especially, are NOT willing to learn anything about MMT. When talking to those sorts of people, HotFlash’s idea seems more practical.
MMT is easier to understand if people know that the system*, of which MMT is description, is not unalterable.
*it is a monetary universe that is just one out of infinite monetary universes.
Motorola Android for years NC header has been wonky in portrait (slightly better in landscape). Oh, and happy GPD https://duckduckgo.com/?q=divine+walk+like&t=fpas&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=pFiqO0Qpa_g
Turning Affluent Suburbs Blue Isn’t Worth the Cost: while the overall conclusions seem correct,
some of the statements in it are too broad. For example,
Not true. A recent Pew Research Center study, More Americans view long-term decline in union membership negatively than positively, has the percentages in various groups
saying that the decline in union membership has been bad.
There is a slight tilt to the right in terms of family income, but by education it’s:
Might not fit the “Dream Hoarder” narrative, but there you have it.
Probably applies to SillyCon Valley where many faux progressives live busy with their cell phones (mostly ipone), eat and dine in high priced-low quality places, drive all over the place and pay homage to each and every startup venture, never worrying about how the poor people can make it.
ZTE N870. Android 4.4.4. The Ameritrade ad partially overlays the site name. A screen full of white space to scroll through to arrive at links/posts. After that everything is fine. I have tried several browsers w/o difference.
Galaxy 5, chrome browser. ..
Same as Earl above..
https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=aN6HH_1528604531 Trump tweets Trudeau’s dishonest, then his eyebrows fall off. LMAO whos fake?https://www.liveleak.com/view?t=aN6HH_1528604531
Based on one of the G7 group pics, where everyone is standing, Trudeau is the only ‘leader’ who is taller (by a hair) than Trump. So, naturellement, one must cut him off at the knees by hurling insults.
And, that’s probably the real reason behind Trump’s firing of Comey; the former FBI director is taller than anybody outside of the NBA.
My take is that Trudeau’s clothing helped infuriate the reign of error, in that in his mind, no captain of industry ever wore blue socks with what looks like IUD devices as a design, to an important meeting.
You decide:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g7-summit-trudeau/in-battle-of-tweets-canadas-trudeau-dismisses-trump-critique-idUSKCN1J6003
One pair were patriotic moose socks. Trudeau has the svelte continental build, tall and willowy, that enables him to sport the fashionable investment banker/young software designer look. As one wag pointed out, that style looks like you are wearing one size too small … and pants are pencil thin and do NOT drape over the shoe. Au contraire, they barely cover the ankle. Allowing one to sport outrageously outré socks. And, the look has the advantage of distinguishing one from the guys who do physical labor and need to have muscles. Poor Donald, OTOH, must wear the baggy suits so beloved by long time Brooks Brothers clients, in order to disguise his saggy gut.
I love that we are discussing fashions worn by male world leaders! Such a change from dissing pant suits.
Yes, male fashion can be discussed in all sorts of situations-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KyDkH1yUeE
An acute observation:
and le grand orange is so obviously stretching. With him, it’s all about the competitive id, even at his age.
Don’t know exactly why but reminds me of this. without the class, though.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k5ba1OKY7Xc
The suit on Trudeau does not look skinny to me.
The most noticeable skinny suiter I have seen is (so-called reverend) Joel Osteen. I’m pretty sure he spends more time in the gym than he spends studying his bible.
Trump can’t be that comfortable with men younger than he is, if he can’t stand others taller.
I assume everyone in the White House is older, especially when his younger wife is there.
Democrats are supporting Trump on his anti-Trudeau tweets. It appears the Democrats don’t understand that Trudeau is a politician representing another country than the US. http://thehill.com/homenews/house/391569-dem-rep-trudeau-sabotaging-trade-negotiations-by-feuding-with-trump
“While I have serious concerns about President Trump’s approach to trade talks with Canada, Prime Minister Trudeau has placed our trade relationship with Canada at risk by publicly feuding with President Trump on the world stage,” Krishnamoorthi said in a statement.
He warned that Trudeau is “sabotaging” trade negotiations between the U.S. and Canada “by driving both sides into their corners instead of encouraging a more diplomatic dialogue.”
So Trump wants to dump NAFTA, slaps Canada with steel tariffs, and is threatening Canada with auto tariffs despite the US-Canada auto industry being heavily integrated dating back to AutoPact. Trudeau pushes back and he is now the person “sabotaging” trade talks. My guess is that Canadians would be pissed if Trudeau did not “sabotage” the current US trade approach with Canada.
In time of war (trade war, here), the whole nation unifies behind the (trade) commander-in-chief.
I wonder how much of that is at work here.
What happens outside the beltway stays outside the beltway. Krishnamoorthi may not be aware that there are other countries.
Le Grand Orange – baseball version:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/baseball/rusty-staub-former-expos-and-mets-great-dies-at-73/article38353296/
Why is Kate Spade’s hubby Andy wearing a RAT MASK after his wife was ‘suicided’ ahem…I mean, killed herself?https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6480272/kate-spade-husband-suicide-mouse-mask-picture/
The mask is a character from a Disney film in which animals band together to save a child. The film was accused of containing subliminal imagery of some kind. (Naked boobs)
Perhaps Black Cube has a suicide assistance hotline.
Also the mask is famously impossible to find.
The Rescuers subliminal sex scene. In the whip pan when the albatross character dives off the skyscraper in New York, the background artists put a playboy centerfold in the stretched windows. Since this was before home video it was unoticeable to the viewing public at the time, and was an animation industry in joke. I believe the first vhs release had the scene intact with the offending frame. It was removed in subsequent releases.
Oh, I’m sorry, is he not dealing with a very public death of a loved one to your satisfaction? Lets make sure we keep the public gaze on him cause I’m sure he doesn’t have enough to deal with.
Life is often a spectator game show, when instead, each of us should be an active audience-participant.
Being a spectator, we too often issue scores and are often asked to do so.
“A perfect 10 score!!!”
But there is an alternative.
Doing one’s part in spending money into existence, instead of watching the government do that, is one place to be active
I have an exceedingly old (as smartphones go) iPhone 4 with iOS 7.something. The site has always been nearly unreadable from my phone but I would never complain because who the heck walks around with an operating system 5 years out of date?
Anyway, for whatever reasons, my phone’s version of Safari puts the Blog Roll as the most prominent feature and shrinks the content down to a minuscule font size and sometimes charts and graphs are either a jumbled mess or just don’t show up at all.
So I am pretty much a desktop reader only, but like I said, being the owner of a phone that Apple stopped making in 2013, I hold no site responsible for my phone’s issues in viewing their content. But since you asked, I thought I would add my experience.
who the heck walks around with an operating system 5 years out of date?
