How Burnsville, Minnesota, cut its carbon emissions nearly 30 percent Yale Climate Connections
Last Month Just “Obliterated” Temperature Records as The Hottest June to Date Science Alert
Beyond Meat fever turns the tiny pea into America’s hot new crop Seattle Times
Looking on the Bright Side of Livestock Emotions—the Potential of Their Transmission to Promote Positive Welfare Frontiers in Veterinary Science
A deadly, drug-resistant fungus has swept the globe—here’s how it spreads Ars Technica
Strong US jobs data shifts rates expectations FT
July 4 Wrapup
Evening in America: What it felt like on Trump’s Fourth of July WaPo
Pentagon Guidance to Troops in Trump’s July 4th Event: Say I Love My Tank Mother Jones (Re Silc).
Flag Fashion The Big Picture (Re Silc).
U.S. Flag Recalled After Causing 143 Million Deaths The Onion (RH).
U.S. Army to drop ‘US’ from name over past links to slavery Duffel Blog
China?
The Anti-China Graffiti Left Behind By Hong Kong Protesters: In Pictures Bloomberg
Protest suicides spark concern in Hong Kong Asia Times
Why Are Migrant Workers Joining the Hong Kong Protests? The Diplomat
First Hong Kong protested. Now it’s Wuhan, China. What makes it Beijing’s latest headache? Los Angeles Times
* * * China Stresses ‘Zero Tolerance’ for Failures to Report Swine Fever Caixin Live
China’s Belt and Road Initiative, from the inside looking out The Interpreter
China winning new Cold War on the Mekong Asia Times
Singapore needs sand, but its neighbors refuse to sell Quartz
Syraqistan
Iran blasts Britain’s ‘piracy’ after Royal Marines detain oil tanker in Gibraltar Telegraph
Israeli government minister takes credit for 27 U.S. states passing anti-BDS laws MondoWeiss (DK).
Trump is finished with the Afghan war Indian Punchline
Brexit
Boris Johnson urged to form election pact with Nigel Farage The Times
No-deal Brexit risks breaking up UK, warns Theresa May Guardian
Both parties need to recognise that civil service impartiality is worth protecting Institute for Government
Bury bodies along UK’s motorways to ease burial crisis, expert suggests Guardian. I’ve always wanted to know where they bury the bodies.
2020
Warren takes on Harris and Biden in battle for black support Politico
People aren’t thrilled about Kamala Harris selling ‘That Little Girl Was Me’ T-shirts: ‘Hollow and calculated’ Yahoo News. Post-debate, still germane.
Democratic Senate hopes hinge on Trump tide The Hill
Sydney Ember’s Secret Sources FAIR. Times reporter on the Sanders beat.
New Cold War
Russian missiles for Turkey? What’s at stake as collision looms. The Christian Science Monitor
Most enjoyable Russia book of the year? Beyond the Kremlin
RussiaGate
CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims Aaron Maté, RealClearInvestigations
Trump Transition
2020 census questionnaires go to printer without citizenship question — but government says it will continue to look for “path forward” (UPDATED) SCOTUSBlog but Trump Considering an Executive Order to Allow Citizenship Question on Census NYT
Report: Pentagon Should Assume US Satellites Are Already Hacked Defense One
Police State Watch
Death of Dog Trainer Highlights Strenuous Heat and Working Conditions at Texas Prisons Texas Observer
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Alexa Goes to ISTE: Edtech Companies—and Teachers—Debut New Skills for Learning EdSurge
Boeing 737 MAX
European regulator sets out issues before 737 Max can return to skies FT
Libra
Inside the Congressional Staff Meeting About Libra Prospect (DK). From last week, still germane.
Guillotine Watch
Measles for the One Percent Vaccines, Waldorf schools, and the problem with liberal Luddites. The Cut
Class Warfare
Abigail Disney: ‘I’m choosing to be a traitor to my class’ FT
When big data aren’t the answer and Reply to Perrykkad and Hohwy: When big data are the answer PNAS
‘Rewiring nerves’ reverses hand and arm paralysis BBC
Antidote du jour (via):
From Okunoshima, Japan’s Bunny Island. And a bonus antidote:
This machine is called HappyCow and it actually makes cows happy. Any cow can boot this device by making a slight pressure against the brush. After the device is turned on, the brush will work for about 60 seconds, cleaning and delighting the animal https://t.co/Ek5linlrMc pic.twitter.com/cGzv5XwdJD
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) June 29, 2019
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
155 comments
Comments are closed.
I’ve come to the realization reading the politics pieces today that most of the descriptions of mainstream Democrat candidates as “center left” make complete sense, IF you are looking through the same spectrum as the 10% professional class. Indeed, to those people, Sanders is a radical leftist and Mitch McConnell a moderate Republican.
So of course that’s the lens that the media uses.
Agreed. Jill Stein is slightly left of center on actual issues. I’ll bet Bernie and Tulsi are closest to center among all candidates running now.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016
Yet, Bernie+Tulsi, as V.P. would defeat Trump.
No other Democrat(s) can.
IMHO
The latest political suicide from the ‘democrats:
A new bill is set to be introduced by the Democrats [Silicon Valley’s Zoe Lofgren] that will increase the number of refugees we take in each year to 100,000.
(From Central America ONLY + plus all other countries in the world).
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-05/immigration-when-do-we-get-too-many
Compare and contrast:
March 16, 20 16
WASHINGTON (CN) – The House Judiciary Committee approved a bill Wednesday that would slash the number of refugees the United States admits each year by a third, and give states the right to refuse to resettle refugees in their borders.
Passing the committee with 18 votes to 9, the Refugee Program Integrity Act will also allow Congress to set the yearly ceiling for refugee admissions, a power that currently belongs to the president.
https://www.courthousenews.com/anti-refugee-bill-floats-through-house-committee/
No, no one cares much regarding the VP unless the choice is terrible (Palin). And even then maybe not (Dan Quayle). Usually they are meant to attract votes from areas of the country where the candidate is perceived to need a boost. Hawaii does not have a lot of voters. And Sanders + Tulsi, as much as I like her, is too high controversy. If you think the MSM is after Sanders, you greatly underestimate what would happen if he managed to prevail and chose Tulsi.
Someone like Tammy Baldwin is a more likely choice.
Never thought of Baldwin. Will investigate.
As much as I like Gabbard, I don’t want her to rob votes from Sanders in the zero sum game California primary, hence the V.P. suggestion.
Yes, she’d have to “give them up to Sanders” before the primary.
Not just Hawaii voters, do you not think nominee Sanders, plus [Major] Gabbard, as V.P., would attract a large number of veterans and active military who might otherwise vote for Trump?
Negative MSM press, for Gabbard, versus just ignoring her as now, might be good press for Bernie + her, if Trump pulls a real boner to alienate all voters between now and election day. Also, it would be good for her in 2024.
Fantasy: Nominee Biden asks Gabbard to be his V.P. to beat Trump for “party unity” and the military vote.
Third mimosa fantasy, Trump asks her.
Not sure that Mayor Booty-Judge will be too happy with that. He’s our DNC-approved gay-of-the-moment.
Of course, Bernie will be in no position to be choosing anyone for a VP slot since I have a better chance of being the Dem nominee than Bernie does.
Actually, I think that’s why he *should* choose Tulsi. Basically, force the issue. Also, fail-safe: they *really* won’t want her as president, so they won’t touch Sanders.
Honestly 100,000 is almost nothing at this point. I’ve been seeing illegal border crossing arrest figures well north of that (144,000+) on a monthly basis. The vast majority are being released and told to show up for an asylum hearing later, which again, the overwhelming majority never do. This means over a million people are being granted de-facto citizenship each year since “sanctuary” states like California will give these illegal immigrants a driver’s license (official US ID) healthcare, education, housing assistance etc all while permitting them to earn money in the black market economy shielding their earnings from taxation and making sure they will always qualify for multiple forms of public assistance, all this while they drive down wages and working conditions for the native born attempting to operate in the above-ground W-4 economy.
