There's a story of a jeweler who accidentally doubled the price of her turquoise jewelry instead of halving it. Based on traditional economics, she should have sold less of the turquoise jewelry, but she actually sold out of it! It turned out that increasing the price of the jewelry increased its perceived value: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/5-psychological-studies/
I first heard about this study when I was a student at a US university whose increasing tuition rates seem to be capitalizing on a similar pricing pattern, as pioneered by George Washington University: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/education/edlife/how-to-raise-a-universitys-profile-pricing-and-packaging.html
2011 is also the year Trump paid buyers of Trump Soho $2.8 million to stop cooperating with a Manhattan DA investigation into criminal Russian funding sources for the project.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/us/politics/donald-trump-soho-settlement.html
Obama has been a major abuser of human rights. If I remember correctly, I think he was one of the only presidents to be in war for all 8 years of his presidency. He actively persecuted whistleblowers, kept Guantanamo open, and still kept the NSA going despite the massive leak. People are willing to overlook too much when it comes to Obama and the amount of freedom that was taken during this administration. I'm sorry, but gay marriage and marijuana isn't enough to forget the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Libyans and Syrians.
But it doesn't matter, the American people have basically spoken by voting for the complete decimation of the Democratic Party. Obama caused liberals to lose the House, the Senate, State legislature, Governor seats, and the Supreme court for the next decade at least. History has judged Obama, and the picture is not as rosy as the Nobel Peace Prize he received.
Edit: I forgot about TPP, Obamacare, racial tensions, Chinese aggression, Crimea .......... damn, but his speeches were slick so it's all okay right /s
> If the United States remains in combat in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria until the end of Mr. Obama’s term — a near-certainty given the president’s recent announcement that he will send 250 additional Special Operations forces to Syria — he will leave behind an improbable legacy as the only president in American history to serve two complete terms with the nation at war
Learn to google people
>“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
I can't see him pardoing specially since how many people he prosecuted so many whistleblowers.
>Since Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009, his government has waged a war against whistleblowers and official leakers. On his watch, there have been eight prosecutions under the 1917 Espionage Act – more than double those under all previous presidents combined.
Under him NSA has only gotten bigger so I don't see why he would ever pardon Snowden. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html
TIL that he would cut his grapefruit with the dull side of the knife.
>Erdös found a grapefruit. He looked at it and looked at it and got a butter knife. "It can't be by chance," Graham explained, "that he so often used the dull side of the knife, trying to force his way through. It'll be squirting like mad, all over himself and the kitchen. I'd say, 'Paul, don't you think you should use a sharper knife?' He'd say, `It doesn't matter,' as the juice shoots across the room. At that point I give up and cut it for him."
TIL that he would call everything he didn't like "fascist."
>This brush with fascism had a lasting impact on Paul, both politically and linguistically. From this point on, anything was inconvenient or oppressive was "fascist". To illustrate: At one point, a colleague showed Erdős a new litter of kittens. Paul picked up a kitten, but the kitten would have none of it, and scratched him. Paul carefully put the kitten back down, clucked and proclaimed "fascist cat!". Paul's colleague, intrigued, asked Paul how the cat could possibly be fascist. Paul responded, "If you were a mouse, you would know!".
Fun facts: MLK's niece has said she voted for Trump, and MLK III (his son) just met with Trump today and praised their constructive talk, and said Trump is very interested in his plan to give free government identification to those who don't have drivers licences as to make it easier for disadvantaged black voters to get ID for voting.
>Mr. King said the session, which included a discussion about voting rights, had been “constructive,” and described Mr. Trump as eager to present himself as inclusive.
>“He said that he is going to represent Americans — he’s said that over and over again,” Mr. King, the president of the Drum Major Institute, a progressive New York-based public policy organization, told reporters. “We will continue to evaluate that.”
>On Monday, Mr. King sought to defuse the furor surrounding Mr. Trump’s remarks about Mr. Lewis, saying, “In the heat of emotion, a lot of things get said on both sides.”
>Mr. King has pressed for the creation of a free photographic government identification card to make it easier for Americans who do not have driver’s licenses, including many black voters, to cast ballots, and he indicated on Monday that Mr. Trump had taken an interest in the plan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/us/politics/donald-trump-martin-luther-king-jr-son.html?_r=0
Please correct the record below. Something about Russia should do it.
He didn't let his children use much technology at all. He believed it was healthy to limit the amount of time they had with technology, especially at a young age.
Her name is Gjinovefa Merxira. She is getting this operation due to the fact that, amongst many incidents, she once saw "flowers instead of numbers" while doing math.
During the surgery in which this photo is taken, she was awake and responding to the surgeon as he cut into her.
Article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-on-the-terrible-beauty-of-brain-surgery.html?_r=0
At this point, there is so much smoke that it's in everyone's best interest to have a full-on bipartisan investigation into these allegations. Both Trump and the media are seemingly going all-in on this, and only one side is going to be able to walk away from the aftermath.
This NYT article sums it up pretty well:
> If true, the claims in the BuzzFeed dossier are sensational, including extensive contacts between Trump aides and Russian operatives and the Russian accumulation of dirt on Mr. Trump to be used for blackmail.
> But are they true? No one knows. This could either be a Watergate-style scandal that engulfs the Trump presidency or a “Hitler Diaries”-style hoax, or anything in between.
> There is only one way to get to the bottom of this tawdry affair: Appoint a bipartisan, 9/11-style commission to investigate all of the allegations and issue a public report. The former C.I.A. directors Leon E. Panetta and Michael V. Hayden, among other possible choices, would provide instant credibility if they were appointed to lead such a panel.
