Good morning, all. I thought I'd take it upon myself to pass along the truly revolting story to ruin your day. I tried to get it up earlier, but life got in the way. So, apologies if your morning was mostly pleasurable.
A number of years ago, Disney Parks instituted a policy that catered to handicapped (both mentally and physically) children and their families. It was a voluntary policy that sought to make it easier on families that had children with disabilities by allowing them to skip ahead of long lines, among other perks. Lord knows is tough enough trudging around with your own able-bodied family in a hot and sweaty theme park for 8 hours without incident.
I've been to Disney's parks a fair amount and can recall seeing this practice maybe a handful of times. Most park-goers recognized it for what it was, which was simply a nice and thoughtful gesture for families that almost certainly have a more difficult daily routine than you do.
You probably know where this is going.
In 2013, Disney discovered this policy was being badly abused in the most soul-crushing and miserable way possible: rich parents, mostly from New York City, were honest-to-God hiring disabled children to drag around the theme parks, all to skip attraction lines.
The comments by some of these people are almost comically evil.
The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.
“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.
“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”
The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.
Nice, right?
Finding it difficult to confirm which family actually had disabled children and which were abusing the system, Disney ultimately decided to discontinue the program. Again, the voluntary program.
The new Disney program was a “blanket accommodation that did not take into account the nuances between various disabilities,” according to the commission findings, dated Feb. 13.
In 2013, Disney ended its previous program, the Guest Assistance Card, because the older program was abused by wealthy people who hired guests with disabilities to take them to the front of a line. The new program, called Disability Access Service, no longer allowed disabled people to skip waiting, but it allowed them to make a reservation in advance and avoid standing in line until that time.
An attorney for the families, Andy Dogali of Tampa, says he filed complaints on behalf of 27 families with the Florida commission. The commission ruled on five of those complaints recently, finding in favor of the families.
The moral of the story, of course, is people are awful and don't ever do anything nice for anyone, ever. I think that was the basic plot of Bambi, actually.
Unpopular President Rips Popular Governor For Giving Everyone Access to Previously Restricted Jobs
—BenK
President Obama has decided to get involved in the 2016 race. I find it interesting that he's chosen to wade in by attacking Scott Walker and not Jeb Bush
I think we'll see a lot more of this as we get closer to the primary voting. The Democrats are going to do everything they can to ensure the next GOP candidate is someone who won't overturn most of Obama's "accomplishments". Aside from the Wall Street Class, Jeb Bush's biggest supporters outside the Republican party will be elected Democrats.
They're hedging their bets on the off chance that Mrs.Inevitable isn't so inevitable.
“Even as its governor claims victory over working Americans, I’d encourage him to try and score a victory for working Americans – by taking meaningful action to raise their wages and offer them the security of paid leave,” Obama said.
Actually, giving everyone access to jobs that were previously only available to union due paying members is a victory for workers. It's just not a victory for the workers who donate to the Democratic party (or whose union dues are donated to the Democratic party against their objections.)
Overnight Open Thread (3-9-2015) - Cop Out Edition
—Maetenloch
Due to hard deadlines and me feeling under the weather you'll get the highly-condensed-but-legally-still-a-contractual ONT. And early to boot!
Because even a lesser piece by Kipling still has more hard-won human wisdom in it than most of what's published in any given year. This comes via Moe Lane.
The Truce of the Bear
Yearly, with tent and rifle, our careless white men go By the Pass called Muttianee, to shoot in the vale below. Yearly by Muttianee he follows our white men in - Matun, the old blind beggar, bandaged from brow to chin.
Eyeless, noseless, and lipless - toothless, broken of speech, Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each; Over and over the story, ending as he began: "Make ye no truce with Adam-zad - the Bear that walks like a Man!
"There was a flint in my musket - pricked and primed was the pan, When I went hunting Adam-zad - the Bear that stands like a Man. I looked my last on the timber, I looked my last on the snow, When I went hunting Adam-zad fifty summers ago!
"I knew his times and his seasons, as he knew mine, that fed By night in the ripened maizefield and robbed my house of bread. I knew his strength and cunning, as he knew mine, that crept At dawn to the crowded goat-pens and plundered while I slept.
"Up from his stony playground - down from his well-digged lair - Out on the naked ridges ran Adam-zad the Bear - Groaning, grunting, and roaring, heavy with stolen meals, Two long marches to northward, and I was at his heels!
"Two long marches to northward, at the fall of the second night, I came on mine enemy Adam-zad all panting from his flight. There was a charge in the musket - pricked and primed was the pan - My finger crooked on the trigger - when he reared up like a man.
"Horrible, hairy, human, with paws like hands in prayer, Making his supplication rose Adam-zad the Bear! I looked at the swaying shoulders, at the paunch's swag and swing, And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous, pleading thing.
"Touched witth pity and wonder, I did not fire then . . . I have looked no more on women - I have walked no more with men. Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands that pray - From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away!
"Sudden, silent, and savage, searing as flame the blow - Faceless I fell before his feet, fifty summers ago. I heard him grunt and chuckle - I heard him pass to his den. He left me blind to the darkened years and the little mercy of men.
"Now ye go down in the morning with guns of the newer style, That load (I have felt) in the middle and range (I have heard) a mile? Luck to the white man's rifle, that shoots so fast and true, But - pay, and I lift my bandage and show what the Bear can do!"
(Flesh like slag in the furnace, knobbed and withered and grey - Matun, the old blind beggar, he gives good worth for his pay.) "Rouse him at noon in the bushes, follow and press him hard - Not for his ragings and roarings flinch ye from Adam-zad.
"But (pay, and I put back the bandage) this is the time to fear, When he stands up like a tired man, tottering near and near; When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise, When he veils the hate and cunning of his little, swinish eyes;
"When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer That is the time of peril - the time of the Truce of the Bear!"
Eyeless, noseless, and lipless, asking a dole at the door, Matun, the old blind beggar, he tells it o'er and o'er; Fumbling and feeling the rifles, warming his hands at the flame, Hearing our careless white men talk of the morrow's game;
Over and over the story, ending as he began: - "There is no truce with Adam-zad, the Bear that looks like a Man!"
Bad Ass: Hillary Clinton Answers Spontaneous, Impropmtu Questions from "Real Women" Note: Even AP Says These "Real Women" "Appeared to be Reading Their Questions From a TelePrompter"
We should have realized that six years into Obama's assault on America.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Hillary Rodham Clinton's silence on the email controversy swirling around her is getting louder by the day.
...
Clinton spoke at a carefully choreographed two-hour event involving her No Ceilings project at the Clinton Foundation, highlighting economic and educational opportunities for women and girls. She took no questions. When she sat down to lead more informal conversations with invited speakers, participants appeared to be reading from teleprompters.
Yes, all "informal chats" are mediated via Telemprompter.
Incidentally, all the emails between the President and his alleged top diplomat?
Pretty much exposed for the world to see, because Hillary Clinton's side of it was unsecured.
The charitable foundation run by Hillary Clinton and her family has received as much as $81m from wealthy international donors who were clients of HSBC’s controversial Swiss bank.
Leaked files from HSBC’s Swiss banking division reveal the identities of seven donors to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation with accounts in Geneva.
...
Hillary Clinton has expressed concern over growing economic inequality in the US and is expected to make the issue a cornerstone of her widely anticipated presidential campaign in 2016. However, political observers are increasingly asking whether the former secretary of state’s focus on wealth inequality sits uncomfortably with the close relationships she and her husband have nurtured with some of the world’s richest individuals.
...
Another Clinton foundation donor who had a HSBC account in the tax haven is Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund manager and convicted sex offender who once flew the former president on his private jet for charity events in Africa.
One guy, named Caring, gave the foundation -- which, by the way, is largley a front group to keep the Clintons' political staff paid between elections -- one million dollars from his tax-free HSBC account in exchange for Bill Clinton's appearance at his lavish costume party in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Caring arranged for 18th century Russian costumes, borrowed from the Hermitage Museum, to be tailor-fitted for each guest at the event at Catherine the Great's Winter Palace. Photographs from the event in November 2005 show Bill Clinton, dressed as a Russian general, partying with other VIP guests such as Elizabeth Hurley. Entertainment was provided by Tina Turner and Elton John.
Caring fundraised during this event, and sent some money, he says, to a British Children's charity and.. the Clinton foundation.
But Ms. Clinton is totes a crusader against income inequality. And also, closing tax loopholes for the rich. Like HSBC.
"One of the issues that I have been preaching about around the world is collecting taxes in an equitable manner, especially from the elites in every country," Hillary Clinton told audience of the Clinton Global Initiative in 2012, when she was still secretary of state. "It is a fact that around the world, the elites of every country are making money. There are rich people everywhere. And yet they do not contribute to the growth of their own countries. They don't invest in public schools, in public hospitals, in other kinds of development internally."
...
A spokesperson for Hillary Clinton declined to comment about her family foundation’s receipt of money from donors with accounts in Geneva.
Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton's convicted pedophile sex party buddy, also has several HSBC accounts in Geneva, and also donated to Clinton.
Other HSBC Geneva clients who donated $1m or more to the Clinton foundation include ex-Formula One racing driver Michael Schumacher, billionaire businessman Eli Broad, and the French hedge-fund manager Arpad Busson.
And:
Another client of HSBC Geneva to donate to the Clinton foundation is Denise Rich, the ex-wife of the late billionaire and commodities trader Marc Rich, who fled to Switzerland in 1983 after being indicted by US authorities for tax evasion, fraud and racketeering. Mark Rich was was controversially granted a presidential pardon by Bill Clinton just hours before the former president left office in 2001.
