Friday

Cool Stuff

Found Here




Taxes

Tariffs: The Trump Tax on the working class.

Here are some notable goods that may become more expensive for American consumers as a result of the tariffs:

TVs
Homes and home renovations
Washing machines
Solar panels
Cars
Beer
Cosmetics
Electronics
Clothing

Many American companies have already announced that tariffs could force them to raise prices, including Walmart, Gap, Coca-Cola and General Motors. Macy's also expects to be affected, and some Apple products are expected to get more expensive as well, although not its new smartwatch or wireless headphones.

Also this. Trump’s Tariffs on Chinese Imports Are Actually a Tax on the US Middle Class


The World

Judge Kavanaugh has taught me so much about how the world works

I knew that in those rich-kid private schools the teachers decide who goes to which school. I know that, for example, Yale takes a certain number of kids from Choate, and Choate tells Yale which kids will be the best fit. There is a symbiotic relationship. Choate can say they always get kids into Yale. And Yale knows they’ll get the best kids for Yale without having to do much searching.

What I didn’t know was that the most coveted clerkships work the same way. Judge Kavanaugh always takes law students from Yale. The symbiotic relationship there is that Yale can say their students always get great clerkships, and in exchange Yale law professor Amy Chua makes sure Kavanaugh always has a stream of female law school students who look like models. Really. Click that link.

Kavanaugh fed law clerks to Judge Alex Kozinski. That’s part of what made Kavanaugh such a great place to start a law career. Kozinski was famous. For power. But also for harassment. Chua and her husband, Jed Rubenfeld, also a Yale law professor and also already under investigation, knew about the harassment. It was common knowledge among Yale faculty.

That feeder system is done. Kozinski was forced to resign. And Chua is on mysterious, emergency medical leave, not even able to write her own emails to the press.

What Brett Kavanaugh Really Learned in High School: Make the Rules, Break the Rules and Prosper

".. the ruling class makes the rules and breaks them and prospers in blameless irresponsibility."

Big Government

Government vs Corporations.

The government isn’t automatically good at doing anything and everything, but neither are corporations. It’s time to bury the myth of government inefficiency. What matters more, anyway, is democracy, whether we have a say in how a public good or service that we all pay for is managed. And corporations certainly aren’t good at that.

Maximum corruption occurs at the intersection of Government and Business. tnb

Bullshit

Sheldon Adelson Sees a Lot to Like in Trump’s Washington

"More than a dozen people who know the Adelsons professionally or personally, some of whom are also friendly with Mr. Trump, said in interviews that the durability of Mr. Adelson’s relationship with the president hinges not on any personal affinity between the two, but on a mutual appreciation for something both men have built their careers on: the transaction"

Bullshit! Their relationship is built on two things.

1. Adelson giving Trump and the R's boat-loads of money. Probably pushing $100 million over the last couple election cycles.
2. Trump making policies to help Netanhayu and Israel take Palestine.

When one of these ends, Trump and Adleson won't have a relationship.

Tuesday

Mummified Banana?

Cops

A former vice detective is at the center of one of the New York Police Department’s worst scandals in recent years. Here is his story, as uncovered by a team of Times reporters


War

Gaza children killed by Israeli snipers, air attack


Politics

Line of the day.

Yup, nothing says “serious candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination” like “an extremely wealthy white guy whose target audience is people who supported Joe Lieberman in 2004 but wish he had run further to the right.”

from America’s Most Useless Pundit Makes America’s Most Useless Argument 

Buy American, ... politicians that is. Shelden Adelson owns the R's.

 They [the Adelsons] have given $55 million in the last few months to groups dedicated to making sure it stays that way. That makes them not only the largest donors to national Republican electoral efforts in this election cycle, but the biggest spenders on federal elections in all of American politics, according to publicly available campaign finance data.

Big Tech

Amazon's #1 Foe - Scott Galloway - Always fun to listen to




Trump

Trump's policies are isolating the US.  Five world powers and Iran agree to set up legal entity to circumvent US sanctions after Trump pullout from 2015 deal. Oh, and why did we cancel the Iran deal? One big reason was Sheldon Adelson wanted it. See Buy American above.

Sunday Morning

Music




Rants

Software disenchantment - A good and mostly right-on rant about the state of software.

Look around: our portable computers are thousands of times more powerful than the ones that brought man to the moon. Yet every other webpage struggles to maintain a smooth 60fps scroll on the latest top-of-the-line MacBook Pro. I can comfortably play games, watch 4K videos but not scroll web pages? How is it ok?