> If Mr. Trump is genuinely innocent of any untoward connections with the Kremlin, wouldn’t he want a full investigation to clear his name? That he so adamantly opposes any such inquiry speaks volumes.
Native American. Pretty much everything. But to name a few popular ones:
Edit: Native people have and continue to be misrepresented so bad that I didn't know I was considered Native until middle school. My teachers generalized the entire race that I thought it couldn't possibly be me or the other several Native students in class. We just identified ourselves as our tribe instead of the "Indians" they taught us in class because they did weird shit.
As Marlon Brando perfectly said, "...the motion picture community has been as responsible as any for degrading the Indian and making a mockery of his character, describing his as savage, hostile and evil. It's hard enough for children to grow up in this world. When Indian children watch television, and they watch films, and when they see their race depicted as they are in films, their minds become injured in ways we can never know."
Fun Fact: When they initially were filming this movie, lots of Indian people were in quite an uproar about an Englishmen playing Gandhi, for obvious reasons. It wasn't until they realized that he was not only in part ethnically Indian, but that his family actually came from the same village as Gandhi, that they gave it the ok.
I can't find a source for this story, as I remember Ben Kingsley talking about it in some interview. But here is the source for the part about his family heritage.
Stealing this from another user from another thread:
> Yes. But a huge number of bills in the Senate are to rename a postoffice in Tumbleweed, Wyoming or something like that. The bills that mattered they differed on. Here are a few examples:
> - The Iraq War (S: No, C: Yes)
- The Wall Street TARP bailout (S: No, C: Yes)
- Tax credits for renewable fuels (S: Yes, C: No)
- Estate tax breaks for millionaires (S: No, C: Yes)
>These 4 votes alone are worth well over $2 trillion dollars. $1.2+ for the Iraq War, $0.8 for the Wall Street bailout, etc.
>There's enough money there alone to pay for Bernie's college plan for nearly 50 years.
Hillary and Sanders also voted on different sides in 2007 on Guantanamo.
Here is a link to another reddit thread about the differences in voting
NYTimes article that discusses the differences in voting
Basically, they only served with each other for about 2 years and the bills they voted similarly on were non-impactful and mostly pork stuff that do not necessarily show any similarity in political ideology. Conversely, what they voted differently on were major impact bills where your vote(s) tell a great deal on where one stands politically and ideologically.
The "Hillary and Sanders voted 93% similarly while they were together so Hillary MUST be as liberal and left leaning as Sanders" is spin coming from the DNC camp to try and fool true democrats into coming into their fold.
EDIT: Holy carp. Gold! Thank you kind stranger, though you could have just given me reddit silver and I've have been just as happy!
This is Rep. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. He supported Trump. It's actually fairly strange to me that he's speaking out about Trump releasing his tax returns, but it's something he's been fairly vocal about since August.
Not really sure what he has to gain from this. Guess he's just taking a principled stand, or trying to boost his image. Either way it's somewhat encouraging to see Republicans standing up to Trump, even in such an extremely limited capacity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/magazine/how-donald-trump-picked-his-running-mate.html?_r=0
>When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy.
>Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of?
>“Making America great again” was the casual reply.
>I would have wanted her to completely walk away from the Clinton Foundation, possibly even dissolving the organization or renaming it and handing it over to others.
Which was the plan they released in September that she got zero credit for.
edit: Originally said the plan was released during the primary but the more detailed plan I was thinking of wasn't released until last September. Still got no credit for it.
>“I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
-Steve Bannon https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/stephen-bannon-breitbart-words.html
Lots of folks have postulated MLK was killed when he tried to organize not just the black people, but the poor people at large. He wanted to turn it from civil rights into what "they" perceived as a brewing class war.
Info on his Poor People's Campaign, which was carried out despite his assassination the month prior.
And the FBI even urged him to kill himself through supposed "fan" letters, even going as far as blackmailing him to do so by threatening to release evidence of his marital affairs. Source on that.
Edit for sources.
>“I'm a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that's my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”
-Steve Bannon https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/15/us/politics/stephen-bannon-breitbart-words.html
He's also the same guy that said "I know a lot about hacking... I have a boy who's 10 year old, he can do anything with a computer." #TrueStory
According to this new york times article the published document has been circulating in journalistic circles for a while but buzzfeed is the first organization that felt it was credible enough to publish.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/business/media/cspan-russia-today.html
>Mr. Mortman [C-SPAN spokesperson] said the network’s early explanation for the interruption came from an internal analysis. He said that he was not aware of any previous such interruption.
>Had Mr. Burke and others who were watching C-Span online at the time not been interrupted, they would have heard Ms. Waters mention Russia and President-elect Donald J. Trump several times before she ended her turn on the floor.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/12/lights-go-out-pompeo-cia-hearing/
>The outage came just as Sen. Mark Warner, the committee’s ranking Democrat, was making opening remarks. He was commenting on how he and the committee’s chairman, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, are committed to examining the intelligence community’s recent assessment of Russian meddling in the U.S election...
>...The lights went out just before he uttered the word “Russia.”
Worth noting that the power outage happened during the confirmation hearing for the new CIA director
It all seems to be coming from a fairly credible ex-member of the British Intelligence. From a New York Times Article: > The former British intelligence officer who gathered the material about Mr. Drumpf is considered a competent and reliable operative with extensive experience in Russia, American officials said. But he passed on what he heard from Russian informants and others, and what they told him has not yet been vetted by American intelligence.
