Women At Ernst & Young Instructed On How To Dress, Act Nicely Around Men HuffPo. “Women’s brains absorb information like pancakes soak up syrup so it’s hard for them to focus, the attendees were told. Men’s brains are more like waffles. They’re better able to focus because the information collects in each little waffle square.”
A 14-year-old boy shot his way in to a school before turning the gun on himself. Now his mother is facing 6 felony charges. Insider (dk). “A probable cause affidavit obtained by the Indianapolis station WXIN said York withdrew her son from a mental-health treatment program after 10 days, because it wasn’t covered by insurance and she couldn’t afford it.”
Congress Continues to Ignore the Dangerous Flaws of the CASE Act EFF (petition). “$30,000 judgments issued by people who are not judges but rather officers of the Copyright Office, who see copyright holders—not the general public—as their customers, are not “small claims”. These are judgments that could ruin the lives of regular people; people who are engaging in the things we all do when we’re online: sharing memes, sharing videos, and downloading images.”
Brexit
EU did ‘all in its power’ to achieve orderly Brexit – Juncker RTE
Brexit: Johnson in last push to get deal through BBC
The mammoth Brexit bill to be squeezed through Commons FT
Section 30:
But if the Government doesn’t propose an extension, Parliament would have no say and we would exit the transition period on the 31 Dec 2020 even if a new trade agreement hadn’t been reached by then with the EU; ie it would mean no deal in just 14 months from now. https://t.co/I4zT2vLU5s
— Hilary Benn (@hilarybennmp) October 21, 2019
Chancellor declines MPs’ request for tr modelling Sky News
Brexit: no exit on 31 October EU Referendum. The timeline (?).
Following Brexit? You’re Watching the Disintegration of Our Democracy Paul Mason, Vice
Justin Trudeau’s political setback: A surprise to the world, but not to Canada Project Syndicate
“We Can’t Remain Indifferent”: Chile Trade Unions Call for General Strike in Support of Student-Led Uprising Common Dreams
Rioting erupts as Bolivia says Morales near outright win AP
U.S. allows Chevron to drill for oil in Venezuela for three more months Reuters
Syraqistan
Putin’s Meeting With Erdogan May Decide Fate of Syria’s Kurds Bloomberg
China?
Don’t put politics before justice, Hong Kong urges Taiwan over fugitive case which sparked anti-government unrest South China Morning Post
Innovation (1):
Protesters in Hong Kong are now bolting barricades into the road using power drills. pic.twitter.com/k6quQGfjCP
— Timothy McLaughlin (@TMclaughlin3) October 20, 2019
Innovation (2):
This is an example of what sets apart HKers from other protesters around the world. These leaflets are left on "refurbished" shops to explain the reasons behind these targeted actions. Also note: *no looting*. #antiELAB #HongKongProtesters #HongKong pic.twitter.com/tB2DDmrXWi
— Dr. Wong Tsu ? (@HongKongHFF) October 21, 2019
* * * Rich Chinese outnumber wealthy Americans for first time, Credit Suisse says The Star
Taiwan Needs a Maoist Military Foreign Policy
Should There Be a ‘Right to Assist’ Campaigns of Civil Resistance? World Politics Review
India
Sowing the seeds of climate crisis in Odisha People’s Archive of Rural India
Water company cuts supply to parts of Hanoi after oil contamination VN Express
Pipe dreams Globe Sihanoukville, Cambodia
Kidney for sale: How organs can be bought via social media in the Philippines Channel News Asia
New Cold War
Everyone Is a Russian Asset Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
America Sponsors Far-Right Holocaust Revisionist Exhibit in Kiev, Part I Yasha Levine
Impeachment
Democrats see impeachment proceedings taking longer than some initially expected CNN
House Democrats zero in on ‘abuse of power’ in Trump impeachment inquiry NBC (Furzy Mouse).
Review of Russia Inquiry Grows as F.B.I. Witnesses Are Questioned NYT. The Durham report. Interestingly, the administration did not grant Durham subpoena power.
FBI/DOJ Likely to Throw the CIA and Clapper Under the Bus Larry Johnson, Sic Semper Tyrannis
The Funnel of Ukrainegate Valdai Discussion Club
Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina American Journal of Political Science
Trump Transition
Why some say Mexico already built Trump’s wall — and paid for it CNN
PG&E
Three men at PG&E decide when Californians go dark to stop fires San Francisco Chronicle
PG&E says more potential power cuts could hit about 209,000 customers Reuters
Opt-in for disaster relief:
Going on now: PG&E wildfire court hearing.
Judge James Donato is not happy with @PGE4Me. He said the wildfire victim claim rates "are abysmal."
"PG&E should have gone to each of those [FEMA] trailers, knocked on their door, and helped [wildfire victims] fill out their form."
— David Krause (@davidekrause) October 21, 2019
Boeing
Boeing’s defense of 737 MAX’s flight-control system in wake of pilot messages stands up Seattle Times
Searching for 40-year old lessons for Boeing in the grounding of the DC-10 The Air Current. A must-read on institutional factors.
Europe Expects to Take Longer Than U.S. to Decide 737 Max Return Bloomberg
Boeing 737 Max crash revelations could cost shareholders $53 billion CBS
Imperial Collapse Watch
This Is the True End Of Pax Americana Ian Burama, NYT
Class Warfare
Tennessee GM Workers Vote Down UAW-GM Proposed Deal Payday Report
Ancient Teeth Reveal Social Stratification Dates Back to Bronze Age Societies Scientific American
‘I’m in an unfair fight against a superpower,’ Assange tells UK court Sidney Morning Herald
Antidote du Jour (via):
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
204 comments
Comments are closed.
Great line in the comments of the Sic Semper Tyrannis piece:
Slogan for the upcoming election – “Trump 2020! Because f- you twice.”
I can see this developing, which is sadly also why there is more than a little effort being made at having the intelligence services and their friends in the military and media step in to cancel any such possibility.
Missing a word:
“Trump 2020! Because Democrats f- you twice.”
I like it. That’s more to the point.
Alternative comma placement interpretations about Democrats, where they could be more studly or villainous.
Trump 2020!, Because, Democrats, f- you twice.
Trump 2020 :(, because cia candidates f u forever
Hopefully some other choice we’ll present itself before 11/2020
the article doesn’t make this clear, but the prosecution lawyers were constantly apparently consulting with u.s. representatives in the courtroom before responding to assange or his lawyers, per craig murray.
as good mouthpieces should, i suppose.
If there had been a Hillary Clinton Presidency, when Assange was yanked out of the Ecuadorian Embassy, he would have been driven to the nearest US base and flown direct to the US with no protest from the British. There is form even now for such behaviour. It has come out that that American women who ran over that kid outside that US base had told the British for the two days before she flew to America that she was going to do so and the British just looked the other way.
> that American women who ran over that kid outside that US base had told the British for the two days before she flew to America that she was going to do so and the British just looked the other way.
Welcome to Airstrip One.
I read that piece by Murray, the lawyers consulted the Americans when asked to schedule the delivery of evidence. Since the US is requesting the extradition so as to try Assange the British lawyers would need to check with the Americans when the evidence to support the US claims would be available.
Assange has spent years in an embassy and a year in gaol and will be remanded in gaol until his extradition hearing because he skipped bail the last time, when he was facing extradition on charges of sexual assault. This is self-inflicted and IMHO the process has not yet gone rogue. Of course, if his health has deteriorated as consequence that may snarl up proceedings and may also argue against extraditing him. Oh well, Blighty can always accommodate another never-ending trash fire.
“self inflicted”??? he holed up in the embassy because sweden was going to hand him over the u.s. and the brits were going along with the farce. the brits need to get permission and direction from their american masters in how this kangaroo courts should run, but that is not a “necessary consequence of anything. he says he is being tortured, and that is why his health is deteriorating. given manning’s treatment, this is quite plausible.
I say this as a Brit: If I was expecting an incoming extradition request from the US, particularly one that was politically charged, I would rather face it in Sweden than here. I don’t believe Assange’s claim that evading the charges in Sweden by arsing about in the UK would protect him against being extradited to the US.
A plot to sent Assange to the US by extraditing him to Sweden seems bizarrely over-complicated to me. If Airstrip One can be ordered to send him to Sweden why not just send him straight to the US? I look at all these complaints about the process here in the UK and think “Should have gone to Sweden then.”
FYI, Assange has never ever been charged with sexual assault or similar in Sweden!!! That is another lie that gets repeated ad infinitum. He was given a custodial sentence in a maximum security prison for skipping bail, nothing to do with Sweden. He is now being kept in prison beyond the time he was sentenced for that bail offence.
Stop either listening to lies or repeating lies. Added to which one of the women involved in the matter in Sweden was very likely a honeypot trap and she had close ties with anti Cuba groups in the US.
I say this as a half-Swede
And what has happened to the Swedish extradition/arrest warrant process?
Has someone decided it’s not that important anymore?
Will the alleged victims be left only with the torn,apparently DNA free condom?
FFA, After Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, some British MPs wanted to send him to Sweden to have him questioned on the allegations of sexual misconduct there. But the case had been closed in Sweden and the judiciary saw no ground for reopening it. We might be tempted, on the basis of this final judicial ruling, to conclude there were no grounds to open any kind of inquiry of sexual misconduct in the first place. First yes, then no (closed shortly after beginning), again yes and then definitively no. Swedish authorities regularly interview people of interest to Swedish law in the UK by electronic link. Why not Assange?
My Understanding is that in order to protect victims in rape cases Swedish law has rape trials held in camera with one Judge and no jury.
If you can’t see how this is open to abuse in political situations I suggest you see an optician.
Once convicted of rape Julian would be just another rapist and few people would object to him being extradited to the US.
Sadly most people believe he has been charged with rape and is probably guilty, this is probably due to the total lack of journalistic integrity (is there such a thing?) at institutions like the Independent, the Guardian and the BBC. I hope hacks like Robert Fisk at the Independent might reflect on their roles in this sorry saga.
Business as usual in the UK.
He wasn’t charged with rape in the initial warrant from Sweden. The warrant was for his arrest in an investigation of an accusation that he had consensual sex with a woman while not wearing a condom. It’s complicated, but he was never charged with rape.