Denise Rich contributed as much as $500,000 to the Clinton foundation. Now 70, she is reported to have recently renounced her US citizenship, becoming tax-resident in Austria. She did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The biggest donor, who may have donated more than $50 million to Clinton (we don't know for sure), is a Canadian mining magnate named Frank Giustra.
Per Wikipedia, in between forming Lionsgate Entertainment, which then distributed Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11, Giustra seems to get a certain amount of economic benefit from his sponsorship of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign:
Mr. Giustra became close with former US President Bill Clinton during fundraising efforts for tsunami relief in 2004. Giustra is a member of the board of trustees of the Clinton Foundation. Giustra provided his corporate jet for Clinton's fundraising campaign in Africa. The two play the card game Oh Hell during flights.
In September 2005, Giustra flew Clinton to Kazakhstan as part of a three-country philanthropic tour. Clinton praised the Kazakh autocrat for "this statement you have made about opening up the social and political life [of Kazakhstan]". Within two days of the former President's meeting with Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev, Giustra's fledgling uranium company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by the state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom. "The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers."[14][15]
In 2006, in the months after Mr. Clinton's visit helped secure Giustra's company the right to mine uranium in Kazakhstan, Mr. Giustra donated $31.3 million to the Clinton Foundation.[14] This figure is at variance with the one released by the William J. Clinton Foundation (on the 18 December 2008), as part of an arrangement with President-elect Barack Obama. It reports Frank Giustra as giving between US$10–25 million.[16]
Shock: Hillary Clinton Sent Over 55,000 Physical Paper Pages of Email Print-Outs to State, Which (and I'm Sure This Is Just a Happy Incident) Cannot Be Searched Except by Hand
Like a mobster paying his bail in nickels -- the Clintons are gangsters and, as criminals tend to be, are innately contemptuous of the law.
Why did Mrs. Clinton have her staff go through the trouble of printing out, boxing and shipping 50,000 or 55,000 pages instead of just sending a copy of the electronic record? One can only speculate, but there is an obvious advantage: Printed files are less informative and far harder to search than the electronic originals.
Because State has only printouts of emails, department personnel responding to a Freedom of Information Act request have to go through the whole haystack rather than type "needle" into a search engine. At best, that would mean long delays in FOIA compliance.
Likewise, printouts are not subject to electronic discovery in the event of investigation or lawsuit. The Times reports that department lawyers responding to a request from the House Select Committee on Benghazi took two months to find "roughly 900 pages pertaining to the Benghazi attacks." And printouts do not include electronic "metadata," which can provide crucial forensic evidence.
I'm sure this is all just an accident.
Taranto points out that Politifact, the alleged "fact" checking organization, claimed that Clinton turned over 55,000 emails.
Obama: Um, Okay, Actually I Did Know Hillary Was Using a Private Email Service
—Ace
Just a few days ago, the White House claimed that it only became aware of this issue in August 2014, when Hillary inveighed upon them to keep it quiet.
Now Josh Earnest "clarifies" -- "clarifies" is a White House euphemism for "completely reverses a previously-told falsehood" -- that in fact Obama did notice that Hillary was using private email since like forever ago, but didn't know the exact extent of her usage of it, nor that she had completely refused to even set up a government email.
"I would not describe the numbers of emails as large.... He was not aware of the details of how that email address and that server had been set up," Earnest said.
That's a shift from Saturday, March 7, when Obama told CBS that he learned about Clinton’s private email system at "the same time everybody else learned it through news reports."
This constant dissembling from the White House, in which broad and emphatic untruths are later replaced, less prominently, but selective disclosures, is a calculated technique of deception. The White House knows that people firm their strongest, most enduring perceptions of an issue just as they form perceptions of a person -- first impressions dominate all subsequent information learned.
So the White House always -- always -- chooses to lie very big in the beginning, to establish that First Impression in the minds of the public, which will never completely dislodge, that they "didn't know" this or that.
Then, once that deception is implanted, they offer less false (but often, still pretty false) accounts.
Looking at the alleged "best apps for the Apple Watch" -- all of which are easily done on a phone -- I can't help thinking that the Apple Watch is a $600 solution in search of a problem (and that's the cost of the watch with the base (lame) watchband --the watchband you actually want will cost you up to $400 more).
I thought this product was an unlikely gamble, but John Ekdahl pointed out, correctly, that given the new Fitness Monitor craze, there exists a potential pre-existing audience for a watch that can do a bunch of things. While the Apple Watch canceled a bunch of planned fitness-monitor technologies, they apparently kept the heart-rate monitor, allowing the Watch to compete, in theory, with Jawbone, Fitbit, Garmin, and so forth.
But I don't know. I have a heart-rate monitor and I find it to be a not very useful thing. I don't know what to do with it. It's largely trivia, rather than useable information.
So I don't know about spending $600-1000 for the midrange Apple Watch.
The lower cost "sport" version, made of aluminum, will cost $350 for the smaller (woman's) version and $400 for the larger (man's) version. The midrange version, in stainless steel, will cost $550 for the woman's version, and $600 for the men's. And then add on several hundred dollars for a decent band.
The top-of-the-line gold version, I don't even want to get into.
One thing I think was potentially attractive about the Apple Watch was price. The Apple Watch would be a stylish little gizmo, as most Apple products are. That means it could, say, compete in the Stylish Wrist Jewelry market with, say, Tag Heuer.
But I assumed, stupidly, it would be cheaper than a Tag Heuer.
If it's pretty much the same price as a Tag Heuer, why not just buy the Tag Heuer?
Eh, I thought this would flop, and then John Ekdahl was all like "no, it will be soooo awesome," but never listen to John Ekdahl. He's an idiot.
The Obama Administration Found That US Companies' "Charitable Donations" To Foreign Governments, When They Had Business Before That Government, Constituted Disguised Bribes; Why Would Foreign Governments' Donations to the Clinton Foundation Not Count Then
Only possible answer. Mollie Hemingway's case is airtight.
Last week the Washington Post reported that Algeria gave half a million dollars to Bill and Hillary Clinton's foundation while at the same time lobbying Hillary Clinton at the State Department. At a forum in Miami this weekend, Bill Clinton defended taking money from Algeria and other countries while his wife held a high-level government position....
One interesting way to look at the ethics of such a donation is how the U.S. government handles donations to foreign charities by U.S. entities lobbying government officials. Remember this part of the Post story:
The money was given to assist with earthquake relief in Haiti, the foundation said. At the time, Algeria, which has sought a closer relationship with Washington, was spending heavily to lobby the State Department on human rights issues.
If the money was given for the stated purpose of earthquake relief, does that make the donation clean even though Algeria sought something from Hillary Clinton's agency?
In 2011 and 2012, the Obama administration’s Securities and Exchange Commission levied large penalties against U.S. pharmaceutical companies for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. These included Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Eli Lilly and Company. Among the charges was making donations to a charitable foundation in Poland.
That charitable foundation was run by an official with a regional health ministry who had the authority to make pharmaceutical purchasing decisions. The charitable foundation was legitimate and the foundation’s work was for a good cause. But the U.S. government found that the donation still had a corrupt purpose.
And the US government fined those companies nearly thirty million dollars for those barely-disguised bribes.
The Nightly News crisis exposed deep-rooted anger among many NBC journalists, who felt frustrated that Williams had been allowed to gain so much power. In recent years, the anchor had churned through executive producers who challenged him.
Others complained about Williams’s unwillingness to go after hard-hitting stories. Multiple sources told me that former NBC investigative reporters Michael Isikoff and Lisa Myers battled with Williams over stories. In February 2013, Isikoff failed to interest Williams in a piece about a confidential Justice Department memo that justified killing American citizens with drones. He instead broke the story on Rachel Maddow. That October, Myers couldn’t get Williams to air a segment about how the White House knew as far back as 2010 that some people would lose their insurance policies under Obamacare. Frustrated, Myers posted the article on NBC's website, where it immediately went viral. Williams relented and ran it the next night. "He didn’t want to put stories on the air that would be divisive," a senior NBC journalist told me. According to a source, Myers wrote a series of scathing memos to then–NBC senior vice-president Antoine Sanfuentes documenting how Williams suppressed her stories. Myers and Isikoff eventually left the network (and both declined to comment).
I mention that because Brian Williams seemed to have the exact same policies about negative stories about Obama that Saturday Night Live did, a show he had occasionally appeared on. And of course SNL and left-wing comedians in genera are not interested in criticizing Obama; they too find it "divisive."
Williams seems to have had the same conception for news that a very partisan comedy show did.
Welcome to the DOOM Room, hepcats and kittens. It's the only club in town that serves brown liquor and bad news in equal portions. Here's three fingers of catastrophe in a short glass. Drink responsibly.
Yet another example of why defined-benfit pensions are a horrible idea. I'm sure the AARP (the geezer arm of the Democrat propaganda ministry) intends this piece as a call for more welfare spending on the elderly -- because that's really the fundamental message of everything the AARP publishes -- but they unintentionally make the point that relying solely on a pension (or Social Security, for that matter) for your retirement income is a bad idea. It's vital to plan to have multiple sources of retirement income -- personal savings, investments, assets, etc. in addition to pension and Social Security benefits.
There is no such thing as a guarantee in the financial world -- or in the world more generally, for that matter. A promise to pay is only as good as the ability to pay.
