A few Links

Oil glut inspired housing crisis in ND: The Real Estate Crisis in North Dakota's Man Camps - Bloomberg Business:

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Dianne Feinstein...

... needs to go.

The Greatest Threat to Campus Free Speech is Coming From Dianne Feinstein and her Military-Contractor Husband:

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The Evil Corporation

A pretty good discussion of the VW event here.

NOT CLEAR ON YOUR STRATEGY HERE | Gin and Tacos:

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Fiorina or Trump?

A good discussion of the two here: IN CHARACTER | Gin and Tacos:

A good one on Fiorina from the comments:

My favorite Fiorina-related metric is what happened to HP stock on the day she was fired. HP as a company was exactly the same after she was tossed as it was beforehand, except the name in the CEO box on the organization chart changed. This change sent the stock price soaring, to the point where the company’s market cap ended the day something like three billion dollars higher than it was when the day began. 

That’s right: the market carefully weighed Fiorina’s value as a corporate asset and determined that she and everything she brought to the table was worth negative $3 billion. I can’t think of any other example of someone’s fundamental worthlessness being established so clearly and so precisely by the almighty free market.

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The Experience Fallacy

The Experience Fallacy - A Wealth of Common SenseA Wealth of Common Sense:

"I’ve witnessed firsthand how easy it can be for very bright and experienced individuals to allow their past experiences to cloud their worldview. One of the biggest downsides of experienced practitioners is that many of them think they have everything figured out. It’s very easy for people to get stuck in their ways and not adapt with the world around them. Irrational ideologies are far more damaging to the decision-making process than inexperience. 

This is why we had Depression babies who were risk averse for decades after the Great Depression. Investors who came up during the 1970s expected interest rates and inflation to stay high forever. Almost everyone who invested in the 80s or 90s became complacent and assumed mid-double digit stock market gains were their birthright. The latest generation of investors have decided that the world is going to end once a week because we’ve lived through two huge crashes in the past 15 years."

.. or why people who lived and worked during the Reagan years think tax cuts are the answer to every economic issue.

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Who are the Terrorists?

"More than 1,991 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces and extremists since 2000, according to figures released by an international rights group Thursday."

Rights group: Israelis have killed nearly 2000 Palestinian children since 2000 | Informed Comment:

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Fiorina vs Trump

Fiorina attacking Trump's business ability last night was classic.

Here's a little on her business skills: Fiorina widely considered a bad CEO - Business Insider:

A few key points.

• She has been frequently called out as one of the "worst" CEOs.
• ...her biggest business achievement, CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is widely regarded as a disaster.
• In an article about worst CEOs in USA Today in 2005, Yale business Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld said that Fiorina was "the worst because of her ruthless attack on the essence of this great company. ... She destroyed half the wealth of her investors and yet still earned almost $100 million in total payments for this destructive reign of terror."
• ..while Fiorina was at HP, "virtually everything she bought ... has been shuttered or divested." He pointed out — emphasis his — that "She has NEVER been offered another CEO position in the decade since."
• She was famously fired from HP.
•  When she began, the stock was hovering around $55. It was hovering at $19 to $20 when she was fired, 

It doesn't sound like she should be lecturing anyone on business skills.

They are both clowns.

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The Greatest Threat to the US...

.. the Neocons. Explained here.

Are Neocons an Existential Threat? | Consortiumnews:

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A Serious Politician

Compare a serious politician to the clown show





Trump



The second debate

CNN Debate 2

Bernie is serious and needs to be heard.

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Polls

Number 5 here explains why the Republican poles were so far off in the last election. They weren't wrong by accident. They were trying to give the illusion of a close race to rally the Romney voters.

Running stop signs

Running stop signs

Cost of a College Education

The cost of a college education are rising because the purpose of our education system is to make money for our corporate overlords.

Why We Should Fear University, Inc. - The New York Times:

Enrolling at a university today means setting yourself up in a vast array of for-profit systems that each take a little slice along the way: student loans distributed on fee-laden A.T.M. cards, college theater tickets sold to you by Ticketmaster, ludicrously expensive athletic apparel brought to you by Nike. Students are presented with a dazzling array of advertisements and offers: glasses at the campus for-profit vision center, car insurance through some giant financial company, spring break through a package deal offered by some multinational.

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Refugees flee Mideast's Wars

Refugees flee Mideast's perpetual 'gang wars' - LA Times:

I like Horsey's work but to be fair this really needs a another monster or two,... I can definitely see a "Bombs from the US/Israel" monster in the mix and maybe even a "Western Economic Warlord" monster.



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Don't believe those Numbers

In Consideration of My Appointment to Secretary of Labor | The Big Picture:

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2016 Presidential Election Quiz

2016 Presidential Election Quiz:

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The Corpor-rat Party

Overall this, Camp Clark and the Demise of Free Speech: is just OK but I thought this paragraph was great.