FFA: I don’t believe Assange’s claim that evading the charges in Sweden by arsing about in the UK would protect him against being extradited to the US.
Assange made no such claim. His fear was that extradition to Sweden would be followed by extradition to the USA, something Sweden refused to deny. Assange repeatedly said he would go to Sweden if he received a guarantee not to be sent on to the US. He never claimed remaining in the UK would protect him from extradition to the US.
I, and many others, suspect the Swedish case was brought in order to turn potential supporters against Assange. Many may feel that disclosing US secrets is OK, but rape is definitely not. As for the charges, one of the women involved said she had not been raped, to which the prosecutor said, “What would you know about it?” And a Swedish anti-rape group said they had never known a case proceed so quickly.
Surely there are “laws” in Sweden that prevent the extradition of a prisoner to a country with the death penalty?
Usually, such as happens here on Airstrip One, the US just makes representations to our government and agrees to not use it in the case concerned.
There are legitimate questions regarding the roguisness of the process, for instance why is a foreign publisher (non US, Australian citizen) in a UK jail for publishing leaked US secrets regarding war crimes committed by the US? Assange is Aussie charged in alleged violation of the US 1917 Espionage Act; a first time that a journalist/publisher has been so prosecuted. This all seem to be outside legal norms.
Also apparently “the Central Intelligence Agency was given access to surveillance video shot by a private Spanish company of all interactions Assange had with lawyers, doctors and visitors” in the Ecuadorian embassy. That doesn’t seem kosher.
Finally the US is known to be in violation of its own constitutional habeas guarantees, a country that is also a known Geneva violator regarding torture as well.
These are all arguments to make at the extradition hearing. Assange’s lawyers could also argue that compelling testimony from witnesses taints the process, that there has been unfair publicity and – as I previously mentioned – that he won’t get fair treatment in the US due to his health problems (I think this worked for McKinnon?).
Assange only gets an extradition hearing if he actually turns up for one and he can’t be trusted to do so of his own accord. That is why he is cooling his heels in a cell.
you’re assuming the process is legitimate in the first place, you ignore the many signs in craig murray’s article that this is not the case. he is in a cell because the uk stuck him in one instead of treating it as an ordinary case. the reason he won’t get fair treatment in the u.s. is the same one that snowden wouldn’t get fair treatment in the u.s., and chelsea manning hasn’t gotten fair treatment–the u.s. wants to punish them for exposing war crimes and other crimes. and the faithful british lapdogs go along with this.
On the face of it, what Assange is accused of is the very definition of a political offence – if this is not, then what is? It is not covered by any of the exceptions from that listed. There is every reason to consider whether this charge is excluded by the extradition treaty, and to do so before the long and very costly process of considering all the evidence should the treaty apply. But Baraitser simply dismissed the argument out of hand.
you pretend this an argument about timing, and ignore the substance of murphy’s article, and the many rebuttals in comments here.
And let’s not forget the utter shame of his home country Australia not lifting a finger: because (like the recent police raid of a journalist’s home here) he implicates his nation in cut-and-dried war crimes.
(Ah yes that quaint phrase “war crimes”. I remember when that was a thing).
When you’re one of the five eyes countries, you do want your masters want.
I assume nothing, the British courts haven’t been tested on the question of Assange because he absconded the first time and he hasn’t been through the process yet for this second case.
He is being treated the way an ordinary suspect would be, one who had a history of absconding.
I offer no defense of the US system. Extradition from the UK has been blocked in some previous high-profile and politically charged hacking cases – McKinnon and Love – at least partly because of concerns about the US system. I would still choose Sweden over the UK for this fight though, and I would skip seven years of self-imprisonment in the Ecuadorian embassy as well.
“The British courts haven’t been tested on the question of Assange.”
How then did he wind up in isolation in a maximum security prison for 50 weeks for bail jumping on a case that had no legs? He was supposed to be eligible for release after half his sentence was up yet he remained in prison, “The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (said) that the verdict contravened “principles of necessity and proportionality” for what it considered a “minor violation”
As well, “After previously stating that she could not question a suspect by video link or in the Swedish embassy, prosecutor Marianne Ny wrote to the English Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 2013. Her letter advised that she intended to lift the detention order and withdraw the European arrest warrant as the actions were not proportionate to the costs and seriousness of the crime. In response the CPS tried to dissuade Ny from doing so…” “On 19 May 2017, the Swedish authorities suspended their investigation against Assange, claiming they could not expect the Ecuadorian Embassy to communicate reliably with Assange with respect to the case. Chief prosecutor Marianne Ny officially revoked his arrest warrant”
– all quotes taken from wikipedia
Of course there will be further tests for British courts but to date the British courts have been tested and failed in their treatment of Assange.
Only Cowards And Sadists Support The Persecution Of Assange https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/22/only-cowards-and-sadists-support-the-persecution-of-assange/
Thanks for mentioning the Craig Murray article. A deeply disturbing and saddening read. Here’s the link:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
and caitlin johnstone’s response to the article:
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/10/22/only-cowards-and-sadists-support-the-persecution-of-assange/
fixing the first paragraph of End of Pax Americana:
The Kurds have been forced to make a deal with the murderous regime of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, hoping it will protect them against being massacred by the murderous regime of President Erdogan who regards them as mortal enemies. Murderous regimes of Russia and Iran, without whose support Mr. Assad’s government would not have survived, are quick to benefit from the sudden retreat of the murderous regime of The United States of America.
That reads much better than the original, which I made the mistake of perusing and will now have to put off breakfast a little longer.
They’ll look back in 2413 @ the last gasp of the American Empire, wondering why it expired when expending it’s wealth & prestige over much ado about nothing, so very far away.
Anyone still discussing history in 2413 will wonder why the Ancients messed about and neglected basic survival programs and infrastructure. The debris field that was Florida should have cleared up enough by then to support a thriving fishing sub-culture.
Headline circa 2413:
Florida Man Accused of Burning Son to Teach Him Lesson About Fire
edit: My bad, this is from January 2019.
Don’t laugh, I had that ‘done’ to me when I was little. I did not react like T E Lawrence in the movie.
That article is a wonderful reminder of the lasting importance of the Orwell quote about controlling the past.
Matt stoller recently did a twitter thread about ‘lost cause’ history and how important it was in cementing Jim Crow.
We need to resist NYT attempts to rewrite history that we’re living through right now.
Yes. We have been planning to ‘abandon the Kurds’ since the Obama admin:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/october/america-abandons-the-kurds?utm_source=LRB+blog+email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20191022+blog&utm_content=usca_nonsubs_blog
And make no mistake–I write this as a left deeply supportive of the Kurds. When they were being slaughtered in serious numbers inside Turkey a few years ago neither the press, nor most of the rest of us, paid the slightest attention.
The Kurds have been abandoned for a century, since the Sykes-Picot lines gave them no country of their own. Spread between 4 hostile nations, they press for autonomy in whichever country’s weakest, with covert support from the others, until the next opportunity breaks out. Our most recent betrayal, until now, was Bush Sr’s after Colin Powell’s Gulf War, when we assumed Saddam would fall after annihilating his armies, and encouraged rebellions by the Marsh Arabs in the Iraq estuary to the South, and by the Kurds in the North. We promised to support their uprisings, then sat on our hands while they too were annihilated. The Kurds obviously knew better than to trust us–and the very idea that we would be true to those difficult, situational allies using us for irredentist goals inimical to all our allied countries with Kurdish minorities, is pure nonsense. Mayo Pete pretending to be that stupid (and ignorant of our infamous betrayals including the Bay of Pigs, Fall of Saigon, etc) in the last ‘debate’ when he puffed out his patriotic chest like a Macy’s parade balloon was, to my stomach, the most sickening Democratic hypocrisy to date. But the party has just begun to bloviate . . .
The Fall of Saigon was not a betrayal. The betrayal was violating the terms of the Geneva Accords and setting up South Vietnam as a permanent puppet state. That was a betrayal of all the people of Vietnam.
Amen!!!
I looked at it like just another not-so-notable NYTimes pro-war editorial. They have been running these types of editorials ever since beating the war drums almost daily when they regularly blamed Saddam Hussein for 9/11… with a little anti-Trump screed thrown in for good measure.
Does anyone honestly believe that pulling 1000 soldiers out of N. Syria and moving them across the border into Iraq will make a difference in a century long war between the Kurds and Turkey? (Not to mention that we can move them back as quickly as we moved them out.)
And does anyone honestly believe that the Kurds never thought for a moment that the US would abandon a “commitment” to them based on US political expediency? We’ve abandoned almost every commitment we’ve made to a war ally since the dawn of the Republic, starting with Hawaii through the Phillipines, Cuba, various other Central American and Caribbean countries through Viet Nam and more (never minding various Indian Tribes before we stretched outside our borders). That’s what we do.
But God Forbid we end our Forever Wars, Think of the Children (of the M-I-C)
Does anyone honestly believe that sending troops to Saudi Arabia, increasing troop levels in the ME by 14,000 since May, increasing drone strikes, considering leaving some troops in Syria for the oil, and vetoing a bill to end US support for the war in Yemen is ending Forever Wars?
To be fair, here’s a perspective that somewhat contradicts my view. It references ” unrelenting pressure from fellow Republicans, and some members of his own administration” to keep troops in Syria (for the oil).
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/graham-fox-news-star-showed-trump-map-change-his-mind-n1069901
We don’t get to see what happens beyond the curtain.
So, we can only try to find out, looking at parts of it from as many ways as we can. One such way is to examine the enemies Trump has made.
We can look at the list itself.
And, as well, we can compare his enemies in foreign policy with other politicians’.
Gabbard is the only one that comes to mind, and for comparison, 4 years ago, there were already over and covert operations under way, when Trump started his candidacy. With Tulsi, we are seeing one overt one now.
I tried to be fair in this instance, having just come across the link. I wasn’t too sympathetic with the argument that Obama was thwarted in his supposedly good intentions by Republicans, Max Baucus, etc., and similarly for Trump and the Blob or whatever. Meanwhile, the wars continue, the .01% gets richer, and many suffer as a result of the policies they managed to implement.
That’s an argument Sanders made recently – look at his enemies.