Ferguson and the modern debtor's prison. Ferguson isn't about race, except as viewed through the warped lens of the current Administration. The Michael Brown story, as reported, was a media fiction, but there was an actual outrage being committed in Ferguson. The larger story is about runaway government using the legal system as a stealth tax-collection agency. It's an outrage, and Ferguson is far from the only place where this is a problem. This isn't about cops catching murderers, rapists, and thieves; this is about the justice system shaking down citizens for tinted windows and beautician's license violations. A truly free people wouldn't stand for this kind of crap. (And don't get me started about the relentless creep of government regulation on things that don't need to be regulated.)
As Kevin D. Williamson writes: "When the law does not apply to the lawmakers and law-enforcers, you are not being governed: You are being ruled. And we are ruled by criminals."
Mr. Williamson also has some wise thoughts about student debt. Buyer's remorse is not sufficient reason to repudiate a legally-incurred debt, kids. If you signed on the dotted line, you're responsible for paying off the debt. If you find the terms too onerous or the return on the investment too meager...well, that mistake is on you, not the bank. One of the responsibilities of an adult is to educate yourself on how to conduct your own financial affairs. If you can't bothered to do that, then maybe you're not ready to be an adult yet, and shouldn't be borrowing money.
What (may be) the story behind negative-yield bonds. I remain a bond bear, and I think the people who are paying to loan banks money are nuts, but...we'll see.
Everyone's heard the old saying about history repeating itself first as tragedy, then as farce; the Greek soap opera has entered the "farce" stage. When a nation-state is reduced to suggesting that tourists act as ad-hoc tax-compliance officers, that nation-state is out of serious options. The Greek reform proposal to the ECB/EC/IMF troika is so devoid of actual reforms that one can only assume it was written as absurdist comedy. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, one must have a heart of stone to read this document without laughing.
Which is not to say that the Greeks themselves find anything the slightest bit amusing in the situation. Greece is in the midst of a grinding depression that extends in all directions as far as the eye can see, and all available options are simply variations on the same horrible theme: privation, misery, humiliation. An outsider, though, can only give a sad shake of the head -- Greece has never in its entire modern history as a nation-state been anything other than an economic basket-case. It should never have been incorporated into the Eurozone in the first place, and the fact that it was simply illustrates the defective design and governance of the Eurozone. Kicking Greece out of the Eurozone won't solve the problem, but leaving Greece in the Eurozone pretty much guarantees that Greece will simply...bleed out. You know you're in an authentic disaster scenario when all the options you have left are horrible.
One thing I can tell the Greeks, though: the solution to your problem is not more voting. What's a referendum going to prove? The Greeks know they owe a lot of money; they know they don't want to pay it back. They know they're not going to be able to legislate that fact out of existence. They know they want to stay in the Eurozone because reverting to the drachma would cause even more pain than they're in now, but they also know that staying in the Eurozone means doing things they really, really don't want to do. More voting isn't going to unravel the knot.
And speaking of the Eurozone, here's the latest success story: Austria.
This just in: fraud requires chumps as well as confidence men to work. Snake-oil only exists because there are suckers in the world willing to pay for it. Want to avoid being cheated? Don't be a chump. (Having said that: I myself have purchased my share of CRAZY ONE-TIME-ONLY DEALS. Everybody sacrifices on the altar of chumpitude from time to time.)
Inside the currency wars. Holding the world's default reserve currency has delivered the USA many benefits, but there are downsides.
Boomers fret that their kids are ruining their retirements. Millennials, meanwhile, fret that their parents and grandparents are ruining their futures. That's the reality of the welfare state, babies: it pits those who fund the government cheese against those who receive it. The welfare state was always a game of musical chairs, and it may be Millennials who are left standing when the music stops. Or they may wise up and just refuse to play the game any more.
I often catch heat for bashing on Boomers in this space, but mostly I'm trying to point out that the problem will require everybody to accept some unsavory truths. Boomers being mad at the young 'uns, the young 'uns being mad at the Boomers: they're both getting mad at the wrong people. The problem is with the federal government, and at some point everybody is going to have to accept that the promises made by this corrupt bunch of assholes cannot be kept, and it's morally wrong to burden future generations to pay for these lies.
For older people, the problem is one of sunk costs: we have to accept that much of the money we "paid in" to the welfare state was summarily squandered. There is no giant pile of money sitting in a vault somewhere. There is only an ocean of debt. For younger people, it's a matter of accepting that a 65-year-old retiree can't simply turn on a dime and reverse a lifetime's worth of decision-making. Decisions driven by rules and incentives prevailing at the time the decisions were made. (In retirement planning as in investing more generally, uncertainty is the worst enemy.)
The perverse actions of the federal government over the past sixty or seventy years have put retirees fundamentally at odds with younger workers -- the incentives are completely inverted depending on which group you happen to be in. It is this aspect of the welfare state that I loathe the most: the fracturing of familial and generational bonds, the mortgaging of the lives and labor of children (and generations yet unborn) who are being given no say in the matter. One of the absolute bedrock principles of liberty -- political, social, cultural -- is consent, and our children did not consent to have these burdens placed upon them.
Ultimately, a new compact between old and young is going to have to be forged. Young people need to understand that retirees, as a rule, didn't choose to be put in the spot they're in. Retirees need to understand that it's morally wrong to expect young people to forgo their own financial futures to finance the retirements of their elders. There needs to be an understanding among all adults, young and old, that "fair" is no longer in the cards. We have been cheated, all of us, and the money is long gone. The best we can do now is mitigate the consequences of the fraud perpetrated on us. But the first step in that mitigation process is accepting that the status quo is unsustainable...and ethically reprehensible.
'Tis the season to offer economic advice to college grads (whether they ask for it or not). If I could boil down my own thoughts on this topic to once sentence, it would be this: "do what you love" is really shitty career advice. Be realistic, both in your choice of college majors and in the job market you expect to enter after graduation. Understand that you are not, in fact, a special snowflake - there are thousands of other people just like you, with the same basic credentials and skills, all competing for the same jobs. Find a job that you can tolerate and that pays enough to make a living, and do that job as well as you can until a better opportunity comes along. Hustle will pay greater dividends than any credential I can think of. If you like stargazing or painting pictures of boats, do it on the weekends. End of advice.
The Clintons are creeps and liars and scoundrels and misfits, always have been, always will be. They are the penicillin-resistant syphilis of American politics.
...A self-respecting people would have sent this clan of scrofulous grifters and po-faced con artists into whatever passes for exile (comfortable exile, of course) in the 21st century. Instead, we are giving them a serious shot at a return to the White House.
After going through a week of embarrassing media coverage about a secret private email account she used exclusively while serving as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is set on Sunday to disappear from her Twitter account a famous photo of her holding a Blackberry that has become politically inconvenient as it reminds viewers of the email scandal instead of her 'badass cool.'
Clinton announced Saturday she will be taking her social media photos down as part of a conveniently timed Clinton Foundation women's rights campaign called "Not There".
And here are some of the other Hillary private email addresses that were created and presumably used since a hacker was able to compile this list:
Yeah well I've had about my lifetime fill of Colin Powell's pontifications. So until your funeral Mr. Powell would you please do us the courtesy of shutting the fuck up. Thank you.
Koenig: Leonard (Nimoy, Mr. Spock) was always kind of unapproachable. But a very good man. Sound ethics and a good sense of morality.
LV Sun: How so?
Koenig: When it came to the attention of the cast that there was a disparity in pay in that George [Takei] and I were getting the same pay but Nichelle was not getting as much, I took it to Leonard and he took it to the front office and they corrected that.
And remember this was back when Nimoy was a nobody actor lucky to get small parts. He also went to bat for Nichols and Takei in the 70s to keep them employed in the Star Trek franchise.
Nimoy: There was also the case where George and Nichelle we're not hired to do their voices in the animated series . I refused to do Spock until they were hired. Mr. Roddenberry started calling me the conscience of Star Trek.
Correlation between oral sex and a low incidence of preeclampsia: a role for soluble HLA in seminal fluid?
The involvement of immune mechanisms in the aetiology of preeclampsia is often suggested. Normal pregnancy is thought to be associated with a state of tolerance to the foreign antigens of the fetus, whereas in preeclamptic women this immunological tolerance might be hampered. The present study shows that oral sex and swallowing sperm is correlated with a diminished occurrence of preeclampsia which fits in the existing idea that a paternal factor is involved in the occurrence of preeclampsia.
Sure it's an older study but then there's this recent one which also points to the power of male essence.
Footsteps of the Ewok - A Journey of Discovery [Weirddave]
—Open Blogger
I mentioned yesterday that I spent the day in New York City. I decided to have lunch at a little place in the East Village called Sunny and Annie's. I was curious to try their pho sandwich. Guess what? It really does taste like pho. Sitting in Tompkins Square Park, munching on a soup sandwich, I couldn't decide where to go next. Finally deciding on midtown, I walked over and caught the L to 8th Ave. As I exited train and came into the station, what to my wondering eyes should appear but this:
"Huh" I thought. That makes sense, since Ace is the greatest living New Yorker, it's logical that the city would feature his presence. I also kind of wanted to meet Ace, since he's nice enough to let me play at his blog on weekends, so I followed the sign. Soon I saw another:
OK, exit. Now we're getting somewhere. I wonder what I'll find? Maybe a guided tour of stately Ace Manor? Or would it be more along the lines of an Ace-itat? A wall of glass, mirrored on the other side but transparent to us, so we could watch the great man as he prowls around the bones of long forgotten hobos, madly kicking empty bottles of Val-U-Rite vodka, muttering to himself perhaps? I journeyed on.
As I walked through the station, I realized that I wasn't the first to make the journey. How foolish I'd been to believe such a thing! Of course New York wouldn't erect signs solely for my benefit. I saw that some of those who had previously made this pilgrimage had erected shrines commemorating their hajj. These shrines took the form of little stylized ewoks, engaged in various daily tasks undertaken by Ace, like reading AoSHQ,
or collecting the prodigious revenue the number one conservative blog in America generates.