Here's a link to that New York Times Article. If this came out to be true, this could be a defining political moment for America.
lol i just looked up what you were talking about, and it's even worse than I thought. just look at who he's replacing:
"Mr. Perry, who once called for the elimination of the Energy Department, will begin the confirmation process Thursday with a hearing before the Senate Energy Committee. If approved by the Senate, he will take over from a secretary, Ernest J. Moniz, who was chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics department and directed the linear accelerator at M.I.T.’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science. Before Mr. Moniz, the job belonged to Steven Chu, a physicist who won a Nobel Prize.
For Mr. Moniz, the future of nuclear science has been a lifelong obsession; he spent his early years working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Mr. Perry studied animal husbandry and led cheers at Texas A&M University."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/politics/rick-perry-energy-secretary-donald-trump.html
> A police spokesman said the death was currently being treated as unexplained but was not thought to be suspicious.
You mean these police?
Remember that golden shower press conference? The one about the Russian piss prostitutes? He shoe-horned in that catchphrase twice (once explicitly, once just talking about how much he loves firing people). And it was equally awkward both times. No way he'd pass up the opportunity to say it again. He loves saying his catchphrase.
You would be just about right.
>When President-elect Donald J. Trump offered Rick Perry the job of energy secretary five weeks ago, Mr. Perry gladly accepted, believing he was taking on a role as a global ambassador for the American oil and gas industry that he had long championed in his home state.
>In the days after, Mr. Perry, the former Texas governor, discovered that he would be no such thing — that in fact, if confirmed by the Senate, he would become the steward of a vast national security complex he knew almost nothing about, caring for the most fearsome weapons on the planet, the United States’ nuclear arsenal.
Salman Rushdie spent 10 years in hiding after a foreign state sentenced him to death for writing a novel. One of his translators was stabbed to death in a university hallway. Another was attacked in his home. The experience broke him down emotionally, to the point that he pretended to convert back to Islam just to make the threats go away.
Fucking men-children, invoking his name to die on the hill of making fun of fat people.
That is absolutely and utterly false. Corporate donations may only be used towards independent advertising, not direct contributions.
Feel free to educate yourself: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/politics/22scotus.html
A writer for the New York Times actually wondered why national parks are so white and thought it was a problem that blacks don't have a passion for camping.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/opinion/sunday/diversify-our-national-parks.html
Dude spent the entire primary yelling all the things he would do "day one." I'm beginning to think this Trump character is full of shit.
There is no problem with Fed borrowing money overnight for banks, because one of the jobs of central bank is to function as lender of last resort in crisis.
>The administration veered rudderlessly from "laissez-faire" to fully dictating what the "private" banks do in less than 24 hours, and in the end let the favored banks make huge profits, bonuses, and acquisitions.
The real moral problem with this is that when banks were in bankruptcy, government did not take their ownership. Big banks are too big to fail, but that does not mean that their ownership should stay intact. Force banks to show their losses in their balance sheets (instant bankruptcy) buy the banks for a dollar and refinance them. After that any profit they make comes to government and those banks can be sold to private markets in 5-10 years.
It's just incomprehensible that when banks fail, governments creates TARP programs that ensure that owners can recover while government takes the risk.
edit:
This can't be. Everyone told me before the election that rigging was a totally unfounded concern and there was no way for it to affect the election.
If it was rigged by Trump, it was pretty masterfully corrupt politicking to get basically everyone to come out and defend the integrity of the electoral process beforehand. Now there's no real way to challenge the results without looking like hypocrites.
Apparently not.
>Asked about the two clemency applications on Friday, the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, discussed the “pretty stark difference” between Ms. Manning’s case for mercy and Mr. Snowden’s. While their offenses were similar, he said, there were “some important differences.
>“Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing,” he said. “Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy.”
I've always noticed a lack of white liberals moving to black neighborhoods—they claim they're safe and wonderful, yet they live far away from them. Strange.
No one wants their neighborhood to look like black neighborhoods, where people are randomly shot, mugged, and burgled frequently.
Also, ethnic groups self-segregate in America, but not to the extent of blacks. It's pretty well-known sociology that even upwardly-mobile blacks choose to live in black neighborhoods.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/us/milwaukee-segregation-wealthy-black-families.html?_r=0
The folks who voted for Trump have absolutely no idea regarding what a President actually does. They are clueless.
I read recently that Obama would read between 3-400 pages of documents and briefings each night. Here is an article that described his work habits.
There is no way that Trump is intellectually capable of digesting that much material. When you are President, you can't just "wing it."
>Some progressives are still shunning the event, with reports both of white women feeling excluded by talk of race relations, and minority women citing privileged whites acknowledging too little, too late their struggle against chronic class and race discrimination.
This is very disappointing to read. These kind of squabbles can cause the opposition to Trump to fail, in other words "A house divided against itself cannot stand."
Let's hope they can put aside the turf wars to focus on the main objective, putting a stop to Trump and the GOP's radical agenda that will destroy decades worth of progress.
Trump met with Martin Luther King III today:
>Mr. King said the session, which included a discussion about voting rights, had been “constructive,” and described Mr. Trump as eager to present himself as inclusive.
>“He said that he is going to represent Americans — he’s said that over and over again,” Mr. King, the president of the Drum Major Institute, a progressive New York-based public policy organization, told reporters. “We will continue to evaluate that.”
>On Monday, Mr. King sought to defuse the furor surrounding Mr. Trump’s remarks about Mr. Lewis, saying, “In the heat of emotion, a lot of things get said on both sides.”
>Mr. King has pressed for the creation of a free photographic government identification card to make it easier for Americans who do not have driver’s licenses, including many black voters, to cast ballots, and he indicated on Monday that Mr. Trump had taken an interest in the plan.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/16/us/politics/donald-trump-martin-luther-king-jr-son.html?_r=0
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-clinton-emails.html
> Mr. Trump’s apparent willingness to avoid condemning Mr. Putin’s government is a remarkable departure from United States policy and Republican Party orthodoxy, and has fueled the questions about Russian meddling in the campaign. Mr. Trump has denied that, saying at the news conference that he has never met Mr. Putin, and has no investments in Russia.