STEP ONE: Does it work? Y -> Don’t Touch It; N-> . . .
Full proc here
Thanks for that chart. Absolutely hilarious.
It is hilarious. Unfortunately I’ll get into trouble if I show it in one of my programming classes. Maybe I can show it to selected grad students or colleagues. ;^) It does describe equipment.
You can take it to your diversity training class as an example of what a bunch of neanderthal pigs our grandpas were and show the youngsters what type of horrors our new enlightened age protects them from being subjected to. Keep it in the attic box with your old slide rule and your souvenir punch-card-decks.
You did save a couple punch-card-decks, right?
Regarding the “Vollgeld”-initiative in Switzerland: Every seventh Swiss is a millionaire… we all can be assured that they won’t produce an outcome a la “Brexit”.
Re: NY primary of Ocasio-cortez vs. Crowley
I feel like ocasio-cortez is running a solid campaign, but that this race will end up disappointing because only registered dems can vote and they’ve got to register 6 months in advance. Plus NYCBOE will just throw a bunch of people off the rolls anyway.
We saw how this played out in 2016 when it was HRC vs. Bernie
Really important big money seat for the establishment Dems. She knew what she was taking on from day 1.
I can’t help I was born white, but since I am I can take on Trump is an interesting campaign strategy in a district that is 50% hispanic and 14% white. Has that Clintonesque “got this one in the bag” feel to it.
But what will those demographics look like if you only count registered dems and count them post-NYCBOE purges.
Which also gets at why the NY AG race with zephyr teachout matters so much, since AG Schneiderman was happy to go along.
Oh, I get it, hence my in the bag comment.
Conversely:
– They fought hard to keep her out of a primary and couldn’t do it
– There hasn’t been a primary in that district for 14 years
– I get an Act Now email about everyday soliciting donations, and I don’t live anywhere near NYC
– The arrogance of “I was born to do this” did not tip the scale in Clinton’s favor, it worked against her.
Will be interesting to see how this one turns out.
Machines are very powerful, until they aren’t. She could most definitely win.
Why Canadian milk infuriates Donald Trump Guardian (KW).
Chuck is blaming innocent onlookers for using a pistol to shoot himself in the arse. Seriously.
Here is a punchline.
Yes, Canadians strongly support supply management in the dairy, egg and poultry “industries” and support the small scale farmers doing it, with dairy farmers having an average herd number of eighty cows. Eighty! Not eight hundred or eight thousand or eighty thousand, eighty, 80!
There is no dumping of 100 million gallons of surplus milk, a colossal waste at every step in the supply chain from fuel to grow the grains that feed the cows, the energy and resources used to care and milk the cows, the refrigerated systems to handle the massive volume of milk to be dumped, and the space requirement and preparation to accept 100 million gallons of dumped milk. Colossal self inflicted stupidity, but blame Canadians for those problems.
100 million gallons of milk is roughly equal to almost one fifth of all milk consumption in Canada. That’s just the stuff thrown away. It should boggle your mind.
If only that 100 million gallons of milk could be dumped on the Canadian market, all of the US dairy farmer’s problems would solved, and Canadian dairy farmers would out of business the next day.
Mr Muirhead, here is the definition of venal.
Understand now?
There is one other reason Canadians like the supply management system, better tasting milk.
Yes, without hormones or antibiotics too.
Agree 100%.
I live in a border town and have the opportunity to buy my milk in the US but I do not despite the low price.
“100 million gallons of milk is roughly equal to almost one fifth of all milk consumption in Canada. That’s just the stuff thrown away. It should boggle your mind.”
That’s a misleading use of the numbers – you apply total U.S. milk wastage to Canada, which has only 1/10 the the population, i.e. instead of the correct one-fiftieth you gin up a scary-sounding ‘one-fifth’. U.S. per-capita consumption is ~20 gallons/year, times 330 million people means over 60 billion gallons/year, thus 100 million gallons is less than 2% wastage – not ignorable, but far from ‘mind-boggling’. That probably quite a bit less than spoils from sitting out or in people’s fridges too long.
Oh, and lookee here – Canadian dairy farmers are subject to overproduction binges and the ensuing dumping, too (and that is just one story and one year – do a websearch for ‘canadian dairy dump milk’ to find plenty more):
http://nationalpost.com/news/its-not-a-pretty-picture-ontario-dairy-farmers-dumping-skim-milk-into-manure-pits-and-sewer-lagoons
My apologies. My calculations were off, by quite a bit.
In Canada, per capita consumption of milk was 66.68 liters for 2017, which equals 17.615 US gallons, and a total milk consumption of 620 million US gallons per year, so 100 million gallons of dumped milk by US producers is equivalent to roughly one sixth of all Canadian milk consumption in 2017.
I would like to reiterate your point, that total US milk wastage is likely multiples of the 100 million gallons dumped, when one considers the stuff going bad in refrigerators around the country. It should boggle your mind.
I think you miss the point. Canada’s production management system works for Canadians, yet the woes suffered by US dairy farmers where overproduction is at an absurd level due in no small part to the subsidies by the US government, is blamed on Canada. Were Canada an open market to US milk, it would be barely greater than a rounding error in the big US milk production scheme. It would transfer US economic dis-function directly to Canadian farmers, put them out of business overnight and still not solve the US overproduction problem.
You tell me. Why do US dairy farmers sell their goods for less than the cost of production? Where is the breaking point? When the banksters have all of it?
Point take, cnchal, the dairy production system does indeed seem to be managed quite perversely in the U.S. – I did not intend for my point re. the stats to obscure that.
On the trade tantrum — If Mexico is thinking of retaliating against US GMO corn, I’d hope someone would also think of retaliation in the form of a carbon tariff on US exports. Many US products are relatively high-emission because they are made with coal energy, and coal interests are some of Trump’s chief contributors. Generally, until we have an international network of carbon tariffs in place, international agreements like the Paris Accord will not be implemented very seriously.
Energy consumption per capita should be addressed as well.
China, for example, can add an excess consumption fee to their exports to the US (American imports from China) to cut down on the consumerist lifestyle here.
Yes, China “could” do that. But why would they?
Our excess consumption of China-made goods is what funds their excess trade surplus and money buildup. Its all part of their plan. Why would they want to go against their own plan?
Does this matter? The American economy is in an ongoing collapse as the economic dead zones expand. Fairly soon, I think, there will not be enough American consumers to support China and our energy use will be down a lot.
Re: The Rich Are Planning to Leave This Wretched Planet
Pigasus???