There was even an homage to Ace's award winning political blogging.
I was starting to get a little weary. I pondered what part of this city Ace would chose to reside in. Hobnobbing with the swells on the Upper West Side? Down with the money in the Financial District, or would the bohemian lifestyle of the village appeal fit better? Uptown, downtown, crosstown or maybe in an outer borough? Suddenly my senses were assaulted with a cacophony of signs! It seemed that Ace resided everywhere!
And then it hit me. Ace truly is bigger than one man. He's bigger than an entire city full of people. Ace is omnipresent and omnipotent. Her perches like The Little Prince on an electron and spans the universe. In the end, Ace is all of us.
Food Thread: The Existential Threat of DNA Laden Foods [CBD]
—Open Blogger
A recent survey by the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics finds that over 80 percent of Americans support "mandatory labels on foods containing DNA," about the same number as support mandatory labeling of GMO foods "produced with genetic engineering."
WARNING: This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). The Surgeon General has determined that DNA is linked to a variety of diseases in both animals and humans. In some configurations, it is a risk factor for cancer and heart disease. Pregnant women are at very high risk of passing on DNA to their children.
One of the advantages of having basic cooking skills (other than the obvious -- the ability to feed one's self) is that any recipe can be used as a template for what you really want.
I was poking around my recipe files for a good beef stew recipe to post today, and I realized that while stew is in semi-regular rotation in Chez Dildo's kitchen, I have only one saved recipe...and it's a crappy one from Jamie Oliver with all sorts of stuff I don't want in my stews (turnips? Bugger off!). I tried it once and was not pleased.
But why only one recipe? Because stew is just a few techniques that need to be filled in with your personal preferences. I really like heavily caramelized onions, so my stews are usually redolent with the sweetish flavor of onions that have been cooked low and slow and long. But bay leaf is cloying on my palate in large doses, so I back off a bit. And against all of my anti-establishment instincts, I have discovered that de-fatting stews and then swirling just a bit of butter in before serving will make them, paradoxically, richer tasting but less filling and heavy.
*******
Anyone a former cooking-show junkie who has, over the past several years, just gotten sick and damned tired of the dumbing down of the cooking, and the push toward stupid game show crap? I used to love watching the Food Network's many good cooking shows, but they have either disappeared (Emeril...we hardly knew ye!) or become parodies more appropriate for SNL.
Are there any remaining that showcase serious cooking for serious cooks?
*******
The classic Manhattan is made with red vermouth, but this twist on it is a nice change, especially if you can get the correct Amaro. They vary wildly, as I have discovered to my misfortune. And the Carpano is simply the best white vermouth on the planet.
The Perfect Manhattan
3 parts Rye Whiskey
1 part Meretti Amaro
1/2 part Carpano Bianco
3-4 dashes of Dutch's Colonial Cocktail Bitters
Add all ingredients to a Boston shaker filled with ice. Stir gently (do not shake) for 30 seconds, then strain into a lowball glass.
Garnish with a twist of lemon (twist it over the drink to get the lemon oil on the surface) or a Luxardo Maraschino cherry.
Paula Deen had some fun recipes that were not overly parsimonious with the fat and sugar. The ones I made were pretty good, including this one. It's a great dish for a big gathering, because it can be doubled or tripled easily, and is best prepared the night before.
Baked French Toast Casserole with Maple Syrup
Ingredients
1 loaf French bread (13 to 16 ounces)
8 large eggs
2 cups half-and-half
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Dash salt
Praline Topping, recipe follows
Maple syrup
Praline Topping:
1/2 pound (2 sticks) butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Directions
Slice French bread into 20 slices, 1-inch each. (Use any extra bread for garlic toast or bread crumbs). Arrange slices in a generously buttered 9 by 13-inch flat baking dish in 2 rows, overlapping the slices. In a large bowl, combine the eggs, half-and-half, milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt and beat with a rotary beater or whisk until blended but not too bubbly. Pour mixture over the bread slices, making sure all are covered evenly with the milk-egg mixture. Spoon some of the mixture in between the slices. Cover with foil and refrigerate overnight.
The next day, preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Spread Praline Topping evenly over the bread and bake for 40 minutes, until puffed and lightly golden. Serve with maple syrup.
Praline Topping:
Combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and blend well.
In the moderated discussion with ethanol entrepreneur Bruce Rastetter, Walker dropped his flat opposition to ethanol mandates, a new stance that's well suited to a state covered in cornfields. Instead, Walker signaled he favored keeping the mandate for now and phasing it out over time.
"I do believe it's an access issue so it's something I'm willing to go forward on renewing a (federal) Renewable Fuel Standard...so farmers going forward planting crops know what the standard is," Walker said, adding that he wanted to "get to a point where you address some of those market access issues...so you no longer need some of the subsidies."
If so, this seems to differ from his earlier position. (Link to the Saturday Politics Thread on ethanol here.)
Good morning to all of you morons and moronettes and bartenders everywhere and all the ships at sea. Welcome to AoSHQ's stately, prestigious, and high-class Sunday Morning Book Thread. The only AoSHQ thread that is so hoity-toity, pants are required. Or kilts. Kilts are OK, too. But not tutus. Unless you're a girl.
Book Quote
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
Dr. Dylan Evans, a respected behavioral psychologist, and an expert on robots and artificial intelligence...in 2006, sold his house in the Cotswolds and its contents, and moved to the Black Isle in Scotland to found a self-sufficient community in a remote valley, with a group of acolytes he had recruited on-line. The project was called the Utopia Experiment, and the idea was to attempt to imagine, through real-life role-playing, the conditions that might exist in the aftermath of society's collapse.
So was this an earnest attempt at Utopia, or an honest-to-goodness attempt at it? This review seems to think that Evans was a serious nutter who wanted to, and thought he could, create a utopian society out there in the wilderness.
But whatever it the case, it didn't work out so well:
Factions formed with different views about the future of the human race, and competition and fighting broke out. The yurts they lived in leaked rain. The vegetables they farmed wouldn't grow. Dylan began to fear for his sanity, and then his life.
Fighting? In Utopia? Whoever heard of such a thing?
...by the time he came to write this book [Evans] realized he was delusional. Though he had no difficulty recruiting like-minded eccentrics to join him in his 'experimental community'...Evans admits that his utopia was doomed to failure.
But he did write a book about this experiences, The Utopia Experiment, wherein he presumably learned to appreciate cooked food, clean sheets and a hot shower.
This appears to be a recurring conceit in modern life. Every now and then, someone gets bored with the comfort and prosperity they've grown accustomed to. and thinks they can just do away with civilization and everything will be just fine. Like 50 years ago when a group of people in California started experimenting with marijuana and LSD and soon the drugs so addled their brains that they began to delude themselves into thinking they could build a sustainable civilization on panhandling, free sex, and selling beads to tourists. They were like 3-year-old children who think they're actually flying when their Daddy lifts them up in the air and swings them around. A number of histories have been written about this cultural breaking point, for example, this one, which is a .pdf file you can download for free) and I think they tend to be a bit hagiographic, since "the 60s" are looked upon with great reverence by the culturally dominant baby-boomers. However, writer and critic Tom Wolfe observed things that the boomers would prefer to forget:
In 1968, in San Francisco, I came across a curious footnote to the hippie movement. At the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, there were doctors treating diseases no living doctor had ever encountered before, diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names, diseases such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot. And how was it that they now returned?...The hippies sought nothing less than to sweep aside all codes and restraints of the past and start from zero...Among the codes and restraints that people in the communes swept aside...were those that said you shouldn't use other people's toothbrushes or sleep on other people's mattresses without changing the sheets...or that you and five other people shouldn't drink from the same bottle of Shasta or take tokes from the same cigarette. And now, in 1968, they were relearning...the laws of hygiene...by getting the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot.
All of this and bedbugs, too. And STDs. Which is why the expression "dirty hippie" or "filthy hippie" is more than mere invective. That whole social experiment really did create some serious health issues for the city of San Francisco that the "free clinics" that were set up only partially addressed.
This was from his article 'The Great Relearning' which was reprinted in Hooking Up (Ceramic Transactions), an anthology of Wolfe's essays which can actually be read in its entirety online here.
There are a couple of other essays in the collection that I think are worth noting. The first is 'The Invisible Artist', a biography of American artist Frederick Hart (who died way too young in 1999) who went against modern art trends and sculpted figures of people that actually looked like people. His best known sculpture is probably 'Daughters of Odessa', an allegorical representation of Faith, Hope, Beauty, and Innocence personified by the four daughters of Czar Nicholas II, who along with him were cruelly murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1917. The sculpture is subtitled 'Martyrs of Modernism.' Hart was a devout Roman Catholic who believed that the old-fashioned virtues (such as Faith, Hope, Beauty, and Innocence) were good things and that art ought to show them.
Google 'Frederick Hart' and look at his sculptures. He did some amazing work, particularly with acrylic.
The other essay in this collection which I found quite interesting is 'Two Young Men Who Went West', an examination of the theological(!) roots of Silicon Valley corporate culture. Specifically, how the engineer who was given seed money to get Fairchild Semiconductor up and running was raised in an area of Iowa dominated by Congregationalist churches, and so, even though he wasn't a believer, even though he never internalized the faith of his parents, nevertheless adopted that denomination's fiercely non-hierarchical ecclesiastical structure into his new company, and how it was radically different than the corporate culture of the parent company back East, and how it affected other Silicon Valley start-up companies. He went on to another start-up, Intel.