Unless these lawless sanctuary cities/states are brought to heel and E-Verify becomes the law of the land for every single employer I don’t see how any of the laws governing immigration matter. They are simply a complete and total farce.
When Trump drops all of his yip-yap about walls and starts pushing 100% mandatory e-verify requirements for every employer, then you will know Republicans are finally interested in cracking down on illegal immigration. Right now I see two parties committed to the same neo-liberal mass immigration agenda with different performative optics for their various voter demographics.
This
Re: MondoWeiss article
The government official quoted in the article stated in his speech in New York that, “They [BDS leaders] couldn’t care less about the real human rights violations, for example in Syria and Iran.”
The voters of those states that approved anti-BDS legislation may want to know about the work of the regime and its military directives, to wit…
If this were a fencing match, the counter by the opponent’s épée could strike in this fashion:
(from https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/shoot-protesters-while-they-rest-israels-new-rules)
An Israeli military document states that snipers are permitted to shoot Palestinians who it determines to be “key instigators” or “key rioters” during Great March of Return protests in Gaza. “Key rioters” are defined as those whose behavior “provide the conditions for which mass breach or infiltration” into Israel from Gaza may occur.
The independent human rights experts tapped by the UN to probe Israel’s use of force against the Great March of Return investigated all protest fatalities occurring between the launch of the demonstrations on 30 March 2018 through the end of that year…The commission of inquiry noted only one incident on 14 May 2018 “that may have amounted to ‘direct participation in hostilities’” and another incident on 12 October that year “that may have constituted an ‘imminent threat to life or serious injury’ to Israeli security forces. In all other cases, the commission found, “the use of live ammunition by Israeli security forces against demonstrators was unlawful.”
The United States doesn’t subsidize Syria and Iran with billions upon billions every year. American society doesn’t treat Syria and Iran like the favored child and respond to their monstrous crimes with praise and rewards.
The Fungus:
For the new study, researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the City of Chicago Public Health Department tried to pin down how it gets onto those surfaces, which they hope can lead to a way to prevent its dispersal. They conducted their work in a ventilator-capable skilled nursing facility currently battling an outbreak, which started with a single case in March of 2017. Despite rigorous decontamination efforts, including bleaching surfaces and wiping down patients, 71 percent of residents have now tested positive for the fungus.
The fungus mostly sticks to healthcare settings, stealing into the blood of vulnerable patients where it causes invasive infections marked by nondescript fever and chills. It’s commonly resistant to multiple drugs, and some isolates have been found to resist all three classes of antifungal drugs, making it extremely difficult if not impossible to cure. Experts estimate that C. auris infections have a fatality rate somewhere between 30% and 60%.
Re: The Fungus
The past days’ CA earthquakes should remind us of the potential for Valley Fever following the roiling of the soil that can unearth the fungus coccidioides. As the previous message highlights, fungal infections, as well as bacterial and viral infections, must be tested regarding antimicrobial resistance (AMR) before prescribing hitherto successful medical interventions as the wrong medication — one that is AMR — can be seriously harmful or deadly.
More on Valley Fever
Mention is made of cases of Valley Fever after a 2012 CA earthquake.
Do they bother ever opening the windows and allow a natural recycling of atmosphere and do they allow enough sunshine in to do its historical biological magic or are they too worried about saving a few pennies and keep a closed cycle HVAC system which has fed some of these “outbreaks” since the boma geniuses decided in the mid 70’s this was the way to satisfy bean counters…
Re: Fungus
That’s quite a vividly written article.
A while back I came across a story (maybe here on NC?) about how Dutch tulip farmers, as a side effect of their attempts to ward off bulb-killing fungi, accidentally created drug-resistant strains of fungal diseases. In some cases these strains were being transmitted to hospital patients via the display plantings at the hospital entrance(!) IIRC it only affected patients with compromised immune systems.
Unfortunately, the fungicides the farmers use include the few that are also used on humans, because they’re so effective. The reason there are so few fungicides safe for humans is because our DNA is actually quite similar, and it’s hard to find one that won’t also attack human cells.
I think this was the article (if not it has the gist). It focuses on the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus, some strains of which have becomes resistant to the anti-fungal drugs called triazoles:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/when-tulips-kill/574489/
I remember reading somewhere somewhen that fungi and animals were descended from some common group. It would be more bio-correct to think of fungi as “honorary animals” than “honorary plants”, though they do look plantlike standing in one place as they do.
Just wait till folks figure out, what herbicide-dessicated, anti-fungal bred critters lurk in their apartments’ wheat or corn based kitty litter? Toxoplasmosis psychotics will be the last of NYC’s pandemic stereotypes? Just imagine what novelty organisms we’re inhaling, or being spread on the sofa & bed, winter and ever hotter summer (this, and pro-inflammatory cytokines triggered?)
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/07/06/big-oil-natural-climate-solutions-nature-conservancy
When will the “Happy Cow” device be modified for home use? Can we lobby to have one installed in the caucus rooms of the Capitol, another in the Pentagon, and others made available to major political parties and Presidential candidates who poll over 3%?
I believe the company that makes it is almost ready with their offering – the Mark II ‘Happy Congresscritter’.
The delays principally center around how to retrofit the internal mechanisms of an ATM to pump dozens and dozens of Benjamins into the Happy Congresscritters pockets, in a pleasingly regular manner, without being too obvious about it.
Also, the permit to connect the old congressional vacuum-driven mail tubes to Lobbyist and Foreign Government bank accounts in order to keep the ATM fully stocked at all times hasn’t come through quite yet.
Woody Allen already thought of this in 1973’s sci fi comedy Sleeper–the “orgasmatron.”
well, isn’t the analogy more like a good back scratch than an orgasm?
I was looking at this in a slightly different perspective than you guys,
like what little doodads could we seriously create all over the place to make living things happier?
This could be a new branch of engineering, Good Vibes Engineering, that my 2nd grade makerspace engineers could lead the way in next fall. Here are some of my initial brainstorms. Feel free to pitch in. Our engineering criteria are we build things to solve problems, and we use only materials headed the landfill or recycle, iow upcycled materials.
1) well, all manner of scratchers and rubbers, for every kind of animal passing that has an itch
Problem we solve: itches!
2) Something that regularly lets dogs know how good they are. Hmm, we’ll only be able to build a model of such a fancy electronic machine. What’s the greenest way to do this, without actually using humans to tell them because sometimes I’m too busy. Maybe we don’t even need a fancy electronic machine. Maybe some pillow device, and when they punched it or laid on it, the air escaping would somehow make a sound like: “you’re a good dog!” :)
Anyway, problem we solve: emotional dog needs.
3) Then, we start thinking, what little doodads would help the humans around us? I wonder if kids look around them if they’ll notice all the public engineering we have to make our lives better, like benches and water fountains, and think about what’s the value of that concept, and see if we can build on it and not let it go away.
So, what would you humans like us to design for you?
Really good back scratcher.
safety gear for bicyclists who cannot afford to invest in it–
helmets, flags, vests, etc. in safety and reflective colors that bicyclists can pick up in town halls or wherever, free.
perhaps also some form of lighting for riding in dusk or dark, when necessary.
reduce traffic accidents, raise bicyclers’ visibility to motorists, raise mutual appreciation level of bicyclers and not-bicyclers (motorists), thus promoting a more cohesive community for facing and helping one another in the current crisis situation.
I want one for my cat. He would love it.
My son is a happy cow device as its showing season here in Queensland, wash, blow dry, etc ….
2019 Headline: “Last Month Just “Obliterated” Temperature Records as The Hottest June to Date”
2029 Headline: “With a sigh of relief, temperatures coolest this year since 2019”
In the last 5 years heat waves during june have been common, at least where I live, whereas I haven’t noticed such a big change in July and August. Another change that I have noticed is the “prolongation of summer” well into october that has become in the last three years a very mild month regarding temperatures in Spain. In the past september was the best month in Madrid, now it is october.