As for Obama, were they his enemies?
For Obama, there are only $$$$$ no enemies.
The horrible Eric Prince explained the mechanics of it, the Pentagon de facto controls how many troops, where they are, and what they’re doing. Not the president. If you’re willing to have an open mind about it then have a look:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/10/11/erik_prince_syrian_kurds_could_pay_mercenaries_with_oil_money_to_keep_isis_at_bay.html
The Kurds were under no illusions about the USA’s loyalty.
But this is not the first time the people and the movement here have been able to make a strategic alliance they know they cannot trust, while still maintaining the strength and integrity of their organising. For a long time, the US was one such “ally”, with its own track record of imperialism, warmongering, profiteering, and colonialism. During these years, the people of north and east Syria wasted no time imagining the US was their friend. Instead, they worked to strengthen and build the values they believed in, relying on their own strength and the solidarity of everyone in the world fighting for a better future.
‘In the chaos of a full-scale war, it can be hard to get clear answers’. UK Internationalists shed light on the deal with Assad.
All I see is a bunch of idiots who made no provisions for the day the US inevitably abandoned them. Now they’ve been forced to submit to Damascus, which they could have been negotiating with for years to work out more favorable terms..
Oh, they made provision. They started talks with the Assad government last year. You must not have heard about them because they happened after a conference in Ankara, in October, to which the U.S. was not invited — or maybe they were invited but refused to attend. Anyway, the conference was not mentioned by the American media, although it included delegates from France, Germany, Russia,Turkey,Iran, and Saudi Arabia. Supposedly, KSA agreed to start talks with Yemen, I think in Geneva, and also to stop arming the salafist jihadists in Syria. In fact, it was about that time the SDF invited the SAA (Syrian government forces) into the area they controlled. The blog Sic Semper Tyrranis covered it.
But, but, …. Uncle Joe said it was shameful.
“This has come to an end. Mr. Trump is no model of democracy or American generosity. On the contrary, he is a model for strongmen all over the world who view democratic checks and human rights with contempt.”
All throughout Pax Americana, the USA supported strongmen and authoritarians for the advancement of corporate interests. Now they’re “shocked” that the current President is the embodiment of that history, the unmasked face of it.
The emperor has no close friends.
Hard to view the reality of Pax war mongering when #TheQueenOfIt is sipping herbal tea and cackling with Whoopi on The View.
Maybe instead of #LadiesWhoLunch trending we’ll see #LadiesWhoTorture and #LadiesWhoSlaughter but I doubt it
And late kudos to Bernie for his statement on Tulsi
I came, I saw, he died and I still cackle. Watch for the broom rider against the moon on Oct 31.
I remember somewhere reading that a US President is an elected King, a supreme monarch.
Are there candidates running to reform the (supreme montarch) office itself?
It’s tempting, though not completely irresistable, to want to exercise all the powers of an elected king (to do good, of course, from each candidate’s particular perspective). It’s human nature, but we can overcome it.
The way significant parts of the left (and I mean the genuine left) have effectively flipped to “proxy armies are good, actually” is depressing.
Newsflash: the Kurdish YPG are a weird anarchist cult with close ties to the PKK terrorist group. They’ve been functioning as a US mercenary army for years, stealing Syrian land and oil as part of some naive, mad quest to set up an independent nation. In Iraq they did much the same, seizing Iraqi land after the Iraqi military fled in the face of ISIS (which the Kurds were happy to ignore until ISIS started attacking them directly). Iraq had to forcibly put them back in their rump-state bottle in 2017 when they refused to give back cities like Kirkuk.
Also speaking purely pragmatically, they’re as dumb as a bag of bricks. They hitched themselves to the US despite the fact that the US has betrayed them before. That we would betray them again was entirely predictable.
And the caliber of what passes for discourse on this subject recently had been extremely low. Lots of hair on fire screaming about “Trump just green lit a genocide!”. There is no genocide. There was never going to be a genocide. Turkey’s goal, which they’ve talked openly about for years, was to create a buffer zone inside Syria to cut off the YPG from the PKK.
Everyone is murderous, except the lovable Kurds. Scott Ritter: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/why-the-syrian-kurds-arent-necessarily-our-friends/
“Women At Ernst & Young Instructed On How To Dress, Act Nicely Around Men”
Brought to you by the most recent Smartest Guys in the Room. In reading this article, I was reminded of a sticker that I saw in Germany a long time ago that mocked men’s attitudes to women’s lib. It had a girl on the ground licking the caps of some guy’s shoes and the text said, when translated, ‘Yeah, finally. The women are back to normal again’.
Highly paid consultants sold this to a Big Four Accounting firm, and you can bet, like (almost) all consultants, they peddled the same drivel elsewhere, to those privileged with time off from the cube to go listen to it. In the Year of Our Lord 2019.
Reversion to the mean. Everywhere one looks.
Nasty, brutish, and short.
Oh that’s just vile. And I say that as a hetero male.
My hunch is this attitude still prevails in Congress, bank boardrooms, IT. Hollywood…etc, etc.
It is in its twilight, but it still prevails. They know it is twilight time though, this is why they are going for broke evoking 40s and 50s style he-manliness.
It’s not unlike “last call” at the bars back in college.
Nothing so shameless as the Powerless lording it over others.
Powerless because they have no self-control nor self-reflection and should not be in any office.
I beg to differ. As long as a pernicious human cultural trait persists, it cannot be considered to be in “twilight.” Such things are like infectious diseases in the human population. They can still re-ignite and spread back into the social body.
The bar may close for the night, but it can and usually does re-open the next morning.
This is a situation where continual diligence is required.
Cheers armbrit
I actually agree – somewhat.
Like diseases, bad human traits ebb and flow depending on societal norms at the time. It was once acceptable to turn an Indian scalp in to the U.S. Govt. and get a reward. Try that now.
The bar IS always open the next day, but gradually, sometimes TOO gradually, the clientele and their attitudes change .
Felicitations Kevin.
Another aspect of the infection model of human social and political relations is the concept of deliberately introduced pathogens. RussiaRussiaRussia is an example of that. Memeological Warfare.
Moar realistickally, the older clientelle dies off. (Today, with the meme of the Jackpot, we consider that it is moar realistickall to say, killed off.)
Be prepared as much as possible. The veneer of civilization is thin.
How about this story – worked in Chicago at a Private Equity client on a consulting assignment for 6 weeks. Part of my role was to run a technical interview with managers from each operating group feeding data to our system. Never met or knew any of them but the interviews should be easy enough – I know what I need going in, I provide the interviewee with written questions from my analysis and I am a good listener – I have gotten lots of feedback from clients and colleagues that I am easy to work with.
Everything is going fine, until I meet with this one manager – a woman who comes to work wearing a thin tshirty top, not wearing a bra and had large breasts with dark nipples clearly visible through the fabric.
I was uncomfortable as it was distracting.
Hey – live your life as you want, live and let live – but in a professional setting, this is not ok.
Was gonna say, the rules have to go both ways. Guys have to keep a lid on it, women , you should *not* bait the bears…
That made me laugh. Thanks.
Note that traditional male office costume largely represses sexuality (wide shoulders are an exception, and ties are rather suggestive, but nothing represses it completely). The reason is, simply, that sexuality is distracting and disruptive in most work environments. When more women came into offices, nobody really liked the idea of them having to wear suits, so in most settings an exception was made (I gather lawyers in courtrooms are well-advised to wear them anyway), but they were still expected to keep sexual expression to a minimum, for the same reasons – and because they didn’t want inappropriate attention.
Apparently Beeman’s interviewee chose to defy the norm; maybe she found that worked for her. Or she was too good at her job to fire. My point is that it’s a long-standing norm, for both sexes, with good reason.
Jane recalls being told that if you want men to focus on the substance of what you’re talking about, “don’t show skin.”
Were they advocating burqhas, or simply telling women not to expect to be taken seriously?
In advertising, the two constants are Sex and Death. Those two subjects will crowd out all else if given a chance.
The advice given to Jane was a pragmatic adaptation to an existing cultural constant. For Materialists, evolution is all about adaptation. Leave your aspirations at the door.
I don’t agree with that world view, but it is a common one.
“an existing cultural constant”
I don’t think it’s cultural; it’s biology intruding where it interferes.
Men don’t show a lot of skin or dress revealingly at the office or in most work situations; why would women? Arguably, it would be an attempt at manipulation. It would also be an invitation to undesired advances.
My son attests that sometimes they do, anyway. So does The Beeman.
None of this defends the weirdly retro advice in the Ernst & Young piece. It just calls for some judgment that most people exercise, dressing for the setting.
“Don’t show skin” is never applied to men.
I didn’t take a Marketing course, but I always thought the two most important things to making sales were SEX! and FREE! A close third was NEW!
From one of my sisters [who went on to make many millions in the oil industry, about a decade ago]:
“Glad I got out of there early…. but the writing was on the wall, no women partners.”
I do not understand the level of upset this link seemed to generate. I worked at firm that was constantly “training us” on one thing or another. The content of most of this training was inane to say the least and generally received about as much regard by us trainees as it deserved. My biggest complaint about this whole training nonsense was that we were “strongly encouraged” to attend — meaning unpaid for the time — and the same level of billable hours applied to a week with or without training and the costs for training were charged to the overheads that ate the difference between what clients paid the firm for a billable hour and what we received as salary and benefits. I often wondered how many of the firm’s partners had financial interests in the firms offering the training sessions.
The pancakes and waffles reference has an echo in another self-help book.
Men Are Like Waffles – Women Are Like Spaghetti.
Re: “Following Brexit? You’re Watching the Disintegration of Our Democracy”
So whines Paul Mason, who then goes on to add that the wronged actors are an opposition who doesn’t want to hold an election and champions the need for another referendum because we, apparently, need a “Final Say” — presumably because the original “say” wasn’t actually final, but the next one will be, even though no-one mentioned that the first “say” was only a placeholder for the real thing.
This is why Remain keeps losing.
There’s also some waffle about Scotland, how it “… will almost certainly leave the UK if a hard Brexit takes place”. The method of the leaving is, one has to indulge in conjecture as it’s not spelt out, to be via a referendum too. This also would be a second referendum on the question, the first, now, we must conclude also wasn’t a “Final Say” but the second one is supposed to be. Unless, it, too, like Brexit, doesn’t generate the result that some people like.