Is there a Go Fund Me for this? What better cause could there be?
I’ve been suggesting for quite some time that we need a GoFundMe account to send most politicians of both parties–& including many of the rich who buy them–to Mars, since that seems to be their latest interest.
So will this be the place that the ultra-rich will vacation at when they are not at their Seasteading homes? And do they realize that they will need advanced training in order to use a toilet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnxTgJeUixs
Going by that film clip, I suspect that hair perming will not be an option for the ladies. And you know that some damn fool will insist on smoking a cigar in zero-gee. Can’t wait for that.
They’ve got to get to the airport first, and that isn’t going to happen if mother nature can help it.
Peacocks stick it to the 1% – https://www.cbsnews.com/news/feral-peacocks-are-attacking-luxury-cars-after-seeing-their-own-reflections/
I lived in feral peacock land for a spell, truth be said, it could be like hell.
And now one of the richer enclaves in the City of Angles is evicting the see me-dig me ones in an attempt to pacify homeowners that have simply had enough of them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the scenic Rancho Palos Verdes, the colorful peafowl have been blamed for scratching cars, leaving large droppings on driveways and awakening residents with their high-pitched screams. Nearly 50 birds were killed between 2012 and 2014 in the neighboring community of Rolling Hills Estates, some apparently by angry residents.
Last year, the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council approved a plan to trap and relocate up to 150 birds in effort to reduce the population to 134, the number of birds recorded in 2000. In October 2014, there were 305, according to a city estimate. The city’s trapping effort was successful, and the City Council has since voted to extend the program.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-0531-trapping-peacocks-20160531-snap-story.html
Someone should set up an electrified “dark shiny car” decoy for the peacocks to peck at. Whenever they make contact with it, electricity goes from the car through the peacock to the ground it is standing on. Enough painful shocks to enough peacocks should train them to stop pecking cars.
Underwater habitat for those not as rich?
Captain Nemo?
NC looking perfect on a Sony Z3 Tablet Compact LTE. Android 6.0.1. Chrome browser. Best little tablet ever made. Makes phone calls too.
I also use an application called NetGuard that keeps snoops away. Best to download it from Github, not the Play Store, so as to get all the features.
Re: 12 Northern California wildfires sparked by PG&E power lines, investigators say San Francisco Chronicle
It seems that the 9000 acre fire of note in SW Colorado right now that should spread through June was started by the coal powered tourist railroad… Yes in tinderbox conditions where strict campfire restrictions were in place, the open coal powered silverton-durango railroad continued to chug back and forth until one if its many sparks finally succeeded at starting a raging forest fire.
A first hand account of how this fire started: https://durangoherald.com/articles/227112
Electric lines and equipment have a long history of causing deadly bushfires in Australia as well-
http://useyourpower.com.au/blog/faulty-privatised-power-lines-caused-five-of-the-worst-black-saturday-bushfires-28
PG&E is not the only investor-owned utility in California with this problem. SCE, in southern and eastern California, seems to be in the same boat — it would be very interesting to see a comparison of historical rates of fires caused by these utilities, and also comparisons with publicly-owned utilities.
In 2015, we had all the valuables stored with friends and were sitting with the cats, with the cat carriers stacked in the front room, waiting for the evacuation order the night of the Round Valley fire. A tree had taken down an SCE power line during a windstorm. We were saved by a change in the wind direction and the start of the rain — without that, we would have had about a 20-minute notice to leave.
Just yesterday afternoon, during another windstorm, my roommate smelled smoke and wondered who would be stupid enough to start their barbecue in a windstorm. Stepping outside, she saw the flames across the street, two doors down, at the base of a utility pole — a 5×5 patch of foot-high flames. The wind was getting up to around forty. The transformer on the pole was smoking. She’s an ex-wildland firefighter, so she grabbed the shovel and had it out in a minute. The house at the end of the street had smoke pouring out of it, but the firefighters arrived and stopped it — the fusebox had blown from the power surge when the transformer shorted out.
Her conversations with other people on the scene suggest that the unsecured bundle of wires next to the transformer shorted it out when the wind blew them together. It will be a long Summer.
That’s an interesting link. It says the train (which I’ve seen but never been on) routinely starts fires and the company running it is supposed to do fuels mitigation along the line and
In this case the follow on vehicle and a volunteer firefighter onlooker were not able to stop the fire. The tourist line has switched to diesel for the time being.
Yep! For now the train is not running, but is getting their diesel option online. Which begs the question, why was it not standard protocol to switch to the diesel option whenever the National Forest places a no campfire ban? Now we suffer a 20k Acres and growing loss of national forest so that they could maintain the coal powered “authentic” experience. Of course I doubt any liability will be assessed against this “small” business that charges 80 dollars a ride. If anything they will expand their easement to chop down any tree within range of coal sparks.
I have seen the follow on pop car and water trailer that follows the train… it is the size of a Prius…. no power or sufficient water to suppress anything far from the tracks.
RE: Why Canadian Milk Infuriates Donald Trump.
At last night’s weekly dinner with Our Cousin the Family Farmer, (as we feasted on this year’s first strawberries, freshly picked from the field behind the barn), we conducted our usual ‘state of local agriculture’ discussion. Cousin remembered when Chautauqua County, NY had over 100 family dairy farms. When 100 milking head was a huge operation. Now, to survive, a dairy farm needs to be really big …. 500 and more head. And, be run by robots.
Two of my spouse’s other cousins run dairy farms; one here NW Pennsylvania, the other on the coast of Washington, near the Columbia River. They are small and they struggle. The cousin here in Pennsylvania has a considerable ‘sugar bush,’ and makes gallons of maple syrup each year, that command a premium price and provide a stable source of income. The Washington cousin, has a huge family … and everyone works at the dairy. And, so they struggle on.
A couple of years ago, we visited large neighboring dairy operation with our Pennsylvania cousin; it is run by robots (the owners admitted they are $1.5 Million in debt to the Dutch corporation that manufactures the system.) An 18 year old with a smart phone can control the entire operation. The cows are ‘units of production.’ They wander into ‘feeding stations’ where a measured amount of grain is dumped into their trough. Little laser-guided robotic milking suction cups reach out and grab each teat and the amount of milk, by quarter, is automatically recorded. When the cow’s output declines, it’s off to the slaughter house. Their waste is swept up by a roving robotic cleaner, then piped over to a heating and evaporating plant. The flaky dried shit and straw is then trucked back to the shed as bedding for the cows. Who never see a pasture or a blade of grass.
Just to pay off their debt, the owners must produce increasingly large amounts of milk.