Both essays make for very fascinating reading, and in my opinion, are worth the price of the book.
I wish I had remembered that last Sunday was the anniversary of Andrew Breitbart's passing, so I am unfortunately a week late with this. Like many of you, I will always remember when I first got up that morning of March 1st, 2012, going to the computer, reloading the AoSHQ main page, only to be punched in the face by ace's obituary of Andrew. I screamed "No! This can't be true. This is some kind of sick joke. C'mon ace, this is a prank, isn't it? Isn't it? Please tell me you're just messing with us." And then the awful realization that it was indeed true.
Breitbart was a one-man wrecking crew of all things progressive, he had already done serious damage to the left, and he was just getting started. Just getting started, that's the tragedy. He had geared up to be in the fight for the long haul, but God evidently had other plans.
I believe that if Andrew Breitbart was still alive, Obama would have been a one-term president.
The first time I encountered Andrew was when I read the book Hollywood, Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon -- The Case Against Celebrity that he co-wrote with journalist Mark Ebner, which I was able to check out from my local library. Don't know how I first found out about it, I probably saw it mentioned on the Drudge Report. I really didn't know who Breitbart was back then, and certainly not what he would become.
And now, looking back, I'm not sure I can recommend Hollywood, Interrupted. Not that it's a bad book, but it's entire raison d'etre is to show that Hollywood is a corrupt, degraded cesspool of vice trying to pass itself off as normal. But all of us here, we already know that. It doesn't need to be demonstrated, it's a given.
Plus, all the stories, as they involve contemporary (2004-5) Hollywood celebrities, would be somewhat dated now, and even more so as time goes on.
Of course, the book that Andrew is really known for is Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!, which has been read and loved by many of us. For those of you who haven't read it, in the words of one Amazon reviewer:
...the Left taught him what they wanted him to know, showed him what they wanted him to see, gave him the Party Line that he should think. But Breitbart somehow retained a thread of sanity. When it came time to rejoin The World, he compared what The University had taught him to what he could see for himself in The World, and realized that the whole substance and foundation of his "liberal" education was a lie. A lie deliberate, malicious, and malignant. He chose to choose, and chose to turn on his creators. And since the Mad Political Scientists of the Left had also taught him how they think, and how they persuade, and how they lie and inculcate lies, they gave him the means to do what they had never planned. They gave him the means to destroy them.
"At last!" I remember thinking to myself when I first started reading about Andrew's exploits, "At last we have someone on our side who really understands how the media works, and can use it for the benefit of conservative causes."
You can watch a 30-minute Uncommon Knowledge interview of Breitbart about Righteous Indignation from 2011 here. I had forgotten that Andrew had helped Ariana Huffington start the Huffington Post. Good line from the interview: "It annoys me that our side does not commit to this battle [for the media]"
I'm afraid we will not see his like again.
Clean Up Your Reading
Hmmm... Apparently, there is now an app that will allow you to censor your own reading, in case you're offended by bad language and would rather not have to read it:
The Clean Reader app removes objectionable language from a book and adds in 'an alternative word with the same general meaning.' One user wrote, 'This app has brought me back to reading and loving books again.'
Eh. The books I usually read aren't overwhelmed by cussing, so I don't care. And the replacement-with-a-milder-word aspect of this app sounds a bit dubious. The example the demo video on the site showed the sentence "He wished he had his damn knife" being changed to "He wished he had his darn knife." Really? I'd say that that substantially changes the meaning of the sentence. The word 'darn' simply does not have the same force as 'damn'.
In other words, this app allows you to change the book that was actually written to the one you'd rather read instead. Is this a good thing? It seems to me that if your practice is to make sure everything conforms to the comfortable contours of your own expectations, that's a recipe for stagnation and complacency. Sometimes getting punched in the face is not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, you may say "ugh, I don't want to read that" or "I don't think my kids should be reading this" and that's perfectly OK. Just put it down and find something else. But don't delude yourself into thinking you're reading something when you really aren't.
I know that this argument can be used, and has been used, to defend some pretty disgusting material. But I would hate it if I wrote something and people messed with it to get it to say something I never intended.
My approach to this is basically libertarian, that is, if you think the books you're reading contain too much bad language, then maybe you should be reading other books. And I sympathize with parents to find appropriate YA books for their teenagers, but again, it seems to me that the libertarian advice is appropriate. Surely you should be able to find plenty of YA stuff out there that isn't an R-rated cuss-fest.
Clean Reader is available for free for both iOS and Android.
Titles
Sometimes, the title of a book is a either a quote or a reference to some other literary work. Here's a quiz where you have to guess what the titles of 10 different books are quoting or referencing. I scored 80% by guessing a lot. I think I only knew 2 of the answers for sure.
Along these same lines, do you know where the title of Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange comes from? Apparently, "queer as a clockwork orange" was an expression used by Londoners back in the day, but perhaps not so much any more.
Also, unrelatedly, the novel has 21 chapters, but the version first published in American only has 20. Burgess tells the story about how this came about in a published introduction to the 1986 (restored) American version, and it has been reprinted here. It's an interesting piece to read, and I learned something I didn't know, that, as it turns out, Burgess doesn't like the book very much at all. Like Alec Guinness' detestation of his iconic role as Obi-Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars film franchise, Burgess wishes he would be remembered for his other works which are considerably more praiseworthy, but
are unknown today.
Dennis Sandoval is a "Ghostrunner," an elite United States Air Force covert operator with a shadowy past. In the waning days of the Cold War, Sandoval must jump into East Germany and rescue an American missionary before a crucial East-West summit. But the mission spirals out of control; both the CIA and East German State Security are after the missionary. Cut off from his chain of command and hunted by Willi Metzger, a fanatical East German State Security officer with his own agenda, Sandoval must call on all of his skill and risk everything in order to survive and succeed.
Shiva says: "It's $2.99, and I believe that it will give my fellow Morons their money's worth in terms of enjoyment."
___________
So that's all for this week. As always, book thread tips, suggestions, bribes, rumors, threats, and insults may be sent to OregonMuse, Proprietor, AoSHQ Book Thread, at the book thread e-mail address: aoshqbookthread, followed by the 'at' sign, and then 'G' mail, and then dot cee oh emm.
What have you all been reading this week? Hopefully something good, because, as you all know, life is too short to be reading lousy books.
Early Morning Thread 3/08/15: In Search of a New Drug edition. [krakatoa]
—Open Blogger
At least I'm only running from my nose & lungs, so I got that going for me.
Any idea whether a pressurized cabin will make my head explode? I want to ask the airline, but I'm afraid that's the kind of question that gets one pulled out of line by the TSA.
Out of 647 detainees who were released, 116 - or 18 percent - have been confirmed as "re-engaging" in terrorism, according to the report by the Director of National Intelligence.
Of those, 25 are dead and 23 are back behind bars.
Another 11 percent of those released are "suspected" of re-engaging in their jihadi ways, according to the annual summary that is required by Congress.
We kick off the official season for bullshit polling reports with the first official Dead Horse Poll: Hill to Die On Edition.
A couple of weeks ago, Y-Not put up a fun post which asked you to build your own FrankenPOTUS. It was an interesting read with everyone from the founding fathers to John Wayne making an appearance as those possessing the must-have qualities for leader of the free world.
In lieu of an actual FrankenPOTUS, let's consider the those issues on which you absolutely will not compromise. What is your hill to die on? Let's establish, first, those issue on which you will not budge. Later we'll look at it from a different angle and ask about those issues on which you are willing to compromise.
Note that a number of the issues are broken down into pro and con positions to allow for the diversity of readers here at the HQ.
Saturday Gardening Thread: Let's Eat! [Y-not and KT]
—Open Blogger
Good afternoon, Gardeners! Welcome to the Saturday Gardening Thread. Today's thread is brought to you by "Mushrooms and earthworms and fancy stuff to eat":
There's not much happening in my garden yet. Our mint and strawberry plants are coming back, as are a few onions and shallots. My neighbors' crocuses and daffodils are also starting to make their presence known as I discovered while walking my dog yesterday:
However, I do have a little indoors growing project underway, courtesy of a kit that Santa brought me:
I started it a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure I'll know when it's time to harvest the mushrooms. I may go ahead and cut some off now and see if more will emerge as I free up some room on the growing surface.
This particular kit is easy as pie. You just scrape the surface to promote growth, soak the growing surface for half a day or so, then keep it moist by spritzing it with water. I have it on a counter in my utility area, away from direct light.
But they're pricey! A small container (one of those square ones that I believe holds a pint) is about $6 at my grocery store, so I don't indulge very often.
(If, like me, you enjoy wild mushrooms, but are unsure of what their different flavor characteristics are, you might find this detailed article at Mushroom.com of interest.)
Although it's been dead easy, I doubt that the mushroom-growing kit Santa brought is even close to economical. So is there a cheaper (or better) way to grow your own mushrooms?
Our friends at Better Homes and Gardens provide this brief overview of growing your own mushrooms:
You can buy mushroom kits already packed with a growing medium that's inoculated with mushroom spawn. Buying a kit is a good way to begin your knowledge of mushroom growing. If you start without a kit, the type of mushroom you choose to grow determines the substrate you grow the mushrooms on. Research each mushroom's needs.
Button mushrooms are among the easiest types to grow. Follow Kansas State University's directions for growing button mushrooms. Use 14x16-inch trays about 6 inches deep that resemble seed flats. Fill the trays with the mushroom compost material and inoculate with spawn.