If this is the best that the progressive left can do, look forward to more Prime Minister Johnson and a second term for Trump. You’ve brought it on yourselves. It’s self-styled progressives like Mason who, did they but realise it, actively campaign for your Johnsons and your Trumps.
And as for “Jeremy Corbyn […] continually trying to change the conversation” — well, on that Mason is right. Having sat through an awful lot of Labour Constituency Party meetings, which have now descended into just about the worse factionalism I’ve ever seen (and keep in mind, this is the Labour Party I’m talking about here, the one which can split into internecine warfare over which goes in first, the tea or the milk) this is never in short supply. There’s a great, unceasing, flow of “conversation”. Effective management of the party, cohesive policy making, intellectual consistency and collectively loyalty to an agreed cause or set of causes? Not so much. “But it hasn’t worked so far”, laments Mason. I’m shocked, just shocked.
I don’t understand the vitriol aimed at “self-styled progressives” in Britain, they are after all laboring under the dead-weight of those nostalgic for the Blair years, in the same way that the progressive majority in the US are burdened by their supposed ‘partners’ in opposition, those nostalgic for the Clinton years.
If by “self-styled progressives”, you mean those nostalgic for the Blair years, doesn’t Mason make it clear that he also finds them problematic?
The opposition to the neo-liberal/neocon consensus, on both sides of the Atlantic is fragmented, while the enemy is deeply entrenched, and one way or another, owns most of the sitting members of their respective governments.
We the People are facing a David and Goliath moment, with unreliable, and misinformed allies, who, truth be told, would settle for Goliath Light, add to that, the constant jeering of a massive audience who so far, act as if they are some how above the fray.
It’s this unengaged audience that I find pathetic, not the nascent, and as yet fragmented opposition to Trump/Brexit.
Over here in the USA, that audience seems content to watch passively while one of the supposed partners in opposition, the democrat party leadership, do everything in their power to inflict a Clinton-flavored candidate, not to truly stop the chaos, but to happily put a new face on it.
No, I was referring to this:
And this:
A progressive — a progressive — casually ad hom’ing and indulging in class warfare against people who live in small rural or coastal towns and attributing racism to old people in his outpouring of completely undisguised ageism targeting a group of people who are disconcerted about the ability of society (certainly the society they live in) to absorb large numbers of migrant workers. Perhaps they don’t always express their worries and unhappiness in an especially polished and considered fashion, but that’s plenty sufficient for Mason to vitriolically turn on, at best dismissively and as worst condescendingly, these miserable plebs and grotty oiks.
No wonder they think only the likes of Trump and Johnson listen to them and understand them. Mason clearly despises them. And he expects support from the downtrodden masses? Those “sorts of people” are my relatives in deprived and economically blighted areas. They are my friends I grew up with and didn’t manage to escape, as I was lucky enough to do. I understand them. I know the evil and the despicable ones and I know the difference between them and the good souls who simply can’t get their messaging quite right to shiny-smooth media pros like Mason. And I find it obscene that Mason victimises — and he knows exactly what he’s doing — the latter.
Thank you, that is clarifying, and I agree, especially with this;
You describe my situation, and experience precisely.
Little raises my displeasure more than them being homogenised, commoditised and exploited by so-called Liberals. The tell is usually in the dehumanisation (“small town folk”, “undereducated” and the like). They aren’t a bottom of the barrel quasi-focus group. They are people. With life stories all their own.
I (and I’ll accept the wisdom of others in respect of how good an idea this is — or isn’t!) try to follow what is going on in the Beltway and, to a limited extent, on the ground in the US by watching Washington Journal on C-SPAN. The way the call screening lets through the token redneck and hick to make a point about how unwashed the great unwashed really are is demeaning and cynical beyond any words I can find.
And mine, very moving Clive.
….and mine…but add in another unfairly homogenised and monolithicised group, Hispanics(whom the census can’t even figure out how to count)
the remaking of liberal/progressive into an analog of the right wing authoritarian follower continues apace.
“all men…”,”all white people…””all country people..”,”all Texans…”
this morning, while wife was getting ready, i played hillary’s recent General Ripper moment, back to back with random youtube vids of Joe McCarthy rambling about Commies in his underwear…the point was made.
encourage us all to fight amongst ourselves, so that we never look up and notice the real enemies.
Sort of like my life as well. I ‘escaped’ to some backwater several times in a row from an upper middle class insular mini-metropolis.
If, as you aver, Mason is witting of his biases, what is his ‘payoff?’ Is he a willing shill or not? I’m curious about motivations.
It all reminds me of those ‘comedic relief’ characters in old plays with names like “Toady” Lickspittle and Lady Teazle and her mentoress, Lady Sneerwell.
Recent politics do resemble a Restoration Comedy.
He’s either very clever or very stupid. My gut feel is that it is, disturbingly, the first rather than the second of these.
Disturbing because it brings up as you rightly wondered the question of why? There’s a good racket to be made as a go-to facade or impersonation of a radical lefty, ready to pop up on TV and in pseud-ey right-on-comrade publications and blather on about the poor and the working class while simultaneously yelling “fight ! fight !” as they try to goad one half of the have-nots into hating and taking on the other half.
I suppose the bigger question is then, who’s paying to mainstream media to indulge in this turning of class struggle into a pro-wrestling type of tawdry public spectacle.
I would imagine that the “payoff” for the Media in all this is in the advertising budgets sent their way. As the Roman aristocrats knew way back when, the mobile vulgaris does react consistently to “panem et circenses.”
I could be wrong, (as in, I’m open to correction,) but I date the ‘tawdrization’ of at least the English MSMs to the introduction of the “Page 3 Girls,” in a mass circulation newspaper no less. Suddenly, the tiddlers had easy access to what was considered “soft porn” back then. Having gotten away with the ‘Page 3 Girls’ caper, the MSMs kept pushing the envelope of what was considered appropriate to be run as “news.”
Over here in America, we have ‘Infotainment’ elevated to the equivalent level as the ‘News.’
Is it any wonder that our politics have been debased?
Some may counter with the observation that early newspapers were unabashedly political. Some were even established by political movements themselves as mouthpieces for partisan arguments. However, back then, such partisanship was up front and centre. No one could complain about a lack of ‘balance’ when a publication announced it’s biases out loud.
Today, it seems that periodicals are reverting to that earlier state of affairs, less the honesty about motivations. That is what I mainly complain about; the lack of honesty on display.
Oh well. Scratch a Cynic and you’ll generally find a closet Romantic.
I find leftist intellectuals, like most people I suppose, can be both clever and stupid at the same time. The ones that have lived lives with virtually no contact with working class people often really have no clue and find it easy to believe the worst kinds of stereotypes.
And now with the cosmopolitan “left,” working class bumpkins can be arrogantly dismissed because, as you say, they say out loud unsayable things about immigration and/or asylum-seekers
What if I’m a working class lefty intellectual? (In real life, I actually am A working class lefty intellectual). I greatly prefer to live in flyover, it’s much better for my blood pressure “out there”.
It never fails to amaze me how little common sense actually exists.
I guess that I would classify myself as a working class lefty, but not very intellectual. (Seriously.)
What constantly amazes me is what passes for “common sense” among the aspirational class. Their version of “common sense” generally closely resembles the prevailing ideology of the local elites. Toadying is too nice a word for it.
I also get the feeling that there are several versions of “flyover country” in this great, sprawling congeries of a continent.
Good luck with the snow days.
Sorry, yes, excellent point. Leftist intellectual and working-class are hardly mutually exclusive, thankfully.
I was struck by how little all the handwringing in the media this week about an imminent Brexit made mention of any positive reasons for staying in the EU. It was all OMG we’re going to die, which of course is just a continuation of the line they have been pushing with such conspicuous success since 2015. But of course the British establishment has never really been able to articulate why Europe is a good thing, apart from vague references to trade and finance which mean nothing to ordinary people. So expecting ordinary people to suddenly panic at the thought of London being less of a financial center or employers having to pay higher wages as EU workers go home is simply silly, and stigmatising them for not understanding is pitiful.
“Europe Expects to Take Longer Than U.S. to Decide 737 Max Return”
Yeah, there is a reason for the delay. An aircraft had been chartered to take the FAA’s rubber stamp for the European Aviation Safety Agency to use but unfortunately the plane chartered was a Boeing 737 MAX.
The (non) regulatory behavior of the FAA has permanently crippled any confidence in its effective oversight in my mind.
But then, hasn’t that been the plan all along by defunding it and regulatory agencies like the FDA, etc., in order to create a chinese-like caveat emptor society in our headlong rush to the bottom?
Were I a foreign regulator I would take my time to accomplish a full recertification of the Max. Where one sees the corner cutting that Boeing did I would be concerned about unilateral changes to a certified design that went uncommunicated to the FDA or other regulators.
All of the piped water to car campgrounds have been turned off in anticipation of freezing weather, there’s just 8 more days before the gates are locked tight & Mineral King goes to sleep, and the time is right to experience the spectacular fall colors. Days will be sunny in the 60’s, nights in the high 30’s. You’ll have the place to yourself mostly.
Stay @ Cold Springs campground & walk through the veil of hues on the adjacent Nature Trail, and then come back on MK road experiencing the colors from another vantage point, BYOW.
…a 5 hour drive from LA or SF
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXBNlApwh0c
p.s.
Hadn’t done the whole dog & pony show that is Sequoia-Kings Canyon NP’s all in one fell swoop in awhile, and friends from San Diego & Fla were shown the forest for the trees, and so cosmopolitan were those we encountered, English was truly a second language dwarfed by a cornucopia of accents in passing.
…a five hour drive from LA or SF…
Yah, burn a bunch of gasoline to sate one’s senses. Not to worry, more than enough of us do it. I just flew to Baltimore and back to Tampa for a distant cousin’s wedding in Annapolis. Pre-wedding festivities at the Officers Club at the Naval Academy — allowed to drive on base, rather than trying to walk half a mile from off-Academy parking, thanks to my disabled-veteran card. Really enjoyed the ship models on display, and the portraiture of Great Admirals of Past Battles (none newer than WW II) in one of the function rooms.