The Canadian system, of supply management and encouragement of small (80 head average) family dairy farms seems rational. Good for the farmers and the cows.
Here in the CVBB, you’ll occasionally see bumper stickers on the rear echelon of vehicles that says:
“Dairying Is Not A Crime”
500 milk cows is nothing here, we were on a hike last year and came across 2 dairying families, one had 6,000 and the other 7,000 head of cattle in CAFO operations in Hanford, which is cheek by jowl close to LeMoore Naval Air Station, where a squadron of F-35’s is based, perhaps to guard closely held bovine secrets?
Although said feed lot ruminants will never eat a blade of grass, sometimes 20 feet beyond the fenceline, you’ll see an apron of the genuine article, as if to mess with them in dangling a carrot on a string from a stick in front of the horse pulling your cart, fashion.
An awful lot of what’s produced is turned into milk powder, and then it’s off to the Port of L.A., soon to be on a cargo ship headed to China.
p.s.
My mom grew up in Alberta on a 160 acre farm in Okotoks, which seemed an awful long way from Calgary when I was a kid, and now it’s an exurb.
They had no electricity or running water, their water coming from a spring a few hundred feet down a hill from the house and barn.
In the late 30’s when she was a teenager, her task twice a day was to milk the cows, and she related to me that they used a manual layer cake like apparatus that separated the more valuable cream from the milk and it had to be cleaned after each use, so for my mom that entailed walking down to that spring with a 5 gallon bucket and fill it up and bring it back no matter the weather-boil it on the stove and sterilize the cream separator for the next round, and the cows never took a vacation from milking, so you couldn’t either.
She just turned 93 and still disses on cows, bad mouthing em’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE8kGMfXaFU
Dairy farming is not for the faint of heart, or those with a yen to wander the world. A large proportion of my spouse’s family suffer from severe anxiety when they leave home, so they have no problem with being ‘tied down’ to cows, pigs and crops. In fact, they thrive on it.
I have been buying home-churned butter from an Amish neighbor. So good, I eat it with a spoon.
Wouldn’t that also make Trump’s system of steel and aluminum supply management (tariffs) and encouragement of local production rational? Good for steel and aluminum workers and their families.
How Many American Jobs Could Be Lost Thanks to Trump’s Steel and Aluminum Tariffs
Wisconsin reeling from tariffs coming from Mexico, Canada, Europe
The Trade Partnership paper referenced by the Forbes article is a bit thin on actual analysis or methodology. I’d love to see an actual analysis that explains why Canadian dairy tariffs (or any other tariffs) are good, yet Trump tariffs are bad.
The authors of the Trade Partnership paper wrote the following paper back in 2005:
Impact of Imports from China on U.S. Employment
Fool me once…
I prefer soy milk and soy cheese.
And I hope more would try them.
For all I know about the details of trade policy, you may well be right as far as “actual analysis or methodology“ (though we’ve seen no evidence of analysis or methodology from Trump on any issue, so there’s that).
My comment at June 10, 2018 at 9:52 am has links to additional posts about actual or feared impacts of Trump’s tariffs from the perspective of actual local businesses. From the Wisconsin link regarding a company that employs 200 people:
As far as the big picture on trade agreements, I would say the harm of current trade policy isn’t due to Trumpian notions about particular countries or industries taking advantage of poor little USA, but to the global elite taking advantage of the global workers and consumers.
Trump tantrums and pitting the interests of one group of US workers against another won’t change that.
I saw / read your links. Thanks for those.
Back in the day, managers conducted risk analysis to identify potential issues and made plans to mitigate those risks. Having a single source of supply for a critical material doesn’t strike me as being too bright. Even more so considering that Trump has been raging about trade, NAFTA and tariffs for some time.
You and I would agree on the source of the trade problems.
If you’ve watched any of the unedited Trump pressers, he makes it clear that he doesn’t blame the other countries or industries. He blames his predecessors in the US for giving away the candy store.
As Yves said the other day, Trump enjoys giving the elites the middle finger. He always has. Now he gets to do it from the White House. Will it help anyone? Who knows, but there wasn’t anyone else stepping forward to fight the fight.
“Beware the Democrats and Their Good Billionaires”
Now there is a coincidence. I just saw Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz on a Jimmy Dore show at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHpN7X9iK3o this morning. Jimmy Dore was tearing strips off Schultz’s statements and his ideas in his usual fashion. You do not want this turkey to be anywhere near public office.
I’d love a schultz vs. Sanders primary for 2020, and i suspect bernie would, too.
Let’s not underestimate the usefulness of billionaire stupidity to clear the field or at least drown out other neoliberal politicans!!!
Sigh. 2016.
If Sanders runs, he’ll be happy to have as many centrist wannabes as possible in the early going.
1) Divides party apparatchiks and machinery between several opponents, and
2) Chops up that voting Bloc in a way that would give him pretty clear sailing until it got winnowed down too a single great centrist hope.
(By saying centrist, I feel I’m being unduly charitable)
Worked for Trump.
You don’t think venti, vidi, vici has a shot?
Same issues with banner ad slightly covering site name, longish scroll down to reach table of contents, on both Samsung phones
(I had thought it might be due to an ad blocker, though not 100% sure I have one still installed):
Galaxy s5, android 6.0.1, Firefox 55.0.2
Galaxy s8+, android 8.0.0, Firefox 60.0.2
from Jesse’s Cafe, referencing a link also posted here yesterday:
“t also helps to understand the stubborn commitment to global ‘trade treaties’ by corporate Democrats that tend to elevate international bureaucracies and rules bodies, dominated by corporate lobbyists, over the inclinations of their own national electorates.
Obama’s determined slogging for the TPP, even as his intended Democratic successor was being electorally eviscerated for her perceived corporatist elitism, was otherwise inexplicable given his sophistication in managing perceptions.”
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
It also explains, imo, why the DCCC is determined to stop progressive candidates in the party, going so far as to undermine the general election campaigns of Dem progressives who win their primary elections.
Once again, the answer to the age-old question, “Are they stupid or are they evil?” is, stupid in service of evil.
J.W. Mason’s review of Quinn Slobodian’s important book is wonderfully clear. Neoliberalism has been remarkably successful in clothing its policy designs in a disguise composed of anodyne aspirations regarding “freedom” and “growth” as well as relentless blaming of “rent-seeking” and the alleged incapacity of government “bureaucracy”. A normative political consensus that “we” are all seeking the same things, but just differ ideologically about ways and means has aided the obfuscation. Dani Rodrik in an article linked a couple of days ago was classically wondering aloud about whether “neoliberalism” was even a thing, or just a catch-all insult.