Whether this is a new normal or changes radically as warming accelerates is to be seen.
https://mobile.twitter.com/CNBC/status/1147134694930169862?p=v
Joe Biden is now running on restoring the individual mandate penalty. Besides demonstrating how bad Biden is, this shows how little Obama did as President. Biden has to attach himself to something Obama ran against.
Yes, we all want to pay a tax for not lining the pockets of insurance companies. Where I work, I do not make enough even to afford the bronze plan offered and even if I did, I would be paying premiums for a plan that I could never use as the deductible is so high. My situation is hardly unique.
Why cannot Biden and the rest of the neoliberals in addition to the Republican neocons straight up admit that the reason why we will never have Medicare For All is because they do not want to offend their big donors?
I would have a lot more respect for honest greed than a pathological liar in this case.
Wherever you go, a large swath of the public is extremely hostile towards the “Out Group”. If people ‘not like us’ are going to get the benefit from a policy like this, it’s going to have to be every man for himself.
I cannot think of a better way to boost Trump’s campaign than ‘regular folks’ hearing every D candidate call for both Medicare for All and Open Borders during their debates.
so you think medicare for all is a bad, or unpopular, idea?
No, I think it’s a good idea.
I am saying that plenty of Americans would happily stick with the status quo, if the alternative meant giving free healthcare to those undeserving “others”.
Or maybe they realize that the combination is completely unsustainable.
Americans swoon with happiness when experiencing the exquisitely American joy of being denied coverage after a hospitalization or paying a high deductible. They will die in the trenches to preserve that American freedom.
This is an excuse pushed by Democrats to justify not pushing for good policy while telling the local partisans they really agree with good ideas but its just all those mean Republicans.
Monty,
Agreed. However, “Medicare For All Citizens” would go a long way toward harvesting the Trump voters.
Here’s the antithesis of that:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/california-considers-health-care-undocumented-immigrants-n1008201
It’s now state law, funded by the taxpayers.
To prevent diseases and for humanitarian reasons, Illegals should get healthcare, but their home countries should pay for it. Money to be subtracted from foreign and military aid.
To be fair, Medicare For All Citizens would reimburse foreign countries that provided healthcare to Americans abroad.
I doubt it. Plenty of “the others” are also US citizens.
who the hell exactly is calling for “open borders”?
no one is
that’s the dog whistle you’re hearing
Joe Biden is now running on restoring the individual mandate penalty.
And Bernie will endorse this fool after the convention, right?
Again, BRAVO! You’ve succinctly summarized our future (immediate, and extended by pretty obvious inference). There was a one dazed scapegoat & a whole bunch of ravening hyenas, sucking up to 0.01% patrons, by tormenting him in front of a bored planet? Empires fail, the kleptocrats hollow out the rotting carcass (cannibalism invariably results).
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2019/07/has-poor-old-biden-passed-torch-yet-or.html?m=1
Meanwhile: the REAL terrorists gather for commie jihad!
https://grist.org/article/opec-head-climate-activists-are-the-greatest-threat-to-oil-industry/
i was out of work for a few months and consequently not covered during 2018.
I had to pay a rather hefty fine. Not only did i not have income during that time to pay rent etc, i now have to pay a fine for not having health insurance.
Sometimes I wonder if he’s actually trying to win or just seeing how far he can go before the dem base finally abandons him.
HRC at least tried to take a stand on an issue after it was poll-tested and carefully crafted with all the nuance that the beltway crowd loves.
Biden’s just shooting from the hip, combining a restoration of Obama-era policies (including, apparently, the ones that people hated) and a little bit of talking in a left direction, since the public is pushing from the left.
I think the success of Biden’s campaign so far is mostly a media myth. I don’t know anyone personally that likes him and I can’t imagine that he’ll get nominated.
100% this. Aside from his policies, his smarmy, “Hey guys, here’s the deal” shtick gets more annoying every time he trots it out.
Biden campaign’s next move – Advertise on local TV channel late night right after “Dealing Joe’s” used car commercials.
Is that before or after the “Call a Sexy Siren for Intercourse (Conversation)” ads?
Joe has been ready to prostitute himself for a long time, so the Sexy Siren ads might not be a stretch. Here’s Joe explaining how he was ready to prostitute himself to the big donors early in his politial career … but the problem was no one was interested.
lol
jimmy dore commented on that recently
“when joe biden starts out a sentence with ‘here’s the deal’,
you’re not going to find out what the deal is.”
Well you know it was only because of those Republicans and racists that ACA was unpopular. Now that people have seen that they don’t have a replacement they recognize Obamacare as the gift from heaven it is! At least in the world according to the acceptable consultant class.
(IOW the gullible public won’t notice that the approved Democrats don’t have a real “replacement” they are willing to give up their grift for either AND don’t give a damn that it wasn’t working but do care that they aren’t getting every last drop of
rentblood from the public.)Wow. I wonder if he vetted this policy position with his campaign handlers first? The penalty was the most unpopular part of the ACA and giving free healthcare to illegal immigrants while penalizing citizens who would undoubtedly like to have health insurance, but can’t afford it is probably the most cruel and unfair policy I could imagine. I don’t see this playing well in the heartland nor anyplace else really. This is sheer idiocy. Is Biden trying to lose? Wasn’t the ACA tax penalty already deemed unconstitutional by a less-conservative Supreme Court? Baffled?
“Looking on the Bright Side of Livestock Emotions” — sounds like anti-depressants in the neoliberal era (let’s focus on your emotions, not the systemic conditions). Maybe leave the cows alone, or don’t confine and abuse them in industrial farms?)
I see that brush contraption putting back-grazing birds outta bidness !
THAT’$ Progress for ya … “Raaaaaaackkkk !!!”
Just an FYI that there seems to be something amiss with the NC RSS feed. Most of what Yves posts comes through alright, but everything by Lambert, for some mysterious reason, comes up as the “About Lambert” page in my RSS reader. And, on occassion, rather than the article, I’ll end up with a random comment.
Don’t know how concerned you all are about your RSS feed (probably pays better to have people come here directly), but thought you might want to know. And I tried a couple of different Android RSS readers and had the same issues repeat, so methinks it’s something on your end. cheers.
I use Akregator in Linux and NC RSS seems fine there. The URL it is using is
https://feeds.feedburner.com/NakedCapitalism
Which is the RSS link at the top of this page. Perhaps your reader is using an alternate source?
Nope, that’s the link I’m using…maybe it’s just me and my outdated android phone.
Hey JCC, I hope you and your roommate are doing okay after that 7.1 and all of the aftershocks! Have been thinking of you guys.
All is relatively fine now, the aftershocks have slowed to a manageable level in both spacing and intensity.
Last night was pretty rough, the 7.1 was followed by multiple aftershocks ranging from the mid 2’s the low 5’s, as many as 60 per hour or more. Over 30 were confirmed to be above 4 (above 4 means serious house shakers). I got very little sleep and the cat was sleeping lightly, too. If I moved, she was up and around with me.
Half the town was without power most of the night, and PG&E is taking no chances, crews everywhere checking out the town’s gas supply. Needless to say, I shut my gas off here after the first one and will probably leave it off for a few days. With the 100+ temps, cool showers will be most pleasant.
The local Navy base, the China Lake NavAir R&D facility, is temporarily shut down and all Naval Personnel were evacuated to other sites.
The town has pulled together nicely. Neighbors helping neighbors, local businesses (including some of the National Chains like Papa John’s Pizza) are giving out free food and water, and, again, no major injuries and few fires – although more of each compared to the first rock and roll concert Mother Nature put on for us on the Fourth of July.
Oh yeah, rumor has it that FEMA is now on it’s way to the rescue… what a relief (/sarc)
The CalTech USGS group is predicting a fair chance (25%+) of a couple of more M6 level rollers over the next couple of weeks. Apparently this area of the Mojave Desert is known for many, though un-named, faults, almost a spider web of short faults throughout the area and at this point they believe that a few of them may have ruptured in a sequence that joined many together into a 30 mile or longer fault line.