The USA has supported the FSA, which turned out to be a Islamist-sympathizing and brutal group with no qualms about terrorizing civilians (like when they handed over a captured NYT reporter to Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al Qaeda affiliate, to be tortured and held for ransom)
>Norm Drucker, one of pro basketball’s most prominent referees, who notoriously ejected Wilt Chamberlain from a game — the only minutes Chamberlain missed in his epic 1961-62 season — died on Friday. He was 94.
>I looked at a subscription to the Times and it was over $1000 a year.
As far as I can tell here's the basic price list. Ignoring introductory rates, you get their primary service levels:
basic: $3.75/week, which is roughly $195/year.
all access: $6.25/week, which is roughly $325/year.
home delivery (including digital and Sunday delivery): $9.40/week, which is roughly $488.80/year.
There are lots of introductory offers, besides the ones listed on that site, too. They send me emails like "give five complimentary 12-week digital subscriptions" (if anyone wants one of these, PM me your email and I'll figure out if they're still good). Those above prices seem to be on the high end, too. If you look around, you can find offers like this where you can get a year of digital subscription for $129.99 (new subscribers only).
I feel like I'm /r/hailcorporate for real now, I'm sure if you were interested you could also just call them up and find out what's the best deal for new subscribers. Personally, though, if I didn't already have a subscription, I'd consider subscribing to the Washington Post instead of the Times, since the Post seems to have better political reporting (though I tend to prefer the Times on most other issues).
You might find this piece from the New York Times, The Big Sleep, relevant.
It talks about the habits of the French farmers during a time well after the Middle Ages, but I think it's safe to assume that those habits would have been around in the Middle Ages too, as their lifestyles would not have changed too much.
In short, yes, a lot of peasants just did nothing, in part to conserve food, according to this writer.
>Economists and bureaucrats who ventured out into the countryside after the Revolution were horrified to find that the work force disappeared between fall and spring. The fields were deserted from Flanders to Provence. Villages and even small towns were silent, with barely a column of smoke to reveal a human presence. As soon as the weather turned cold, people all over France shut themselves away and practiced the forgotten art of doing nothing at all for months on end. > >In the mountains, the tradition of seasonal sloth was ancient and pervasive. “Seven months of winter, five months of hell,” they said in the Alps. When the “hell” of unremitting toil was over, the human beings settled in with their cows and pigs. They lowered their metabolic rate to prevent hunger from exhausting supplies. If someone died during the seven months of winter, the corpse was stored on the roof under a blanket of snow until spring thawed the ground, allowing a grave to be dug and a priest to reach the village.
Just so you know, only 1/5 millionaires inherit their wealth in the US. This is a very poor stereotype to perpetuate. http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/7-millionaire-myths.aspx https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html
NY Times does a good job comparing Perry to the man he's supposed to replace
> Mr. Perry, who once called for the elimination of the Energy Department, will begin the confirmation process Thursday with a hearing before the Senate Energy Committee. If approved by the Senate, he will take over from a secretary, Ernest J. Moniz, who was chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics department and directed the linear accelerator at M.I.T.’s Laboratory for Nuclear Science. Before Mr. Moniz, the job belonged to Steven Chu, a physicist who won a Nobel Prize.
>For Mr. Moniz, the future of nuclear science has been a lifelong obsession; he spent his early years working at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. Mr. Perry studied animal husbandry and led cheers at Texas A&M University.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/politics/rick-perry-energy-secretary-donald-trump.html?_r=0
Just yesterday there was an article about Obama's reading habit. I think it's going to be a long, long time before we see another thoughtful introvert in the Oval Office again.
The explanation is simple: pay-per-play, the press is just as corrupt as the politicians. The publications receive money (usually officially for "ads") in exchange for allowing "guests" to write editorials.
This is not just the British press (The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail, etc.) who attack Romania's fight against corruption, but parts of the American press as well.
For instance, a couple of years ago, New York Times published an editorial titled "Romania’s Anti-Corruption Mania":
> BUCHAREST, Romania — With its wide, tree-lined boulevards and Belle Époque buildings, this city was once known as Little Paris. Today, Romania’s capital feels more reminiscent of the French Revolution as it is roiled by a legal reign of terror. [...] Romania’s anti-corruption campaign has rapidly metastasized into an illiberal crusade. The public’s insatiable appetite for justice only exacerbates the threat to the country’s democratic future. > > Romania’s democratic development would be better served by a public process whereby past misdeeds were acknowledged, documented and then forgiven.
Apparently this comic needs a fact check. GE pays no federal taxes.
>[GE's] extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.
Obama - in a big fuck you to the American people and the world - just gave full XKEYSCORE access to all 17 intelligence agencies. This is one of the worst crimes against due process and civil rights of any president ever.
That entire video was just a cringe-worthy example of middle class Bobos being absolutely appalled at the behavior of lower class minorities.
As likely as it is that Cheney used inappropriate techniques to try and suppress Zelikow's memo, what would happen today if a similar official were to circulate dissenting material? Obama and his administration have embarked on a very concentrated effort to punish whistleblowers, and I imagine that this administration's response would actually be worse than Cheney's actions. After all, Zelikow wasn't arrested and charged for his dissent.
As an example, in January the Obama administration charged John Kiriakou with espionage-related crimes for (ostensibly) naming two individuals who tortured detainees that were suspected to be Al-Qaeda operatives. Kirakou was the first US official to publicly reveal that the US was torturing detainees with water boarding, and for this act of government transparency the Obama administration wants to put him in federal prison for up to thirty years [nytimes].