Mason notes that Slobodian leaves little doubt that neoliberalism has been a definite ideology and political movement, and Mason is very clear that the neoliberals have opposed, effectively, democratic and egalitarian values.
Thanks for linking to this again. It wasn’t the first time I read Mason’s review, but it was worth a second read.
Are they stupid or evil? They are the same. Empathy breeds carefulness and accuracy. I refer to your post below about the PBS Russian story not making sense. The spin masters don’t care, hence they can’t be bothered with basic accuracy.
“You know, I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, this is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity, a week before the website opens, if I thought that it wasn’t going to work.” -Barack Obama during the fallout of the ACA website rollout.
Yes, Obama might not be as stupid as he describes, but he was stupid enough to not keep up with his “signature” legislation. Largely, the failure of the roll out goes back to Obama’s desire to appease the powers that be versus caring about a good policy. We see it with Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos. Elon Musk. Hillary. Back in 2007, facing a strong challenger, she tried to rig the primary calendar. Backlash to those efforts led to Michigan delegates not counting. Instead of honoring the existing rules and focusing her efforts on GOTV efforts of say nursing homes and understanding delegate allocation, the Clinton campaign tried to rig the contest and seemed to not bother with the election process.
Take the VA scandal under Obama. Becoming President after Bush had a VA scandal, one might think Obama would keep his eye on the ball. Nope. Even Mark Warner called for Shinseki to be sacked, and Mark is lazy.
My favorite recent example of stupid and evil is the littlest Kennedy who has called his vote to massively increase the nuclear stockpile and give that power to Trump a vote he made by “mistake.”
I don’t know if he was stupid but he was a con man. He shilled hard for the insurance, hospital and Pharma knowing fully well he’d have rewards awaiting him at the finish line. He had a golden opportunity to be a great president by nationalizing the big banks and teaching wall street a lesson but he almost tripped over himself in his urgency to kiss their b**ts.
Yes. I think so.
Reading J.W.Mason’s review of Slobodian’s book had the same effect on me as watching an apparently blank piece of photo paper in developing solution suddenly reveal a recognisable image. Great essay.
To add another article I think can be read in light of Slobodian’s work: Thomas Frank’s ‘Nor a Lender Be’, Harpers April 2016 issue.
“You can find dozens of examples of this kind of liberal-class virtue quest if you try, but instead of listing them, let me go straight to the point: this is not politics. It’s an imitation of politics. It feels political, yes: it’s highly moralistic, it sets up an easy melodrama of good versus bad, it allows you to make all kinds of judgments about people you disagree with. But ultimately it’s a diversion, a way of putting across a policy program while avoiding any sincere discussion of the policies in question. The virtue quest is an exciting moral crusade that seems to be extremely important but at the conclusion of which you discover you’ve got little to show for it besides NAFTA, bank deregulation, and a prison-building spree.
….
“What was most attractive about microlending was what it was not, what it made unnecessary: any sort of collective action by poor people coming together in governments or unions. ….”
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/nor-a-lender-be/
We will see soon if 2016 has made them (the DCCC) so determined to never let 2016 happen again, and if they will succeed, now that they claim they won’t be surprised again.
To expect anything less from the Democrats is not helpful.
In fact, more drastic, desperate responses should be not surprising.
Twitter thread with links to local news stories from WI, PA, OH, FL, TN about businesses being hurt now or concerned about future impact of new tariff policies. (Link)
Shouldn’t Maduro and co take at least a little bit of responsibility for that? They had almost 20 years to lessen the dependency on oil (which should have been urgent given that their major buyer is the US). Consider Iran and Russia whose economies are relatively stable despite also being subjected to sanctions.
The level of poverty, disease, and illiteracy in Venezuela when the US-sponsored oligarchs were thrown out made that the top priority. It’s all well and good to say “they should have done more to diversify” if you ignore the fact people were dying. And it was precisely in hope that driving the people back into desperation would convince them to overthrow the government the US didn’t want running things those sanctions were imposed in the first place.
Maduro is fully aware depending on one industry is a disaster, and was in the process of working on doing something about it. But the people will always come first with his government, and those people know it. They’d rather go down with him than submit to the nastiness that is neoliberal feudalism again.
About tonight’s antidote du jour. Are you sure it is a good idea publishing that image? The Dieterich Native Species Treatment Center is in Colorado but that is apparently a Canadian Lynx that that girl is holding for treatment and anything Canadian is not in Trump’s good books at the moment. :)
Rumors of trrrrrrssst Canadian Lynx from up over are not to be underestimated, especially in light of the turn in events from the Gulag Hockeypelago being an ally-to being meek, not unlike the milk cows that are the cause of the lacked dose tariff distress between our two countries.
Things are escalating quickly in the states, by the way.
I saw packages of Canadian Bacon in the supermarket, where the forename was Sharpie’d out, with the word “Back” written in it’s place above.
I feel certain the next shipment will do away with the offensive wording on the packaging, which will alleviate tensions somewhat.
Couldn’t they just call it “Freedom Bacon” or something?
I used to ‘Freedom Press’ about a liter of coffee in the morning back in the early days of ‘ssshrubery not getting the frogs to play along, but that was before Libya, so it’s safe to call it by the proper name now.
Canadians call it back bacon. Back Bacon on a Bun is a delicious treat in Toronto. SO the culprit in this case was probably a pedantic Canadian vegan, not some Trumpist yahoo.
A pedantic Canadian vegan would be spotted running askance from the meat department-not towards it, if I know my know it all vegans no matter their nationality, so no.
p.s.
If there is an unbearable tariff on comedians from Canada, we’ll make do somehow with our native born talent, and yeah laughs will be fewer, but the bar will be lowered on joke job employment.
Canadians don’t call it “Canadian bacon”. They call it “English bacon” or “back bacon”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_bacon
Similarly, The French don’t call French fries that. The French and Belgians simply called them “frites”. It was the Americans who called them French fried potatoes. http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/the-history-of-french-fries/
So Americans may feel good about renaming offending foods to “Freedom whatever” but the originating countries don’t care because they don’t use the term the Americans use. The move just becomes another source of international amusement.
The English call them Chips.
What the US call chips the English call Potato Crisps.
What the US calls beer the English call swill.
In addition, the French and Belgians have their frites with a big dollop with mayonnaise on them. When I was there, they served them out in a cone container. Delicious!
A hare raising development.
Sorry
Ha!
On a more serious note, some nice background on the wildlife rehab center – since renamed – featured in the photo:
https://thistle25.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/big-kitty/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/06/09/borderseparations/Z95z4eFZjyfqCLG9pyHjAO/story.html
Ja. “We were just following orders.”