Got to see the convoy of some Demi-important Imperial official (windows on the black Escalade darker out, only two destroyer escorts and three soaking wet motorcycle cops (it was raining hard) zipping by on the way from Imperial Capital to BWI.
They got to the VIP drop off a whole lot faster than we got to the airport, so also got to see the same three drowned-rat cycle cops pulling into a quick-stop with a Dunkin Donuts franchise, happy to get under the roof over the gas pumps.
Burn, baby, burn.
I was merely baiting 20 million hooks, and road trips are the bomb, do em’ while ya can.
It would take me maybe 3 weeks to do the sojourn on foot, 1/100th as quick as driving.
I stayed at Cold Spring last year – 10/22 – 10/26. Aside from the chilly nights the weather was wonderful in late October. Mineral King is a very special place that was nearly lost 50 years ago. Treasure it as it likely will always be threatened by those who seek only money; the more the better.
Long predicted here, but Russia!Russia!Russia! shots being taken at Bernie now on the Rec List at DailyKos since Bernie defended Tulsi:
Bernie, you (of all people!) needed to stay out of the Clinton/Gabbard spat
I really don’t see DailyKos aficionados as potential allies going down the road. Three years of gaslighting has rendered them tools of Kristol, Brennan, Clapper, etc.
While I realize this is somewhat off-topic, lets say I have a friend at a company that’s entering open enrollment and their benefits structure is changing. In particular, the pharmacy benefits manager and the formulary is changing.
There’s an open comments period, although certainly not a vote, and it’s distressing to read the accounts of those that are going to get shafted by the formulary change. (The refrain that people that like their insurance haven’t had to use it certainly applies to these stories.) It’s amazing the extent to which drugs that are chemically similar work differently in different people, and how devastating it is when the FBM denies claims and appeals.
And as we’ve read here throughout the years, these denials and formulary changes are simply weapons employed by the PBM to rein in costs (for more profits) when negotiating with drug companies. The insured isn’t the customer, in any part of this. You’re just a meatbag with a wallet attached.
The individuals affected by this are clearly having a difficult time of it; and as someone fortunate enough not to need any significant drugs it’s disturbing to read.
Heh heh heh…..
Just wait till you start getting old
I’m coming up on the “donut hole” in Medicare drug coverage soon. I can sell my 2016 Honda Accord Sport for a decent sum and get an older Civic, but then there’s next year.
The ‘re-privitization’ of medicine in America is literally deadly. Now one can argue that medicine originally started out as a wholly ‘private’ endeavour. However, that method enabled severe triage in the population. If you didn’t have the wealth, you died. Thus was born the idea of public health medicine.
I take some anti-hypertension medicines, which I get, at the local version of a public health clinic for the underlings. The difference in the prices between the clinics in house pharmacy drugs and the exact same drugs ‘in the wild’ is sometimes incredible.
I have begun to imagine that in the basket of inputs to the pricing structures of the medical field we should add, next to the fabulous “hidden hand” of fate, the lowly firearm. Balance is all.
Remember that I think it was Department of Commerce woman employee who was so ill-advised as to seek out the real costs of a whole bunch of drugs and calculate the markups? It was a bit of a minor fuss-maker for maybe two news cycles. The markups were often on the order of 30,000 percent, outer bound. She got some pain for her troubling the Great Flow, as I recall. Acting way outside her portfolio, tsk tsk…
Oh, and see here for a mansplaining of cost versus value of all those high-priced medicines: https://hbr.org/2014/11/the-real-cost-of-high-priced-drugs We mopes should be prostrate and grateful that we live in such wondrous times, when we are allowed to have access to such medicines…
And then there’s this, of course: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-much-human-body-worth/
Oh, good sir, do you mean an Elite model human body or a Deplorable model?
The Alchemist’s Creed does not appear to work in this line of endeavour.
>“[Jill Stein’s] also a Russian asset… Yeah, she’s a Russian asset — I mean, totally. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate.”
Um, Ms. Clinton, (what is going on, I mean she is really getting stupider by the day, if she was my grandma I’d be seriously worried), aren’t you forgetting somebody?
Gary Johnson received 4,489,233 total votes and 3.27% of the national vote, coming third in the nation and setting a record for the Libertarian Party’s best ever electoral result in the process.
But yeah it was Jill Stein (taking my pathetic vote) that cost you the election. You still haven’t figured out that Wisconsin is a state, you still haven’t figured out that you need like, Congresspeople (how much money did you take from their campaigns?) to get whatever your vision was passed, and you really aren’t figuring out that your day is long past.
No gratitude on Hillary’s part for Jill Stein when she organized a re-count on Hillary’s behalf after the 2016 election.
AFAIK, That was more a fundraiser for the greens.
Um, Ms. Clinton, (what is going on, I mean she is really getting stupider by the day…
I’ve come to the conclusion that she was never really as smart as we have been told that she is. Many of her actions, especially for someone who has lived under intense media scrutiny for the past 25+ years, I can only characterize as “dumb”; running private email servers as Sec of State, the GS speeches post Occupy, the whole of the `16 campaign, inability to tell that even small lies come back to bite you, and a lot more.
I don’t mean that she’s a 2+2=5 dumb, but… I just kept hearing (esp in `16) over over via various sources how smart and capable she was which caused me to actually think back on all of her actions as a public figure. Which lead me to the conclusion that she really just isn’t.
Sorry, I realize that that may have been obvious to a lot of others, but I hadn’t really questioned her intelligence up until then, just her motives.
The neo-liberal 5 Stages of Grief and Loss
1. Denial and isolation
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
X. Acceptance.
5. Denial
Where does “Blame someone else” fit in here?
Don’t be so stupid.
2+2=Russian conspiracy.
Email server was to avoid FOIA requests, otherwise she would have to be more circumspect billing clients thru foundation slush fund for state dept favors.
Her deal with big o was to not do that as sec state, honored, if that is the word, in the breach.
And Karen Finney, one of HRC’s top campaign aides says;
So I guess there are possible nominees that Clinton wouldn’t be supporting “out on the trail in 2020” ?
That’s interesting isn’t it?
I blame tv. The result is we (society) allows anyone who isn’t smearing themselves in feces to be hailed as a super genius and anyone who demands that people think for themselves to be a provincial rube for not recognizing the nice people on tv as brainiacs.
On tv, Obama is a brilliant speaker. On paper, he’s word salad.
I was reading something recently, I think one of Werner Jaeger’s Greek Paideia books, and it was talking about the original sophists. How it was all about presentation and moving the audience, and that they were very popular form of entertainment, some people made big money giving speeches. I think Jaeger’s point was that for the Greeks it was all about form, the presentation, and not much about the substance, and you can see those ideas entering the early church. So I was trying to explain (mansplain?) it to my wife and was trying to come up with a contemporary example when she said, “You mean TED talks.” Ha ha, exactly. TED Talks the modern sophists. We’re just like the ancient greeks preferring a confident, moving, appealing, presentation, over substance. We’re living in the age of confidence rackets, everyone Winning Friends and Influencing People.
Without the teleprompter he’s a dummy.
HRC may have been smart and capable twenty years ago, but now she is just an old and addled person who can best serve this nation by retiring to a rocking chair with her grandchildren.
Arrogance tantamount to stupidity.
I’ve seen two explanations for her setting up the server. One is rarely acknowledged, but back in the early aughts government IT was really still terrible (it probably still is, but I don’t have much contact with it any more). It seem to be true that her private server was never hacked, while the State Department secure network is hacked regularly. The other explanation, which seems just a plausible to me, is that she is utterly unable/unwilling to learn how to use either a desktop computer or a modern smart phone. She needed the private server to have underlings print out the emails for her to read.
Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard are women. Susan Sarandon.
I know its overlooked because Hillary is also a woman, but who are the villains of Clinton world or much of Team Blue? Approved women are okay as long as they respect the Queen, but dissenters are bullied. When you think about David Brock’s operation is basically the same as when he was a Republican except now he works for Team Clinton.
This is exactly what I was trying to get at in yesterday’s comments.
He’s not trustworthy, even by erstwhile allies like Neera Tanden. I was just floating the Manchurian conspiracy to provoke conversation and generate ideas on how to defend against his operation. I do mostly agree with Pat’s reply that David Brock is just too craven and I’m giving him too much credit.
However, there is clear and overwhelming evidence (see previous posts) that David Brock, ShareBlue, and the American Bridge PAC are engaged in the very disinformation and bot tactics that Russia is being accused of. I don’t understand how he or any of his operations have any credibility at all, on any side of any aisle.
The only reason to explain why Labor unions are channelling money into an operation that is fomenting dissent within the Democratic party and taking down Democratic candidates for President is that the Union leadership are largely just as corrupt as he is and membership are uninformed of what is going on.
I think too many unions are too large they aren’t answerable to the members. Challenging a bum like Trumka is beyond the means of a random chapter. Its basically the incumbency protection racket.
Unions need to be an electoral force, not assistants to parties. They should have candidates for political office. That would make negotiations with the bosses more interesting.
At this point I am just eagerly awaiting the answer to the age old question, “If a bear barfs up Hillary Clinton in the woods to avoid alchohol poisoning, will MSDNC report it as a Russian one?”
My immediate thought is that Russian bears would have a higher tolerance for alchohol, but, anyway, go bears! One always thinks that she has reached peak tiresome, and then she does something like this.
In 2000 Al Gore was openly cheated by the S.C. (As other candidates were cheated in different ways in the past.) After waging a vigorous fight all the way to the S.C. and losing, he gracefully as possible conceded (which must have hurt like hell). He did not spend the next 3-4 years publicly whining and throwing a public temper tantrum. After all, what would people think of a man who acted like that? Too emotional to handle himself during a setback, unable to control himself, to emotional to handle authority?
Now I’m supposed to give Hills a pass for acting the way (refusing to ‘suck it up’ and go forward) that would disqualify a man for high office? Hills playing a double standard sets back the cause of womens equality far more than some Strom Thurmond-type patronizingly patting ‘the little ladies’ on the head, imo. Hills is confirming the old stereotype that women are too emotional to be trusted with real power. Melt downs, blaming others, still whining that she really won, and attacking other women. Thanks a lot… not.
https://morningconsult.com/2020-democratic-primary-2/
I get that polling can be hard to decipher, especially as there’s been a recent split where either biden is up 10, or warren is up 3-4. However, it’s worth watching morningconsult each week, because it’s incredibly slow and steady in how it moves. This is probably at least partially a function of sample size (which is very large).