I think we've passed the point where tech and programming were the driving force of the tech revolution and showing the business world how all this computer stuff could make people rich. Now we've reached the point where the business world is driving the process and demanding tech produce at a faster rate. More profits now ! Fuck the quality! The capitalist are in control, there is no time for tech to catch up. The capitalist race to the bottom?  

A side note.... Lack of broadband in large parts of the US amplifies the problem. Try dragging bloated pages, with slow, crappy code across slow, throttled connections. It ain't pretty. 

Also,.... on this

Would you buy a car if it eats 100 liters per 100 kilometers? How about 1000 liters? With computers, we do that all the time.

It wouldn't matter to most people if the liters and the cost to store them were basically free. 

Economics

Tariffs vs Taxes - Political Irony: When is a tax not a tax?

How does this differ from a tax? I can’t think of any substantiative difference. If you buy anything from China or other foreign nations, you will be pay what is basically a sales tax to the federal government. Can you imagine the uproar if the government levied a sales tax of 25% on mobile phones, televisions, washing machines, solar panels, and other goods? Well, they have basically done that, and are threatening to tax those things even more.

I'd guess in some cases, tariffs would help home nation businesses more than a tax. Tariffs on large displacement motorcycles in the 80s helped HD survive but I'm not sure it will work like that with Trumps wide-ranging tariffs. 

But like a sales tax, cost to the end consumer will rise and the poor and middle class will be hit harder than the rich.

This Week

Capitalism's race to the bottom

Your wireless carrier is definitely throttling video, but not because of network congestion (Verizon's the worst). More details here: They’re all in on it

Payday Loans Are Coming For Everyone

Deceptive packaging makes it look like you are getting 3 pens, but there's only one in the box

Politics

Beto O’Rourke Is Crafting His Own Mythology

Cruz, meanwhile, is still the guy about whom a Republican colleague once said, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” Pretty much everyone in Texas knows who Cruz is, and he isn’t particularly beloved. A recent Emerson College poll found that 44 percent of Texas voters had an unfavorable opinion of him. (This is in a state where he got 57 percent of the vote in 2012.) 

O'Rourke is getting the press and may have a chance but the main story here is that our country is so screwed-up that he is still behind a person as detested as Ted Cruz.

With Supreme Court Decision on Dark Money "We're About to Know a Lot More About Who Is Funding Our Elections - Maybe.... Big Money and Big Power have a way of getting around laws like this.


Inequality

Rich Folk are nuts -  The $675,000 License Plate


Healthcare

Best healthcare system in the world my ass. These Are the Economies With the Most (and Least) Efficient Health Care - Medicare for all !!

From the Last Few Days.

Cool Stuff

Si-Fi KFC - found at Dangerous Minds




Medicare for All

Government spending would increase but the nation's total health care spending would decrease



What could go wrong?

British private security firm hires ex-military from Sierra Leone at $250 a month to help the US military in Iraq.  The price of precarious labour in contemporary warfare


Corporate American

Umair Haque on Why a Divided America is Collapsing

"Corporations became people in a clever legal trick — basically, to evade taxes. And over the years, their powers expand and multiplied, quite naturally, as their money did. So now America has a strange and bizarre situation where corporations are super-people. They have powers actual people don’t — and can’t. They can be in infinite places at once. They know where you live and track your moods and your emotions and thoughts. And they don’t have to pay taxes or live in the country and so forth. Actual people are puny things compared to corporate people. But corporate people are just legal and social fictions which represent capitalists. (In Europe, though, corporations are not people — not in remotely the same way as in America — and so such a class does not really exist, a point I’ll return to.)"

I agree. Corporations have too much power. We have to start putting not only CEOs but top management and board members in jail for corporate actions that would land the perp in jail if done by normal person. The Boston gas explosions come to mind. 

Media

Trump won most counties with the lowest newspaper circulation rates - I'll bet they had Fox News though.


The Lobby

Wow....Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel was brought to you by Jeffrey Goldberg. This'll fire'em up.

TEXAS REQUIRES SCHOOLS TO BLAME ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT ON ARABS - do they mention the occupation?


Trump

Farm Country Gets What It Voted For - Trump's policies hurting farm income.

From the Last Week

Cops

Baltimore police officers carry toy guns to plant on people they shoot


Free Speech

Trump administration moves to curb campus criticism of Israel - Fuck the First Amendment.... there's a hurricane coming.


Politics

Yes, let's wipe out Trump. But take neoliberal Democrats with him, too -  Yep. My plan for the youngsters is.......