Re: Olive Garden Review
That’s good on Anthony Bourdain, for defending that reviewer. To a good chunk of the country, Olive Garden is a pretty decent place to get a meal. Grand Forks, after all, doesn’t have the culture or sophistication of, say, Fargo.
Pierre gives you 4 stars for your review of the review of the review.
Wukchumni
June 10, 2018 at 10:38 am
Alas, in this review I cannot give you 5 stars, but only a meager 4.8 stars for your review of the review of the review of the review, because although a witty review, it was derivative….
Had to curse, again, your review of the review of the …
ROFL!!!
Axtually, as far as restaurants go, I’d say the opposite, although I think Fargo may have more variety and ethnic food.
I understand why Howard Schultz and other reach-across-the-aisle Dems are described as “centrist.”
But really, it makes no sense, does it? After all, to take two issues, a majority of Americans favor Medicare for all and a strong plurality even favors Sanders’ federal job guarantee. Those are routinely described as leftist ideas. But if a majority of Americans favor them, doesn’t this put them at the real center of the spectrum?
Thus the bulk of Dems and Repubs in Washington are right-wing and way out of kilter with the people. The fact that they are not routinely characterized as such in the media means that journalists in general are right-leaning as well. Hence, we have the real fake news.
It’s all about definitions, I suppose.
They can also be described as populists, in the sense of their representing the common people.
Centrists should be the same as populists, unless most people are not in the center, which could happen. Then, you can be in the center but do not represent most people.
It is that damn elitist education. The ivy stained schools teach what happened to the french in le revolution, and of course it is claimed to be leftist trauma. So rich people are (rightfully) afraid of the simplistic form and function of le guillotine. They dream of being Louis without Robespierre.
The rich are terrified and are doing everything they can to have a nice ’round em up and shoot a poor’ decade. But it won’t end well for them. Guillotines are cheap to make and the plans are readily available on the internet and in public libraries.
The irony is that the French Revolution began when there were discussions of heavy taxes on wealthy landowners to pay for the debts that France had incurred supporting the American Revolution as well as agricultural challenges. The wealthy initiated a meeting to push back on being taxed, but the “Third Estate” (non-noble-people) organized and started to take over the process which then cascaded into chaos and did not end with the outcome desired by the previously very powerful noblemen.
There are potentially lessons here for the .1%….
https://www.history.com/topics/french-revolution
Bernie finally speaks out about the unconstitutional foreign policy that is this country now. So why did he support HRC? I love Jimmy Dore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJvoIIeeCVU&feature=youtu.be
What doesn’t kill makes you stronger.
Does it? Is the above always true?
Has the surprise take-over attack of 2016 made Hillary and her fellow corporate Democrats stronger?
Will they do better this November?
Have they done better recently?
Have they sworn to be ‘never fooled again?”
Was 2016 a rare chance to resist all the way, by refusing to endorse?
“So why did he support HRC?” Because he said he would support the democrat party nominee when he declared his candidacy as a Democrat. One of the reasons for his success is he is not a liar like most politicians. (IMO, ‘liar’ and ‘politician’ are nearly synonymous). I’m a big Jimmy Dore fan but he has said several times that Sanders “sold out”. I define some of the ‘sell outs’ as folks like some of those at TYT who voted for Clinton (and said so) in the solid blue state of California.
Will he have to make the same promise again?
Was it necessary before he ran?
I like Bernie but it’s hard not to call him a sell out when he keeps caucusing with the DimRats and yet calls himself an independent!
Any agreement is obviated by fraud.
If I told you to use my money to buy a used car, I wouldn’t be impressed with your honesty for following through with a deal if it turned out that the seller delivered the car in a condition very different than originally represented.
Me too, and man was it heartening to hear Sanders speak those words. I need to go back and look at the dare and time. It’s been ansomewhat large political weekend, and I wonder about timing. The 10% Dems attack with Pay Go and closing the nomination process to outsiders. Bernie says what he was never willing to say in ’16, points out the imperial elephant in the room, the devastating impact everywhere from our war machine. I’d never heard him anywhere close to this.
I’m wondering which came first, Bernie’s remarks or the heavy establishment dem attack?
Says what he was never willing to say in ’16.
Will he do something he was not willing to do in ’16 – go all out, let the chips fall where they may and trust the people to act, if not in ’16 or ’18?
Are we experiencing Half-Revolution?
For the thousandth time, because he said he would, and Bernie is a man of his word. Plus, he understood all too well a Republican trifecta would be the very disaster we now witness (unless we depend on the corporate media for information, in which case we only know what TRUMP!!! tweeted last). I wish I understood why those two facts are so hard for so many people to get their heads around. Or why so many people wanted the man to abandon everything he has ever stood for.
For some reason this didn’t post… first time round?
finally Bernie speaks about the unconstitutional endless wars in this country. Love Jimmy Dore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJvoIIeeCVU&feature=youtu.be
oops. sorry for the double posting.
Very sorry for Anthony Bourdain.
When you look behind the curtain of modern society, some very dark secrets are revealed. In a way, we are all dealing with these same demons- all in our own way. Not to mention, looking into your own soul and discovering what you find there.
There are times when carrying on business as usual does not suffice.
It is coming to terms with the tragedy of modern life- of finding hope and meaning- a purpose.
All seekers of truth choose a difficult road to travel- but they often leave behind insights and observations that enable others to carry on.
There is always talk of a persons legacy- what they leave behind. From my experience of Anthony Bourdain, through his shows and writing, he seemed to always seek to find the extraordinary embedded in the ordinary.
This sensitivity toward the ordinary is needed now more than ever. Anthony Bourdain talked about food, and also much more.
I was pretty floored by Bourdain’s death.
One of the links asks if Elizabeth Holmes is a sociopath, describing such a person as having a lack of conscience. I’ve always thought of a sociopath as having a complete lack of empathy. And to me, Bourdain was the opposite of a sociopath – he was someone who had a very highly tuned sense of empathy…he might have even felt “too much”.
Unfortunately as a society we seem to value/protect the sociopaths more so than those on the opposite end of the spectrum. We are conditioned to idolize money with the message that rich people are somehow more virtuous. We’ve become the richest country in the world and yet the majority of Americans live paycheck to paycheck and in a constant state of fear and anxiety. Our currency is not tied to any index but we can’t even enjoy the positives that might come from such a situation because of the unequal ties between labor and currency. The world is dangerously out of balance. Could it be that Bourdain realized that? Are there members of the 1% who realize this – and if they do realize this are they complicit because of the realization? It reminds me of the “This is America” video where the last shot is D. Glover running away, terrified by what is chasing him.