The spokesman also mention that before the last 20 years of a quiet period here in SoCal, Ridgecrest was considered the Earthquake Capital of the World.
7.1 is really big, but Ridgecrest is a small town (pop. 28,000 or so) and I’m guessing 70% or more of the buildings/homes are single story, and almost all are on slabs. As one of my friends from LA said this morning during his check-up ph. call, “I went through the 6 level Northridge Quake. If a 7.1 happened here it would have been a very serious, tragic, disaster.” So all in all, we were very lucky… again.
I actually got a little seasick from the two or three hours of constant rolling last night and the kitty is showing a case of nerves, too. The area beneath the coffee table is now her favorite.
Glad to hear you weathered the ground palpitations, and yes a 7.1 centered in LA would be devastating.
For about a year after the 1994 LA quake, I noticed people were hesitant to be stuck under overpasses when traffic slowed, such as the usually slow & go route on Sepulveda next to the 405, there’d be a 5 car gap @ times.
And then everybody forgot about earthquakes, and filled the void…
A friend of mine’s now ex was driving back to Sacramento from Oakland, when the Loma Preita (sp) Quake came rumbling northeast. She was just about at the end of the 101 Nimitz Viaduct that coursed along the East Bay when she felt like one or more of her car tires had suffered a flat, only to realize as she peered through her rearview mirror, that the Nimitz was pancaking steadily behind her. She did make it off that elevated section in time, thank Zeus ! … and lived to tell the tale.
Can you imagine being in such a situation .. I remember many a time in the past stuck in traffic at a standstill on that very stretch of freeway !
Why do they hate us? Africa responds to the New York Times.
Why do they hate us
For those who missed Yves posting of the Michael Hudson Guns and Butter interview a few days ago, here is the post from his website:
https://michael-hudson.com/2019/06/food-blackmail-the-washington-consensus-and-freedom/
After reading, please look at this Democracy Now! web post of an interview with ousted Honduran president Zelaya as he explains, as a text book example of Michael Hudson’s explanation of the US imperialism via financial warfare, what is happening in Central and South America right now.
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/3/manuel_zelaya_reflects_on_the_coup
Re the hottest-ever June: On the one hand it appears that the heat in some parts of the world is already making them only semi-habitable, and then there’s the threat of rising oceans.
On the other hand, I’ve read that there are some simple and cheap — but potentially perilous — means of reversing global warming, such as dumping half a tanker full of iron filings into the ocean to stimulate the growth of CO2-absorbing organisms.
So how long before some poor and climate-afflicted nation simply takes matters in its own hands — in the absence of ANY enforceable climate-change commitment or progress by advanced nations — and does the iron-filing dump? At this sorry and desperate point, why should these nations wait?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7959570.stm
Sounds like a recipe for the mother of all ‘dead zones’.
The company that was promoting it hasn’t issued any press releases since 2011. Maybe it just didn’t work and they gave up on the concept?
Thanks for the links. They explain a lot.
Some great links today. I had never heard of the Waldorf schools.
Elsewhere in cult behavior is the H’wood actor dramatization of the Mueller report. Perhaps the Waldorf outfit could stage a kid’s version.
Where is George Carlin when you really need him?
The Waldorf education system is one of the fruits and nuts from the Steiner tree. Rudolf Steiner is one of the more beneficial kooks in recent history and their schools are highly praised and highly priced. There is a nugget in the article which also has an omission.
The big honchos who run the information industrial complex keep their kids away from these devices they want all of the little people tethered to. They want you addicted to porn; they want your children exposed to porn; and they take pains to shield their own children from porn. They have little integrity. They have so little they probably forgot what it is if they ever knew.
The part I find most remarkable about the Waldorfs is no reading before age seven. More specifically, no reading before the adult teeth are set in the jaws. I saw a thing on the internet a few months ago from some highly deviated intelligence quotient test score person where they had an explanation that involved a change in brain circuitry that occurs as the young homo sapiens goes from baby teeth -> adult teeth and overlap with the brain circuitry involved in reading. Totally ridiculous but he claimed evidence that reading too soon is hazardous to development.
Science classes should be fun given all that mysticism and made up biology.
And yes some of us learned to read before age seven–must have freak brain circuitry. The story claims many of the parents are barely aware of the schools’ kooky origins. But that’s a feeble excuse if they are really so concerned about their children’s welfare.
There was an interview on Thinking Allowed with Gary Lachman where he talked about denial in the customers. I forget if it was children or nieces/nephews but he had some blood relations in Waldorf in London and he went to a parents’ function and tried to talk to people about Steiner and they shushed him down right quick.
Steiner got the thing about teeth and reading from channeling the Akashic Records. If you ever get a chance to visit a Steiner farm by all means do so. They are beautiful and the Steiner Cult folks I have met are friendly and they did not do the hard sell and I was never asked to dip into my wallet.
Waldorf science: https://www.google.com/search?q=waldorf+science+lesson&client=safari&hl=en-us&prmd=inv&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjD3-vG86DjAhUpwFkKHQ31D-4Q_AUoAXoECA4QAQ&biw=320&bih=438&dpr=2#imgrc=x7qR8BAzCTVOTM
doesnt look much like a cult does it?
The relationship of readiness to learn to read and deciduous teeth is hardly less tneous than forcing kids to read based on their age i would venture…
“The big honchos who run the information industrial complex keep their kids away from these devices they want all of the little people tethered to.” Claims like that require links:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html
Thank you Cal2.
My blanket statement is a clear over reach but it might be the article you linked that ker-plunked solid inside my skull.
Did you see the Caitlin Flanagan thing on Sidwell Friends and the competition for college slots in The Atlantic? Such anger. Very hostility. Wow.
I remember when I was a kid there were warnings from “education” experts that parents should not try to teach their kids to read. They claimed that only trained and certified teachers had the expertise necessary to teach reading and efforts by parents could only be harmful and would obstruct the children’s learning. As far as I know my parents did not try to teach me how to read — I still believe I taught myself. I was impatient with the orthodox curriculum, which would have forced me to wait until first grade to even start to learn to read. A whole year! To this day I do not know if those warnings had any empirical support or if they were just a job protection measure. Note that there would have been reason for job protection measures, because this was in the late ’40s, when memories of the Great Depression were still vivid.
My mom taught me how to read. My primers:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23772.Green_Eggs_and_Ham
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/460548.Go_Dog_Go_
Today I learned Dr. Seuss was not the author of Go Dog Go.
Mine too!
I teach 2nd grade, which is the final primary grade and the final year for reading instruction for most students
As the saying goes, through 2nd grade you learn to read, and after that you read to learn
and for most kids you just need to get out of the way by 2nd grade
some kids, usually about 3 to 6 every year (in an average class of 25)
need significant intervention
about 10% of kids struggle with dyslexia and need even more specialized instruction
but anyway, oi, parents and families can and should work with their children with reading, of course! Those warnings are pretty old fashioned, and I’m not sure either what sort of evidence they were based on. Like every job that calls itself a profession, teachers are able to cloak themselves in jargon when it suits them, usually to avoid some public function of their job. Like public scrutiny in a area where one feels weak, or a parent making requests/demands you think are unreasonable.
Everybody I know has used it that way, at least at some point, because everyone gets tired. Really, jargon is just bad manners.
All the adult teeth? As someone in the 99th percentile of delayed onset puberty, this would have meant my waiting until the age of 17 before learning to read.
No thanks.
Age of seven. If children teach selves that is fine. This is also standard in Finland, I understand. Alphabet, pattern drawing, and basic arithmetic taught in first grade, however.
I wonder if anti-vaxers of any or all stripes consider their potential grandchildren. I assume that they assume their daughters will grow up & bear children. If said daughters remain un-vaccinated and do not contract measles before child bearing age, then they may be vulnerable during pregnancy. IIRC, contracting measles during pregnancy can lead to rather dire consequences for the unborn child.