I post here today because there’s a shift, not on the surface, but beneath the surface. Biden’s favorability, which has been neck-and-neck with sanders for months, has now started to drop.
Biden now has the highest unfavorables of any candidate, except tulsi and marianne williamson. Bernie continues to be steady on favorability at 74% fav, biden is now down to 70%.
I suspect pundits are reading these numbers incorrectly. I think the numbers point to potential upside if voters shift. Biden’s ceiling is dropping and bernie’s looks quite high, higher than warren’s.
There’s also a bit of reclaiming lost ground from sanders in the 2nd choice category. He’d lost ground to warren over the last month.
This seems worth watching in coming weeks.
I saw a good tweet this morning saying that a quarter of all Iowans have signed up to volunteer for Bernie.
Not that far off the mark, imo.
PG&E says more potential power cuts could hit about 209,000 customers Reuters
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
One of the cabin owners in our community is from the Bay Area and a retired NPS superintendent. He is Mr. Prepared, and was ready for the power outage with a potent generator which also provided electricity to 3 other neighbors, one of which gave him a case of wine for the effort afterwards.
I told him there must be some way for Silicon Valley to milk the lack of power crisis in a sharing way economy, call it Över.
Can’t wait for the IPO!
> Three men at PG&E decide when Californians go dark to stop fires
This article is a two-faced mealy-mouth wishy-washy piece of poop without the names and the photographs of the three boot lickers.
(My power has not been subtracted yet but I live in the flatlands not the hills. The item that really interests me is if any customers have lost their power in the hills in Woodside. All I have seen is maps with huge splotches covered and I am inside a splotch and all the lights and computers are running like the Energizer bunny.)
“Out” would be better. Uber and Out. :)
“Everyone Is a Russian Asset”
This is really going deep down the rabbit hole here. We have completely forgotten some of the hardest learnt lessons from the 1950s. Oh well, if that is the case, we may as well have the appropriate music. After the events of the past few days, I am calling it Hillary’s Theme-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSRm80WzZk
Yes, but clearly this is where we are. I met with an older friend, a good long-time Santa Monica Democrat on the weekend, and found out that the Russian asset theme is working its magic just fine. Democrat rank and file members, as we have seen from recent polling, are largely all down with the intelligence blob narrative … having surrounded themselves in the Big Time media bubble like a warm blanket on a cold winter’s day. Coming here to NC each morning increasingly makes me feel like some weird outcast when most people I know limit themselves to NYT, CNN, and NPR … so that IS their reality. Needless to say, I don’t talk politics in polite company.
The US has basically living in a time warp since the end of the Second War. 1945 is the touchstone for the chisled-in-stone evaluation that the US is great, rich, victorious over the whole globe—and still is, according to Pres. Trump, or still can be according to a slew of demons. Ms Clinton is the perfect embodiment of the attitude’s high point in the ‘fifties: a Goldwater Girl!
Which proves the adage that you can take the Goldwater Girl out of the Goldwater campaign, but you will never get the Goldwater campaign out of the Goldwater Girl.
The last two years have been like something out of a John Birch Society newsletter, but it has been fun to watch people squeal with fear about a country with the GDP of Spain and military spending that is less than our annual increases.
Home of the brave, indeed.
In the near-term this sort of stuff works to buy time for the survival of the current establishment. But, in the longer term, you can see the seeds of distrust being sown even further. Larger and larger numbers of the public are openly distrustful. The generational gap looms large, too. People under 40 aren’t nearly as wedded to those news sources. Many are now openly hostile to them.
It’s a narrow slice of the population, mostly concentrated in blue states, consisting of richer, older democrats. As usual with team D, it works for fundraising, but it’s a terrible electoral strategy.
A consequence of the disconnect is the echo chamber will be self-reinforcing as the members of the Team Blue Right Wing attempt to show even greater loyalty to Mother. Fortunately they are such a bloody ignorant lot they can’t make too many comparisons having to rely on whatever phrases Maddow berates them with.
Newsweek: While Gabbard has responded with claims that she is the subject of a coordinated smear campaign by Clinton, she has steadfastly refused to renounce any Russian support she may be receiving. As somebody who worked against Russian intelligence, I agree with Clinton’s assessment—Gabbard’s campaign and messaging are at risk of being weaponized to interfere with and manipulate our election.
Just mind boggling…
https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-being-used-russians-former-us-double-agent-evidence-clear-opinion-1466750
I temporarily blanked out McCarthy’s first name (almost wrote Eugene) as I was beginning a comment so DuckDuckGoed McCarthyism.
Lo and behold someone had changed the Wikipedia synopsis to read “Clintonism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence.”
Tried to copy and paste the synopsis but every time I tried, a click went to the full Wikipedia page which said McCarthyism.
DuckDuckGo:
McCarthyism – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Clintonism is the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term refers to U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting from the late 1940s through the 1950s.
By that logic, if Russians really wanted to undermine the US elections, they could simply support every candidate.
I got linked to that piece by a Clinton-Bot friend (who actually took it seriously).
I read the piece looking for even a single hard, falsifiable piece of supporting evidence tying the Russians to Gabbard in *any* way. Nope, not even a whiff. You could write the precise same piece and claim the Russians were instead trying to help Biden or Buttigieg and there would be *exactly* as much actual evidence to support *that* conclusion instead! No the “nesting doll” doesn’t fit. Amazing what a putative news outlet will publish. This is nothing but a pure smear piece at its ugliest, and most political.
Making outragous accusations like these publicly against a major Presidential candidate without *any* hard supporting evidence is, at the least reckless and irresponsible, and must at least be sailing close to legally slanderous. How can this be legal to do?
“Law is for the little people.” You do what you can get away with, depending on how Big you are. There are no “rights” without ENFORCEABLE REMEDIES, as with the “civil forfeitures programs” where cops take your money and stuff “in rem,” or use chain saws to cut up your sailboat looking for drugs and then flip you off (Tort Claims Act is NOT a remedy.
Get used to it, folks, we are in the Land of Arbitrary Power, almost exclusively. Any different outcomes in individual cases are just the exceptions that prove the rule. How many cops have been convicted of any kind of crime for killing civilians, again? How many courtiers in DC have gone to jail or paid any judgments for defaming anyone? All Sharpton has just ignored the judgment against him for defaming a NY prosecutor back in the Tawana Brawley witch-hunt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tawana_Brawley_rape_allegations
“No rights without remedies.” Good luck getting any relief “at law or in equity.” Especially where “public person” is involved. Remember NYTimes v. Sullivan, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan, and its progeny?
The more money you have the more justice you can buy; the more moneyed friends you have the better your chance to get away scot free.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if an Army lawyer took this up, for trashing federal property?
Given HIllary’s two high profile losses, shouldn’t we start pointing fingers at the most obvious Kremlin assets: the Clinton campaign teams?
For some reason, comrades Mook and Penn aren’t being held to account. Have they gathered intel on the msm through their Kremlin contacts?
I imagine this piece of memery to be the theme for inside the DNC/Clinton camp;
See, hear, and weep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trWoUFihU34
‘A Time For US,’ where Romeo represents America and Juliet represents, well, you know. Everybody who counts is on board. Get with the program! Two Mommies!
I am surprised that we haven’t seen films (new or old, if I have missed them) about the Siberian Candidate, who is more menacing than the Manchurian Candidate.
Well, Siberia is right above Manchuria. Some people might assert that Manchuria is a part of Siberia. I might make some sort of lame-o witticism about China and it’s propensity to emit candidates like tofu burgers, but that would be Pandaing to our Base-R elements and thus beneath contempt.
This is my favorite HRC theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYJRc0TJkQ
D–n! Someone is taking the Hillary threat seriously!
An energizing video, but, as my old homeland’s eponymous Victorian ruler was prone to utter: “We are not amused.”
If antiquity only understood Milgrams many splendid coloured coat … soon to be upgraded to 5G … where there are only two options … love or hate … where one is defined by others …
Ah yes! The care and nurturing of the ‘Self’ is not on any curriculum that I have ever seen.
If what I have been reading is even close to correct, 5G will turn the surface of the skin into an effulgent horizon.
RE: “Women At Ernst & Young Instructed On How To Dress, Act Nicely Around Men”
This is also the crap being programmed into algorithms by mentally and emotional deficients: the future mindf- – – where nobody is accountable for absolute oppression and ignorance because “the computer said so.”
That reminds of this funny clip!
“Computer says, ‘No’.”
I love the women are pancakes and men are waffles logic.
Effectively, both men and women are just batter, a mix of egg, flour and milk with a pinch of salt. Women batter then gets poured into a frying pan and gently flipped a couple of times until they go softly solid before being served with a drizzle of sweet.
Men, on the other hand, get poured into the bottom half of a hot waffle iron and then the top half of the waffle iron slams down on them and they get branded on both sides before being jerked out onto a plate and served with jam and cream.
Is this what the EY consultant means?
Really regret this isn’t Twitter and I can’t “like” this comment.
RE: “These are judgments that could ruin the lives of regular people; people who are engaging in the things we all do when we’re online: sharing memes, sharing videos, and downloading images.”
Regular people, not only corporations, have copyrights too.
The true spirit of copyright is sharing and acknowledgement.
We should wish. The true spirit of copyright and intellectual property is ownership, exclusion, and rent-seeking.
Oh, so authors and music writers and performers should starve. Glad to know you hate us.
Just trying to describe what seems to be the state of play with regard to the people who have been doing such violence to the original notion expressed by Summer, folks like Disney and the rest. Under what passes for “rule of law.”
I worked for a Big Law Firm, now eaten by a Bigger Law Firm, that had a large and growing “Intellectual Property” practice. A lot of what they did involved stealing the work of others via copyright games, “work for hire” thievery and such like. Helped Bill Gates gain ”digital” copyright power over a huge swath of Great Art from the past. https://bizfluent.com/how-7887122-become-rich-bill-gates.html
Sorry you read what I typed the way you did. My cynical but I think correct view of the larger picture where the Big Corps play is not what should be the case at all, of course.