Use a heating pad to raise the soil temperature to about 70 degrees F for about three weeks or until you see the mycelium -- the tiny, threadlike roots. At this point, drop the temperature to 55 to 60 degrees F. Cover the spawn with an inch or so of potting soil.
Keep the soil moist by spritzing it with water and covering it with a damp cloth that you can spritz with water as it dries.
Now, it must be said that growing your own mushrooms is definitely more difficult than growing nearly any other crop if you use the standard methods. Mushroom farming normally relies on significant pasteurisation equipment and climatic control. This can be hard to recreate at home without spending a fortune.
The best advice for success is to start by growing Oyster mushrooms, the easiest and most forgiving variety for any home cultivator to grow. Next you must consider the growing medium. The most common materials to grow Oysters on are usually freshly cut hardwood logs or shredded straw. Growing mushrooms on logs can be quite hit or miss and will take up to a year for your first harvest. Growing on straw requires you to pasteurise the straw first, to kill off resident micro-organisms that will compete with your mycelium.
This is where coffee comes in. The beauty of growing mushrooms on fresh coffee waste is that the substrate is already pasteurised by the coffee brewing process, so you can bypass the whole pasteurising step and get straight into the inoculating. Plus, spent coffee grounds are a huge waste resource, and are packed full of nutrients which your Oyster Mushrooms love to grow on.
More details at the link.
These folks recommend you check out Fungi Perfecti for more resources to help you get started.
Another place that I found was this place (Mushroom Mountain), a farm that offers a wide variety of mushroom strains, substrates, indoor and outdoor growing kits, and even classes. They are located in Easley, South Carolina (about 20 minutes west of Greenville). I admit, the idea of a class appeals to me as I found the nomenclature associated with mushroom growing is a bit confusing.
One day, 10 years from now, you might find yourself hankering for a snack. No, you don't plunk a few quarters into a vending machine in return for a salty bag of potato chips. Instead, you reach for a 3D-printed cracker, which over the last few days, has sprouted nutritious-and-delicious mushrooms and greens.
(Follow the link for a video. I couldn't figure out how to embed it.)
"Fungus", "plastic", and "edible" are three words you probably wouldn't think would go together, but Austria-based Livin Studio is keen to make you think again. It is responsible for the Fungal Mutarium, a prototype terrarium that uses bioremediation techniques to destroy plastic while creating edible fungus creations in the form of little pods that can be flavored and filled.
Using mushrooms for bioremediation, the use of organisms to remove or neutralize pollutants, is not new. Pleurotus ostreatus, or what you commonly know as the oyster mushrooms floating in your Chinese takeout, is a common species for bioremediation. Schizophyllum c. is less well known in the West, but commonly eaten in parts of Asia and Mexico. Both species are used in the Mutarium along with an agar substrate, and of course, plastic.
As a child, I learned that people eat nasturtiums. But it was several years before I learned much more than that about edible garden flowers. As noted at the link above, edible flowers can be used in many ways. Johnnys Selected Seeds emphasizes flowers for use in salads. This is probably where the beginning flower-eater typically starts.
The following video produced by Peaceful Valley Farm Supply includes ten pretty sensible safety and taste tips for eating flowers. The edible flower lady mentions sticking to petals and trying to avoid eating pollen if you are an allergic type. But some people eat bee pollen as a remedy for allergies, so I don't worry too much about eating flower pollen from plants to which I am not allergic.
The guy in this video identifies Pineapple Guava petals as his favorite edible flowers. They really do have a nice, fruity flavor that is perfectly compatible with a fruit salad. If you live in a mild climate where pineapple guavas make good-flavored fruit, choose named cultivars. You might want to stick to eating the flowers in hotter climates where pineapple guava is used as a landscaping shrub, but where fruit quality is inferior.
The video guy linked above didn't convince me that he actually enjoys eating French Marigolds. Heh. Over at Eat the Weeds, three kinds of marigolds are identified as being tasty enough to eat:
Tagetes patula - French Marigold
T. tenuifolia - Signet Marigold
T. lucida - Mexican Tarragon
I'm not too wild about the idea of eating French Marigolds myself. I might try Signet Marigolds. I have grown "Mexican Tarragon". The leaves taste a lot like French Tarragon -- a little heavier on the anise flavor. The annual plants are probably easier for some people to grow than perennial French Tarragon from cuttings. (Pro tip: Don't plant Russian Tarragon for culinary use. It has no flavor even though it is "real" tarragon. Also beware of any tarragon pretending to be French Tarragon, even though it is grown from seed.) The Mexican marigold stand-in is on the rangy side, probably not the best choice in a formal garden setting.
"Mexican Tarragon" marigolds bloom in autumn. In parts of Mexico, stems with clusters of small golden flowers are used in a religious celebration. Shepherds Seeds used to sell a cultivar that bloomed longer because it wasn't as sensitive to day length. I think it was also shorter than the species. Wish I knew where to find it now.
Ninety-eight kinds of edible cultivated flowers are described here. I think the author is pretty careful about confirming edibility of flowers before recommending them. But I think he missed his earlier description of Corn Poppies. I read years ago that the seeds of Papaver rhoeas could be used like the more familiar seeds of opium poppies, but that they had a different flavor. I also read that the flower petals were used to color syrups. From his description, it sounds like the flowers and seeds were widely used in the past.
Corn Poppy
The author also seems to have missed Kudzu in his list of ninety-eight. Well, I guess that Kudzu is not cultivated by many people, even thought the government introduced it. But one of our own Morons makes Kudzu Jelly from naturalized Kudzu flowers. Sounds pretty good.
Kudzu flowers have an intense grape aroma
This brings me to a Garden Kitty Update. I did not name the newest refugee kittens Quince and Kudzu, as suggested in the comments a few weeks ago. I was out of ideas. Thanks to the plant name suggestions, I did choose plant-related names. The calico is now "Sweet Ginny" because her ears are the same color as Orange Ginseng Sweet Potatoes.
Sweet Ginny with Orange Ginseng and Korean Purple Sweet Potatoes
The little brunette classic tabby is "Lana Turnip".
Lana Turnip with Oasis, Just Right and Hakurei turnips
I also re-named the latest two mackerel tabbies (they arrived last year) "Quincy" for quinces and "Piers" for pears. "Kudzu" is a name that is going to have to wait for a really special kitty.
Y-not: Thanks, KT! To wrap things up, here's another mushroom-y song:
Fundamental Concepts - Weakness Invites Aggression [Weirddave]
—Open Blogger
It's human nature to live in your own bubble. We have only experienced the world that we live in, so naturally many people assume that the world as it is is its default state. In order to move beyond this paradigm, one must first be introspective enough to recognize it, then take the time and effort to study history and culture to examine whether your norm is anything at all like the human norm through history. Often times this forces one to confront truths that may be, like life, nasty and brutish. For example, students are taught today that the shameful reality of slavery in America is somehow unique and uniquely horrible. It is only through further study that one discovers that slavery has been practiced in almost all human cultures for as long as human beings have been around. In fact, it was the hated Judeo-Christian civilization that recognized it for the evil that it is and fought to eliminate it. Slavery is still practiced today across much of the Arab world and in vast swaths of Africa. What little slavery remains in the West (sex slavery) is universally condemned and vigorously prosecuted. Recognizing that slavery is not a uniquely American phenomenon, and that there is still lots of it around can be a distressing challenge to a world view that has been unexamined. Acknowledging that the West is the only culture in the history of mankind that has for all practical purposes eradicated it can destroy that world view.
The same thing is true with peace. Almost everyone wants peace, the problem is that we've had peace in this country for so long that most people don't recognize it for the aberration that it is. Because of this, a curiously contradictory mindset holds sway over a large segment of the population, most of them on the left side of the political spectrum. It goes something like this: "Well, we want peace, so we'll just refuse to fight. If we refuse to fight, the other guy will have no reason to fight us." If you point out to them that the other guy just might not want peace, you'll get a predictable response: " Well, since peace is the default state of the world, if we can figure out what we did to make the other guy mad at us and desirous of war, and make it up to him, then he'll feel comfortable with allowing the default state to resume."
The problem is, of course, that peace isn't the default state of the world, war is. Human beings are predators, and we are genetically designed to be in competition with other human beings, either individually or in groups. If group A has something group B wants, the natural instinct of group B is to attack group A and take it. The only way that group A can prevent this from happening is to be stronger than group B. For centuries, the Mongol tribes roamed the countryside of Mongolia, squabbling with and fighting each other. The great neighboring dynasties, the Xia and Jin, had little to fear from the Mongols beyond nuisance raids, because they were stronger. Then Temujin united the tribes, assumed the title Genghis Khan, and swept both empires off the face of the earth. The empires had enjoyed peace for generations - because they were strong. When they ceased to be stronger than their foes, they soon ceased to be entirely.
So what? Primitives. Barbarians. Savages. We're different now. Civilized. Cultured. Superior.
I hate to break it to you, but we're not. 13th century man is behaviorally identical to modern man. 8 centuries is nowhere near long enough for that kind of evolutionary change in the human animal. People are...people. Always have been, always will be. The reason that we've enjoyed centuries of peace in America (even our wars haven't been fought here since the 1860s) is because we've been strong enough that nobody has had the ability to fight us over here, and we've had the ability to go fight them over there when we needed to. There is nothing about this situation that is written in stone. Our homeland is peaceful because we've had the military might necessary to make it impossible for foes to make it not peaceful.
But now, with so many believing that peace is the natural order of things, we are in grave danger of finding out that peace is not the natural order of things, it's a luxury, one that is paid for in blood and the willingness and ability to shed it. Our military is a shell of its former self, hollowed out to buy bread and circuses for the masses. Our diplomacy a joke, conducted insecurely and thus transparent to our foes. Our foreign policy is a hot mess of appeasement and apology. All of this makes us look weaker and weaker to the world, and so now they believe that they can take what they want from us because we can no longer defend it. Bill Clinton gave Ukraine a rock solid guarantee of protection in return for them giving up their nukes to ensure "peace". That's gone, along with half that country. Our strongest allies are realizing that they are on their own against genocidal aggressions and prepare to act alone or in concert with new allies. We issue ultimatums and draw red lines and the world laughs at us. This isn't peace, it's the prelude to destruction. Our destruction. Ronald Reagan had the right of it.
Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we'll only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he'll forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer -- not an easy answer -- but simple: If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based on what we know in our hearts is morally right.
We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion human beings now enslaved behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skins, we're willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Now let's set the record straight. There's no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there's only one guaranteed way you can have peace -- and you can have it in the next second -- surrender.
Admittedly, there's a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson of history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face -- that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight or surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand -- the ultimatum. And what then -- when Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we're retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the final ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary, because by that time we will have been weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he's heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he'd rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us.
You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin -- just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well it's a simple answer after all.
You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." "There is a point beyond which they must not advance." And this -- this is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said, "The destiny of man is not measured by material computations. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we're spirits -- not animals." And he said, "There's something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."
You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We'll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we'll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
Good morning, horde! Today we'll examine the field of prospective 2016 GOP candidates for their positions on Medicaid expansion, in particular as it relates to Obamacare.
Title XIX of the Social Security Act is a federal and state entitlement program that pays for medical assistance for certain individuals and families with low incomes and resources. This program, known as Medicaid, became law in 1965 as a cooperative venture jointly funded by the federal and state governments (including the District of Columbia and the territories) to assist states in furnishing medical assistance to eligible needy persons. Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for America's poorest people.
Within broad national guidelines established by federal statutes, regulations, and policies, each state establishes its own eligibility standards; determines the type, amount, duration, and scope of services; sets the rate of payment for services; and administers its own program. Medicaid policies for eligibility, services, and payment are complex and vary considerably, even among states of similar size or geographic proximity. Thus, a person who is eligible for Medicaid in one state may not be eligible in another state, and the services provided by one state may differ considerably in amount, duration, or scope from services provided in a similar or neighboring state. In addition, state legislatures may change Medicaid eligibility, services, and/or reimbursement at any time.
Follow the link to read about the alphabet soup of subsequent programs, including CHIP, CHIPRA, PPACA, and HCERA under which Medicaid has expanded over the years. Then go down a fifth of ValuRite and wander back.
Under Obamacare, states have been induced to expand Medicaid coverage. From the ACA website:
The Affordable Care Act provides states with additional federal funding to expand their Medicaid programs to cover adults under 65 with income up to 133% of the federal poverty level. (Because of the way this is calculated, it's effectively 138% of the federal poverty level.) Children (18 and under) are eligible up to that income level or higher in all states.
This means that in states that have expanded Medicaid, free or low-cost health coverage is available to people with incomes below a certain level regardless of disability, family status, financial resources, and other factors that are usually taken into account in Medicaid eligibility decisions.
Federal spending would increase to 26 percent of GDP by 2039 under the assumptions of the extended baseline, CBO projects, compared with 21 percent in 2013 and an average of 20.5 percent over the past 40 years. That increase reflects the following projected paths for various types of federal spending if current laws remained generally unchanged (see the figure below):
Federal spending for Social Security and the government's major health care programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and subsidies for health insurance purchased through the exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act -- would rise sharply, to a total of 14 percent of GDP by 2039, twice the 7 percent average seen over the past 40 years. That boost in spending is expected to occur because of the aging of the population, growth in per capita spending on health care, and an expansion of federal health care programs.
Follow the link to read more. Then, down another fifth of ValuRite, blow chow behind the dumpster, and stagger back.
Provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) expanded Medicaid to all Americans under age 65 whose family income is at or below 133 percent of federal poverty guidelines ($14,484 for an individual and $29,726 for a family of four in 2011) by Jan. 1, 2014. As passed by Congress, states failing to participate in this expansion would risk losing their entire federal Medicaid allotment.
The Medicaid expansion provision of the law led to challenges that rose to the Supreme Court where, on June 28, 2012, the court ruled that Congress may not make a state's entire existing Medicaid funds contingent upon the state's compliance with the PPACA Medicaid expansion. In practice, this ruling makes the Medicaid expansion a voluntary action by states.
The Court's decision sparked many questions from state policymakers. In a series of letters, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has begun to clarify its interpretation of the ruling. In the initial letter on July 10, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius addressed the decision and the next steps. Furthermore, responding to a letter from the Republican Governors Association (RGA) requesting additional guidance from the Obama administration, Marilyn Tavenner, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, clarified in a letter that no deadlines had been set for states to make a decision concerning the expansion of their Medicaid programs.
Given this new choice, states are weighing the costs and savings associated with expanding Medicaid to cover most people under the age of 65 with incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. Even with the federal government paying for a significant portion of the cost of coverage for the newly eligible -- 100 percent in 2014 through 2016, decreasing to 90 percent in 2020 and thereafter -- fiscal uncertainties remain.
State of the States: Blue=expanding coverage with Medicaid; Purple: expanding coverage with an alternate plan; Dark grey=considering expansion; Light grey=not expanding coverage at this time. Wisconsin, Texas, Louisiana, and South Carolina are not expanding Medicaid. New Mexico is. And Indiana is planning to expand using its own plan (more about that later).
Because I'm a giver, I donned my HazMat suit (and grabbed my trusty spray bottle of vinegar) and went over to some Liberal sites to see what their arguments were in favor of Medicaid expansion.
As a growing number of conservative states expand their Medicaid programs under the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, a new analysis finds that the states still holding out on expansion will pay out $152 billion to provide insurance for low income Americans in other states with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
Taxpayers in five of the biggest non-expansion states -- Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia -- will have to fork over close to $88 billion through federal taxes to benefit others. Under the law, the federal government picks up the entire cost of expansion through 2016 and up to 90 percent thereafter. As a result, federal dollars will pay for more than 95 percent of the total cost of the Medicaid expansion over the next ten years (from 2015 to 2024).
Your hostess after reading "Progressive" web sites. (Crabby.)
Here are some bullet points from A Toolkit for State Advocates developed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
* Rural America Will Benefit from Medicaid Expansion
* Expanding Medicaid Will Benefit Both Low-Income Women and Their Babies
* If Low-Income Adults Are To Gain Health Coverage, States Must Expand Medicaid
* Half of Uninsured Veterans Would Gain Health Coverage Through Medicaid
* Medicaid Will Improve Outcomes, Lower Costs for People with HIV
* Medicaid Expansion Could Cut Native Americans' Uninsurance Rate by Half
Each bullet point links with a "fact sheet" purporting to back their claims. There are many more, this was just a sampling.
Of course, there are many arguments being made against Medicaid expansion. Here's a brief round up:
One of the biggest myths pushed in statehouses across the country is that Obamacare's Medicaid expansion will be an engine of economic growth. The Obama administration promises that more than 350,000 jobs would be created nationwide in 2015 if all states opted into Obamacare expansion.
But the truth is that expanding Medicaid to able-bodied adults will discourage work, create massive new welfare cliffs and ultimately shrink the economy, not grow it. A new report by the Foundation for Government Accountability outlines how Obamacare expansion could affect the labor force.
Obamacare's perverse design discourages work by creating a massive new welfare cliff for able-bodied adults. In states that expand Medicaid under Obamacare, single adults moving above 138 percent FPL would face premiums, deductibles, copays, coinsurance and other out-of-pocket costs nearly $2,000 higher (on average) than those they were subject to under Medicaid.
The massive new welfare cliff created by Obamacare's Medicaid expansion is sure to discourage employment. Research shows that expanding Medicaid to this new population will discourage work, depress earnings, reduce labor-force participation and hurt the economy.
Medicaid is a problem for patients -- and it's also a major problem for states that are struggling financially. As Heritage's Nina Owcharenko explains:
Today, Medicaid consumes over 23 percent of state budgets, surpassing education as the largest state budget item. As Medicaid spending continues to rise, other important state priorities such as education, emergency services, transportation, and criminal justice are squeezed.
In fact, 40 out of the 50 states are projected to see higher costs -- not savings -- from expanding Medicaid.
Finally, in this piece that appeared in The Federalist last Fall, the author outlines the political ramifications to Republicans who back some form of Medicaid expansion. I'm afraid that Governors John Kasich (whom some seem to think is a 2016 prospect) and Mike Pence took it on the chin. Here's what he had to say about the Indiana governor's strategy:
His proposed Medicaid expansion would build on the current Healthy Indiana Plan, which funds health savings accounts for certain Medicaid enrollees, and create "HIP 2.0" -- essentially the same program but extended to the expansion population, with more benefits and larger taxpayer-funded HSA contributions for those who deposit a nominal amount of their own funds each month. Pence has touted his "consumer-driven" proposal as a conservative way to expand Medicaid in the belief that such a thing is possible. A close examination of his plan shows that it is not. In fact, a close examination of all the Republican expansion plans to date reveals that truly conservative Medicaid reforms are incompatible with Medicaid rules as promulgated by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
(Coincidentally, yesterday's AoSHQ Podcast included discussion of Medicaid expansion, so feel free to check that out if you want even more info about the subject.)