A death is a tragedy…
Another: Any man’s diminishes me…(even Pol Pot?)
We all have to face our own mortality in our own ways. From the little I have read, I don’t why he chose the path he did. I can only respect his choice, not know how many will make the same jump.
I have met a few people like Bourdain whose hard-bitten and cynical personas mask a highly developed sense of empathy. If you are, for example, in a situation where people are making jokes at your expense or teasing you, and it’s starting to cross the line to the point where you are getting genuinely upset, the Bourdains of the world are invariably the very first ones to notice and pitch in on your side.
Re: Bad Dog robot is shocking China’s youth out of their loneliness.
So lonely people are bad? Nice job blaming the victim here.
So the answer to the destruction of social life by technology is of course more tech! It never dawns on modern people that maybe some forms of “progress” are not beneficial and that tech advances are not always good. But most modern people cannot bring themselves to criticize technology in any serious way since it has largely replaced religion as the source of hope and meaning in our lives.
Also, I will never understand why some people look to China as some kind of model. The Chinese seem to be trying to win a race with other advanced countries to see which nation can become a cyberpunk dystopia sooner.
Countries should be compared wholistically, not just on infrastructure achievements.
Otherwise, if you compare, say public transportation, like rail and making trains run on time, China is another Mussolini’s Italy.
But we should not jump to that conclusion so quickly.
‘So lonely people are bad? Nice job blaming the victim here.’
I wonder what the effect would be of requiring everybody at a young age to be completely isolated for a week but somewhere natural like an island or a desert. Give them plenty to eat and drink but no books, internet, radio, tv, just nothing to do but be alone with themselves for awhile.
Re: Peacocks attacking luxury cars
They’re calling it a problem, I call it poetic justice. The universe can have a real sly sense of humor sometimes. Let’s hope the phenomenon spreads.
In my experience, the peacocks of Rancho Palos Verdes never discriminated in terms of make or model.
I see. Perhaps, then, the message is that the automobile itself is an expression of human vanity, even old crappy ones.
The ultimate symbol of animus towards automobile…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lKXdVqEFWM
A friend arrived on the scene about 30 minutes after it happened, and the fellows whose car the 1,500 year old giant sequoia crushed flat, told him that it sounded like a jet airplane engine out of control as it came down as they were a few hundred yards away from their late Jeep Cherokee.
They had to use the jaws of life to extract one of the guys wallets from the back seat.
They attack any car (reflection), not just luxury. I guess the journalist doesn’t know any po folk.
Peacocks are Airorist threats not to be taken lightly.
p.p.s.
Ever seen a set of peacock whitewall tires, with their runny excrement encrusted where black used to be on the sides?
Especially pigeons – they bomb every car, every human, every tree or rock in sight, when armed (or winged).
Hi, I have a Galaxy S7 and have always experienced the ad overlap at the top of the page. A few months ago I also went through a period of a few weeks where I couldn’t browse the site for more than 30 seconds or a minute before I was forcibly redirected to one of those predatory ad pages that tries to force you to click the screen, but that seems to have subsided now. I’ll email you if it starts happening again
It’s so odd having an embarrassment-proof leader, an untouchable with peccable manners that makes you to cringe, that is until the next episode.
I’m getting used to it now, which is a bummer, man.
OMG! I want to be the girl holding the Lynx..!
Me, too! Gorgeous animal.
We had Lynx, Bobcat & Mtn Lion where I formerly lived, but I never had the opportunity to photograph any of the big cats since they only came in at night, when they would ‘dine & dash’ on my chickens despite my best efforts at keeping them out. (finally succeeded)
I always thought it rude of them, since I had (unintentionally) fed them so well yet they never hung around for pictures.
However, reading the comments in the tweet, many other folks feel the same way about how beautiful & cuddly they appear, so I’m hoping some fools don’t decide they’d make a good pet after seeing that. *heavy sigh*
Jealous…never lived anyplace where there was a “threat” of wild animals. Dream of mine!
I say…let’s save the wild animals….and protect ourselves from the peaceful humans!
Here Here! :)
Love the antidote pic… HERE KITTY KITTY.
What is a smart phone? My dog decided to crunch and gnaw on my old flip phone so insurancereplaced the Huawei with an Alcatel and it toook four of us two days to figure out where to plug in the charger.
Pixel 2 running Android 8.1 (most recent update). The links page looks fine in both portrait and landscape using Chrome.
You don’t need actual phones or user polls to test your site on phone-sized screens. Google “Firefox Responsive Design Mode”. Chrome has a similar tool called Device Mode.
Apple has something similar in Safari.
Use Responsive Design Mode to simulate how your website appears on other screen sizes and Apple devices, such as iPhone and iPad.
Choose Develop > Enter Responsive Design Mode.
If you don’t see the Develop menu in the menu bar, choose Safari > Preferences, click Advanced, then select “Show Develop menu in menu bar.”
But, the emulators don’t have the buggy richness of the actual device :)
I can’t see it, but it sounds like one of the floating containers is not generating height.
I have a Princess phone, rotary dial with cord.
The only import from Canada we’d really feel a tariff pinch on would be the kitty opiates that go by the name of Temptations, it’s feline crack for the uninitiated. Normally cats ignore you as much as possible, but one shake of the canister and they’re like putty in my hands.
Iraqi ballot box storage site catches fire in Baghdad [Reuters]
Printed ballots, counted in public, burned as needed.
I usually try to avoid all things Russiagate, Spygate and the rest as dangerous to mental health, but I foolishly thought I would steel myself to give the PBS “giant” Timeline a try.
I got as far as “Three Bombshells, One Day“. Overlooking the overwrought headline for a moment, one of their “bombshells” is: “Wikileaks posts Podesta emails from DNC hack.” Their narrative is that “an hour after” the Access Hollywood tape was released, Wikileaks released a bunch of emails “from the DNC hack”. And this narrative tidbit is tagged for authentication (I guess that’s the rhetorical purpose of the tag) with “Politifact reports”.
Just factually, this is very confused. Wikipedia confirms for me that Wikileaks began releasing the Podesta emails on that day in the PBS timeline, but the Podesta emails, which were downloaded from Gmail using Podesta’s password which he had given up to a spear-fishing exploit after his idiot tech guy typed “legitimate” for “illegitimate”, were quite separate from the emails supposedly “hacked” from the DNC server and released first by DCLeaks in June and July (and by Wikileaks in July and November).
I feel like I am killing brain cells even trying to wade thru this single, roughly 25 word item from PBS. What is wrong with these people!?