Kiriakou is just one whistleblower of six that the Obama administration has charged under the Espionage Act. Given the fact that, prior to Obama, there were only three such charges in the 95 years since World War I, I have to imagine that Zelikow would now be declared a federal criminal for daring to publicly disclose misdeeds* of the executive branch.
* internationally recognized war crimes
Here is the full speech written by Marlon Brando to be read by Sacheen Littlefeather. speech
It is surprisingly hard to find and I am not sure if this is the full version as it does not seem to be 15 pages long as described. It is not included on Ms Littlefield's wikipedia page nor on the Oscar website for acceptance speechs.
it was :(.. one example:
"Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals." -William F Buckley, New York Times, 1986
https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-aids.html
other conservatives like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell called for quarantine (or worse) in addition to forcible tattoos.
> they bring their culture and problems with them.
It's really hard to move past the mindsets of poverty & effects under-education.
Combine that with the social issues in the black community & it gets harder.
I see anger here that American dream is disappearing but for people who started in the hood & couldn't get out, progress has been stagnant for a long time. I'm skeptical that will change in the next 50 years.
>In August, around the same time the decision was made to keep the Manafort investigation at a low simmer, the F.B.I. grappled with whether to issue subpoenas in the Clinton Foundation case, which, like the Manafort matter, was in its preliminary stages. The investigation, based in New York, had not developed much evidence and was based mostly on information that had surfaced in news stories and the book “Clinton Cash,” according to several law enforcement officials briefed on the case.
Apparently the FBI deemed this "book" more deserving of their investigative power.
Jason Chaffetz, who has the audacity to threaten the Office of Government Ethics with an investigation for questioning Trump's commitment to confront his potential conflicts of interest.
That is fucking madness.
Which he then apologized for which is a rarity for presidents do do. Owned up to the mistake after it was investigated. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/08/world/asia/obama-apologizes-for-bombing-of-afghanistan-hospital.amp.html
Don't think this qualifies as a scandal. Not even on the same level now. It was an open and close case with an unfortunate outcome.
Exit polling showed that the first issue for Trump voters was immigration followed by national security. Economy was a distant third. So don't let anyone tell you it wasn't racism. It was racism lol. It was fear of brown people taking jobs and blowing things up.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/election-exit-polls.html
There is no such thing as a reliable think tank.
Think tank are part of the public relations industry, an industry that is based on manipulating public opinion.
Let's take the CATO Institute and The Heritage Foundation. They were created by big business in order to influence american public opinion. Their goals are the following : Promote markets over governement, low taxes on businessmen, low regulations, oppose measures favorable to workers unions.
If their "researcher" publish anything that doesn't fit this point of view, they immediatly get fired.
Let's take the Economic Policy Institute. It was funded by unions in order order to influence american public opinion. Their goal is the following : Promote governement over markets, higher taxes on business, more labor regulations, oppose measures favorable to large corporations.
If their "researcher" publish anything that doesn't fit this point of view, they immediatly get fired.
Let's take another example. The Center on Middle East Policy. It's backed by Israeli money. Any position defavorable to Israel is opposed. Their goal is to promote policies favorable to Israel. If their "researcher" publish anything that doesn't fit this point of view, they immediatly get fired.
The Washington Think Tank Industrial Complex is just total propaganda.
You pay them, they will say anything you want to :
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/us/politics/think-tanks-research-and-corporate-lobbying.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/us/politics/think-tank-scholars-corporate-consultants.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html
You want reliable studies, look into academia. Avoid any researcher affiliated with a think-tank.
Most millionaires and up attain their wealth through their own hard work.
They work doing dull, normal jobs, but they do them on their own terms. They are usually entrepreneurs who start out on own businesses at some point.
They are almost always living well below their means. They don't buy new cars, or own fancy suits or live in the Upper East Side.
Pretty much it comes down to these two simple facts.
If you want to go from nothing to wealthy, you must:
1) Do something that pays fairly well, preferably as a business owner or contractor.
And
2) Live as though you weren't paid well at all. No one ever got rich by spending money on gadgets and status symbols.
Surprisingly, using my friends as an example, #1 is much easier than #2.
None of us make fantastic money, but we all make far more than we need. My friends are always broke while I am always afraid of becoming broke and, as such, save. I save compulsively. I dump no less than $175/wk into various savings and investment instruments NOT including the 10% of my pay I defer to my 401(k). I'm not a millionaire, but I'm doing quite well for a 31 year old single male.
Im pretty sure all of my friends have extensive credit card debt and negative net worth.
This feels ironic given Trump's ideas on registering Muslims or making them carry special IDs.
Yes it is true. John Dower in Embracing Defeat recounts one tale of a woman listening to the broadcast with her whole village, and she couldn't really understand what the Emperor was saying. But, iirc, he also writes that there would generally be at least one person in each village who'd been educated and was able to relay what was being said. In the above story it was someone who had recently come from Tokyo who said "this means that Japan has lost". You can read an excerpt including this story here.
I can wholly recommend Embracing Defeat if you're interested in Japan's reaction to the surrender and subsequent occupation. It is, in my mind, an example of the kind of standard all historical works ought to aspire too. Rather than just give you a narrative, it does as much as it can (imo as much as is humanly possible) to tell you what people experienced on all levels of Japanese society and to a lesser extend within the American occupiers.
I can't answer your other questions, so I'll leave that to those who can.
Its cool, up until 2010 the AAP had a policy supporting female circumcision, and suggested that American doctors be given permission to perform a ceremonial "nick" on girls.