So, with that background, here's where our seven Republican primary prospects stand:
GOV. BOBBY JINDAL, LOUISIANA
Bobby Jindal opposes Medicaid expansion. (More recently, Jindal has engaged in a lively debate with Ramesh Ponnuru over a "conservative alternative to Obamacare." It's a bit outside the scope of this post, but you might find it interesting.)
GOV. NIKKI HALEY, SOUTH CAROLINA
South Carolina is not expanding Medicaid. Here's a recent article from a former advisor to Haley who stands by that decision for South Carolina, but who says that Medicaid expansion might be the right answer in some states.
GOV. SUSANA MARTINEZ, NEW MEXICO
Governor Martinez, who has had a Democrat legislature for most of her term in office, announced in 2013 that New Mexico would expand Medicaid. Interestingly, CATO still gave her the second highest "fiscal responsibility" score out of the governors we're reviewing in depth.
The Obama administration has been so eager to close this coverage gap among the neediest Americans that it has cut deals with several states -- notably Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, and Pennsylvania -- to allow them to expand Medicaid in ways that differ from the traditional program. But the concessions it made to Pence and Indiana go far beyond what it has agreed to previously. The expansion will cover 350,000 people in Indiana, which previously had very stringent eligibility levels -- adults qualified only if they had young children and were virtually indigent, making less than a quarter of the poverty level. But under the plan, Hoosiers above the poverty level will have to pay a monthly premium of 2 percent of their income -- as much as $25 a month for a single childless adult -- for coverage. Those under the poverty level won't have to pay the premium to get basic coverage, but they won't qualify for dental and vision benefits unless they do pay the premium. The rule will effectively create a waiting period before people get coverage, as the state determines whether they're paying their premiums and what level of coverage they qualify for. And, in a first for Medicaid, Indiana will lock out people earning above the poverty level from their coverage for six months if they fail to pay their monthly premiums.
Hoosiers on Medicaid will also need to make copayments -- including, in an another first for Medicaid, paying $25 for an emergency room visit if they've previously made what are deemed to be needless visits to the emergency room.
Cruz and a number of Senate cosponsors have filed a bill called the Health Care Choice Act of 2015. The bill intends to set into statute a much-discussed idea by conservative health care reformers to allow people to buy health insurance across state lines. It also repeals the portion of Obamacare law that mandates that individuals must buy health insurance on pain of ever increasing fines.
Cruz's bill represents a different approach to health care reform than that of the Obama administration. Whereas Obamacare relies on sanctions and penalties,
"Cruzcare" relies on the free market to expand choice and bring down costs. The idea of a national market for health insurance that creates risk pools is not a new one. But Cruz is the first to make a concrete proposal to make it happen.
I'm sure you all join me in denouncing this awful junior Senator who has the gall to actually make a concrete proposal.
/s
See you next week!
Candidate Backgrounders:
Walker, Perry, Jindal here
Paul, Rubio, Cruz here
Kasich, Haley, Martinez here
Pence here
Gowdy, Sessions, Carson, Lee here
Huntsman, Bush, Christie here
Romney, Ryan, Huckabee, Palin here
Quick Reference Guide: The composition (by majority party) of the state legislatures that each of the six governors we've been tracking have enjoyed during their terms. In Ted Cruz's case, I'm showing the party split for Congress. Note: I've collapsed Perry's first seven years as governor into two columns to make the chart more legible. When he assumed office, Texas had a "purple" legislature.
Outrageously, the nation's top prosecutor failed to control for factors that explain the racial "disparity" in traffic stops, such as speeding, DUI, expired license plates, headlight, seat-belt and child-restraint violations and other reasons for being pulled over.
Holder's own department statistics show that African Americans, on average, violate speeding and other traffic laws at much greater rates than whites.
The Justice Department's research arm, the National Institute of Justice, explains that differences in traffic stops can simply be attributed to "differences in offending."
Duh. For another example, "Seat-belt usage is chronically lower among blacks," the NIJ says in a 2013 study. "If a law enforcement agency aggressively enforces violations, police will stop more black drivers."
If Holder is going to dismantle the Ferguson PD, then he may as well dismantle the other 1,800 PDs as they will have similar numbers.
researchers discovered that instead of it actually being the muscular structure of the gluteus maximus or any buttock fat (or silicone implants) discerned atop or inside the butt that was a main factor of attractiveness to males - it was actually the curvature of the spine that attracts the male species.
The White House, State Department and Hillary Clinton's personal office knew in August that House Republicans had received information showing that the former secretary of state conducted official government business through her private email account -- and Clinton's staff made the decision to keep quiet.
Sources familiar with the discussions say key people in the Obama administration and on Clinton's staff were aware that the revelation could be explosive for the all-but-announced candidate for president. But those involved deferred to Clinton’s aides, and they decided not to respond.
In the end, Clinton’s staff waited six months -- until after the New York Times published a story on Tuesday about the email account and the possibility that it hampered public access to official records -- to begin their response.
Clinton's slow-off-the-block defense has left many political strategists and observers confused because even a presidential campaign in its early stages should have been prepared to get out ahead of bad news.
Kristina Ribali, Senior Coalitions Director for the Foundation for Government Accountability, joins Ace, Gabe, Drew and John to discuss the FGA's work blocking Medicaid expansion and reforming state welfare programs. Focus then turns to Hillary Clinton's emails and Bradley Cooper's eyes.
Intro: Clintonemail.com
Outro: Message In A Bottle - The Police
Democrats: If Republicans Attempt to Demote John Boehner, We'll Keep Him In the Speakership
—Ace
I don't want to be an asshole and re-open old wounds, but remember when the "Crazies" wanted to demote Boehner back in January, and said how crazy it was, and told the crazies to shut up, and were generally super-proud of themselves for not being so Crazy?
Seriously, you people who pride yourselves as being The Thinkers and the Reasonable Ones should try thinking occasionally, and giving reason a try.
Feds Preparing Criminal Corruption Charges Against Democratic Senator Bob Menendez
—Ace
You may remember that Menendez took flights on a wealthy doctor's plane, often down to the Dominican Republican, and did not reimburse that doctor (that is, he took the flights as illegal gifts).
People briefed on the case say Attorney General Eric Holder has signed off on prosecutors' request to proceed with charges, CNN has learned exclusively. An announcement could come within weeks. Prosecutors are under pressure in part because of the statute of limitation on some of the allegations.
The case could pose a high-profile test of the Justice Department's ability to prosecute sitting lawmakers, having already spawned a legal battle over whether key evidence the government has gathered is protected by the Constitution's Speech and Debate clause.
The FBI and prosecutors from the Justice Department's public integrity section, have pursued a variety of allegations against Menendez, who has called the probe part of "smear campaign" against him.
The government's case centers on Menendez's relationship with Salomon Melgen, a Florida ophthalmologist who the senator has called a friend and political supporter. Melgen and his family have been generous donors to the senator and various committees the senator is associated with.
...
Menendez advocated on Melgen's behalf with federal Medicare administrators who accused Melgen of overbilling the government's healthcare program, according to court documents and people briefed on the probe. Melgen was among the top recipients of Medicare reimbursements in recent years, during a time when he was also a major Democratic donor. Melgen's attorneys have denied any wrongdoing.
Menendez also used US government pressure to lobby the Dominican Republic to give Melgen a huge contract for a port's cargo screening equipment. Why an opthamalogist is in the Port Screening Equipment Business I don't know.
One part of this story remains, I think, well debunked: The "underaged prostitutes" who accused Menendez may have been put up to it by other business interests (maybe other people in the apparently lucrative Port Screening Equipment industry).
Menendez has been the target of a federal grand jury since 2013.
I don't think the Conspiracy Angle makes sense, though I did wonder about it, but yes, if you're wondering, that's right, you do remember Menendez taking a high profile position against Barack Obama's Iran deal.
The Did-Obama-Do-This-For-Iran game is big this week. We talked about it on the podcast.
She talks up how important "transparency" is to the lying grifter Obama. When asked if she would fire someone conducting all of his business on private email, she declines to answer that "hypothetical."
Editorial: The public deserves answers, not stonewalling, from Hillary Clinton "Dispatching friendly politicians and former aides to television news shows to dismiss the issue as just politics does not help her cause. If she is elected president, can Americans expect a similar response when she faces difficult questions...?" [rdbrewer]
Michael Bastasch: More Evidence Of Climate Data Tampering By NOAA? "When Dr. Roy Spencer looked up summer temperature data for the U.S. Corn Belt, it showed no warming trend for over a century. But that was before temperatures were 'adjusted' by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate scientists. Now the same data shows a significant warming trend." [rdbrewer]
Apocalypse Newark A politician, no matter how badly he’s botched the job, can still always scare voters into believing things could be worse. [rdbrewer]
Physical security of the Clinton e-mail server. Ace and others have been raising the issue here, but a former military contractor w/experience setting up and running secure e-mail servers weighs in as well. Bottom line: either the gov't set it up and knew all about it, or they didn't and there's a massive security hole. [Fritzworth]
Christina Hoff Sommers, AEI: The war on gamers continues Video. "A major humanitarian group has just come out with a lesson plan for high school students on sexism in video games. It is full of propaganda, vilifies gaming and gamers, and is likely to discourage young women from playing." [rdbrewer]
USA Today: Report: Tim Tebow can finally throw a spiral Fine, but we're concerned about touchdowns or style? If those ugly ducks were winning games, who cares? At any rate, my worry about tryouts is that he's the kind of guy who needs game pressure to perform. [rdbrewer]
Clinton e-mails prompt another inquiry on Capitol Hill "[Grassley] didn’t know, until last week, that Clinton was exclusively using a private e-mail account that could contain relevant information about Clinton’s use of the so-called 'special government employee' program." [rdbrewer]
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