• Always Vote. 
• Always Vote for the most progressive choice.
• A Social D in the D Primaries.
• The Left most in the General.
• oh, and Always Vote

Medicare for all

What we don’t know about Bernie’s favorite health care idea

Now you know.

Corporations are people too.

Except a person would go to jail if they blew up 39 houses.


Trump

The American Conservative on Trump's Foreign Policy

So America under Trump has become a cat’s paw in a Middle East intrigue that is very likely to lead to war. This is not how he campaigned in 2016, and it is not what the American people want. If Trump doesn’t veer away from this path to war and the result is further Mideast blood and woe, he likely will go down in flames. That would be fitting and proper. But the rest of the world wouldn’t deserve the result.

No one really likes Trump. His supporters like the person he plays on TV but they'd hate him too if they ever had to work with him or even be around him for a few days

Mid Week

Cool Stuff

Some good shots of pre-war bikes. by Paul Clifton


Politics

Generation Gap

"We have impressions – things which enter our mind with “most force and violence” – and ideas, which are “faint images”. Our experiences in our formative years are impressions; everything else is an idea. This, I suspect, lies behind at least some of the generational divide in politics. And its partisans are insufficiently aware of it."

I agree. Here in the US, the depression era has been forgotten and we're in the death-throes of the Reagan generation with a shot of 9-11 and a  hint of the Vietnam era thrown in the mix. I can't wait for the younger, friendlier, grunge-rockers and Obama babies to really take control. 

Kavanaugh

The best thing I've read on Kavanaugh - I, TOO, GREW UP IN THE CRIME-RIDDEN STREETS OF BETHESDA, MARYLAND


Trump

Trump mocks NFL for ratings drop in season opener; suggests numbers would improve if players didn't kneel -  Hell, I've been boycotting NFL games because they black-listed Kaepernick.

On the Economy. “Best Ever” Economy?

The US is above the law, International Law that is.


Middle East

We use a carrot with Israel, moving the embassy to Jerusalem and allowing the settlements, but we use a stick with the Palestinians.


Our Crappy Media

CNN on the Economy - Trump's economy is roaring -- but the controversies around him are drowning it out. A  better headline would have been "The economy is rolling despite the Trump controversies" Liberal Media my ass.

Another left-wing, anti-war type blindly accepting that the Syrian chemical weapon attack was the real thing. Did Trump almost start WW III with Russia with Proposed Massive Bombing of Syrian AF?

"Knowing that the Russian Aerospace Forces personnel were all over Syrian air bases, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis became alarmed, and shaped a limited response to the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons at Khan Sheikhoun on April 4, 2017"

Capitalism's Race to the bottom.

About a quarter of rural Americans say access to high-speed internet is a major problem

Yep. It's a bitch. I live in Teabagistan (eastern Indiana) about a mile from a town with cable broadband and about 10 miles from a larger town with cable, wireless, and fiber broadband. The best available to me is copper-fed DSL at about 2.8MB. It's passable but barely. 

Not far from me we have $200,000 to 300,000 houses with no access to broadband. 

I expect 5G will help but until the phone carriers change their thought process from phone-like plans to more full-access, electricity-like service it will never work for users. Currently, Sprint 4G is my best option, 50gb for 50$ then the speed is cut. 50gb is about 10 days of use for an older, nearly-retired couple. That ain't going to get it. 

If I had to buy electricity like that, I'd get 500kwh a month then the house would go dark or I could turn on lights but couldn't use my oven, water heater or heat-pump.  

Still, I guess our broadband isn't as fucked up as our health care. - Insulin's High Cost Leads To Lethal Rationing.


Foreign Influence

Ex-Trump adviser was reportedly accused of being unregistered Israeli agent. Wow, I thought he was working for Russia.

Over the Weekend

On Trump

The always good Stonekettle Station - Jenkins.

And that’s Trump, America’s shitty boyfriend. Selfish. Self centered. Stupid. Too much money and not enough goddamned sense. Entitled. Spoiled. Emotionally stunted. 

Trump daily complains about the news media, who he says doesn't really have the inside scoop on his administration  ... and then, instead of quoting his own staff, his own agencies, his own experts, his own government, he always, every time, presents information filtered through the media instead

Trump says he could use the MILITARY to build his wall if Congress won't fund it through Homeland Security's budget - and he won't rule out another government shutdown to get his way -

And American will pay for it?