Ultimately they reversed that after a lot of angry letters. If you are mad, let them know.
Greeks do pretty well under capitalism, wherever they go in the world.
It's just that Greece itself is a corrupt and bureaucratic nightmare, so I don't think you solve that problem by letting the same institutions that screwed everything up take over all the industry.
The Senate does not agree: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/health-care-congress-vote-a-rama.html?_r=0
"In its lengthy series of votes, the Senate rejected amendments proposed by Democrats that were intended to allow imports of prescription drugs from Canada, protect rural hospitals and ensure continued access to coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, among other causes."
Regarding these two things:
> - On 9/11, for far too long after it was clear flight 11 had been hijacked, no fighters were scrambled to intercept the flights heading toward NY or DC, even though ATC had informed NORAD that planes were being hijacked. However, once planes were scrambled, they flew far below top speed towards NY and DC and their pilots weren't even informed of what was happening in NY nor were they told to intercept the second plane heading toward NYC.
> - There were well-established automatic procedures for intercepting aircraft that were either off course or had lost communication. Yet there were no interceptions of any of the four hijacked aircraft on 9/11. Real nice.
It simply was not as cut-and-dry as you make it out to be. These audio recordings might help you gain a better perspective on just how chaotic 9/11 was for flight responders as well as military personnel.
To be grandfathered in means that you're allowed to keep the deal originally promised to you. For example: if you have a cell phone plan with X amount of data, but your provider decided to change the terms, you may keep the original plan until you decide to "upgrade" or change plans.
It sounds like she's confident that her son will get the same deal, only future generations will get the privatized social security. I'm not sure what the current proposals are (currently checking) but I'd bet that the people ~40 and older will have the current system, while people below will see privatized social security
Edit: Nov 26 2016 NY Times says "Republicans say their proposal would apply to future beneficiaries, not to those in or near retirement." So this is why I say those ~40 and younger currently
Actually he was, he was in litigation of not allowing African Americans to be a tenant in one of his apartments in the 1970's....
Again actions speak louder than words.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/us/politics/donald-trump-housing-race.html
Eddie Huang's response to this: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/14/opinion/sunday/hey-steve-harvey-who-says-i-might-not-steal-your-girl.html
"I told myself that it was all a lie, but the structural emasculation of Asian men in all forms of media became a self-fulfilling prophecy that produced an actual abhorrence to Asian men in the real world."
Manafort received $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments from pro-Russian political party from 2007 to 2012. It is unclear what exactly the series of 22 payments designated for Manafort were for.
The dates here are key because the (unsubstantiated) 35 page document written by former MI6 officer Christopher Steele, leaked to U.S. government officials states that Russia have been "supporting and assisting" Trump for five years.
So while he HAS advised government officials, as you state, this is about what he did around 2011 right before Trump began circulating the birther theory, delegitimizing President Obama.
Yes, its all circumstantial but - holy shit - what a massive cloud of smoke there.
Six Reagan officials were charged and pled guilty/were found guilty/awaiting trial on charges stemming from Iran-Contra. One of H.W. Bush's last acts before leaving office was to pardon them.
>December 25, 1992 >Six years after the arms-for-hostages scandal began to cast a shadow that would darken two Administrations, President Bush today granted full pardons to six former officials in Ronald Reagan's Administration, including former Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.
>Mr. Weinberger was scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 5 on charges that he lied to Congress about his knowledge of the arms sales to Iran and efforts by other countries to help underwrite the Nicaraguan rebels, a case that was expected to focus on Mr. Weinberger's private notes that contain references to Mr. Bush's endorsement of the secret shipments to Iran.
>In one remaining facet of the inquiry, the independent prosecutor, Lawrence E. Walsh, plans to review a 1986 campaign diary kept by Mr. Bush. Mr. Walsh has characterized the President's failure to turn over the diary until now as misconduct.
>Decapitated Walsh Efforts
>But in a single stroke, Mr. Bush swept away one conviction, three guilty pleas and two pending cases, virtually decapitating what was left of Mr. Walsh's effort, which began in 1986. Mr. Bush's decision was announced by the White House in a printed statement after the President left for Camp David, where he will spend the Christmas holiday.
>Mr. Walsh bitterly condemned the President's action, charging that "the Iran-contra cover-up, which has continued for more than six years, has now been completed."
> Jackie Evancho
NYT did a piece today about her. I did not know she has a transgender sibling. NYT reports that the family has yet to get an answer from the Trump people whether or not Jackie Evancho's transgender sibling is invited to the Inaugural performance.
Article:
It's a (relatively) small loan when your dad has a net worth of $250 million.
Edit: Apparently it is necessary for me to say /s
In 1974, a scallop trawler brought up a mastadon skull and what is clearly a pre- Clovis man-made tool in over 200 feet of water in the Chesapeake Bay Area. Since most early people's likely lived in coastal areas, much of the archeological evidence is now submerged.
http://www.livescience.com/47289-mastodon-found-under-chesapeake-bay.html
There's also genetic and archeological evidence that a people related to Australian Aborigines inhabited Brazil before the Clovis people as well.
Obama commuted the sentence of Oscar López Rivera, a leader of the Puerto Rican separatist group, FALN which carried out more than 120 bomb attacks in the United States killing 5 people and injuring at least 50 others. President Bill Clinton had previously offered the leaders of FALN sentence commutations in return for a statement renouncing violence. Some leaders accepted that, Oscar López Rivera refused.
Left-wing activists are celebrating the decision. Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted: >Sobbing with gratitude here in London. OSCAR LOPEZ RIVERA IS COMING HOME. THANK YOU, @POTUS.