Years ago, during an illness with accompanying insomnia, I watched late-night teevee preachers to pass time, and I was amazed at how some of these characters would push on the bounds of credibility with their audience. One guy based locally would show movies of the Tennessee Walking Horses he bought with the money his working class congregation donated.
I feel like the factual carelessness is the message. To me, the gratuitous “Politifact reported” in this particular item was added to make that point.
But, still, somehow, in my literal mindedness, I am not sure what meaning I am supposed to get from that message. Are the PBS reporters signalling their own organization’s untrustworthiness?
I am honestly puzzled and would appreciate any insights. Especially from anyone able to wade further than I into the swamp.
It’s their job to make this look like Rocket Surgery. You could build a party on the issues where American’s agree by 60-70 percent. That must be avoided. Ponder Michael Crichton’s ‘Gell Mann Amnesia Effect.’ Anyone still watching the talking heads who lied us into Iraq is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. But is their alliance with the Talking Head personally or the order they represent?
For instance, a few hundred thousand insurance jobs versus the health of three hundred million has to be turned into a hard question.
Off topic. for the non-apple/Samsung crowd, recommend the Motorola G4 play. Removable battery, unlocked for all carriers, micro-SIM. If functionality is more important than style for you.
Probably one of the last phones from the major manufacturers with a removable battery .
https://global.handelsblatt.com/finance/create-money-swiss-vote-promises-revolution-929244
Few understand one of the most important economic realities there is, “What is money and how it is created?” In a world run by bankers, should it surprise anybody that money [along with just about everything else] is debt?
Understand the transformation of labor [value] into an abstraction [its money-form] followed by the creation of money as debt, you begin to understand that the term “debt-serf” is not too far off the mark.
Any semblance of freedom is only possible if the individual controls their own labor. The dark side of money lies in its ability to obfuscate this abstraction.
If money is to be created by being spent into exist, should the people be asked who should do the spending?
1 the pentagon
2. the entire government
3. banks
4. the 1%
5. the people
etc
Should that descriptive fact be
A. first made to the people (any presidential him/herself believes that?)
B. ask the people to vote on it
Whoever creates money should not be allowed to be able to spend it (when first created) more than other participants in the system.
It leads to all kinds of conflict of interest.
That should be the key design parameter of any monetary system.
The site looks excellent on my phone — a ZTE “Bolton” (such ironies!) running 7.1.1.
However I use a browser called Brave which is very effective at deleting almost all ads. Since I enjoy the site very much I promise I will make a contribution!
reading a blog post about isolation and which had this visual:
https://me.me/i/best-party-ever-the-new-generation-9026357
>Trump’s Policies Paying Off For Man Who Helped Make Him President: Vladimir Putin HuffPo
I’m always amazed when I see nonsense like this, in light of the fact that we’re in a Cold War 2.0 that many say is more dangerous than the first one.
Let’s hope for some good news out of Singapore today.
iPhone 5s, Ghostery browser. Big blank frame overlapping title and stretching down to motto.
If you can’t find either of those two nearby (such that you can do it almost daily), I think being active here with the rest of the Naked Capitalism community is a good alternative.
Of course, you also need to walk a little faster (per a recent link) so you can live longer (is that the third key to longevity?).
Does a commenter have to be registered with this site or WordPress in order for the reply [to a particular comment] link, shown under each comment, to work?
No, but sometimes there’s a brief glitch. Check the contact page to report tech issues
Thanks for the response marym. I no longer use email, which is needed to contact the hosts, but if they are reading, I’m using the latest version of SeaMonkey. With scripting allowed, I attempted to use the reply (to a specific comment) link, for my first comment here (https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/05/links-5-28-18.html#comment-2974602) and it didn’t work. I have also allowed scripting in this reponse but it doesn’t look like my reply is going to end up under marym’s comment which I’m replying to.
I’ve not had this problem replying to Word Press comments previously, so I’m unsure how to correct it.
wonderful, and thanks marym!, looks like it worked that time,usually WordPress notes the person replied to so I didn’t think it would work this time either.
Meanwhile, coming to you from the News That You Can Use Department – “Japan falls in love with gorgeous Russian policewoman on horse (PHOTOS)”. Story at-
https://www.rt.com/news/429338-japan-love-russian-police/
Testing to see if it will work without scripting. and thanks again, marym!
I guess the reply (to a particular comment) link doesn’t work without scripting, for anyone else curious who might still be on dial up for cost limitations, area constraints,or privacy. SeaMonkey, which is somewhat new to me, seems to make scripting a bit less slow than my last browser though, I just wish the Mozilla Parent would utterly disconnect from Google reliance, I’m thinking of trying Pale Moon for that reason.
Samsug Galaxy J7 Android 7.1.1
It works fine with the white space others have described between title and beginning of links but otherwise totally fine.
Also have a Samsung tablet SM-T280, I can’t find the operating system. It looks even better than phone and I do most of my reading on it.
Lol. I just looked at my laptop on Firefox and an ad is partially covering the Naked Capitalism name there!
“The ‘West’ Is Past”
In that now famous photo of the confrontational Trump sitting while surrounded by the other G6 members, I noticed something odd. Do you note how Abe from Japan is mirroring Trump’s crossed arms? And when I think about it, I don’t think that there has been so many show-downs with the Japanese as the rest of his ‘allies’.
Monkey see, monkey do.
Watching CNN tonight for the first time in many years … but only because they’re showing an Anthony Bourdain retrospective. Parts Unknown visits Berlin – mmm, that Wienerschnitzel reminds me of the ones my Austrian grandma used to make. Great scene wher he and one of his local hosts sit in a dinner-and-a-movie-theater, watching Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, trying various German wines to see what goes best with messy, yummy working-class food treats like the German-Turkish culinary mash-up Donnerkebab, as Bourdain waxes about the still-socially relevant themes of the film: corporate greed and the role of individual activism in the context of an oppressive society. Great stuff.
Hmmphh. Watching CNN. It could be worse. There is a channel called SBS in Australia which caters to all the emigrants in Australia and use to have a good news program. Now? Not so much. Last night I scanned the TV guide and found that they had two docos on. The first was called “John McCain: Maverick” and the other was part one of a four parter called “Fourth Estate: The NY Times and Trump: The First 100 Days”. So one catered for those who would align with Republicans here in Oz and the other with Clinton Democrats. Seeing more and more of this extremism as time goes by and less middle of the roaders.
Gave up and watched a good quality Italian detective mystery instead.
Good post from Caitlin Johnstone
Why Bringing Assange Home Would Be The Best Possible Thing For Australia