Politics - Fox and CNN

A Trump insider, a right-winger, keeps his mouth shut for almost two years while the Trump administration works to trash human rights, civil rights, the world economy, the US budget, pal around with dumb-shit dictators, divide the country, all while handing even more of our national wealth to the rich and powerful and now CNN, the so-called left-wing media, calls the insider a hero?

That ain't left-wing media. Fuck CNN, oh and also,... Fuck Fox News.


Israel

I thought America's Christians were the "Chosen People"?

The Chosen People won't think twice about killing your arms-in-the-air ass.

International Law

Note, the US and Israel don't seem to have any problem breaking international law.

US Ambassador Friedman: Israel Shouldn't Have to Ask U.S. Permission to Build in West Bank

According to Friedman, the current administration has never challenged an Israeli construction plan in the West Bank.

The International view of the West Bank

"The international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.[6][7][8][9] The International Court of Justice advisory ruling (2004) concluded that events that came after the 1967 occupation of the West Bank by Israel, including the Jerusalem Law, Israel's peace treaty with Jordan and the Oslo Accords, did not change the status of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) as occupied territory with Israel as the occupying power.[10][11]"

This Week

Media

THE CONSISTENT NON-INTERVENTIONIST MINDSET OF DONALD TRUMP

"After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward." 

Assad's Chemical attack is just accepted as fact by our media, left or right. It was never proven. There was at least some evidence it was staged but now, it is accepted as fact forever by both sides. 

U.S. Envoy Warns That Syria Preparing To Use Chemical Weapons In Idlib - Here we go again.


Trump

Exploring Trump's Claim of Using Tariffs to Pay Down $21 Trillion in Debt - Believe it when you see it.

The United States is going to become the warehouse for global soybean supplies - Making Brazil Soybeans Great

The OP-Ed. I'm going with Pence. Even though it says the person "could be fired" and Pence really couldn't.

• Pence is the cowardly type who would be too afraid to take a bullet for the country. 
• He certainly wants to preserve his political future.
• This word from the anonymous New York Times op-ed may prove Mike Pence wrote it. 
• Also, this,  "It was a piece of moral cowardice of the worst sort.",  is a perfect description of Pence:  Link - [Trump’s Enablers boast of Saving Nation but Reveal they’re Looting the Nation]. 

All BS all the Time: Trump Shows Reporters an Article Praising Him, Then Lies About What It Says

And...Trump Suggests Nike’s Kaepernick Hire Is Fine – Because They Rent From Him

"Donald Trump is the most dishonest president in American history 95 percent of the time. But during that other 5 percent, his shamelessness — and utter dearth of impulse control — renders him the most disarmingly (and self-destructively) honest public figure in modern memory."

Medicare for All - or better yet, complete-full-coverage, Medicare for All!

Soaring bankruptcy rates signal a 'coming storm of broke elderly,' study finds

Medical costs are a frequent tipping point for older bankruptcy filers, the study found.

Politics

Speaking Interfering in our Politics - Israel Targeted Black Lives Matter Movement: Documentary


War 

What could go wrong?

Israel confirms 200 strikes in Syria in 18 months

An Israeli company that designs military-grade vests, uniforms and helmets has developed a bulletproof backpack for school students – and orders are pouring in from the US.

Fox Propaganda

Not a word about the op-ed on the Fox "News" front page

The Weekend

MAGA?

Trump's moves are spurring the rest of the world to look away from the US and its mighty dollar.

When Will The US Lose Control Of the World Payments System?

Germany calls for global payments system free of US

China defies Trump on Iran, Creating new Benchmark Crude Market in Yuan

"Reuters speculates that thwarting US sanctions on third parties that buy Iranian crude, due to kick in November 1, is one reason for the establishment of the Shanghai exchange. Since it functions in yuan, not dollars, the US Dept of Treasury has no say over it. If Chinese banks are used to transfer the yuan payments, Treasury cannot do anything to the companies involved."

Trump’s Policies Will Displace the Dollar

Turkey calls US ‘Wild Wolves,’ vows to Dump Dollar for Russia, Iran Trade


Israel vs US

Obama’s foreign policy options were continually limited by Netanyahu and the lobby — Ben Rhodes

The Lobby


The Working Class

Our Anti-Worker President

A new report shows how the United States is lining corporate executives’ pockets with tax dollars.

 ".. the report found that the corporations that received the most government funds often had the highest CEO-to-median-worker pay ratios." 

The Online Gig Economy’s ‘Race to the Bottom’: When the whole world is fighting for the same jobs, what happens to workers?


Politics

McCain