I think copyright should be for the life of the author, no more. Right now the law goes a LOT farther than that, at the behest of Silicon Valley and Disney. They are the reason why untold numbers of recordings and movies will never be seen again.
And as an (visual, traditional) artist, I’m insulted by people who think I need money to “incentivize” my art. No, I need money to pay the bills and live. My art is going to happen anyway, that doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all. I set the terms for my art, or no deal.
For the most part, it seems like intellectual property benefits corporations more overall than it does authors and music writers. That’s not to say concepts such as copyright and intellectual property are by default bad, but to say they cannot be criticized, discussed or modified in any way or else you ‘hate authors and musicians’ seems overly reductivist. Surely something can be done to reduce corporate rentierism like the way corporations like Disney distorts copyright to last indefinitely without ‘hating authors and performers’ or harming said people.
IMassinissa,I see you got the point I was making.
Copyright is a bargain between creators and society whose Constitutional justification is to encourage the creation of valuable expressions of ideas. The creator gets a non-perpetual exclusive right to reproduce their work and license others to do so. Patents, likewise, serve their Constitutional justification of encouraging the process of science and the useful arts by offering the inventor the non-perpetual, exclusive right to practice their inventions and license others to practice them, in exchange for fully and publicly disclosing their invention such that anyone skilled in the art can reproduce it.
Intellectual “property”, on the other hand, is nothing more than a neoliberal rent-seeking scheme and the concept is best brutally put down with incessant mockery and air quotes whenever the term is mentioned. Absolutely no transfer of rights away from the creator encourages the creation of useful ideas and expressions, and are therefore against public policy, except to the public domain, or in the case of patents to the decedent creator’s kin.
So how do we insure that creators get their due without it turning into the kind of nightmare in the article?
For one thing, under the present system creators very often do NOT get their due because some corporation owns their output.
Did the copyright system work better before it was seized by corporate power?
The principle is “works for hire”. If you are an employee, your employer owns any intellectual property you produce while working. I don’t see why that is controversial. They paid for your time, provided the tools and materials, and important, filed the patent application, which costs $50K just to get started. If you work on a factory line and build a car, you don’t take the position that you own 1/350th of the car. The fact that “creators” fancy that their relationship to being employed is different than blue collar workers is a conceit.
Having said that, I do know of one corporate employee who was allowed to own his own IP, but first, he was a tech guy at a bank (as in his IP was not core to the business of the business of his employer), second, his bank wan’t terribly interested in developing his IP, third, the guy could have quit and been hired in a very top position at other banks and demanded ownership of his IP as a condition of his hiring, and fourth, he was able to do most of his own patent applications so his legal bills were way lower than for most mere mortals.
On the dark side — copyright laws give the Federal Government a great hammer to use on anyone they decide to go against for any reason. All they need is a warrant that enables them to access the target’s home computers and or smart phone [I am assuming the target would use computers or a smart phone]. Who has not downloaded an image or text, or tune, or copied any sort of materials in violation of some interpretation of copyright laws? If you are innocent — what about other users of the home computers and smart phones? Do you have any teenagers in the house — or did you sometime within the statute of limitations? How many counts would it take to build an indictment that could hold someone in prison for life and wipe out any savings they might have? — Just carefully watch the first few minutes of the next movie DVD you play.
Rather like the drug laws, which make it absurdly easy to frame someone.
Huh? Please tell me when this has happened.
Hint: the Feds have way better ways to go after people. Planting child porn on your hard disk. A contact who is not paranoid but has done some serious whistleblowing regards that as a real risk.
I stated that copyright laws give the Federal Government a great hammer which they could use. It is not quite the same but I believe the Aaron Swartz case tells of how Federal prosecutors might use a hammer if they are intent on going after someone — “Aaron Hillel Swartz: “Federal prosecutors later charged him with two counts of wire fraud and eleven violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, carrying a cumulative maximum penalty of $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison, asset forfeiture, restitution, and supervised release.
Swartz declined a plea bargain under which he would have served six months in federal prison.” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz]
Planting kiddie porn on a hard disk is playing very hard ball. I think it goes well beyond serving as a tool for forcing a plea bargain. Why use a sledge hammer?
RE: Ancient Teeth Reveal Social Stratification Dates Back to Bronze Age Societies
Social Stratification will go back as far as there was a production of surplus agriculture. Because the ability to hoard is the only thing needed to create stratification of a society. Now we have money as a surrogate, but it is no different.
And the trait that enables the continuation of the stratification is the hope that someday “I” will be the one who has hoarded the most. It falls apart when people feel that that is not possible anymore.
Farming was a significant break, though it seems to me that some stratification was there with the division of labor, even among hunter-gatherers.
Going further back, looking at our closest primate relatives, we can picture our ancestors kowtowing to the group’s alpha male. And if it is true that everyone, or many, in Central Asia, could claim to be a descedant of Genghis Khan, and if many in the UNK can’t face the possibility they might have some royal blood, it is because the alpha male got plenty of chances to pass on his DNA…by dominating those who would submit, and so, we also have that part of the human genome in us.
And so, looking around, we can ask if evolution has instilled in us the tendency to obey, follow and worship, from having had to survive the alpha male, but it is also something we must and can overcome.
Well said. There’s a sad tendency among economists and other social scientists to view humans in isolation, as if our biology has nothing to do with who we are or what we do.
As for overcoming our limitations before they overcome us, this recent piece of research suggests that evolution may have left us more stuck in a rut than monkeys.
Monkeys outperform humans when it comes to cognitive flexibility, study finds
“we can picture our ancestors kowtowing to the group’s alpha male” — Really funny early-SNL sketch along these lines: look for an online video of “The Hominids”. Laraine Newman’s (as Oona, the cave girl) version of “I like you” to Steve Martin’s uber-smart caveman is an absolute classic. :)
“I am swift, and I am strong … and now I am smart.”
The “alpha male” is the myth that keeps on mything. There is no such thing. Some men may have social dominance but that is all. This myth lives to perpetuate the myth that capitalists have earned what ever host they have. The rest do not hang around for survival, but rather, it is the hope they will share in the greed.
Its even a myth when referring to wolves, of which the term ‘alpha’ originates from. Turns out wolves only have ‘alphas’ when held in captivity, which distorted the study from which the term ‘alpha’ was derived. The man who coined the term in the 70s later disavowed the term in 1999.
I assume the ‘alpha male human’ is as much a myth as the ‘alpha wolf’.
Actually, bonobos, our closest living relatives, are female-dominant.
“Turkey To Go Its Own Way With Submarines”
Bit of a worry this as submarines are offensive weapons. Erdogan did a conference a few days ago and the map behind him showed the Islands in Eastern Aegean as being Turkish so he is not shy about his ambitions. Erdogan is an old-fashioned imperialist who wants to expand his country’s borders and reclaim “lost” territory. The Jerusalem Post picked up on his plans for the Syrian border a month ago-
https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Turkey-plans-to-occupy-northeast-Syria-with-27-billion-program-603250
I would imagine that Erdogan wants those submarines so that he can perhaps one day interdict Greece and the islands in the Aegean that she owns. Maybe more so with Cyprus as Erdogan wants to claim nearly all those off-shore deposits of gas and oil for Turkey. This probably explains why Greece is letting the US build several bases in Greece now as support against Turkey. This has the potential to get real ugly as time goes by.
Slight quibble.
“Boomer” submarines are offensive. “Attack” submarines are defensive.
As far as I know, Turkey doesn’t have any WMD to speak of, so they must be building “attack” submarines, or playing a game of decades.
I couldn’t determine the classification of the submarine, but the Forbes article is clearly heavily influenced by the same wikipedia page I read. Notably the same classification of sub is used by Greece as well, and this is probably just Turkey trying to keep up.
The sub appears to have (at a casual glance) 4-8 rocket ports on top for cruise missles, which can be ship-to-ship or ship-to-air. (ship to shore could work, but hardly makes sense unless secrecy is a top concern.) I believe these subs are for surface control, not ‘attack’ Hardly able to defend the Bosphorous straights, or give an opposing fleet much cause for concern if they have modern sensors… or screens of the new underwater drones.
Just like the US defense industry, sometimes spending money is it’s own reward.
Ask the captain of an aircraft carrier whether “attack” submarines are “defensive” or “attack.” Only accurate, I would say, if one is talking about strategic weapons, preferably of mass destruction, carried by “boomers.” Though let’s recall the Israelis have “attack” submarines fitted with submersible-launched “cruise missiles” which carry nuclear warheads. Said submarines having been built by ThyssenKrupp, the same firm that built U-boats for the Nazi war effort, and the same firm that built some of the Turkish U-boats. And a good part of the cost of said submarines was paid by good old Uncle Sucker.
I love this entry from Wiki, that packs so much unintended irony into a couple of paragraphs:
The Dolphin class (Hebrew: הצוללות מסדרת דולפין) is a diesel-electric submarine developed and constructed by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft AG (HDW) in Kiel, Germany, for the Israeli Navy.[4] The first boats of the class were based on the export-only German 209-class submarines, but modified and enlarged. The Dolphin 1 sub-class is slightly larger than the German Navy Type 212 in length and displacement. The three newer air-independent propulsion (AIP) equipped boats are similar to the Type 212 vessels in underwater endurance, are 12 metres (39 ft) longer, nearly 500 tonnes heavier in submerged displacement and have a larger crew than either the Type 212 or the Type 214.
The Dolphin 2-class are the largest submarines to have been built in Germany since World War II.[3] The Dolphin class boats are the most expensive single vehicles in the Israel Defense Forces.[5] The Dolphin-class replaced the aging Gal-class submarine, which had served in the Israeli navy since the late 1970s. Each Dolphin-class submarine is capable of carrying a combined total of up to 16 torpedoes and submarine-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs).[6] The cruise missiles have a range of at least 1,500 km (930 mi)[7] and are widely believed[8][9] to be equipped with a 200 kiloton nuclear warhead containing up to 6 kilograms (13 lb) of plutonium.[10][11] The latter, if true, would provide Israel with an offshore nuclear second strike capability.[12][13][14][15]…
History….
First budgeted in July 1989 and ordered in January 1990, by November the order was cancelled due to budget reallocation aimed at countering Iraqi threats made against Israel following the Iraqi invasion and annexation of neighboring Kuwait during leadup to the 1991 Gulf War. Funding for first two boats (Dolphin and Leviathan) was fully subsidized by the German government to restart the construction program and the third (Tekumah) received a 50% subsidy. During the first Gulf War, it was revealed that German firms had assisted Iraq with modernizing its ballistic missile and chemical weapon programs, thanks in part to lax enforcement by German customs, in violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime protocols which West Germany had in 1987 acceded to.[16] These enhanced missiles brought Israeli cities into Iraqi targeting range for the first time and included supplies and factories for modern weaponized mustard and nerve gas.[17][18] Though not a belligerent in the Gulf War, Israeli cities were nevertheless bombarded with these upgraded Iraqi missiles.[19][20] To compensate Israel for war related damage and economic losses[18][21] and keep German shipyards occupied with a high profile project in the post Cold War defense spending downturn,[22][23] then Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl approved an assistance package to German industry including the construction of two Dolphin-class submarines.[24][25]
Got to love the international arms bazaar, no? “We are so sorry we sold long range missiles to Iraq — now we will
sellgive you U-boats as reparations…”One should also recall other bits of history, like the Israeli attack on And attempt to sink the USS Liberty, and this tidbit, sinking a Lebanese refugee vessel in the 6 Days War: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal-class_submarine
No wonder Erdogan wants his own bathtub fleet, and nuclear weapons to boot — a mini-MAD game is afoot, rats scrapping under the hooves of the Great Powers… Must keep our Imperial War Planners and Battlespace Managers up at night, thinking out all the combinations and permutations…
Or planning on those sinecures with defense contractors or consultants, or even broadcasters, after leaving the service.
“Attack” submarines are defensive.
Are you kidding, or is that the official military terminology? Incredibly Orwellian if it is!
Nope. To be fair, the captain of the carrier probably is the real threat, but the nuclear armed subs are doomsday weapons… The ‘boomers’. Orwell eat your heart out.
Attack subs are comparatively reassuring.
What scares me are drones and unmarked vessels. Imagine tracing back these shadowy refinery attacks, but it’s a city destroyed instead.
Is Crimea a ‘lost’ territory?
Does Ergodan remember all the wars between Russia and the Ottoman Empire?
Further east, do they feel a kinship with the Uyghurs, who are Turkic? How big is a greater Turkey? Can this be worked out within the Heartland Alliance?
It is a rule on the internet that there is an XKCD cartoon for everything, now including brexit:
https://xkcd.com/2218/
sigh
RE: “A 14-year-old boy … mother is facing 6 felony charges” — This story is as vague as it is disturbing. I’d like to make an intelligent comment to what is going on but there is so much I’m left guessing about.
It is very believable the clinic and physicians treating this woman’s son did not tell his diagnosis or proper advice for how she could help her son given whatever financial constraints she faced. The article omits details of her financial situation and details of the treatment costs at this mental health center but I can believe the woman is not wealthy and the costs of mental health care where I live are well beyond the means of more than 90% of the population. The medication for treating someone who was diagnosed as ” … depressed, had suicidal thoughts, heard voices, and had expressed homicidal urges against his bullies …” is not cheap and many of the medications have horrendous side-effects. For example consider the anti-psychotic drug Risperdal, and the lawsuits and a recent judgment against Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary arising from “… risks that the drug could lead to breast growth in boys” — risks the lawsuit claims — “… the health care giant downplayed.
The article gives no details of the many criminal counts brought against the mother of this boy although another article suggests they include allegations like: “‘Investigators were not able to find any documentation of actions that York took to address any bullying prior to December 13, 2018,’ the document says. It also shows that the teen was sometimes left home alone.” [https://fox59.com/2019/10/14/felony-charges-filed-against-mother-in-connection-with-2018-shooting-at-richmond-school/] — the counts are given a little more detail in this reference.
The woman’s boyfriend left guns around her home: “She said she was never able to get her boyfriend to take the guns out of the home. He has not been charged in the case.” The matter of the guns in the home relates to what I believe was the primary count in the indictment of this mother: “Dangerous control of a child – permit child to possess handgun while aware of risk (Level 5 felony).” I found nothing more was said on this but I think issue of guns and the ammunition raises many unanswered questions. It looks to me as if the other felony counts were piled on to compel this woman to take a plea bargain to assure a quick slam dunk win the prosecutor could notch on his or her briefcase.
If you own a firearm you are 100% responsible for what happens with it, regardless who actually is on the trigger. There is loads of supporting case law on this. Been that way since forever, or at least since the 1964 Gun Control act. Failure to secure your arm is kinda basic, its one of the first things they teach you in the gun safety courses….. that are taught by the NRA.
Who knows what the laws could be in Indiana. It was reported to me, Pence was the best and the brightest. Really, and he said yes to Trump.
State has zero to do with it, since firearms are regulated by the Feds via BATF. States are free to add more restrictions, but not to remove restrictions from federal law.
As far as I could tell reading the two articles — the boyfriend owned the guns — not the woman indicted. As for law, there is law and there is Justice and what is right. Our ‘laws’ have multiplied in number and severity of their application and punishment and mutated to forms which place far too much burden on a criminals defender — a defense which very few people can afford. [In my opinion the public defenders work a little too closely with the prosecutors, both parties are completely overburdened with case loads, underpaid, and pressed to close cases as quickly as possible and move on.]
To me the biggest issue is the boy’s insanity and the way our society deals with insanity and helps the relatives of the sufferer. In my opinion there is little help available; it is overly monetized and very expensive; it is largely ineffective and badly executed. Insanity seems on the rise in this country and if so why is that? Is the boy responsible for his insanity, or his mother? Is it his mother’s fault she see didn’t go to the school and complain about the big kids picking on her boy? What would they have done that would have made a difference?
Now consider the matter of the guns. Well and good that “If you own a firearm you are 100% responsible for what happens with it, regardless who actually is on the trigger.” How is that just and how does such law fit the way people, especially people in rural areas actually use guns? You might be able to afford an expensive gun safe but how many country people can? How many people in the rural areas pay much attention to the gun laws — other than the ways those laws restrict the ownership, exchanges, and use of guns? You must be aware that guns have become something of a country investment item bought and sold like stocks or bonds. Don’t get me wrong — I do not own a gun, I am not comfortable around them, and I would just as soon see them eliminated. But that does not change the place they have in our culture. The laws passed by city-folk applied to the rural areas and poor don’t change the culture and they cannot be followed in many cases for a variety of reasons — matters like a boyfriend keeping his guns around the woman’s house, which is actually a matter in this case I am most curious about.
Now suppose, late one night, the boy took a kitchen knife, went to his bedroom, cut his throat, and bled to death? How many of the prosecutor’s charges should be filed against this boy’s mother?
— Dangerous control of a child – permit child to possess handgun while aware of risk (Level 5 felony)
[On this count just change handgun to butcher knife.]
— 2 counts: Neglect of a dependent – places dependent in situation that endangers the dependent (Level 6 felony)
— 3 counts: Neglect of a dependent – deprives dependent of necessary support (Level 6 felony)
— Criminal recklessness (Class B misdemeanor)
Knifes are a close in weapon but every bit as lethal as a gun. What makes guns so special? True they are easier and quicker to use, and less painful — but what of a two-banger engine running in a closed area, or a large bottle of Tylenol [the pain comes later]?
Where does culpability lie in this case and with whom?
My experience is that people in rural areas pay far better attention to proper and safe gun ownership than urban people, regardless of having a proper gun safe or not. When I was a kid in flyover country, it never occurred to anyone that guns were used for “busting a cap in a rival dope dealer” or any other such nonsense. When the nearest neighbors are 3 miles away, things are different. The rural people are far more likely to be raised with the proper respect.
I agree that people in rural areas pay far better attention to proper and safe gun ownership than urban people, regardless of having a proper gun safe or not. However, “proper and safe gun ownership” — as a matter at law — may contain requirements for a gun safe and/or separation of guns from ammunition. Hence any matter — at law — is also a matter into which the ability to afford a proper gun safe could come into consideration.
And be that as it may, you do not address my concerns about the Justice of how this matter appears to have been handled. You do not address my concerns for the lack of care for mental health problems at a time they seem — to me — to be on the increase.
CASE Act bureaucracy;
Same thing is happening with music copyrights. Less nightlife in your town? Streets empty? Probably has to do with less live music being played in bars and cafes, which attracts people and leads to liquor sales and taxes paid.
Not talking film scores here, but rather some high school kid playing for coins in a bar.
ASCAP or BMI sends in auditors who tape shows. If any standards are played, a huge bill is sent to the cafe owner who must pay a licensing fee per federal law. Recalcitrants are taken to federal court. ASCAP always wins because the fees are in federal law.
Of course the cafe can just acquiesce and pay thousands every year to the music copyright enforcement agencies which keep a majority of the money and return little to the musicians and composers who wrote the songs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08music-t.html
Forgot to add, you can’t even play a commercial radio station or your own CDs in a commercial establishment without paying.
“Of course the cafe can just acquiesce and pay thousands every year to the music copyright enforcement agencies which keep a majority of the money and return little to the musicians and composers who wrote the songs.”
This is simply not true. Ask any ASCAP member who has works performed in the popular media. They do get quite a bit of money depending on the number of plays their work generated. And when is it right for one group to make money off the group that created what they’re selling? Should the bars stiff the providers of the booze they sell?
Yes, commercially as in radio stations and CDs.
The amount the bar pays versus what the artist gets from that is pitiful, i.e.
checks for less than a dollar per year for lessor artists whose work is played a lot. This smells like medical insurance.
CNN e_enterainment Manu Raju & Jeremy Herb SHILLS. As a nation of laws. Slow meticulously slow; infuriatingly slow is the price. Proof are the freedoms surrendered after the knee jerk reactions to 9/11
Re: the antidote, when I saw it in thumbnail form I initially thought it was a snail. Nice picture though (once I figured out what it actually was).