 A decade and a half into the 21st century, the corporate project is almost complete. The corporations are nearly unassailable. They are legal persons. Their capital is free speech. Their bribes are written into law. They have crushed labor. They own Washington. All that remains is to wipe out the remaining threats. The ideological aims of the corporate state are simple: it must remove all barriers to corporate profit. 

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Meet the Flexians

Meet the Flexians - Pacific Standard:

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The geezer Vote

Margaret Atwood: The geezer vote | National Post:

On Canada but applies here....

It seems old Canadians like their Socialist Health Care system

One of our top concerns is our health-care system, which polls say is preferred to private alternatives by 80-90 per cent of Canadians. Our system, started in Saskatchewan by Tommy Douglas in 1946 and in Alberta by Social Credit in 1950, became near-universal in 1966 under Lester Pearson, supported by the NDP. Warning bell: Pearson was a Liberal, and we remember Harper’s vow to destroy anything built by the Libs.

and something for those R's, who would burn the country to the ground rather than agree with Obama, to think about.

Is hatred by one party for another, regardless of the public interest, a sound basis for public policy?

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Donald Trump a Populist?

I think this gets Trump Right.

Donald Trump Is Not a Populist. He's the Voice of Aggrieved Privilege. | The New Republic:

Rather than a populist, Trump is the voice of aggrieved privilege—of those who already are doing well but feel threatened by social change from below, whether in the form of Hispanic immigrants or uppity women (hence the loud applause he got at the first GOP debate when he derided “political correctness”). Far from being a defender of the little people against the elites, Trump plays to the anxiety of those who fear that their status is being challenged by people they regard as their social inferiors. That’s why the word “loser” is such a big part of his vocabulary.

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Cost of Health Care

A good example of our fucked up health care system. The two administrators of the new clinic get $164,000 in salaries while two actual health care providers get $100,303.

Also of note, this is taking place in the middle of in the anti-federal-government, evangelical, anti-Obamacare, TeaBagistan section of Indiana where they hate government handouts and it is being paid for by a Federal grant.

By a 4-2 vote, Wayne County’s Personnel Committee this week approved the salaries for key positions at the Wayne County Community Health Center under its new Federally Qualified Health Center status.

The split vote came on salary proposals for health department Executive Director Eric Coulter, who also will be the health center’s executive director, and health center Supervisor of Operations Kim Flanigan, who also will become the facility’s chief operating officer.

The committee approved a pay increase for Coulter of 17.4 percent from $78,382 per year to $95,000. Flanigan’s increase is 20 percent, from $55,000 to $69,000.

The increases reflect compensation for additional responsibilities and to make their pay commensurate with what professionals are earning in similar jobs in the industry.

Five other clinic staff will receive increases ranging from 5 to 7 percent.

The personnel committee, which is made up of Wayne County Council members, also approved two new positions for the health center, a nurse practitioner who would earn $75,000 and a medical assistant who would earn $25,303.

...

 The federal status promises $1.19 million in reimbursements for services to the local health center over the next 22 months, Coulter said. That amount is expected to increase by about $600,000 per year in the years ahead, he said. 

The federal grant, which requires key personnel in several positions at the center, will pay for most of the increases and the new positions

Richmond Indiana Pal-Item September 5, 2015

Today's Propaganda

from GG: NYT Claims U.S. Abides by Cluster Bomb Treaty: The Exact Opposite of Reality:

The New York Times today has a truly bizarre article regarding the U.S. and cluster bombs. The advocacy group Cluster Munition Coalition just issued its annual report finding that cluster bombs had been used in five countries this year: Syria, Libya, Yemen, Ukraine and Sudan. This is what The Paper of Record, in its report by Rick Gladstone, said this morning about the international reaction to that report (emphasis added):

The use of these weapons was criticized by all 117 countries that have joined the treaty, which took effect five years ago. Their use was also criticized by a number of others, including the United States, that have not yet joined the treaty but have abided by its provisions.

As Americans, we should feel proud that our government, though refusing to sign the cluster ban treaty, has nonetheless “abided by its provisions” — if not for the fact that this claim is totally false. The U.S. has long been and remains one of the world’s most aggressive suppliers of cluster munitions, and has used those banned weapons itself in devastating ways.

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Bible Banger

A good post on the crazy Kentucky bible-banger refusing to do her job.

And Now I Have to Say Something About Kim Davis - Slog - The Stranger:

here's a cut but read the whole thing...

Davis and her supporters would like to see the "rule of law" replaced with "the rule of your imaginary friends." The trouble with that, of course, is that people have very different ideas about who their imaginary friends are and what their imaginary friends think is sick, sinful, or icky. (Their imaginary friends, in fact, might not think much of your imaginary friends.) So empowering people—particularly public servants—to violate the rights of their fellow citizens based on the opinions of their various imaginary friends is an invitation to civic chaos.

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