Perhaps Oscar López Rivera will now be able get a professorship at the University of Chicago inspiring the next generation of "community activists" next?
Can somebody steelman any of this for me?
I can't imagine a Republican administration ever commuting the sentence of a leader of a radical right-wing organization convicted of using violence ("direct action") or any mainstream Republicans even being happy about such an action. But, polite society and leftish politicians seem to have no trouble pardoning, making excuses for, or even celebrating (with a special performance of Hamlet or a professorship or ...) members of radical left-wing groups.
Trying to flip the tables, what would the Republican equivalent of this action be? Trump pardoning Dylan Roof? And if he did that is there anybody mainstream who would ever celebrate it on twitter?
Honestly this completely disgusts me.
No he didn't. On the other hand he criticise Kremlin https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/28/world/europe/edward-snowden-criticizes-big-brother-measure-in-russia.html
Why do you intentionally mislead people?
Getting people off was accepted medical practice for centuries and it is documented:
"When these symptoms indicate, we think it necessary to ask a midwife to assist, so that she can massage the genitalia with one finger inside, using oil of lilies, musk root, crocus, or [something] similar. And in this way the afflicted woman can be aroused to the paroxysm. This kind of stimulation with the finger is recommended by Galen and Avicenna, among others, most especially for widows, those who live chaste lives, and female religious, as Gradus [Ferrari da Gradi] proposes; it is less often recommended for very young women, public women, or married women, for whom it is a better remedy to engage in intercourse with their spouses."
Observationem et Curationem Medicinalium ac Chirurgicarum Opera Omnia - 1653 https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/maines-technology.html
>And at a time when a presidential candidate ran against political correctness and won — with half of white female voters supporting him — is this the time to tone down talk about race or to double down?
The next quote
>“If your short-term goal is to get as many people as possible at the march, maybe you don’t want to alienate people,” said Anne Valk, the author of “Radical Sisters,” a book about racial and class differences in the women’s movement. “But if your longer-term goal is to use the march as a catalyst for progressive social and political change, then that has to include thinking about race and class privilege.”
Looks like a double down, nice!
A touching article, a first person account of someone with a terminal illness. Here he talks about the process of his own and other peoples illness and dying.
Edit, another article written by his wife about Dr Paul Kalanithi, some may find it interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/health/lucy-paul-kalanithi-interview-breath-becomes-air.html
Which is funny, because atheists are still banned from holding public office by the constitutions of a number of states: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/in-seven-states-atheists-push-to-end-largely-forgotten-ban-.html?_r=0
>This is a verifiable US government document backed by the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc.
Actually, it's not. It wasn't created by the US government nor have they been able to verify it despite having the information for months.
>The summary is based on memos generated by political operatives seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy...
>The appendix summarized opposition research memos prepared mainly by a retired British intelligence operative for a Washington political and corporate research firm. The firm was paid for its work first by Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals and later by supporters of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The Times has checked on a number of the details included in the memos but has been unable to substantiate them...
>The F.B.I. obtained the material long before the election, and some of the memos in the opposition research dossier are dated as early as June. But agents have struggled to confirm it, according to federal officials familiar with the investigation.
God damn it, you're not wrong.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1998/04/three-new-revelations-about-lbj/377094/
>Johnson had "an unfillable hole in his ego," Moyers says. Feelings of emptiness spurred him to eat, drink, and smoke to excess. Sexual conquests also helped to fill the void. He was a competitive womanizer. When people mentioned Kennedy's many affairs, Johnson would bang the table and declare that he had more women by accident than Kennedy ever had on purpose.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/dallek-giant.html
>Johnson had a keen sense of identification with the needy. Throughout his life he had suffered from feelings of emptiness, which he answered with constant activity: "I never think about politics more than 18 hours a day," he joked. He filled himself with excessive eating, drinking, and smoking, and an affinity for womanizing--sexual conquests gave him temporary respites from feeling unwanted, unloved, unattended.
Source for anyone that's curious.
This is incorrect. Kissinger advised Nixon to sabotage a potential peace treaty because peace would negatively affect his campaign.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/31/opinion/sunday/nixons-vietnam-treachery.html?_r=0
well let's pretend you were genuinely curious (and ignore that any of that information is freely available by searching "donald trump division" or that you didn't quote each item listed as if each was a lie) and start with this article. just a google search.
there are plenty of reasons donald trump has been called divisive. i think a better approach to disagreeing with that premise would be to reassure people why he isnt, rather than just denying it (or blaming the DNC or HC even though you haven't done that yet).
> You understand how war works right?
Most drone bombings under Obama happened in Syria or Pakistan, 2 countries we are NOT at war with.
> Especially a war on "terrorists" who use a tactic of hiding among civilians.
Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About Who Will Die
Nearly 90 Percent Of People Killed In Recent Drone Strikes Were Not The Target
> By using drones, it puts less enlisted lives in danger.
But more American lives are in danger:
India has a very open list of IDs that can used to vote.
> “India allows the use of fifteen different types of identification, ranging from property documents to arms licenses to income tax identity cards. Included, too, are forms of identification most likely to be possessed by the poor.... For instance, voters can present ration cards issued to the poor to allow them to buy food staples and kerosene oil at subsidized prices.”
The right has consistently used their power to restrict that list. In Texas, there were only 7 forms of acceptable ID until they were forced to accept more under court order.
A more in-depth article from the NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/europe/germany-afd-alternative-bjorn-hocke.html?_r=0
That wasn't the only outrageous moment of the speech. There was also this:
> Mr. Höcke, for instance, disavowed a famous 1985 speech by Richard von Weizsacker, then the president of Germany, that called for the Allied victory over Nazi Germany to be seen as the liberation of the German people, not as their defeat.