“The Anti-China Graffiti Left Behind By Hong Kong Protesters: In Pictures”
That’s the trouble with stories like this. After seeing how trouble is stirred up in countries opposed to Washington, you can never be sure if this was the work of some random guy or people or whether is was part of an agitprop campaign. That bit about Muslims in one slogan makes me suspect the later. And to answer one of the political slogans in that article that said ‘HK is not China’ well yes, it actually is. Probably with more legality that say Puerto Rico.
You’re right, of course. This has gotten to the point that – upon seeing reports of protests in strategic places – one just assumes a colour revolution in the making. Genuine protests and/or reforms seem impossible, as they become readily co-opted. Such regions are not only denied independence, but also genuine progress is thwarted. This has been going on since at least the end of WWII.
Btw, a friend’s family live in HK. Apparently, the biggest problem there is the daily influx of a huge number of mainland Chinese, which strains resources and aggravates natives (fwiw; not been there in a while, so cannot confirm).
RK, this may be of interest
http://www.unz.com/article/hong-kongs-poisoned-chalice/
Thanks for that link Olga. Fascinating, isn’t it?
And of course the Beijing Communist authorities must be fully aware of this reality, and may well have learned to exploit it. How many graffiti saying things like “Hong Kong is not part of China” might have been written by false-flag under-cover Communist agents to be left behind as easter eggs to be misunderstood and misattributed by suspicious western color-revolution skeptics?
The news out of Wuhan is interesting, in that, the last uprising inspired by Dr. Sun that led to the abdication of Xuantong emperor, or Puyi, and the end the end of Qing dynasty (not quite the end of thousands of years of imperial rule in China, becasue Yuan Shikai would declare himself as an emperor a few years later) occured there.
If there was to be a color revolution, that would have been a better choice…more historical significance…much more so than HK, and Dr. Sun never bothered with it….all uprisings were on mainland China, under direct Qing rule.
Trump Considering an Executive Order to Allow Citizenship Question on Census NYT
Just out of curiosity, why couldn’t everyone who gets a census form just answer “Yes” to the “Are you a US citizen” question?
Have been wondering the same thing. People really think these folks are going to answer “no”?
People in communities vulnerable to anti-immigrant and anti-minority policies are more likely to try to avoid the census than to lie, leading to an undercount. Here’s a post from an AEI writer at Bloomberg; and a tweet from an editor at Reason referencing the opinion of census directors. The Bloomberg article also has a link to a 2017 report from census researchers with their findings about people’s privacy concerns in these communities.
Undercounting such demographics is a feature, not a bug, of an agenda to dilute the non-white vote, the quiet part which Trump stated out loud yesterday.
….. Or just skip the question for cryin’ out loud?
How hard would it be for AOC et al. to hit the airwaves to remind all Americans that they do not have to answer any question that makes them uncomfortable (the NIH standard for questionnaires)?
The 2000 census form (long form) is at https://www.census.gov/dmd/www/pdf/d02p.pdf
It included questions on citizenship, ancestry, income, education, who you lived with, disabilities, etc, etc.
In my area, census workers would show up at homes and hound the occupants if all the questions were not answered. One of my neighbors was very upset because they got home from work to find the gate open, dog gone, and a census notice taped to her door.
Never heard a word from Democrats concerned that we were forced to disclose intimate details of our lives when Clinton was president
you don’t have to answer the census questions. they will keep asking for awhile, then give up. there’s no penalty.
You are mistaken.
You are mistaken. See 13USC221 and 13USC222. It provides for a fine of $100 for not answering and $500 for answering falsely. There are some who assert that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 increased the fines to $5,000
For cryin’ out loud, Tomonthebeach, I guess you haven’t been otherized lately.
I haven’t been a fan of impeachment but if Trump just blithely ignores the Supreme Court and orders this question, the House would be derelict in its duty if they don’t impeach him.
BTW, no one who reads NC is a target of this question. The whole point is to reduce responses in the target communities. So all of you can answer the question however you want. It won’t make a shred of difference.
Anybody hear from Wukchumni?
He must be pretty shook up at least…worry bout all those dead trees in Sierra he writes about….imagine quite a few came down over last 3 days.
It’s all about proximity in quakes, and as the hawk flies we’re about 70 miles away from the epicenter and we’re buffered a bit by the massif that is the High Sierra being in the way and all, and from what I heard on news radio in L.A. they had a very similar experience to ours there, along with S.D. and L.V. even though their distance from the scene of the clime was far further.
Our experience was a 20 second roller that wasn’t going anywhere not that we knew at the time, and we beat a path further away from the 20 feet distance we already had from our cabin, in a hurry. We have W.H.Y. wasp traps up and they barely swayed, a nothingburger entree temblor, but fun.
This was my mom’s experience in L.A.
A musician I know in LA called it “house surfing”.
Was definitely wobbly in my LA neighborhood. At first I thought the cats were up to no good (as usual) then realized it was the whole building that was making noise, windows rattling, etc. No damage though. Just a friendly reminder from the planet that we are but renters on her property and can be evicted at any time she wants.
Evicted, gased, burnt, crushed, drowned, often sickened …. but that’s what happens when one lives on Crust !
I know a girl who was in Anchorage during the 9-point-something quake there, she said her bed bucked like a bronco and slid from one side of the room to the other
Re ‘CrowdStrikeOut…’
The piece by Aaron Mate is the most detailed analysis of the Mueller report I have seen from a critical perspective. As he points out, one of the striking aspects of the sections on Russian interference is how much specific and detailed description is given about what supposedly happened, especially in regard to the “hacking” of e-mails, in contrast to the omissions and obfuscations regarding the compromised evidence that was the source of this information. So despite the use of weasel-words in places (something was “assumed” to have happened, etc.), the Report reads as a compendium of facts when it is anything but. The air of certainty was so strong that as I read part one of the Report, I began to feel uneasy; maybe I was wrong after all. Surely there must be stronger evidence that we have been told for Mueller to lay out the narrative so authoritatively. But there isn’t, as Mate’s systematic deconstruction shows.
I mention this because Mueller’s description is now repeated by Russiagaters as the objective, factual account of what happened — supposedly established by an objective, fact-based investigation. Even the occasional NC comment does this (generating considerable reaction, of course). This is understandable. Even someone as skeptical as me was momentarily cowered by Mueller’s Voice of Authority. Then I remembered who Mueller was, and the basics of Propaganda 101 came back to me.
well if that didn’t convince you, what about the hollywood actors doing a little play about it. that has to do the job, right?
Of course. After all, there’s nothing like a Hollywood dramatization to make history “come alive”! I just wish Morgan Freeman would have been given a part. I know it was based on the Mueller Report text, but I think they could have written a part for a “Transcendent Narrator” Who bestows His blessing on the Truth.
Finding myself wondering what comes after RussiaGate for the TDS crowd. Judicial Watch is filing civil suits that will result in admissible evidence and they’re finding some very inconvenient stuff, like what advice Team Hilary got prior to her destruction of evidence currently under subpoena (her 30,000 emails etc.) and what protocol did they use in the destruction (none)?
So what irrelevant boogie-man stuff will the TDS crowd go to next? Hard to top the last round, with Russian prostitutes peeing on the Prez, funny we didn’t hear a peep (or a squirt?) about how that turned out to be just a ridiculous fairytale. Has Maddow come up with anything fresh, aside from praising Bolton, screeching for war with Iran and North Korea, and scouring Trump’s tax returns from 30 years ago?
We’ll get four more years of Trump of course but it won’t be for lack of not trying. Team Dem swearing fealty to disabled trans illegal immigrants so they get free healthcare, yeah that’ll be a winner in the heartland…
If you have nothing else to do:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-02/hedge-funds-are-tracking-private-jets-to-find-the-next-megadeal?srnd=premium
Monopsony the early years.
It doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/06/18/733510647/apples-buying-power-and-the-woman-who-named-it
for those, like me, who can’t surmount the FT paywall:
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/28/736993245/disney-heiress-calls-for-wealth-tax-we-have-to-draw-a-line
FTA:”… my objection is you have $15-an-hour workers who cannot buy enough food to eat. They are rationing their insulin; they are sleeping in their cars.
How do you jibe one thing with the other? When you’re running such an enormous conglomerate, can you not break from orthodoxy? What if you made less money and everybody else made some more? You don’t have to create a foundation to go feed those hungry people because you’ve paid them fairly. …”
i’d never heard of this woman before today’s links.
i went searching around because the link language reminded me of FDR…the quintessential class traitor.
i’m pleased to see this phenomenon more and more out there in the wild…that hedge fund guy(krakauer? or something) talking to his fellow moguls about how the pitchforks are coming for them…
my own experience with the Upper Crust—mostly as the Help—indicates a blindness to what’s going on with the not-rich…the proverbial hillaryism, “everything’s fine”/”america is already great”…
so i (remarkably, perhaps)tend to give the 10% the benefit of the doubt, and reckon that Ignorance is potentially curable….but it will take people from their own circles to educate them. the horatio alger disease is so entrenched and pernicious that many of them readily come up with all kinds of excuses for the failures/travails of the hoi polloi….anything but the Machine that they, themselves, benefit so grandly from.
Walt himself treated his employees like family but paid many of them–particularly the women support staff– peanuts. Of course back then the company was often on the edge financially and animated features were very expensive. But when his employees finally went on strike it didn’t sit well at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_animators'_strike
As for the cost of Insulin, movie companies and particularly Disney have been at the forefront in lobbying for ever more expansive intellectual property protections. So even this is not completely unrelated to the company that has given Abigail Disney her fortune. If she feels she has too much she could simply write a check to the government.
?If she feels she has too much she could simply write a check to the government.
You were doing well up to there.. but no. No no no nononono. Should she quietly subsidize the F35 program? Because that’s what will happen. The gummint does not care about how much money comes in, in truth. Taxation is used to pick winners and losers. All she would be doing is moving one person, her, to the losers side.
We need something a lot bigger than that.
Agreed. That line is used all the time by the rightwing. It’s not simply about paying taxes but about what those taxes are going toward. The reason people talk about taxing the rich isn’t about them paying more, it’s about funding programs that benefit the whole of society. What good would a 90% marginal tax rate do right now? Not much other than increase DoD profiteering. But, if we had M4A, GND, and other programs that benefitted all of us that tax rate would be merited.
Short: it’s not merely about writing a fat check to the government, it’s about reforming the government so it serves the needs of the people. Until that happens, that money would be better spent lobbying for those reforms.
Fair enough. But I wonder if she, who has made films extolling the Disney company’s history, fully embraces the idea that wealth itself is the root of the problem. In other words when she or Buffet talk about a wealth tax just how much tax are they talking about? The top rate under FDR was 90 percent.
The top rate under Eisenhower was 91%.
I don’t agree with all this person writes, but the basic point is valid.
See: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/12/19/eisenhowers-tax-policies-invested-future-not/ideas/essay/
I believe it was also that high during WW2 but could be wrong. And a sea change in attitudes toward the rich has taken place since the New Deal and particularly since Reagan. Tom Wolfe lampooned Leonard Bernstein and his friends for playing poor and wearing jeans in the early 70s but by the 90s there were articles quoted socialites saying that “it was ok to be rich again.” Reagan’s tax cut sent that signal. On TV The Beverly Hillbillies–slyly making fun of the posh life–gave way to Dynasty and Beverly Hills 90120. Being poor was definitely out.
Abigail Disney is undoubtedly sincere but we are unlikely to have a “nice” revolution where the wealthy give it up voluntarily.and all is reformed. This is why the rightwingers express their skepticism and say “you first.”
They’re talkin a single lick of spit … in a VERY LARGE spitoon !
I have zero sympathy for the whole bloody lot !
Thanks for this link…she certainly sounds like a sensible woman. I wish she did have some power in the Disney corporation.
Their response about helping the employees to educate themselves is bullshit. I know many folk with degrees making minimum wages…..this is the cry of people who don’t give a damn “if they would only get a proper education…..or move to where the work is” I hear it all the time form so called liberals.
I’ve been recently reading about the high turnover of employees (“Cast Members”) at Disneyland, due not only to low wages but oppressive management practices, and reports by visitors that Disneyland employees seem increasingly under strain.
I don’t understand. Why does it make more sense to underpay your staff and limit their input in decision-making and have to continually hire replacements than to have a happier, more stable workforce? It shouldn’t be enough to just declare yourself “The Happiest Place on Earth.”
About the FT paywall — I recently stumbled upon “Bypass Paywalls for Firefox” which, along with the Cookie Remover add-on, has allowed me to access articles at FT, WSJ, the Seattle Times and all sorts of other news sources. I believe it was banished from the official Firefox add-ons store after complaints were received. So far, quite good! There’s also a Chrome version, that I haven’t tried.
“I don’t understand. Why does it make more sense to underpay your staff and limit their input in decision-making and have to continually hire replacements than to have a happier, more stable workforce?”
my grandad turned his airplane making skills learned in the pacific theater into a small manufacturing bidness that lasted until a couple of years ago(sheet metal, pipe, etc. we built the can plants and breweries and production lines of numerous houston plants)
he treated “his people” like family, paid them well…and was always there at the hospital with a wad of cash when one of them had a crisis.
open door, and all…couldn’t keep him in the office, he was always on the shop floor or at the job site.
i remember when there was a wave of union agitation in the 80’s him being upset and bewildered…”outside agitators” mucking up the works, and feeling betrayed…”i give them the shirt off my back…”
that mess soon passed…in no small part because he took a cut in his own pay(and my dads and uncles) to give everyone a raise.(i don’t remember the details about that episode…aside from “closed” vs “open” shop…and it was reagan’s time(patco) and unions were reeling)
i grew up with welders and pipefitters and ordinary laborers at family get-togethers, and everyone had access to the lake house and the bay house.
i haven’t seen such loyalty of workers to the boss since.
of course, the system selects for psychopathy, from the tax code on down…it’s hard to be that kind of boss…but still…it should be the gold standard for bosshood.
instead of this “let them eat shit” attitude that seems to be the norm, today.
My father was similar. Had a small optometry practice and his staff was family. They were paid better than other similar places, given a voice in the business, and had annual company trips. And it showed in how well lived they all were by their patients too. To this day they are all still an extended family even though he retired a while ago.
Of course, he retired modestly- comfortable but very modest comforts. No vacation home, only one car between he and my mom, small two bedroom condo, etc. Many of his fellow optometrists retired quite wealthy and many years before he did. So, he gave up that option to instead benefit those who worked for him. He did it because he cared about people over profit. Had a lot of very low income patients that he would work out payment plans that were more of a formality where they paid what they could, even if it was just a few dollars each month. Wasn’t about the money for him, just the joy of helping people.
The employees at Coors Brewing hate unions because they feel they get better pay without unions. Ironically, it was the threat of the unions to unionize Coors that made management increase pay for the workers. Of course, it turned up the anti union propaganda several notches after that!
My father was an accountant and eventually became comptroller at a specialized company which made precision measuring instruments, especially flow meters. He was generally liberal, having scraped a living as a musician, pool shark, server in a cafeteria (he was proud of how thin he could slice turkey or roast beef), and probably other jobs, while earning his master’s degree. Nevertheless, he was adamantly anti-union until the workers in his company finally voted for a union. I don’t remember if it was United Mine Workers District 50 or the Teamsters, but about a year later he commented to me how valuable it was to have the help of the union conveying the grievances of the workers and their recommendations to management before things got dire. He actually admitted he had been wrong to oppose unions because in his position constantly aware of the financials, he saw how the increased cooperation between workers and management increased efficiency and profit.
Thanks Ath. I appreciate your taking the time to find that kink & share it.
“find that kink & share it.”
Always happy to discover a new kink! ;)
Amfortas — I don’t think Ms. Disney is a traitor to her class at all — she’s just trying to save it, and capitalism, as was FDR. Unlike so many oligarchs, they seem to recall a little thing called the guillotine.
Have you tried to get through the FT paywall this way? You go to Google (which I use only for this purpose BTW) and put the exact headline into the search line. With FT, it usually takes me to a link that gives me full access to that article. Same thing used to work for me with WSJ, but no longer.
Amfortas, I believe that you are thinking of Nick Hanauer
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Hanauer
Beyond Meat fever turns the tiny pea into America’s hot new crop Seattle Times
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Picking pea pods on grandfather’s farm circa 1967 in Okotoks, Ab. shucking them and eaten’ em raw was my vegetable starter drug, so sweet and tasty compared to the wrecked cooked ones I abhor.
You seldom see English Peas in the pod for sale in supermarkets, but farmers markets usually come through.
Here’s the pesticides used on
non-organic peas.
Assume residues in the fake “meat”
Amount used on peas, conventional versus none used on organic:
Pesticide How Often is it Found?
Toxicity? see website below
Dimethoate 12.1% Conventional
vs. Organic
Other Foods
o-Phenylphenol 3.3% Conventional
vs. Organic
Other Foods
Omethoate 2.3% Conventional
vs. Organic
Other Foods
Spinosad 0.9% Conventional
vs. Organic
Other Foods
Pyraclostrobin 0.4% Conventional
vs. Organic
Other Foods
Thiabendazole 0.4% Conventional
vs. Organic
http://www.whatsonmyfood.org/food.jsp?food=PS
Wonder how many parents are still feeding conventional food to their
little “sweet peas” or “little beans”? Are your kids Roundup Ready?
Interesting to see spinosad on this list, erroneously compared, I believe, to organic. It is a bacterium; we use it in our (organic) community garden to control Colorado potato beetles.
Same here, brook trout. I have used it in my garden plot in our community garden for years. We must keep it “organic” according to the rules. I had asked what my options were for the Colorado potato beetles and the woman that supervises things suggested I use spinosad.
o “How Burnsville, Minnesota, cut its carbon emissions nearly 30 percent | Yale Climate Connections” — Ooh, ooh, I know this one! Lemme guess … by changing its name from “Burnsville” to “Carbonsinkland”? What do I win?
o “Iran blasts Britain’s ‘piracy’ after Royal Marines detain oil tanker in Gibraltar Telegraph” — I’m guessing the odds of a tit-for-tat “hostage taking” in the Strait of Hormuz just went way up.
o “Trump is finished with the Afghan war Indian Punchline” — But is the Afghan war finished with him?
o “Both parties need to recognise that civil service impartiality is worth protecting Institute for Government” — Question for UK readers: Is “civil service impartiality” one of those aspirational-shibboleths-honored-in-the-breach in the UK, akin to “central bank independence?”
o “Bury bodies along UK’s motorways to ease burial crisis, expert suggests Guardian. I’ve always wanted to know where they bury the bodies.” — Each day on the anniversary of his death, we make a family drive-by pilgrimage to Mile Marker Uncle Joe.
“CrowdStrikeOut: Mueller’s Own Report Undercuts Its Core Russia-Meddling Claims”.
It is beginning to look like this will be the Alger Hiss/Rosenberg case of this time. Interestingly the former cases arose as the byproduct of the struggle to shift US foreign policy to anti-communism. That struggle, lasted nearly 3 decades and did not cease until Reagan won in 1980. The current meta foreign policy struggle is against full spectrum dominance and for an aceptance of a multi-polar world. The Russia collusion/Russia hoax controversy is the central domestic battlefield of this struggle and will likely remain so for another 15 – 20 years at least. So don’t get you hopes up for a resolution.
https://wolfstreet.com/2019/06/10/was-this-the-very-minute-of-peak-insanity-in-ipo-stocks/
This is what Wolf Richter of Wolf St had to say about Beyond Meat, earlier in June
. Fascinating
Kamala Harris’ T shirts
Kamala Harris puts on the struggle act when in fact she was a rich kid with more privilege than 95% of white people. Her mother was a PhD cancer research scientist and father was an economics professor at Stanford; one of her grandparents was a diplomat. Her ancestors on her fathers side were slave owning descendants of Scottish people, except for one of her grandmothers.
Harris has never got her hands dirty, although she accepted lots of favors early in her career.
“Aside from handing her an expensive BMW, Brown appointed her to two patronage positions in state government that paid handsomely — more than $400,000 over five years. In 1994, she took a six-month leave of absence from her Alameda County [deputy DA] job to join the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. Brown then appointed her to the California Medical Assistance Commission, where she served until 1998, attending two meetings a month for a $99,000 annual salary.”
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-kamala-harris-criminal-justice-willie-brown-20190123-story.html
Biden on the back foot, “breaks” earlier campaign “promise” never to apologize for “anything”:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/06/politics/joe-biden-defends-record-obama-2020/index.html
Includes a very brief clip of this where he looks square into the (CNN? pooled?) camera for a few beats during the statement. And his body language (posture, gesture, rhythm) seems much more “humble,” even white-dude contrite, than previous appearances. The clip is just a couple of short excerpts, but it’s what CNN picked out for this story.
Body language is a big thing for presidential campaigns. Campaigns field focus groups on their candidate’s physical style, see Gore2000, text-search for “focus group” (or simply “us g”) to find the relevant paragraph here: http://p2000.us/overview.html.
Also compare the url to the (current) headline “Biden regrets remarks about working with segregationist senators,” the thrust of the piece is about Biden invoking Obama.
No quite frantic hand-waving but it’s still early days. My take has always been the Obama did not like Biden much (and still doesn’t), and their earliest interactions are particularly awkward in the timing between the two. Timing between two (or more) people is important because it suggests similarity or difference of thought and reasoning sequences. Even faking it takes practice for at least one player.
Of course the underlying theme here and across the Dem field is “who can beat Trump?”, itself a variation on the “electability” theme often leveraged by party and press centrists against non-centrists (and since the US political “center” hews right, it generally concerns punching left). I think the Dem-center’s (by which I mean their big doner’s) hopes were that Biden would poll solidly throughout, but hey, ya field 20+ candidates, ya takes ya’s chances. Study of physical turbulence is instructive in this regard, turbulence being one product of energy saturation (the other is state transition from liquid to gaseous or from solid to liquid/gas). There’s a lot of pent-up frustration to be tapped or discarded, and trying to smother it with a beauty-pageant cum game-show can backfire.
IMO “who can beat Trump?” is a poor choice of analytic paradigm, I use “how does Trump win?” which takes more account of Dem blundering and left+deplorable-hating as well as the gamut of election interference options available to this ideologically incisive President. And all candidates swing right between introduction and general election, Bernie did in 2016 (and is trying to swing back left now, but clumsily). But most of the Dem primary campaigns are correctly sensing that they have to at least head-fake to the left this time around, and apparently this has finally soaked across to Biden and his backers.
Biden’s apology is the beginning of his slow motion implosion that will likely lead to Harris’ ascendency. Basically Joe is a putz. The idea that his “Shucks, I’m just a regular guy” routine will carry him to the presidency is a dream held by old folks,K Street insiders and stray billionaires. After he loses Iowa, NH and perhaps holds his own in SC he’ll be in it to help Harris and deny Bernie. Perhaps she’ll have him as her VP, what with all his experience.
“ideologically incisive” ?? I know what I meant but that’s terrible word choice. Trump is a motivator, in every political direction. His clusiness sometimes blunts, sometimes sharpens. Imagine what Dems and other skeptics could have accomplished if they could swallow their pride and butter up to him. Trump and the reaction to him can’t be assessed separately.
I just read an interesting, and disturbing, story by Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal at The Gray Zone. The title summarizes the main point: “DSA/Jacobin/Haymarket-sponsored ‘Socialism’ conference features US gov-funded regime-change activists.” Here is the link:
https://thegrayzone.com/2019/07/06/dsa-jacobin-iso-socialism-conference-us-funded-regime-change/
I would be very interested in the NC community’s reaction to this article, especially those who are affiliated with the DSA. I realize that organization is very heterogeneous today, so the DSAers discussed here are by no means representative of its membership. I should also say that I was a member of the DSA way back in the 1980s; I first knew of Bernie Sanders as a DSA member long before he had any national recognition. But I grow increasingly distressed by the actions of the “compatible left” these days in my old age. Coincidentally, I also happened to read an article about the Hong Kong demonstrations in Socialist Review that could have come from the NYT or Reuters (do Trotskyist anti-commies *have* to help the empire with its propaganda?), so I was already primed to be suspicious.
Late Saturday night is probably not a good time to post this. But any feedback would be appreciated.
US hegemonic exceptionalism seems to me to largely define what it is to be a USian, ‘left’ or ‘right’ (‘patriots’ all). However authoritarian the US government and however openly tyrannical the corporate private sector, it seems essential for those within it to believe in a personal and national superiority that rests, in the material sense, on nothing more (or less) than the capacity for violence, best exercised against those who refuse to accept, even dare to challenge, this dogmatic subjectivist claim.
Thanks for link. Of course many of the Neocon group were former Trotskyites who came under the wing of Washington state hawk Henry Jackson and then started promoting US imperialism rather than fighting it. The part of their former creed that seems to have stuck was the “international.”
Call it intellectual false flagging if these so called human rights activists at the conference were really working for the NED. A scorecard like this article is needed to keep up with all the intrigue. Since Sanders barely talks about foreign policy at all it’s hard to know how much any of this has to do with him.
OT, but I ran across this little cultural time capsule from Rolling Stone 1974: Bowie and William Burroughs brainstorm a Ziggy Stardust musical.
Bowie: The time is five years to go before the end of the earth. It has been announced that the world will end because of lack of natural resources. Ziggy is in a position where all the kids have access to things that they thought they wanted. The older people have lost all touch with reality and the kids are left on their own to plunder anything. Ziggy was in a rock-and-roll band and the kids no longer want rock-and-roll. There’s no electricity to play it….
Burroughs: Yes, a black hole on stage would be an incredible expense. And it would be a continuing Performance, first eating up Shaftesbury Avenue.
Hmm, I may change my NC handle to ‘Queenie the Infinite Fox’
“Bury bodies along UK’s motorways to ease burial crisis, expert suggests”
Everything old is new again. The Romans used to do that. Private burial spots were along the roads leading into Rome, especially the Appian Way but you had often above ground tombs that the family could go visit. The UK suggestion would imply that you would just wave out the window as you drove by along the highway at 70 per hour. I am sure that it would be all very respectful. This suggestion is in line with another one that I heard. People would be buried in a decomposable body bag out in the middle of a cow paddock. You would actually have livestock feeding on the grass there. And if relatives wanted to visit their loved ones, they would use an app on a mobile to track them to their latitude-longitude coordinates. Grave markers would not be allowed. You know that I am no making this up.
The needs of the dead are always a disposable need. The city of Sydney in Australia for example. The first graveyard was where the present Town Hall is. They were moved to the outskirts of the town at what was called the Devonshire Street Cemetery. Then a century ago, the graves were once again moved and the land re-used for Sydney’s Central Railway Station. In upgrades, they still find graves at both sites that were missed. A lot of bodies were moved to Botany Cemetery but now land developers have got their eye on the cemetery site as it would be worth so much. Another Australian city – Adelaide – simply reuses graves every thirty years I believe and just move the headstones. Have these people never seen the move “Poltergeist”?
Aaron Mate’s monomaniacal obsession with exonerating Russian responsibility in the 2016 info warfare campaign against the Democratic Party to the exclusion of pursuing any alternate theories nor presenting a single possible liable party suggests Mate does not want to dig too deep, lest his reporting further implicates his benefactors. One would think a journalist like Mate would want to selling a long-read piece to a fact-checking publication, reporting complete with original reporting, new sources, with a compelling argument revealing the true parties responsible for the crime with which he is obsessed, and advance his stunted career. Instead, Mate continues to reiterate the same doubts, without, well, any reporting an editor can take seriously.
For example, Mate maintains the Internet Research Agency has no connections to the Russian gov’t. Great! Certainly, a plausible supposition. Does Mate support his assertion with documentation that suggests a Russian private sector group had considerable interest in swaying the US election? Nope. If I were Mate, [or his editor] I’d ask myself why the GRU was purchasing server space in Illinois when bulletproof servers are a dime-a-dozen throughout Eastern Europe. The skeptic in me believes Mate does not bother because he knows he won’t find any activity that wasn’t supporting the DNC op. [Remember the Russian Federation, the largest state in the world, rich in natural resources, has the same GDP, on paper, as Italy. The Kremlin doesn’t have the rubles to traipse around N. America without directly supporting its national security objectives.] If Mate could connect this server space with other areas of interest, in no particular order: Moldova, Transnistria, Crimea, Donetsk rebel liquidation, Ukraine Parliament, Syria, traitors, the bonkers Moscow lo-fi house music scene, Estonia, or the Nord Stream II pipeline. Or the probing private sector profit motive inherent in maintaining crime assets as service regarding either the server space or the IRA project.
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I really have to hand it to you, you have nailed the insufferable MSNBC watching, TDS victim stereotype with this. Awesome satire. Congrats!
How much did they spend on this activity (I will assume you have some actual evidence that it happened)? I don’t think it costs a heck of a lot to hire server space in Illinois. The fact that they did so certainly allows for speculation about nefarious motives, but I don’t think the claim that it was done by the GRU is well supported. I’m always happy to see criticisms of people I find plausible. When it’s done as poorly as this it tends to support my confirmation bias. I really need to work on that.
Not the first time I’ve seen someone whining that Maté ‘debunks too much’. Perhaps you should try finding positions that have firmer foundations, instead of complaining when their flimsy foundations are destroyed?
So many people out there working really hard to exonerate the Russian influence on the 2016 election. Who is financing this?
Wowsers, make shit up much?
The Internet Research Agency is a Russian troll farm. You could have found that out with not much work. And there have been numerous reports as to how appallingly amateurish its work was.
As to your fulminating about “purchasing server space.” The indictment doesn’t even call it a server, it calls it a mere computer. And it wasn’t purchased either. It was leased. This blog actually does lease server space, a dedicated server. It’s cheap. If we can afford that, pretty much anyone can.
Monomaniacal Obsession SF? Mirror! Mirror!
re: Last Month Just “Obliterated” Temperature Records as The Hottest June to Date
despite that, population weighted cooling degree days in the US, a measure of air conditioning demand, were at a 15 year low…
The First Word Of The First Sentence is “Europe”. The second sentence has both “Europe” and “European Union”. The third sentence refers to France, Germany, and Spain. And it doesn’t even slow down from there.
So “despite that” what exactly? The US is getting Biblical rainstorms, so yeah maybe it’s a bit cooler.
This 15 years stat seems to be a bit dubious. Any chance you could provide a source? The Nat gas sites that use this statistic suggest the cdd level is above the 5 year average. That doesn’t seem consistent with it being at 15 year lows.
“Singapore needs sand, but its neighbors refuse to sell”
So I was just reading an article that brought up an interesting point. Singapore is desperate for sand for construction purposes and a main reason for that is a growing world-wide shortage of sand to use in concrete, right? As the oceans rise due to global warming, everybody will start to build concrete barriers to protect cities with. So, where is all the sand going to come from to be used in all those concrete barriers?
Looking on the Bright Side of Livestock Emotions—the Potential of Their Transmission to Promote Positive Welfare Frontiers in Veterinary Science
This is a very interesting article, thank you for posting it. Some of the ideas correspond to material I studied in kungfu. It surprises Westerners that a tradition almost entirely transmitted through sequences of movement can encapsulate rich heritage of medical, psychological, and social knowledge.