> Mr. Höcke called Mr. Weizsacker’s address “a speech against his own people, and not for his own people.”
I read today's NYT article on it instead of watching because of school. I am severely concerned what her nomination will mean to the future of public education. What I liked best (worst?) was how she tried to turn the lack of choice regarding schools into an unacceptable injustice. UN-BELIEV-ABLE.
>You don't have to be rich to donate. You can donate. Remember how Trump bragged about taking money from poor elderly women? We're talking about that. Routine political donations.
We all know Trump is known for far more corrupt things than just donations, so when we see the scope of donations, it helps us appreciate the scope of the rest.
If anyone is interested in more reasons for a bearish sentiment on China, look into how they are categorising their non-performing loans.
In most of western countries loans are deemed to be "non-performing" when the loan holders don't make their scheduled payments after a certain period of time.
However in China a loan is deemed to be non-performing when the payments stop AND the market price of the underlying asset which was bought using the loan falls below the total value of the loan.
This is most applicable in real estate - where massive amounts of toxic loans are not categorised as such because the market price for the underlying assets keeps inflating. Some time ago I read a report by PWC, which estimated that because of these mechanisms a 15-20% drop in real estate prices could collapse their entire economy.
In other estimates China's toxic loans could exceed 5 trillion dollars.
scandal /'skandl/: (n) an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage.
To name a few:
Recording of trump inciting sexual assault
Video of him mocking a disabled reporter
Are lawsuits still considered scandals? or do we praise him for being a con artist still?
please. support Trump for whatever reason you want. but PLEASE don't walk around arrogantly saying he doesn't have scandals.
This is a very well written argument but not supported by the data. If wealth was the dominant factor in human capital accumulation, outside of intrinsic talent, then we would expect that children of wealthy disadvantaged minorities would preform as well as those from the equally wealthy families of the ethnic majority on things like standardized tests. They don't by a long shot. There are numerous social factors that are not accounted for by a simple compound interest model of human capital.
There are even places where you 'can't' hold office or sit on jury if you are atheist. Yes, the rules are archaic, but they're still in place.
In fact he asked for the Russians to hack emails publicly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNa2B5zHfbQ https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/28/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-clinton-emails.html
Never forget. He PUBLICLY ASKED RUSSIA to DO THIS.
Have you seen "Little White Lie"? (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/movies/little-white-lie-lacey-schwartzs-film-about-self-discovery.html)
There are tons of people of mediterranean-ish heritage that don't look "white", but they don't obsess about their status because they have enough corroborating data to back it up ("my family's from sicily, this is what my parents look like, etc"). While individual person-to-person random racism on the street is highly appearance-driven, race assessments in other situations are much more complex ("how do they talk?", "what's their last name?", "what's their economic background?")
FWIW my grandparents still don't consider Italians "white".
Except it didn't come from the intelligence services. They have a copy and gave Obama and trump briefings on it but they didn't create it.
>The summary is based on memos generated by political operatives seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy.
>The appendix summarized opposition research memos prepared mainly by a retired British intelligence operative for a Washington political and corporate research firm. The firm was paid for its work first by Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals and later by supporters of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. The Times has checked on a number of the details included in the memos but has been unable to substantiate them.
Submission statement:
The title is a bit of an exaggeration and the article definitely comes from a humanitarian rather than geopolitical point of view; however, I do think it indicates a future policy change with regards to KSA. While the US has supported KSA, over time the Obama administration seemed to have slowly distanced itself from KSA's actions in Yemen, backing off and decreasing certain times of kinds sales and changing intelligence policies. Tillerson seems like he could be a reversal of that.
If you have the time and interest, you can watch Tillerson's confirmation here to get a better idea of this and other changes that might occur in the next 4-8 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgXz8W9tHwo (10 hours.) There was a second part of it but I haven't been able to find it yet. If anyone has that, I'd appreciate it if you could provide a link.
EDIT: Here's an example of US arms support. Other reductions included decreasing (or banning?) cluster bomb sales. If you put "Yemen" in google news the policy of decrease becomes more obvious but I think the NYT article in this edit explains one of the bigger drops in the decline of support over time.
Something I haven't seen discussed yet is the (yes, unprecedented) number of filibusters by GOP minority in the Senate during Obama's tenure.
Since the introduction of the two-track system in the early 1970's, after a contentious (and frequently unproductive) decade of trying to pass/block civil rights legislation, the number of cloture votes has increased steadily. It went from 1 or 2 filibusters per year, to ~6 a year in the 60's. The two-track system was introduced to allow the Senate to continue doing business on other laws, and the floodgates were open. In the 70's and 80's, 30-40 filibusters per congress were common. Then under Bill Cinton, it climbed to 60-80 filibusters a year. It dropped off a bit under GW Bush, with a GOP majority Senate the democrats peaked at 71 cloture motions. The highest number of cloture motions, pre-Obama, was 82, in 95-96, in the midst of the Republican congress vs. Bill Clinton years. The Democrats were criticized for filibustering so often.
In 2007 the Democrats regained control of the Senate. During the 110th congress, there were 139 cloture motions.
It peaked in the 113th congress, 2013-2014, with 253 cloture motions, more 3x as many as had ever been filed pre-Obama in a single congress, since the adoption of Senate rule 22 in 1917 which allowed cloture motions, resulting in 187 cloture votes (highest ever pre-Obama was 34).
On top of this, never in the history of our Republic has a sitting president been out-and-out blocked from appointing a SCOTUS justice. Others have talked about how many of Obama's other appointments have gone unfilled because of obstructionism.
Sources:
http://www.senate.gov/reference/clotureCounts.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses