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darkmaga-returns · 2 months ago

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10 shocking stories the media buried today.

The Vigilant Fox

Dec 04, 2024

10 – Dr. Peter Hotez warns of a series of potential pandemics “coming down the pike,” claiming it will all “come crashing down” on Trump “on January 21st.”

Is that a threat?

Meanwhile, a mysterious “flu-like disease” has claimed 179 lives and counting in Africa, leaving health officials scrambling for answers as they admit they “have no idea what it is,” The New York Post reports.

While on MSNBC, Hotez named every disease he could think of in less than 60 seconds, claiming all of them could pose a serious threat to public health under the new Trump administration, especially because of RFK Jr. and “anti-vaccine” activism.

This includes:

• Bird flu

• New coronavirus (SARS)

• Dengue

• Zika

• Oropouche virus

• Yellow fever

• Whooping cough

• Measles

• Polio

“We have some big picture stuff coming down the pike... All that’s going to come crashing down on January 21st on the Trump administration,” Hotez warned.

Video: https://x.com/Patri0tContr0l/status/1864341348200927446

(See 9 More Revealing Stories Below)

9 - Whoopi Goldberg freaks out on Charlamagne after he says Biden lied about pardoning Hunter.

CHARLAMAGNE: “He didn’t have to volunteer that lie to begin with.”

WHOOPI: “I’m gonna stop you there for a second.”

CHARLAMAGNE: “Uh oh.”

WHOOPI: “Only because you don’t know it was a lie. We don’t know why he changed his mind.”

CHARLAMAGNE: “You really think he just changed his mind over Thanksgiving weekend all of a sudden?”

WHOOPI: “No. I’m gonna tell you what I think. I think he changed because he got sick of watching everybody else get over… because at some point, you get to the place where you just go, so I’m just gonna follow the straight and narrow always ‘cause that’s what’s expected of Democrats.”

CHARLAMAGNE: “But that’s their fault! They’re the ones that go out there, and they stand on this moral high ground. They don’t have to do that.”

8 - The Jimmy Kimmel Show drops a surprisingly funny segment making fun of CA Governor Gavin Newsom.

And get this—Californians were so clueless that they actually believed they were talking to the real Gavin Newsom.

NEWSOM (Actor): “There’s 217 officially recognized gender choices that you have in California.”

CALIFORNIAN: “Wow! 217?”

NEWSOM: “Like, I have a macadamia nut allergy. Like, that might be how you identify.”

7 - CNN admits Kash Patel’s odds of being confirmed as FBI Director are “climbing ever higher.”

“The key number here is zero. That’s how many GOP senators have come out against him... Kash Patel’s [odds] to lead the FBI seems to be climbing ever higher.”

This news comes as the media melts down over Kash Patel's extensive list of Deep State enemies.

6 - Stephen Miller Issues a Stark Message to Illegals: EVERYTHING Changes on January 20

“It will be the end of the invasion. It will be the beginning of the liberation.”

1. “President Trump will issue a series of executive orders and actions that will suspend the entry of illegal aliens into this country.”

2. “There will be no benefits. There will be no entry. There will be no asylum. There will be no admission.”

3. “You may be prosecuted. You will certainly be arrested, and you will absolutely be deported.”

4. “Every presidential authority, including his absolute authority under Article 2 to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States, will be used.”

5. “The entire world—Mexico, Northern Triangle, Central America, South America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East—will get this message: there is no unlawful route to enter the United States of America.”

While you’re here, don’t forget to subscribe to this page for more daily news roundups.Subscribe

#5 - CEO of UnitedHealthcare Killed in “Targeted Attack”

#4 - Police Threaten Man Investigating Mysterious Booms Heard in Idaho

#3 - Ukraine Accused of Training Terrorists in Syria

#2 - Mexico to Ban Toxic Genetically-Modified Corn From U.S.

Mexico recently released an 182-page scientific dossier on genetically modified corn and its effects on human health, the environment, and biodiversity, including the biocultural richness of native corn in Mexico.

The summary immediately cuts to the chase that there is “no scientific consensus on the safety of human or animal consumption and the releasing into the environment of GM crops.”

Prepared by Mexico’s National Council for Humanities, Science, and Technology (CONAHCYT), the summary adds, “What there is, however, is a corpus of scientific research that has shown that transgenesis is an imprecise technology with unexpected and undesired effect; in particular, it has demonstrated the risks and harms it entails.”

Read More: https://thehighwire.com/editorial/mexico-plans-to-modify-its-constitution-to-ban-toxic-us-genetically-modified-corn/

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iliyad · 4 years ago

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everything that has happened in 2020, in case you forgot

because it’s been a long year. counts up to december 20. i tried to get in as much as i could, but there will still be some things missing, because it's been a long year.

january (timeframes will be rough)

australian bush fires

persian gulf crisis

taal volcano eruption

impeachment trial of donald trump

covid-19 pandemic what else is there to say?

the united kingdom’s withdrawal from the european union

february

delhi riots

collapse of malaysia’s coalition government

stock market crash

luxembourg made public transport free

conditional peace agreement between the united states and the taliban

march

afghanistan war crimes inquiry authorised to proceed

tokyo summer olympics postponed to 2021

north macedonia joins nato

russia-saudi arabia oil price war

april

united states designates a white supremacist group as a terrorist group for the first time

opec and allies agree to cut oil production by 9.7 million barrels a day

united states suspends funding to the world health organisation

nova scotia attacks

israeli politicians agree to form a unity government

iran deploys first military satellite

king salman declares people will not be executed for crimes committed as minors

the pentagon officially releases three ufo videos

colombia formalises its membership of the oecd

may

venezuelan dissidents and american private military attempt to infiltrate venezuela and remove president maduro from office

scientists discover parasitic microbe blocking mosquitos from carrying malaria

first black hole discovered in a star system visible to the naked eye

styrene gas leak in india

cross-border clash at the nantha lu crossing between chinese and indian soldiers

konarak vessel incident

fossil analysis indicates modern humans may have arrived in europe thousands of years earlier than thought

maternity hospital stormed by gunmen in afghanistan

discovery of millipede fossil as the world's oldest-known land animal dating c.425 million years

east africa floods

palestine terminates all agreements with israel and the united states after israel plans to annex the jordan valley

cyclone amphan

united states announces withdrawal from open skies treaty

mining company rio tinto destroys sacred aboriginal caves at juukan gorge in australia

george floyd is killed, beginning mass global protests against police racism and brutality

costa rica becomes first central american country to legalise same-sex marriage

chinese government votes for legislation granting powers to suppress democracy movement in hong kong

rwandan court sentences former mayor to life imprisonment for role in rwandan genocide

first crewed spacex flight is launched

june

state of emergency declared by russia after 20 thousand tons of oil leaks into ambarnaya river

libya’s government claims control of tripoli

turkish and iranian forces begin air and artillery strikes against kurdish forces in iraqi kurdistan

north korea demolishes kaesong’s inter-korean liaison office

solar eclipse

7.5 magnitude earthquake in oaxaca, mexico

historic three-party coalition government formed in ireland

china passes hong kong national security law

july

russian voters support constitutional amendment allowing vladimir putin to seek two further six-year terms

landslide at jade mine in myanmar

bulgarian protests against boyko borisov’s government

mass graves uncovered in burkina faso believed to be the result of extrajudicial executions by government forces

turkish president orders the hagia sophia in istanbul to be reverted from a museum to a mosque

china floods

twitter accounts of prominent politicians, ceos and celebrities hacked in bitcoin scam

flooding of the brahmaputra river

nasa launches mars 2020 rover mission

august

barakah nuclear power plant in the uae becomes first commercial nuclear power station in the arab states

beirut explosions

belarusian protests sparked by controversial presidential election

vladimir putin announces russia’s approval of world’s first covid-19 vaccine

israel and uae agree to normalise relations

stranded japanese ship breaks in mauritius and spills one thousand tonnes of oil into the ocean

coup d'état takes place in mali

africa is declared free of wild polio

amazon ceo jeff bezos becomes first person ever with a net worth exceeding us$200 billion

hurricane laura

japanese prime minister shinzo abe resigns after seven years

september

an agreement is signed to transition sudan into a secular state

largest find of mammoth skeletons at construction site for airport in mexico city

pope benedict xvi becomes longest-living pope

kosovo and serbia announce normalisation of economic relations

bahrain and israel agree to normalise relations

typhoon haishen

announcement of detection of phosphine in venus’ atmosphere

first discovery of perfectly preserved cave bear remains in siberia, believed to be 22 thousand - 39 thousand years old

venezuelan government is accused of crimes against humanity by human rights council

france, germany, and the united kingdom reject china’s claims to the south china sea

oldest known copy of any work by william shakespeare, a 1634 edition of the two noble kinsman, is found in spain

documents of the financial crimes enforcement network are released, detailing suspicious transations valued at over us$2 trillion

microsoft buys zenimax media in the biggest and most expensive takover in the video game industry

deadly clashes erupt between armenian and azerbaijani forces in nagorno-karabakh

october

the european union launches legal action against the united kingdom for overriding sections of the brexit withdrawal agreement

new caledonia votes against independence from france

mass protests break out in kyrgyzstan against controversial parliamentary election

thai protests

new zealand prime minister jacinda ardern's labour party wins second term in office by a landslide, gaining the first parliamentary majority since introduction of new voting system in the early 90s

nasa's osiris-rex spacecraft becomes their first probe to retrieve samples from an asteroid

geneva consensus declaration on women's health and strengthening families is signed by 34 countries

falkland islands declared free of land mines

israel and sudan agree to normalise relations

nasa confirms existence of molecular water on the moon

7.0 aegean sea earthquake

typhoon goni

november

amhara women, children and elderly killed in ethiopia

tumblr melts down over supernatural ship “destiel” (dean winchester and castiel), causing this site to crash several times

united states election concludes joe biden as president of the united states, STATES FLIP DATA

hurricane eta

united states exits the paris climate change accord

armenia and azerbaijan sign ceasefire agreement

hong kong pro-democracy lawmakers resign en masse

nasa and spacex launch to the international space station

hurricane iota

brereton report into australian war crimes during the war in afghanistan released

indian farmers’ protest

iranian nuclear scientist mohsen fakhrizadeh is assassinated

koshobe massacre

lunar eclipse

protein folding is solved

december

arecibo telescope collapses

the united kingdom approves covid-19 vaccine

three activists jailed in hong kong for part in democracy protests

united nations commission on narcotic drugs votes to remove cannabis from dangerous drugs list

united states announces withdrawal from somali civil war

russia begins mass vaccination against covid-19

venezuelan parliamentary election

the united kingdom begins mass vaccination against covid-19

report into the christchurch mosque shootings released

nepal and china officially agree on height of mount everest

israel and morocco normalise relations

end of nicolas sarkozy corruption trial in france

the european union agrees to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% over the next decade

bhutan and israel normalise relations

the international criminal court accuses the philippines of crimes against humanity in its war on drugs

the united states accuses switzerland and vietnam of currency manipulation

a new, highly-infectious strain of covid-19 begins to spread through the united kingdom and europe

#2020 #wildfires #covid-19 #coronavirus #destiel #united states #literally this year...may was So Long #you're welcome xoxo #and yes i included destiel because i Had To

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writerthreads · 4 years ago

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The top 10 classic fears in literature

By Prof. Marianna Torgovnik on TedBlog

Fear #1: Death, death, death—did I mention death?

An almost universal fear, death recurs in literature more than any other fear, all the way from canonical works through fantasies like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I list the fear of death three times since it occurs in many forms: fear of our own deaths, fear of family members or close friends dying, fear of children preceding parents, the death of an entire culture.

Some examples: Shakespeare’s Sonnets (“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”; Hamlet (“To be or not to be”); John Keats (“When I have fears”); Virginia Woolf, The Waves; Pat Barker, The Ghost Road. This list could go on and on, because the fear does.

Fear #2: Avoiding death for the wrong reasons.

Literature loves paradox and so, paradoxically, the second greatest fear is avoiding death for the wrong reasons: when death will inevitably follow a noble or moral act or out of cowardice, especially in war. For understandable reasons, this fear is less common than more general fear of death, but it is out there and memorable nonetheless.

Some examples: Sophocles, Antigone (to bury her dead brother, Antigone famously courts death); Shakespeare several times — Hamlet again (“There is a providence in the fall of a sparrow”) and Antony and Cleopatra (to avoid capture by Octavius); Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done”); Harry Potter in his pursuit of Voldemort.

Fear #3: Hunger or other severe physical deprivation.

Survival tends to trump the finer emotions when it comes to fear. Sometimes time specific, the fear of hunger nonetheless reminds us of basic things. In romantic novels or poems, it can be and often is a symbol for more abstract needs, like love. In Holocaust literature, it portrays humanity strained to the core.

Some examples: Dante, The Divine Comedy (Count Ugolino and his children); Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (“Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink”); Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; Elie Wiesel, Night; Susanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

Fear #4: Killing or causing the death of someone you love.

Whether by murder, negligence or a set of circumstances beyond our control, the fear of causing the death of someone we love is a big one. It’s a stock feature of numerous spy and crime dramas, where we tend to brush it off since the hero (think James Bond) or (more rarely) heroine’s beloved is almost always a goner. Numerous operas by Verdi, including Rigoletto and Un Ballo in Maschera use this theme, sometimes more than once; in fact, opera thrives on this fear, as in Bizet’s Carmen. It usually takes serious and even majestic forms in literature.

Some examples: Patroclus dying for Achilles in Homer’s The Iliad; Othello killing Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello; Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (“Done because we are too menny”); D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (Gerald choosing to die rather than kill Gudrun); Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Fear #5: Being rejected and/or being loved by the wrong person.

At last we come to a fear that can have a lighter side and, sometimes — though not always — a happy ending. In literature, characters fear being rejected, being loved, and being loved by the wrong person in almost equal proportions. Once again, the examples span the ancient classics all the way up to the present.

Some examples: Woman loves step-son madly in three versions of the same story, none with a happy ending (Euripides, Hippolytus; Racine, Phaedra; Mary Renault, The Bull from the Sea); mixed up couples set right in Shakespeare’s As You Like It; love triumphs by the end in Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; two different kinds of love lead to tragedy in Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles; mixed results in Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot.

Fear #6: Illness, disease and aging.

Closely allied to the fear of death — but not identical to it — the fear of illness is another constant though, as we’d expect, the disease most feared changes over time. The bubonic plague used to be the leading contender; TB enjoyed a long dominance until cures were found. Nowadays, cancer and, more often, dementia are far greater fears. There is at least one stunning example in this category of embracing the fear being absolutely the right thing to do: Flaubert’s St Julien, L’Hospitalier, in which the saint embraces a leper and achieves transcendence.

Some examples: Giovanni Boccacio’s Decameron; Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year; Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray; Albert Camus, La Peste (The Plague); Ian McEwan, Atonement; Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections.

Fear #7: Lost reputation, divorce or scandal.

People used to fear this one more than they do today, when our motto seems to be that no publicity is really bad publicity and unseemly revelations are the order of the day. Still, this is a significant fear, and one that even recent books revisit in original ways.

Some examples: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina; D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Thomas Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities; Phillip Roth, The Human Stain.

Fear #8: War, shipwrecks and other disasters.

The fear of shipwrecks can seem archaic — but they were the airplane crashes of yesteryear. Shipwrecks can be mere episodes or the core of the plot; in early literature, they are closely allied with war, a more global disaster. While other disasters arouse fear — earthquakes, volcanos — war and shipwrecks lead the field. Both change characters’ lives, with variable results.

Some examples: Homer, The Odyssey; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Tolstoy, War and Peace; Yann Martel, Life of Pi.

Fear #9: The law and, more specifically, lawyers.

Fear of the law is a surprisingly classic fear, weighing in at number nine. But what’s meant by the law changes over time. While fear of God’s judgment remains plausible in literature, it is far less common today than fear of society’s laws — and specifically the rapacity of lawyers and the law’s ability, in Dickens’ words, “to make business for itself.” In some modern books, the law becomes a metaphor for the meaning of life.

Some examples: The Bible; Aeschylus, The Oresteia; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Dickens, Bleak House; Franz Kafka, The Trial; Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Fear #10: That real life won’t resemble literature.

While this might seem the most trivial of fears, in fact it drives a lot of great literature. Some characters want life to be elevated, inflated, like epic or romantic literature. Deprived of that illusion, they die or take their own lives—looping us back to fear #1. Other characters favor codes of renunciation that have been called by literary critics “the Great Tradition,” fearing that they will gain something by immoral or amoral actions; a variation on this fear is the fear, as George Eliot’s Dorothea puts it, “I try not to have desires merely for myself.” Not at all light for avid readers, this fear usefully reminds us that life is not really like a Henry James novel.

Some examples: Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary; George Eliot, Middlemarch; Henry James, The Ambassadors; Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.

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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years ago

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Heather Cox Richardson:

August 10, 2020 (Monday)

The most striking news of the day was not that Trump has suggested he wants his image on Mt. Rushmore but rather that such an outrageous statement has garnered so little attention. That says something about his presidency.

This weekend, the New York Times ran a story by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman laying out Trump’s apparent interest in adding his face to those carved on Mt. Rushmore. He’d like to be up there next to Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. After Trump told the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, that he hoped to have his likeness there next to his predecessors, an aide reached out to the governor’s office to learn about the process of adding an additional face. When Trump visited the monument last month, Noem greeted him with a four-foot replica of the monument with his faced added.

This entire concept is moot. The rock face cannot support more carving, which answers the question definitively. Even if it could, though, the sculpture is carved on a mountain that is part of land that the United States government took illegally from the Lakota people in 1877. The monument remains embroiled in the legal dispute over this land grab. The chance that anyone would now attempt to add a new carving to it is pretty close to zero.

Not to be deterred, on Sunday night Trump tweeted a picture of himself positioned in such a way that his face was superimposed on the structure, beside Lincoln. Yet the story that the president wanted his likeness added to Mt. Rushmore had no sticking power.

A similar fate met Trump’s statement that last week’s devastating explosion in Beirut, caused when an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate blew up, was a “terrible attack.” “I've met with some of our great generals and they just seem to feel that it was not a -- some kind of manufacturing explosion type of event. This was a -- seems to be according to them, they would know better than I would, but they seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.” U.S. Defense Department officials said there was no indication that the explosion was an attack. The statement came and went.

This afternoon, at his press conference, Trump told reporters that “the Obama campaign spied on our campaign, and they've been caught, all right?.... It's probably treason. It's a horrible thing they did.... They used the intelligence agencies of our country to spy on my campaign, and they have been caught." This is a statement Trump has been making since June 22, and it is an astonishing lie. And like Trump’s other outlandish statements recently, people didn’t pay a great deal of attention to it.

During his first three years in office, Trump could command headlines with outrageous statements. They often distracted us from larger stories. But that power has waned from overuse, and now outlandish stories—Trump’s face on Mt. Rushmore, a deadly attack in Beirut, Obama committing treason—barely make a ripple.

That we are no longer shocked by his outrageous comments weakens Trump’s ability to control the narrative. It also badly weakens the office of the presidency. Increasingly, he seems to be sidelined from any real decision making, which makes it hard to run for reelection with the argument that he will accomplish anything in a second term.

The White House dropped Trump’s three executive memorandums and one executive order on Friday evening, clearly expecting to set up a situation in which Democrats challenged their legality and Republicans argued that Democrats were keeping ordinary Americans from getting coronavirus relief payments. Trump’s people came out swinging as soon as Trump signed the actions, suggesting that Democrats would oppose them and it would be their fault Americans were suffering from the economic crash.

While even some Republicans opposed Trump’s redirection of congressionally-appropriated money—Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska called the actions “unconstitutional slop”-- Democratic leaders took a different approach. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed that the executive announcements were “absurdly unconstitutional,” but she and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer challenged them not on legal grounds, but on their effectiveness.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Pelosi said they were “illusions,” and listed, point by point, their weaknesses. The relief memo relies on state money that states don’t have; the payroll tax cut only defers the tax until next year, meaning employers will be reluctant to implement it since they will have to claw it all back after the election. Schumer told ABC’s “This Week” that Trump’s executive actions were “a big show, but they don’t do anything.” They both called for Republicans to return to the table for negotiations.

This threw Trump back on his heels and he is trying to spin the exchange as a victory. “The Democrats have called,” Trump said on Sunday night. “They’d like to get together. And we say if it’s not a waste of time, we’ll do it…. They’re much more inclined to make a deal now than they would’ve been two days ago.” This morning, he tweeted: “So now Schumer and Pelosi want to meet to make a deal. Amazing how it all works, isn’t it. Where have they been for the last 4 weeks when they were “hardliners”, and only wanted BAILOUT MONEY for Democrat run states and cities that are failing badly? They know my phone number!”

Pelosi and Trump haven’t spoken since October 16, when she walked out of a meeting where he railed at her and called her a “third-rate politician.” She told reporters he had a “meltdown.”

Meanwhile, the country’s governors today issued a statement outlining their concerns about Trump’s executive actions. Five days ago, the National Governors Association, a nonpartisan organization of the 55 states, territories, and commonwealths, unanimously elected New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, as their chair. Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, is the NGA vice chair. Their statement calls out “the significant administrative burdens and costs this latest action would place on the states.”

“The best way forward is for the Congress and the Administration to get back to the negotiating table and come up with a workable solution, which should provide meaningful additional relief for American families. NGA has requested $500 billion in unrestricted state aid and NGA continues to urge Congress and the White House to reach a quick resolution to provide immediate assistance to unemployed Americans. This resolution should avoid new administrative and fiscal burdens on states. It is essential that our federal partners work together to find common ground to help restore our nation’s health and protect our economy.”

Today Trump has floated yet another outrageous idea: the notion that he will make his speech accepting the Republican nomination for his reelection either at the White House or at “The Great Battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania,” which is a national park. Both locations run into both ethical problems and optical problems, since both are federal property and iconic sites.

Federal law prohibits federal employees from promoting political positions at work. The law does not cover the president, but it does cover all the other federal employees who would need to be present to make such an event possible.

Either choice also has optical problems for Trump. The White House is the people’s house, and giving a partisan speech there will not play well. And Gettysburg? It will invite comparisons the president might not like.

It was during the dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, where the dead of the 1863 battle were laid to rest, that Lincoln rededicated America to “the proposition that all men are created equal.” He reminded his listeners that the men who had died there to save the Union had given “the last full measure of devotion” to their country. And he charged Americans to “here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

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evilelitest2 · 5 years ago

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Sanders does have an immediate plan of issuing executive orders around immigration, marijuana, and more upon assuming office. It would immediately be different than the Obama administration because he is the only candidate who acknowledges we need to do everything we can to halt deportations. His tax proposals are also extremely detailed, and Warren explicitly said she wouldn't even try to actually implement M4A until her third term. I just think there's some key nuance missing there

Ok lets go through their plans

1) Sanders has plans for executive orders certainly but that isn’t actually what I was talking about. Sanders doesn’t have a plan (or hasn’t told us) for remaking the Executive Branch, how to fix the staffing issues, reorganize the state department, and obtain the adminstrative system he will need to rule. I’m kinda worried Sanders will spend the first six months of his presidency trying to fix Trumps mistakes before he can even do anything

There is also no mention on his website on dealing with Trumps corruption, while Warren intends to prosecute the lot of them

2) Warrens plan involves M4A not starting until the third year of her term. So its basically M4A but takes longer to get there. I prefer this, because the healthcare market is super fragile and one wrong move could cause the entire market to crash which would delegitimize M4A for a generation. But the debate doesn’t matter, neither candidate is going to get past setting up the fundementals in their first term anyways as AOC acknowledged

Ok lets compare Sanders and Warrens on....reducing corporate money influencing politics.

Sanders Plan is here https://berniesanders.com/issues/money-out-of-politics/

Warrens plan is here https://elizabethwarren.com/plans#end-washington-corruption-and-fix-our-democracy

Like right away you see the advantage to warren right? her plan is actually 13 inter connected plans which all help contribute to the problem, while Sanders plan is a single plan. Ok but lets check out that plan

in the short term he basically wants to cap individual donations to $500 and ban all corporate contributions to the Democratic Party Convention (no mention of the Republicans)

Update the Federal Election Campaign Act to have National party Conventions be funded with public funding

Constitutional Amendment to make it clear that money is not speech and corporations are not people (but he doesn’t want to get ride of the filibuster)

Enact mandatory public financing laws for all federal elections

Abolish the FEC and replace it with the “Federal Election Administration” which is a plan the Senate has been wanting to do for decades, which would have strict term limits and no lobbying

Ban Advertising during the Primary Debates

Ban a lifetime lobbying ban for former members of Congress and their staffers

OK those are all good changes and I think they are necessary for the country, though he is a bit vague on HOW he will enact them. but ok, lets look at Warren

So Warren has 13 interconnected plans each one of which is a lot larger than Sanders, but lets just limit ourselves to “Getting Big Money Out of Politics”

https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/campaign-finance-reform

So one thing Warren points out in her plan is that in addition to being correct, the need to collect money means that elected officials spend Hours per day on the phone with donors rather than learning about policy. Its terrible and its a major reason why our elected officials are so fucking out of it

You can see here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrt5xE0rBbs

So in the plan she says basically all the same things as Sanders does (though she wants to limit the individual donations to $200)

In addition she also wants to

Close the Loophole in Citizens United

Ban donations from Political Action Committed

Outlaw Foreign Money from coming into elections

Effectively outlaw Dark Money

Make it illegal for campaign contributions to play a role in the Selection of Ambassadors

Make the inaugural committees transparent

Wiat there is a section called “Ban Lobbyists from Donating Bundling and Fundraising for cannidates.” Ok what does she mean by that....oh shit son look its a different plan https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/end-washington-corruption She has an anti corruption Plan hidden within her anti corruption plan. Wait ok there are 14 plans, not 13...wait I can’t actually sum up oen plan because its inconnected to the other plans.

Literally there is so much detail that it is kinda overwhelming

What is really useful about Warrens plan though is that she can do most of it even if she doesn’t win the Senate and if she has a hostile Supreme Court.

Ok lets pick another issue, the Electoral College. Both of them siad its undemocratic and they will abolish it. One of the issues I care the most about.

Sanders....doesn’t have a section on it. His Website makes no mention of the EC. I tried googling it but all I get are statements by Sanders here he says he wants to ban it which...that is good Sanders is correct but no actual plan

Warrens plan listed here

https://elizabethwarren.com/plans/electoral-college

Its....also actually pretty vague, she basically just explains in detail why the EC is bad and rebuts a bunch of Republican Arguments but no word on how she plans to actually do it. So both of them are vague, but at least Warren made it clear its a prority.

Ok lets choose a different issue. Puerto Rico

Look at these two policies

https://elizabethwarren.com/respect-for-puerto-rico/?ftag=MSF0951a18

https://berniesanders.com/issues/empower-puerto-rico/

Just the sheer amount of detail

Now there are some issues where Sanders is 100% better than Warren. I like that sanders wants to give prisoners the right to vote, and think his policy towards turning post offices in to banks is great. But Warrens focus on the specifics makes me a lot more confident things can be passed rather than just talked about.

Now Sanders is my second choice, but I feel like the first six months of his administration are going to be absolute hell for him as he has to rebuild the Executive Branch, which will limit his ability to get things done.

#ask EvilElitest #Elizabeth Warren #Bernie Sanders

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anthonybialy · 5 years ago

Text

Pressed for Precedent

Failures are due for a good break. Try the same idea that exploded spectacularly the last 700 times on the grounds that something simply must work eventually just to break the pattern. You win this time, gravity.

Presuming an established catastrophe will thrive during the next try is a favorite hobby of socialists who somehow still exist. The enthusiastic deniers of all that's happened claim to be for science despite their commitment to loathing evidence. It's a great sign when ignorance is the best excuse. Government's goons aren't aware of the earlier failures, hopefully, as it's unhealthy to ignore so many experiments.

Surrendering autonomy has worked out every single occasion before except for all of them. Just ask Bernie Sanders about which direction people hopped the Berlin Wall. It only looks like they're heading west because decadent capitalists who bought control of information flipped the footage.

It's the arrogance that's most charming in those who think you'e stupid for noticing how quickly money disappears when it belongs to everyone. Presuming everyone in opposition to one giant wallet either disregards human suffering or profits off it is especially open-minded, as there's no other reason a person could stand for persons being left alone.

Let's have socialism without the authoritarian parts. Also, enjoy cheesecake without the calories. It's a diet food now even if every time it's ever been eaten before has led to tighter slacks. You just have to consume it correctly this time, assures the New York Times editorial.

Thinking that concentrated authority won't require bossiness would be adorable if not for the ruined lives and corpse piles. People who claim ending insurance mandates and net neutrality lead to widespread death sure have lots of excuses for mass-murdering tyrants.

You just have to proclaim that a scheme will work. Don't you have faith, you heathen? Deciding the design of the present trendy system for supervising the minutes of our lives will function is the worst type of theocracy. Anyone who hasn't figured out central planning causes a plane crash into a tire fire every single time thinks it's our fault for not investing enough through taxes that are redundant to classify as a ripoff.

Pompousness enabled by obliviousness is a perfect pairing to keep socialism alive after a century that showed why it's deadly in so many ways. How anyone could oppose delicate schemes to bring wealth and health is a mystery except to anyone who's ever read the news. But those free market parasites are just being negative with their examples.

Nothing delights like fans of the most thoroughly discredited financial ideas in human history claiming to have objective facts. Their certainty can only get more precious considering they're advocating ideas that turned the Eastern Bloc into a sludge pit. Projections from people who think Washington manages money and lives efficiently couldn't possibly contain flimsy assumptions.

Planning failures sure are lucky to have a fawning media that is objective as long as thinking government action means caring for people counts. The limp goons are never prompted to provide one example of trading liberty for central planning that has resulted in bliss or even something other than ruin.

Adoration of ideas that least deserve them helps a certain kind of delusional candidate win elections. That's entirely different from winning at life. But all those craving the next temporary job need is to sucker half the voters. Government works splendidly for those who pretend it works.

Willfully disregarding what has actually worked is the ideology's crucial part. There are countless examples of markets lifting humans out of poverty, including in the exploitative rotten oppressive nation ingrates call home.

Things are so good that those outraged by compensation for value have time to act as if a company's owner making a lot more than a janitor is a moral outrage. You'd think with all that free time they could find successful precedents for what they believe.

Getting numbers and reality wrong isn't even the most horrifying part. Excessive power enthusiasts are making life fantastically easy for Donald Trump. The poor guy has never gotten a break. Now, the least deserving posing tycoon of our time will get to face ideas so easily dismissed that even he can do so with a vaguely rude gesture.

Our poor maligned president can once more point out his foes are horrendous without having to do anything else. A binary choice is always his best hope.

Facing collectivists allows him to bitch while never having to list his own accomplishments. The mouthy lightweight can just note socialist claptrap sucks, which is true in the same way as knowing The Walking Dead is dull in darkness. But it's apparently not obvious enough. Trump gets to stand up to massive overreach even as he bravely refuses to confront the entitlement state.

Offering an alternative to the most obnoxious president imaginable should be easier than free exchange. A seller who offers nothing but boasts can only succeed if the alternative promises to finally bring all the good parts of Cuba to America.

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taylorscottbarnett · 5 years ago

Link

“10 ominous and risky trend”

Nah. First you only list nine. One is basically listed twice.

Ok so this is my issue with this analysis, we have the attention grabber: “Called the 2008 Crash” however some form of recession usually hits every decade or so. Let us take a look at the predictions that didn’t pan out (and still haven't):

He predicted that foreign investors would stop financing the fiscal and current-account deficit and abandon the dollar, wreaking havoc on the economy. He said that these problems, which he called the “twin financial train wrecks,” might manifest themselves in 2005 or, at the latest, 2006. “You have been warned here first,” he wrote ominously on his blog. But by the end of 2006, the train wrecks hadn’t occurred.

Note, the economy may have crashed, but it had zero to do with foreign investors not financing debt. Throughout the economic crisis and the decade that followed, countries bought up US Debt like it was hand sanitizer and paper towels at the start of the COVID crisis. The world has also weathered the Greek debt crisis as well as the Italy’s issues, and Brexit with not much crisis to show for it, and what did happen was mostly temporary for the world economy. People have been issuing warnings about the aging crisis for decades, but it is not as hard to solve (for the US) as people assume. Yes social security, and medicare taxes and increasing intensives for companies and people to invest in saving for the future need to be increased. However, America’s aging workforce has two silver bullets: One, automation. In some estimates nearly have of all jobs can be automated in the next decade -- while that has it’s own set of issues, a worker shortage isn’t one of them. Secondly, as I’ve stated before, immigration reform would go a long way towards shoring up the US’ older workforce. The later comes with new workers contributing social security and medicare taxes to public coffers. The former can be taxed the same, just with new tax systems.

Let’s take a look at some of the issues he has declared the reason we are all doomed:

A third issue is the growing risk of deflation. In addition to causing a deep recession, the crisis is also creating a massive slack in goods (unused machines and capacity) and labour markets (mass unemployment), as well as driving a price collapse in commodities such as oil and industrial metals. That makes debt deflation likely, increasing the risk of insolvency.

Hey look while Republicans supposedly feared inflation when we were fighting the 2007-2008 financial crisis (one that I’ll remind you never occurred) and economists stated wouldn’t occur. Paul Krugman spent years warning about over-hyped inflation worries by policy makers.:

Recently the Federal Reserve released transcripts of its monetary policy meetings during the fateful year of 2008. And boy, are they discouraging reading. ... The economy was plunging, yet all many people at the Fed wanted to talk about was inflation. ...

As I suggested, we used to marvel at the wrongheadedness of policy makers during the Great Depression. But when the Great Recession struck, and we were given a chance to do better, we ended up repeating all the same mistakes.

But Republicans were up in arms, warning that the Fed’s policies would lead to runaway inflation. A Congressman named Mike Pence introduced a bill that would prohibit the Fed from even considering the state of the labor market in its actions. A who’s who of Republicans signed an open letter to Ben Bernanke demanding that he stop his monetary efforts, which they claimed would “risk currency debasement and inflation.”

Bernanke, Fed economists, and Keynesians in general were proved right: printing money isn’t inflationary in a depressed economy.

Needless to say, those warnings proved totally wrong. Soaring inflation never materialized. Job creation was sluggish at first, but more recently has accelerated dramatically.

K so let us move on to other issues shall we?

A fifth issue is the broader digital disruption of the economy. With millions of people losing their jobs or working and earning less, the income and wealth gaps of the 21st-century economy will widen further. To guard against future supply-chain shocks, companies in advanced economies will re-shore production from low-cost regions to higher-cost domestic markets. But rather than helping workers at home, this trend will accelerate the pace of automation, putting downward pressure on wages and further fanning the flames of populism, nationalism, and xenophobia.

Again, Automation is inevitable, and as I said earlier, a benefit and solution to an ageing workforce. One should also note this crisis has also been talked about for decades. It still never happened. Although many jobs have been automated, more jobs tend to come in and take the place of those lost jobs. Sectors of the economy die all the time. They get replaced. Automation isn’t going to necessarily be the death of the American worker -- if anything working less wouldn’t hurt us. There is a valid argument if you look at many of our peers, the American worker is overworked already.

This points to the sixth major factor: deglobalisation. The pandemic is accelerating trends toward balkanisation and fragmentation that were already well underway. The US and China will decouple faster, and most countries will respond by adopting still more protectionist policies to shield domestic firms and workers from global disruptions. The post-pandemic world will be marked by tighter restrictions on the movement of goods, services, capital, labour, technology, data, and information. This is already happening in the pharmaceutical, medical-equipment, and food sectors, where governments are imposing export restrictions and other protectionist measures in response to the crisis.

True, at the moment populism has had a nice multi-year run. de-globalization has been a goal of Donald Trump for his entire presidency. Trump will not be president forever. As our current COVID crisis has illustrated, he really is a carnival barker, and if anything has increased the odds of Biden becoming president and they were already pretty damn likely.

Under conditions of heightened economic insecurity, there will be a strong impulse to scapegoat foreigners for the crisis. Blue-collar workers and broad cohorts of the middle class will become more susceptible to populist rhetoric, particularly proposals to restrict migration and trade.

Again, this already happened with the election of Donald Trump. But take a look at just how close many of those state elections came: Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and Pennsylvania -- A flu (and this would have been an illness far less destructive than COVID) could have affected the outcomes of those states -- and the election. A few thousand votes in a country that cast 138,884,643 ballots and had another 92,671,979 that could have voted but didn't won Trump the election.

This points to an eighth factor: the geostrategic standoff between the US and China. With the Trump administration making every effort to blame China for the pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime will double down on its claim that the US is conspiring to prevent China’s peaceful rise. The Sino-American decoupling in trade, technology, investment, data, and monetary arrangements will intensify.

Re-read my above two responses.

A final risk that cannot be ignored is environmental disruption, which, as the Covid-19 crisis has shown, can wreak far more economic havoc than a financial crisis. Recurring epidemics (HIV since the 1980s, Sars in 2003, H1N1 in 2009, Mers in 2011, Ebola in 2014-16) are, like climate change, essentially manmade disasters, born of poor health and sanitary standards, the abuse of natural systems, and the growing interconnectivity of a globalised world. Pandemics and the many morbid symptoms of climate change will become more frequent, severe, and costly in the years ahead.

Arguably COVID closings around the world and shelter-at-home orders have if anything given the world a chance to take a breath. Also if you are arguing a globalized world is a direct reason a pandemic like this will “become more frequent, severe, and costly” then wouldn’t it stand to reason de-globalization (that you claim will happen as a result of this pandemic) would make these event’s less likely to happen in the future? Which is it? It cannot be both.

Also am I missing something or do I not find a “seventh factor” in your post at all?

#the economy #recession #coronavirus #markets #politics

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businessweekme · 6 years ago

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George H.W. Bush, U.S. Leader as Iron Curtain Fell, Dies at 94

George H.W. Bush, the U.S. president who fashioned a restrained response to the Soviet Union’s collapse and assembled the multinational coalition that liberated Kuwait from an Iraqi invasion, hoping that would be a model for “a new world order,” has died. He was 94.

Bush died shortly after 10 p.m. Friday at his home in Houston, according to a statement from a family spokesman. The longest-living president in American history, he used a wheelchair in recent years after being diagnosed with a form of Parkinson’s disease. His wife of 73 years, Barbara, died on April 17 at age 92.

“George H.W. Bush was a man of the highest character and the best dad a son or daughter could ask for,” his son and former President George W. Bush said in a separate statement.

President Donald Trump said in a statement: “President Bush always found a way to set the bar higher.”

Read More: George H.W. Bush’s Death Spurs Tributes From Clintons to Trump

“I love you, too,” were his last words, spoken to his son George W. Bush, according to the New York Times.

George H.W. Bush drew on a lifetime of experience in international affairs during a presidency that faced tests around the globe. The achievements he could claim on the world stage weren’t enough to win him a second term, as American voters held him accountable for rising unemployment. His 1992 defeat at the hands of Democrat Bill Clinton made Bush the eighth U.S. president to lose a bid for re-election after serving a full term. The Bush name was far from done, however, as two of his sons became governors who ran for the presidency, with one succeeding.

Groomed for Success

Born to New England privilege, successful in the oil business in Texas, Bush straddled the Republican Party’s ideological divide between northeastern moderates and southern conservatives. He built his specialty in foreign policy as he ascended in Republican politics, serving in Congress and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, special envoy to China and director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

His rise to the pinnacle of American power was based more on experience, friendships and party service than on any signature cause or exhortation, and as the 41st U.S. president, from 1989 to 1993, he struggled to articulate what he called “the vision thing.”

‘Sacrificial Devotion’

“Despite an almost sacrificial devotion to the Republican Party,” former New York Times writer Tom Wicker wrote in a 2004 biography, Bush “sometimes exhibited chameleon-like changes of coloration within its spectrum of opinion and never overcame the suspicions of its most conservative elements.”

Bush served as vice president under Ronald Reagan even after mocking Reagan’s campaign agenda as “voodoo economics.” He courted his party’s tax-cutting wing as a candidate for president in 1988 — “Read my lips: No new taxes” — then infuriated it by agreeing to a tax increase. He appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court both David Souter, who became a gift to liberals, as well as Clarence Thomas, a hero to conservatives.

Following his 1992 defeat, Bush’s eldest son, George W., carried out a rapid rise through politics in time to succeed Clinton as president in 2000.

Burned Up

Bush 43, as the son is sometimes known, signed on with the tax-cutting conservatives who had distrusted his father, resumed armed combat against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and, on the strength of the leadership he showed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, won the second term his father had been denied.

Had Bush 43 sought to distinguish himself from his father? Such speculation “burns me up a little bit,” Bush 41 said in a 2009 interview with Fox News. “I don’t think there’s ever been any competition of that nature that I’m aware of.”Still, their legacies were intertwined. Public approval of the first Bush presidency slid during his son’s terms, then rebounded, according to the Gallup Poll. Bush received a 63 percent approval rating in June 2014, compared with 53 percent for his son.

In “41: A Portrait of My Father,” published in 2014, the younger Bush praised his father’s accomplishments and said that while other biographies may be objective, “This one is not. This book is a love story.”

Family Business

Another Bush son who went into the family business, Jeb Bush, the former two-term governor of Florida, lost his bid to become the Republican presidential nominee in 2016.

The popular image of George H.W. Bush as president was that he was cautious above all, a caricature sealed by “Saturday Night Live” comedian Dana Carvey’s impression of him repeating the phrase, “Wouldn’t be prudent.” Bush’s refusal to gloat when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated spurred accusations that he cared more about his friendship with Mikhail Gorbachev than the quest for democracy around the globe.

Later scholarship would take a kinder view.

With his restrained public comments, Bush “coaxed the Soviet Union toward worldwide surrender” by “never giving Moscow a pretext to reverse course,” Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott wrote in “At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the End of the Cold War” (1993).

Deliberate Restraint

Publicly celebrating the fall of the Iron Curtain “would have been the stupidest thing I could have done,” Bush said in “41,” an HBO documentary about his life that aired in 2012. “Everybody’s got certain levels of respect and pride, and for me to stick my finger in the eyes of Gorbachev or the Soviet military would have made no sense at all.”

In an address marking Gorbachev’s resignation on Dec. 25, 1991, Bush said, “We stand tonight before a new world of hope and possibilities and hope for our children, a world we could not have contemplated a few years ago.”

The “new world” Bush envisioned had, earlier that year, survived a major test.

After Iraq invaded neighboring Kuwait in August 1990, Bush arranged the coalition of dozens of countries that came to Kuwait’s defense. Following weeks of bombardment that began in January 1991, coalition ground troops routed Iraq’s army in 100 hours in Operation Desert Storm.

In his State of the Union address on Jan. 29, 1991, Bush said that what was at stake in Kuwait “is more than one small country. It is a big idea: a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind — peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.”

Bush chose not to chase the enemy into Iraq to topple the Hussein regime. That could have made the U.S. “an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land,” he later wrote, a comment oft-quoted years later when his son did order an invasion of Iraq.

Protecting Kuwait

Saving Kuwait was the high point of Bush’s term in office, lifting his approval rating to 90 percent in polls before a faltering economy at home chipped away at his popularity. The U.S. went into recession from July 1990 until March 1991, and the unemployment rate climbed to 7.8 percent in June 1992 from 5.4 percent when he took office.

A growing federal deficit also forced Bush to renege on the “no new taxes” campaign pledge he had made, to acclaim from his party.

The deficit rose each year of his presidency, from $152.6 billion in 1989 to $290.3 billion in 1992. During closed-door budget negotiations in 1990, the Democrats who controlled Congress insisted that Bush, not they, put tax increases on the table.

Bush, relenting, released a statement that included “tax revenue increases” in a list of necessary measures. In some quarters of his party, that was never forgiven.

Did he regret his acquiescence? “Nope, because it was right,” he said in the HBO documentary.

Poppy’s Youth

George Herbert Walker Bush was born on June 12, 1924, in Milton, Massachusetts, named for his maternal grandfather, George Herbert Walker, founder of the Wall Street investment firm G.H. Walker & Co. Since his grandfather was known as “Pop,” Bush became “Poppy.”

His father, Prescott Bush, was a partner at Wall Street’s Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. before serving as a Republican senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1963. While experiencing politics and public service through his father, Bush said he learned important lessons about modesty from his mother, the former Dorothy Walker.

“She had these kind of truisms that served me in good stead even when I got to be president of the United States,” he recalled in the HBO film. “She said, ‘Nobody likes a braggadocio, don’t be bragging about yourself all the time.’ She said, ‘Listen, don’t talk all the time.’ She said, ‘Give the other guy credit.’”

Meeting Barbara

At Phillips Academy boarding school in Andover, Massachusetts, Bush lettered in baseball, soccer and basketball. At 17, attending a dance in Greenwich, Connecticut, he met 16-year-old Barbara Pierce, daughter of the president of McCall Corp., publisher of magazines including McCall’s and Redbook. They married in January 1945, while Bush was on leave from the U.S. Navy.

Bush enlisted on his 18th birthday, seven months after the U.S. entered World War II. He was the youngest U.S. naval aviator when he completed preflight training in June 1943, according to the Navy.

He flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific war against Japan, one of which almost ended his life.

On Sept. 2, 1944, the TBM Avenger he was piloting in a bombing raid on the island of Chichi Jima was struck by anti-aircraft fire. Bush parachuted from the airplane before it crashed in the ocean. A U.S. submarine located his yellow lifeboat and rescued him. His two crewmates didn’t survive.

Bush received the Distinguished Flying Cross for bravery in action.

Family Connections

After the war, he earned an economics degree and made Phi Beta Kappa at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he was captain of the baseball team. He then parlayed family connections into lucrative business success in Texas, a path that his firstborn son, George W., would later follow on his own way to the presidency.

With his wife and that son, Bush moved to Odessa, Texas, to join an oil field-supply firm that was a subsidiary of Dresser Industries, on whose board his father sat. Dresser was acquired in 1998 by its competitor, Halliburton Co. After his apprenticeship he settled in Midland and helped start a new business buying and developing oil leases.

With two partners, brothers Hugh and William Liedtke, Bush founded Zapata Petroleum Co. in 1953, the name inspired by the 1952 Marlon Brando film “Viva Zapata!” By the end of the 1950s, Bush had moved his family to Houston and was running an offshoot of Zapata that churned out profits from high-risk offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Enters Politics

In Houston, he became chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. Following a spirited, unsuccessful challenge to Democratic U.S. Senator Ralph Yarborough — “He does not represent Texas; he represents the New Frontier and the labor bosses in Detroit,” Bush said in one television commercial — Bush won two terms in the House of Representatives, from 1967 to 1971. After another failed Senate bid, he was named ambassador to the UN by President Richard Nixon.

Nixon turned again to Bush two years later, to succeed Robert Dole as chairman of the Republican National Committee. Bush was handed the unenviable mission of revitalizing the party as the Watergate scandal was bringing it down.

“It was a bleak future at that moment” for Republicans, Bush said in the HBO documentary. “But that’s why these things come and go. It gives me perspective over the years. I mean, when it seems gloomy and down, you bounce back.”

China Assignment

Gerald Ford, who became president when Nixon resigned, appointed Bush chief of the U.S. liaison office in China in 1974. Based in Beijing, then called Peking, Bush sometimes traveled to meetings by bicycle and entertained guests with old movies, popcorn and soft drinks, according to a 1975 New York Times profile that said he “succeeded, at least to a limited degree, in erasing the image that many persons in Peking had of America as an elitist country.”

Ford recalled him in 1976 to take over the CIA, an agency, Bush later said, that was “battered by a decade of hostile congressional investigations, exposés, and charges that ran from law-breaking to simple incompetence.”

When Democrat Jimmy Carter became president in January 1977, Bush was out of politics for the first time in a decade. He began a campaign for president in May 1979 that, for a time, looked like it might spoil what became the Reagan Revolution.

‘Voodoo Economics’

He defeated Reagan in the kickoff Iowa caucuses and went on to win six other primary contests before bowing to Reagan’s overwhelming delegate lead. Along the way, he derided as “voodoo economics” Reagan’s contention that lower taxes could be combined with higher military spending with no effect on the deficit. That didn’t stop Reagan from naming Bush to his ticket.

Bush’s “finest moments” as vice president, Time wrote in 1984, may have come when he acted “calmly and with sensitivity” amid the turmoil set off by the assassination attempt on Reagan in March 1981. Bush deferentially declined entreaties to take a helicopter directly to the White House, where aides were monitoring reports of Reagan’s medical condition. Bush later explained, “Only the president lands on the South Lawn.”

During Reagan’s second term, Bush tried to distance himself from the Iran-Contra scandal, the secret effort to aid anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua with money raised from arms sales to Iran. He claimed he had been “out of the loop.”

That view would be challenged by Reagan’s secretary of State, George Shultz. He wrote in his 1993 memoir that he had warned Bush, face to face, that an arms-for-hostages exchange had at least been attempted and “would never stand up in public.”

‘Gentler Nation’

Along with his “Read my lips” tax pledge, Bush vowed to shape “a kinder, gentler nation” as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination in 1988. His victory over Democrat Michael Dukakis, whom he portrayed as soft on crime, made Bush the first sitting vice president in more than 100 years to get elected to the top job.

Seeking re-election in 1992, Bush found himself challenged not just by Clinton but also by Ross Perot, the billionaire founder of Electronic Data Systems Corp., running as an independent. Television cameras caught Bush checking his watch during a three-way debate in which Perot displayed a folksy wit and Clinton demonstrated his ability to connect with voters’ pocketbook concerns.

Perot’s Share

On Election Day, Clinton took 43 percent of the vote to Bush’s 37 percent, with Perot winning almost 19 percent. Of Perot, Bush would later say: “I think he cost me the election, and I don’t like him.” Others doubt that Perot had a decisive impact on the result.

In a final chapter to the arms-for-hostages case, Bush, in his waning weeks in the Oval Office, pardoned Reagan’s defense secretary, Casper Weinberger, and five others.

Bush moved from the White House back to Houston, where he monitored development of his presidential library. He formed an unlikely and lasting friendship with Clinton, teaming up to raise relief funds for victims of the December 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia and of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. He parachuted from airplanes to mark several birthdays in his later years. His last jump came when he turned 90.

In November 2017, about midway through his 94th year, he became the longest-living U.S. president, a distinction that had been held by Ford, who died in 2006.

Bush is survived by sons George, Jeb, Neil and Marvin and daughter Dorothy Bush Koch, plus 17 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. His first daughter, Robin, died of leukemia at age 3.

The post George H.W. Bush, U.S. Leader as Iron Curtain Fell, Dies at 94 appeared first on Bloomberg Businessweek Middle East.

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#Business #George Bush #obituaries

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kateanddevinreview · 6 years ago

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London Has Fallen

In which Kate and Devin write a porno

Devin: Okay, so this movie is just Gerard Butler being a badass right? Is this the one with Denzel Washington? Or are neither of those things right.

Kate: It’s something like that.

Devin: Well, Butler showed up in the credits, but so did morgan freeman?

Kate: It’s a trifecta!!

Devin: Or maybe I'm just racist and mixed them up.

Kate: Or maybe it’s the two of them being badass together.

Devin: I made some comment the other day about minorities being underrepresented at the oscars or something and they asked what actors I think should win instead and I blanked on literally every minority actor I knew.

Kate: Hahahah. It’s still true though. And to be fair, could you name any white actors?

Devin: My brain got stuck on Tom Hardy and forgot literally every other actor on earth

Kate:I think he’s on tv now anyway. So far this movie is starting a bit slow. Do you think someone is going to be shot soon?

Devin: I find it weird that we are in....India?

Kate: I think we’re at an Indian wedding. Terrorist’s daughter is getting married

Devin: This is set up for motive?

Kate: Probs

Devin: The Phantom of the Opera and Harvey Dent go for a jog

Kate: Why are politicians always running? I don’t think they do that much

Devin: I think cause DC? it's an easy excuse to pan around the lawn

Kate: Ok well fine, coming at me with movie reasons. Wait, is this a sequel?

Devin: Is it? Was the last one just called "London"?

Kate: I was thinking Gerald saved a president in the last one?

Devin: She has crazy eyes

Kate: She does but she’s pregnant

Devin: I'll forgive it if we get through this movie without her vomiting.

Kate: She’s in like her third tri already so she really shouldn’t

Devin: Google says this is a sequel, to Olympus Has Fallen. Lots of stuff falling apparently

Kate: Knew it!!! I’ve seen that one too

Devin: Really? I'm guessing last time he saved President Harvey Dent from terrorists, wooed or impregnated his wife, and got hired for secret service or unfired from secret service

Kate: Unfired, if it’s what I’m thinking of

Devin: This time he'll save the Prime Minister from terrorists, see his kid born, and...uh. Be knighted? That's my guess

Kate: Seems like a totally logical guess to me. I’m betting he discovers the Prime Minister was murdered. I don’t think people are expected to attend state funerals?

Devin: I think it's cause his vice isn't available? I think normally this is the kind of thing they send him for. But I am basing that on episodes of Madam Secretary so who knows

Kate: New guess!! President is killed and Butler has to protect Freeman

Devin: Hmmm. Maybe. Is Freeman the Vice?

Kate: Yes. He said “Hello, Mr VP”

Devin: I'm missing like half of this dialogue, idk how

Kate: Cause it’s boring

Devin: I want splosions!

Kate: This baby melodrama music is not my favorite. Once again I feel like writing is letting us down?

Devin: Yeah. Be better hollywood!

Kate: Also important people shouldn’t just sign shit without looking at it

Devin: is this the fringe guy? No. Who is he? He's someone

Kate: I think? No?

Devin: Fringe guy is similar but different. Oh! The Magicians? Magicians teacher guy?

Kate: No, definitely not him

Devin: IMDBing....

Kate: “Most protected event on earth”= everyone will die

Devin: Yup. This cast listing order is stupid. Do we know British Gerard Butler's name?

Kate: You mean the head of the British security? Also no. Also I think they’re going to use kids?

Devin: Yes, British guy. Mr. Sands! From Limitless. Thanks wikipedia, for your superior cast list

Kate: Limitless. That’s right, I never watched much of that

Devin: I really liked the main guy and all the arts and crafts in that show. I'm sad it was cancelled. Also we should add the movie to our review list

Kate: Yes!

Devin: Splosion! I didn't think those guards were supposed to have real guns? Then again EMTs should definitely not have rocket launchers

Kate: Hahaha, yeah, those cops are definitely plants. It’s clearly a very well orchestrated attack

Devin: Pretty sure only america gives their cops guns. Also, rocket launcher

Kate: Wow I don’t care how this movie ends the world would not recover from this

Devin: Yeah Kate, it's fallen. Show. Us. The. Egg. It's not London unless I see the big glass egg and the ferris wheel

Kate: How did they know that one president wouldn’t leave on time?

Devin: Trackers? Or they caused the traffic?

Kate: No, he decided?

Devin: Motorcycles, a car's only weakness

Kate: Nice driving!

Devin: Don't injure civilians!

Kate: Ummmm, Devin. I think that ship has sailed.

Devin: He rammed the bad guy into a non bad guy car!

Kate: Oh fuck. Ok so who is the black lady? Is she the First Lady?

Devin: Voight buddy, you could have moved. He's the driver, she's the head of secret service

Kate: He was driving! It was a bullet! Give him some credit. Is she?

Devin: Yes. According to wikipedia

Kate: She’s not doing much. And she hunkered with the president?

Devin: Right? Stop flailing. Where is your gun, woman?

Kate: Oh god. That was brutal

Devin: That was very brutal

Kate: Why didn’t they park closer to the chopper?

Devin: Crashing in 3...2...oh ok nvm

Kate: Hahaha

Devin: He's got a cane so you know he's evil

Kate: So true

Devin: Moral of this movie: don't trust the handicapped

Kate: And yet, they didn’t detect a plan of this magnitude

Devin: Uh, did those people just have labels?

Kate: Yes. NSA and something else

Devin: Like, movie? Movie. We do not care

Kate: I’m assuming it will be important later?

Devin: Why is the lady not doing anything?

Kate: Nice, flares! I like flares. Why are they flying so low anyway?

Devin: I got distracted googling the secret service

Kate: Anything pertinent to share?

Devin: Apparently the director just does the boring shit, so idk why she's even here

Kate: Ummmm, I think the movie should end here?

Devin: Yes they all died. The End

Kate: No way anyone survived that. I call bullshit

Devin: Also, I assumed presidents would have like one guy their whole time in office? But apparently they hire someone new a lot. Oh she dead.

Kate: For the secret service?

Devin: As director. Like Obama had 2

Kate: I mean, that’s four years for each

Devin: Trump has already had 2. The first guy for like 2 months? 1 month?

Kate: Well, Trump does that a lot. He’s had like 8 communication directors

Devin: I just wonder if they choose to leave or if the president purposefully swaps them out

Kate: Also working for the president is really intense, so maybe you just burn out and have to leave

Devin: Makes sense. The local biker gang is here

Kate: I don’t think bikes make that noise. That is dumb

Devin: Yes. Also no one checked the wreck

Kate: At least we know from earlier scenes they are fast runners!

Devin: This looks like he put his manifesto on youtube

Kate: What point is there in entertaining this phone call? Also why does he care about one president?

Devin: Imagine if he called before they watched the video! Like 5 minutes earlier

Kate: Right? He should take the uniform too

Devin:

"Who is this?"

"It's...seriously? You didn't see my video?"

"h/o googling it"

"It's on youtube"

"yeah one sec, gotta sit through this 50 shade of grey trailer"

Kate: Ahhhhhhh Being hunted by motorbikes!! Oh no

Devin: Sure, that's subtle. Also this is a regular subway

Kate: I like that he was able to loot the body for weapons. Very practical

Devin: Jesus Gerard Butler. WTF? You went from zero to torture in no time

Kate: I know, little intense. Definitely running on adrenaline

Devin: This is the most 'murrican fucking movie. You cannot convince me that huge squads of racists didn't come out of this movie going "rah rah ‘murrica"

Kate: Oh god. Unfortunately yes

Devin: Although these talky bits suck. I'd rather have more fighting. Oh, thanks label, I really cared what time it was

Kate: Everyone is dead, that’s what this discussion is. I mean surrender and then ambush. How many people do they think there are? You’re not going to be professional right now? Weird

Devin: Blah blah blah. Bitch it was a wedding. Of course his family was there

Kate: How did you not know his family was there? It was a wedding. So dumb

Devin: What even is the point of that dialogue? There better be drugs in his water or something

Kate: What kind of shoddy intel are you all operating on? This is dumb. Do criticize if necessary. You have to teach them. Also off color jokes?

Devin: "You know what's most important Mike? Children. That's why we are never going to spend time with ours in any subsequent movie."

Kate: Of course it’s not your delta team.

Devin: Yeah why was that message not in code?

Kate: Zoom in!

Devin: Enhance! Your safe house has a fucking skylight!?

Kate: Seems like a pretty lame safe house. Oh this is gross

Devin: This movie is very gratuitous with its gore

Kate: It really is. And president you should not have done that. You are not almost out of this by any long shot

Devin: There must be a porno of this where they fuck right then

Kate: Did all of MI6 just die?

Devin: I'm not going to lie, that weird pirate porno you made us watch that one time is better than this movie

Kate: Haha! Oh pirates. Also my taste is terrible because I still enjoy this

Devin: I don't believe the hackers would make this basic of a mistake

Kate: No, me neither

Devin: Also driving seems like the quickest way to be spotted?

Kate: They kept everything under the radar but you didn’t notice this earlier?

Devin: Ok I guess at least the car is bulletproofed

Kate: How many of these terrorists are there supposed to be?

Devin: It's just the same 4 guys, they're really fast. They keep healing when they're off screen

Kate: Seems like an infinite supply. Mutants!! Also Mike is still somehow always faster

Devin: Now I want an action movie where 3/4 of the way through you realize he's been re-killing the same 5 guys over and over and surprise! it's really a fantasy/horror movie!

Kate: That would be so good. Change the whole game. I do oddly think this would make a good porno with very very little change

Devin: It's cause there's so much standing really close while breathing heavily and the plot is basically just as thin

Kate: Yeah pretty much. It’s a male romance novel

Devin: Also there have been.....5 women? in this entire movie. 6, I guess. Wife, mother, secret service director, beehive, assistant cop, MI6

Kate: Assistant cop?

Devin: Black lady?

Kate: I don’t remember her

Devin: She was in the bullpen with not!Fringe guy

Kate: Ok sure

Devin: Oh, ok, and random lady who had a text label I didn't read

Kate: There was the turning 30 woman and one lady head of state.

Devin: Still, none of these people shooting right now? There's like 20 guys in this scene!

Kate: Nope. Can’t have women in harm’s way unless they don’t have a choice. Also no lady terrorists

Devin: Only lady terrorists allowed are dead motivation ones

Kate: Also I’m subbing lady because it’s faster to type than woman

Devin: Agreed

Kate: Omg. Whispered “Mike.” Straight out of a romance novel

Devin: What? Are you ahead of me or did I miss it?

Kate: Maybe? The president whispered it

Devin: No! I must have missed the Mike whisper

Kate: He should be really tired by now. He didn’t have dinner!

Devin: "Hear that? My boyfriend is coming"

Kate: He really should just kill the president. It doesn’t make sense not to

Devin: There is so much manly eye contact and face holding

Kate: So much

Devin: Like I'm pretty sure almost this exact sequence happened in Outlander

Kate: In the porn there would be a scene where the president seduced him, Mike walked in on it, and then they have a threesome

Devin: With the bad guy?

Kate: Yup

Devin: That seems like it would be out of place plot wise. Would the bad guy turn himself in or something?

Kate: No. Just random sex that doesn’t make sense

Devin: Weird. The sex should make sense!

Kate: It’s for real a thing that happens in porn, you get whiplash. Oh god. This is lame. Really?

Devin: One punch where he runs all the way across the screen. So stupid

Kate: Did we learn who the brit mole was?

Devin: Nope. They hacked the police station I think? Damn! Wheelchair guy didn't even get to make a speech about how bad America is. This movie is not even pretending to care about America's mistakes

Kate: Why didn’t he just shoot everyone?

Devin: Out of bullets?

Kate: He hasn’t run out of guns until now

Devin: What even is this dialogue right now?

Kate: Really dumb

Devin: "You fuck with America? OH HELL NO. WE BAT SHIT. WE WILL FUCKING MURDER ALL Y'ALL."

Kate: America’s not even 500. Witty banter!

Devin: "EVEN OUR PRESIDENT WILL PICK UP A GUN FOR MURDER TIME"

Kate: Also he’s not dead because you haven’t killed him?

Devin: Yeah you just punched him a bit and talked nonsense

Kate: Once again, another thing they wouldn’t have survived.

Devin: I feel like the porno version of this has them go back to their wives at the end with lots of meaningful looks and sly smiles between the two main dudes. Like "yeah, we'll do this again next mission"

Kate: Oh no! But yes probably. Why was there a lock in an elevator?

Devin: Is the president the only one alive from this whole thing? They would definitely make out in this elevator

Kate: I think one other world leader survived? There was a missing link to the terrorist?

Devin: I guess?

Kate: Who sent a fucking video?

Devin: Honestly this plot is stupid Yeah he's def the mole. Also he's running away? Like he obviously did it

Kate: Are we supposed to care about him or her? Because I do not

Devin: They would have had sex earlier in the porno

Kate: Yeah. It would have made more sense. Just kill him already

Devin: Also she would have just arrested him. I feel like the porno would have less murder

Kate: It’s weird that normally I complain about too much sex? But this would just be better as a porn

Devin: Yeah our review is basically "this would have made a better porno"

Kate: How would you have found him?

Devin: Who hears "look out your window" and looks up at the ceiling? Oh maybe that's what the missing link was?

Kate: Also the VP does not have the authority to call that type of strike

Devin: What is this 10 angled shot explosion? Ok, we've got a baby

Kate: So it’s been at least a few weeks

Devin: No prime minister but I didn't realize it was his funeral so I feel like the president is close enough. Now knighthood

Kate: Sure. They don’t know how emails work? Re: is for replies

Devin: "Many people would say this is our fault, but we're america so fuck those people. we'll kill those people."

Kate: “Commence spending no time with my kid”

Devin: In the porno version we end instead with a mirror of the earlier DC lawn scene, with them sitting on a bench watching their wives/kids, and the pres saying something like "still want to quit?" and Butler saying "and leave you, sir? Never." And then meaningful eye contact. Roll credits.

Kate: Hahahah

Devin: Okay, so scores

Kate: Yes. Scores.

Devin: 3/10 for the movie, 6/10 for the porno

Kate: I go a little higher movie? Like 4.5 for the movie. 6 for porno though. I think we can agree that no porn should ever rank higher than 7

Devin: Yeah. Like, even amazing porn is still porn

Kate: Ummmm tropes? So many, “family as our motivation”

Devin: “America is terrible and we never learn anything”?

Kate: Which is so hypocritical

Devin: “One man assumes command of literally every other character without argument”

Kate: Hahahaha. So like 7 on the tropes? They all fit the plot really well

Devin: Yeah, I mean it had a very particular niche and it played to it

Kate: Exactly

Devin: I'm going to give the title an 8/10. Catchy and accurate

Kate: I can agree. Thematic

Devin: London did pretty much fall. Like an old lady in a Life Alert commercial

Kate: Better than Olympus has fallen

Devin: Yeah, plus how fucking pretentious is it to call the white house "olympus"?

Kate: Exactly

Devin: What would the porn title be? I feel like they're usually puns?

Kate: Pun for sure. London may fall but our guys stay up

Devin: kind of long

Kate: It could be the tagline?

Devin: Oh yeah, good tagline. My brain gave me "Banging Private Ryan" which does not fit but is almost certainly a movie that exists

Kate: Hahahahaha. Banging president something? Whatever his name was

Devin: No idea, I called him Harvey Dent the whole movie. London Goes Down?

Kate: London laid down? Cause laid. Get it?

Devin: H/o I have to see if there is a real porn title for this. NSA people monitoring my internet searches, I'm really sorry

Kate: Gives them some spice! A story to take home

Devin: Top result for "London Has Fallen Porn Title" is:

"London Has Fallen movie condemned as racist 'terrorsploitation' "

"London Has Fallen is gun-barrel porn"

Kate: Whelp. Yep. I feel bad for enjoying it?

Devin: "London Has Fallen Is The Worst Film About Our City Ever"

Kate: Oh no it was a piece of shit for sure. Super fucking racist

Devin: “Blowing London.” That's my official submission

Kate: Nice! “Blowing London” is great. I thought you’d actually found it.

Devin: Ok, any parting words?

Kate: It was a dumb racist movie that I feel guilty for enjoying anyway? Which means we should have more action movies made with better plots and motivation. And female representation!

Devin: Or more action movies that are just porn

Kate: Or that. What about you? Parting words?

Devin: If you want to see a movie where Gerard Butler brutally murders everyone, this is it. Or, you know, go watch 300, it is less awful.

Kate: So true.

#kate and devin review #london has fallen #murrica

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orbemnews · 4 years ago

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Sleepless in the Senate On Feb. 22-23, DealBook will bring together some of the sharpest minds in business and policy for our DealBook DC Policy Project. Join us from anywhere in the world, free of charge. Register today. Fifteen hours later … From around 2:30 p.m. yesterday to 5:30 a.m. today, senators engaged in a “vote-a-rama,” dealing with a flood of amendments to a budget resolution that would accelerate the passage of President Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan, without any Republican votes if necessary. Indeed, after dealing with dozens of amendments, the Senate passed the bill along party lines, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote in the evenly split chamber. And so begins the “budget reconciliation” process. The arcane, filibuster-proof procedure — which was used to pass President Donald Trump’s tax cut in 2017 — features “baroque parliamentary tricks that few understand,” writes Times Opinion’s Ezra Klein. In short, after the House passes an identical resolution to the Senate’s, probably within a day or so, lawmakers will take a few weeks to work out the details of the stimulus bill, subject to some constraints under reconciliation. The final package won’t include everything Mr. Biden wants, most notably raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour, which will be delayed by an amendment that senators passed to put off any increase until after the pandemic. Senator Bernie Sanders, unfazed, said that his plan for the wage increase was to phase it in over five years, not impose it immediately. Senators also agreed to a motion to block tax increases on small businesses during the pandemic, backed a fund to provide grants to bars and restaurants hit by the coronavirus crisis, voted to overturn Mr. Biden’s halt on the Keystone XL pipeline, and forbade $1,400 stimulus checks from going to “upper-income taxpayers,” which will be defined when the bill-writing process begins. The upshot: Something resembling the $1.9 trillion package proposed by the White House will probably become law in the coming weeks. Later today, the monthly jobs report will provide an important gauge of the strength of the economic recovery, and could influence lawmakers as they haggle over the small print for a huge stimulus. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Johnson & Johnson applies for emergency approval of its Covid-19 vaccine. The drugmaker submitted paperwork for its single-shot treatment to the F.D.A. yesterday. Approval could come by late this month, clearing J.&J. to begin shipping it in early March. Senator Amy Klobuchar proposes sweeping changes to antitrust laws. The new Democratic head of the Senate antitrust subcommittee introduced legislation that would prohibit companies with dominant market positions from buying rivals unless they can prove such deals wouldn’t hinder competition. Expect skepticism from Republicans and the tech industry. The Bank of England paves the way for negative interest rates. The central bank told British banks yesterday that they should prepare for rates to go below zero, though policymakers have kept the benchmark rate at 0.1 percent. Still, the pound and bond yields rose in anticipation of a future rate cut. A short seller takes on Chamath Palihapitiya. Hindenburg Research, the research and investment firm, accused the health insurer Clover Health of misleading investors and failing to disclose an inquiry by the Justice Department. Hindenburg, which said it has no investment in Clover, questioned whether Mr. Palihapitiya was aware of those issues when one of his SPACs took the company public. Clover rebutted Hindenburg’s claims this morning, but acknowledged the S.E.C. has begun an investigation. Private equity might join the club of N.B.A. team owners. CVC Capital is reportedly in talks to buy a minority stake in the San Antonio Spurs at a $1.3 billion valuation, The Financial Times reports. A deal could open the door to investment firms buying pieces of other N.B.A. teams, as some minority owners demand more options for selling their stakes. Cashing in on meme-stock mania Here’s another winner in the meme-stock frenzy: the Koss family. The headphone maker that bears their name was swept up in the recent market mania, pushing the heavily shorted small-cap company’s share price up by nearly 2,000 percent in a matter of days. Koss insiders sold some $44 million in stock this week, an amount worth more than the company’s entire market cap before the crowds of retail traders sent its shares soaring. Michael J. Koss, the C.E.O. and son of the firm’s founder, sold shares worth more than $13 million, and was joined by other family members, executives and directors in paring their holdings. Can they do that? Although executives at other companies at the center of the frenzy, namely GameStop and AMC, haven’t sold shares during the rally, there is nothing untoward legally about the move, provided that the insiders did not have access to private information about the run-up in share price. There’s no reason to believe that they did, since it seems that the Reddit-fueled rally was largely conducted in the open, by investors cheering each other on via a public message board. “As the stock goes up in price, whether it makes sense or not, the people on the end of the short sale suffer,” said Craig Marcus, a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray, “and people who hold the stock and have the opportunity to sell it and benefit from it, benefit from it.” Speaking of cashing in, Jaime Rogozinski, the founder of the WallStreetBets Reddit forum, where meme-stock traders gather, sold the rights to his life story to a production company. Other moderators at the forum, who pushed out Mr. Rogozinski last year, are now fighting for control of the group, which has 8.5 million members, amid accusations that they are trying to position themselves as key players in the saga in hopes of signing deals similar to Mr. Rogozinski’s. In other meme-stock news: GameStop crashed again yesterday, leaving it more than 80 percent lower than at the start of the week. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen held a meeting with fellow regulators to address market volatility, which concluded with statements promising further research but no immediate action. And Elon Musk, who had celebrated the meme-stock rally before saying he would take a break from Twitter, returned to tweet praise of the jokey cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which promptly surged in price. A big week for Big Media At CNN: The news network’s longtime leader, Jeff Zucker, announced that he would be stepping down at the end of the year. His exit from CNN raises questions about the network’s future — including speculation about whether he would try to buy out the channel from AT&T or seek to replace his boss, Jason Kilar of WarnerMedia. At Fox News: The election technology company Smartmatic has sued the network for more than $2.7 billion, accusing Rupert Murdoch’s broadcaster of peddling false conspiracy theories about its technology. It follows Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.3 billion lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani on similar grounds. In the papers Some of the academic research that caught our eye this week, summarized in one sentence: Speculative trading in volatile assets creates “pseudo-wealth,” which becomes “dangerously untethered from either market wealth or the real wealth of the economy.” (Joseph Stiglitz) Bankruptcy filings have fallen during the pandemic, but governments should prepare for a surge later this year. (Simeon Djankov and Eva Zhang) Covid-19 may accelerate the automation of jobs, which would affect women more than men. (Alex Chernoff and Casey Warman) How you’d fix the market In his column this week, Andrew suggested six ways to restore trust and fairness in the stock market. We asked what you would add to the list, and received a ton of thoughtful submissions. We read all of them, and here is a selection of common suggestions, edited and condensed for clarity: “Have a zero percent capital gains tax on securities held more than two years. This would encourage long-term investing at the expense of short-term speculative trading.”— Bob Knutson in St. Paul, Minn. “Limit how much of each new issue the big guys can grab and let the small fish get their nibbles first.”— Miriam Kelly in Baltimore “Restore the uptick rule.”— Andrew Oliver in Marblehead, Mass. “Buying back shares should not be allowed. It does nothing for the value of the company, nor does it lead to better investment performance.”— Joyce Hum in Ottawa “Limit the total percentage of float allowed to be sold short. Anything over 100 percent seems to be a recipe for a short squeeze.”— Dan Niemiec in Chicago “Have the exchanges process market orders in a manner that nullifies the machinery of high-frequency trading, like adding a random delay of between five and 15 seconds to any market order.”— Ronny Lempel in Redmond, Wash. “Go to T-0 equity settlement, which reduces the overall credit exposures from trading T+2. Before anyone objects to the technical challenge, China operates this way.”— Stephen Howard in Hong Kong THE SPEED READ Deals Exxon Mobil is reportedly considering adding Jeff Ubben, the environmentally minded activist investor, to its board amid pressure from hedge funds like D.E. Shaw. (Bloomberg) In I.P.O. news: Shares in Kuaishou, a Chinese rival to TikTok, more than doubled in their market debut in Hong Kong. And the yogurt company Chobani plans to go public later this year. (CNBC) A SPAC backed by Alex Rodriguez — yes, A-Rod — hopes to raise about $500 million. (Reuters) Politics and policy Millions of dollars in donations to key Senate races last year came from mysterious nonprofits and companies with little to no paper trail. (Axios) “Can the Man Who Saved the Euro Now Save Italy?” (NYT) Tech Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook unexpectedly made his debut on the social network Clubhouse last night, causing service outages on the platform. (Newsweek) Gov. Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, President Biden’s pick for commerce secretary, said she saw “no reason” to lift U.S. national security restrictions on Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE. (Bloomberg) Best of the rest The economist Nina Banks argues that community activism and other unpaid social labor by Black women is ignored by traditional economic data. (NYT) The number of Black executives who serve as chairs, C.E.O.s or C.F.O.s of Britain’s 100 biggest companies has fallen to zero, thanks to a “vanilla boys’ club.” (HR Magazine) Peloton is spending $100 million on air and ocean freight to shorten shipping delays of its exercise bikes and treadmills. (CNBC) We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. Source link Orbem News #Senate #Sleepless

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airdropsandcryptonews · 4 years ago

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BTC supply squeeze and Biden: 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week

https://ift.tt/32qzS8I

BTC supply squeeze and Biden: 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week

Bitcoin (BTC) is starting what will be likely a hectic week for markets as the United States begins its two-month presidential transition.

After Joe Biden was declared the projected winner of the U.S. presidential elections during the weekend, Bitcoin fell, but managed to avoid major losses — what’s next?

Cointelegraph takes a look at the factors set to influence BTC price action over the coming week.

U.S. election frenzy starts to bite

Attention remains firmly fixed on Washington as the aftermath of a highly contentious election begins to play out.

Experts had warned that market volatility was all but guaranteed once the result was in. Since this occurred over the weekend, Monday’s Wall St. open will be a source of interest for market participants.

At press time, Japan was leading the gains, with its stock market hitting a 29-year high on what the press is calling the “Biden bounce.”

Bitcoin, on the other hand, has stopped short of continuing last week’s gains and at one point hit $14,400 — $1,590 off its recent peak. Since then, BTC/USD has rebounded considerably, circling $15,250 at press time Monday.

BTC/USD 1-week chart. Source: TradingView

Incumbent president Donald Trump has vowed to challenge vote counts and could yet cause further issues for Biden, leading to confusion over policy, which could yet rattle sentiment.

Zooming out, however, analysts frequently argue that in the long run, Bitcoin and gold as safe havens will ultimately win from the election, regardless of which candidate leads the U.S. going forward. The reason, among other things, is inflation.

As Cointelegraph reported, a speech last week by Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, saw demands for further financial stimulus to enter the U.S. economy, raising debt and debasing the dollar.

“Bitcoin is the dominant crypto network – engineered to host the ideal safe haven asset & preserve monetary energy over long periods of time without power loss,” Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, summarized in a tweet on Monday.

“That makes #BTC the solution to every investor’s store of value problem. Few understand this.”

Coronavirus mayhem throttles Europe

Accompanying the election fallout is the continued turmoil over nation states’ handling of the Coronavirus.

Europe and the U.S. have recently diverged in this respect, with the former succumbing to a wave of new lockdown measures that have met with considerable pushback from the population.

After showing off buoyant recovery statistics for Q3, many governments will soon be drawing another altogether less savory picture of their economies for Q4 as economic activity dives for a second time in 2020.

This opens up the possibility of history repeating itself for Bitcoiners. After March’s cross-asset crash and first lockdowns, Bitcoin bounced back from $3,600 to circle five figures in under two months.

As governments themselves repeated the controversial responses to the virus, analysts were already forecasting a strong year for Bitcoin in 2021. Among them, as Cointelegraph reported, Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal and Gemini exchange co-founder Tyler Winklevoss both predicted a new all-time high for BTC by Q1 next year.

Fear & Greed Index hits danger zone

In terms of current investor sentiment, however, warning bells are sounding as Bitcoin stays above $15,000.

According to the Crypto Fear & Greed Index, which measures market sentiment using a basket of factors, a correction is more than overdue.

Compiled as a score out of 100, the Index reached its highest reading since June 2019 on Monday — the time when Bitcoin circled its yearly highs of $13,800.

For Comparison, two weeks ago, the Index measured under 60 — firmly “neutral” territory — before the latest price rises upended sentiment.

The closer its score is to 100, the more likely it is that the market will correct thanks to a wave of selling, dragging the price down.

Crypto Fear & Greed Index historical chart. Source: Alternative.me

Noting the Index on Friday, Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe advised Twitter followers that he was eyeing a market entry point as low as $11,600.

“Decent weekly close, but below $16,000,” he added on Monday.

“Levels to watch; $13,700-14,100, $12,800-13,200 and $11,500-12,000 If the market starts to correct.”

Bitcoin closed Sunday with its third-highest weekly close in history.

Institutions stay record long BTC

Despite the volatile conditions of the past week, however, the weekend managed to avoid a significant “gap” opening up in Bitcoin futures markets.

These “gaps” appear when the end of one futures trading session is markedly different in price to the start of the next after a weekend.

Bitcoin has traditionally risen or fallen from its Monday position to revisit, or “fill,” such gaps. This weekend provided only a small one — between $15,455 and $15,635 — and BTC/USD moved quickly to fill it in early Monday trading.

CME Bitcoin futures chart showing latest gap. Source: TradingView

CME Group’s Bitcoin futures meanwhile have seen record open interest in recent days, hitting $934 million on Friday with $764 million daily trading volume.

Enthusiasm has been tempered, however, by the latest commitments of traders (COT) report released Friday, which showed hedge funds being record short BTC at current prices.

At the same time, institutional investors remained record long, building on previous bullishness from late October.

The latest COT report shows hedge funds record short and institutions record long BTC. Source: Skew

Bitcoin supply shortage boosts prospects

Bitcoin’s run to $16,000 meanwhile opened up an increasingly popular narrative, which predicts further price rises based on a surprisingly simple and well-known equation — supply and demand.

After a wave of corporate buy-ins and increased sales from heavyweights such as payments network Square, attention is focusing on the fact that there is just not enough BTC on the market to satisfy incoming demand.

The situation will likely be exacerbated by PayPal, analysts say, which already has a waiting list for Bitcoin buyers for when it begins offering cryptocurrency facilities early next year.

Square alone, as Cointelegraph reported, already buys more BTC than miners produce. Going forward, the resulting supply squeeze can only realistically drive up the USD value of a Bitcoin.

As Saifedean Ammous, author of the popular book, “The Bitcoin Standard,” summarized on Saturday:

“Two ways to fix a money shortage: 1- Central bank provides liquidity 2- Number Go Up. There is no right or wrong way; there are consequences!”

https://ift.tt/2JR6stR Market Analysis BTC supply squeeze and Biden: 5 things to watch in Bitcoin this week

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khalilhumam · 4 years ago

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Federal breakdowns are accelerating

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/federal-breakdowns-are-accelerating/

Federal breakdowns are accelerating

By Paul C. Light The Trump administration has made little effort to honor the president’s promises to make government work. Employee morale is down, public distrust is up, and the swamp has never been so vibrant. Americans know trust in the federal government has declined, believe it is affecting government’s ability to act, blame government performance for a substantial share of the decline, and even say it should be repaired. At the same time, Americans say the federal government gets the respect it deserves.[1] The failure to address the need for government reform feeds the cycle of disappointment that threatens the nation. As my colleagues, Will Howell and Terry Moe argue in Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy, Trump’s rise to power is more a symptom than a cause of the current populist crisis. New policies for economic and social renewal would help stem the threat, but such renewal would only succeed with a return to the faithful execution of the laws. Hence, Howell and Moe’s call to reform includes a long list of standard bureaucratic reforms such as reducing the number of political appointees and strengthening the civil service.[2] Trust in government is also related to demographic, economic, and social change, but appears to be highly responsive to government breakdowns. Even if an occasional breakdown can be justified as the price of ambition, the recent acceleration creates a sense that the federal government cannot be trusted to meet minimal expectations for reliability and care. The sluggish response to COVID-19 will long be remembered as one of the federal government’s greatest breakdowns, but it also triggered a cascade of smaller breakdowns as beleaguered agencies struggled to perform seemingly simple tasks such as printing and mailing stimulus checks to people. Moreover, breakdowns often return to the front page when blue-ribbon investigations, court cases, histories, and even books about the government’s greatest failures reach the news again. Past breakdowns and the failures to fix the underlying problems are also relitigated when new breakdowns are triggered by the same or similar causes. (Read through the 70 post-2001 breakdowns here and the COVID-19 crisis becomes a failure foretold by previous failures.[3]) These include the failure of imagination that led to the 9/11 attacks, the depleted supply-chain that undermined the response to Hurricanes Katrina and Maria, the “pervasive permissiveness” toward risky financial industry behaviors that sparked the Great Recession, the denial that preceded the Challenger and Columbia tragedies, and the overpromising that turned what should have been the agile launch of the Obamacare website into a nightmare of frozen screens. The total number of highly-visible breakdowns may seem small, but it accelerated as the federal bureaucracy strained to do more with less, with aging government systems and political turmoil. The pre-2001 administrations averaged just 1.4 breakdowns per year from 1986-2000, while the post-2001 administrations have averaged 3.5 to date. Compared administration-to-administration, the Trump administration has more than tripled the number of breakdowns in George H.W. Bush’s first and only term, while the three post-2001 presidents have more than doubled their predecessors. Figure 1 shows the number of breakdowns by presidential administration. The rising number of highly-visible breakdowns is almost certainly tied to media polarization. Government breakdowns under Democratic control may have produced higher ratings at Fox, just as breakdowns under Republican control may have been a boon for MSNBC and CNN, both of which could be fueling greater public interest in stories about failure. Notwithstanding the partisan incentives that might underpin the pursuit of visibility at CNN, Fox, or MSNBC, there is good reason to blame decades of neglect for the increase, be it in the failure to upgrade government management systems, the desperate need for civil service reform, the death of government reorganization as a tool for increasing efficiency, the budgetary cliff-diving that led to shutdowns and annual uncertainty, and the bureaucratic layers discussed in the fourth piece of this series. As Figure 1 shows, the same data tell a different story when they are divided into breakdowns per year. Suddenly, what looks like a peak during the Obama administration turns into an steady rise from 1.6 breakdowns per year during Reagan’s second term to 4.3 breakdowns per year under Trump. Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his team would be well advised to note the recent acceleration in the number of breakdowns per year—and be reminded of those that occurred during his tenure as vice president. The acceleration makes the Trump administration more vulnerable to criticism, but also should raise warnings about overpromising in the absence of a government reform agenda—something Mr. Trump did during the 2016 campaign and as president and Mr. Biden is doing in the 2020 campaign. President Trump has himself to blame for any backlash against his long list of first-term government breakdowns. Having reassured his party in 2016 that he “alone could fix it,” Trump showed little interest in doing so. Administrative experts may disagree on how Trump set a record in first-term breakdowns, but he alone must claim it. Absent action to repair the underlying causes of failure that each president inherits, the blame goes to the incumbent.

[1] Seventy-five percent of the Americans interviewed by the Pew Research Center in December, 2018, 64% said low trust in the federal government made it harder to solve problems, 36% volunteered in written open-ended answers that the federal government’s performance, or the lack thereof was to blame for the decline, and 68% said it was very important to repair the decline. See Lee Rainie and Andrew Perrin, “Key findings about Americans declining trust in government and each other,” Pew Research Center, July 22, 2019. [2] William G. Howell, and Terry M. Moe, Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020; see also the 2019 Knight Commission on Trust, Media and Democracy for a review of the data and effects, [3] In my list of highly visible government breakdowns, I build on the defunct Pew Research Center News Interest Index. Launched in 1986, the original index was designed to track public attention to “stories in the news” over time. Respondents were read a list of stories covered by news organizations in a specific period and asked whether they followed each of the stories on the list very closely, fairly closely, not closely, or not at all closely. The question was first used by the Times Mirror Center for the People & the Press in July 1986 and remained in the queue when the Times Mirror Center became the Pew Research Center in 1996 and remained in the inventory until a three-year hiatus began in late summer 2015. The current question asks respondents “How much, if anything, have you heard or read about each of the following stories that have been in the news recently?” I used the 1986-2015 data in my 2015 Volcker Alliance report, Vision + Execution = Faithful Execution. I reconstructed the Pew survey question to the extent I could by compiling lists of major news stories such as the AP’s annual survey of U.S. editors and news directors. I then searched for polling data on each story and selected the most visible stories for further review. The Volkswagen emissions-testing scandal was the first news story that showed up on my list after the Pew Research Center suspended the news interest question. I began adding to the index on my own in 2010 by following high-visibility new stories that involved a federal government breakdown that was being followed very or fairly closely by at least 30 percent of respondents. I made the judgment about whether a given story revealed a significant federal government failure based on news stories, congressional investigations, and other available information about the federal role in the event. Readers should note that the recent list of breakdowns is solely based on my judgment about what constitutes a breakdown. I define a breakdown as a time-specific event that reveals an administrative failure in how the federal government executed a law. I readily accepted poorly crafted policy as a cause of such failures, but focused on execution as I read stories in the news. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not cause the Boeing 737 Max accidents—the design flaws, cost-cutting, and regulatory evasion belongs to Boeing. However, as the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee recently reported, the two crashes that killed 346 people reflected a “horrific combination” of failure that included the FAA’s weak oversight and improper regulatory delegation. See Niraj Chokshi, “House Report Condemns Boeing and F.A.A. in 737 Max Disasters,” New York Times, September 16, 2020.

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veipp · 7 years ago

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DOT Announces It Is Amending Its Drug-Testing Regulations

Importance Notice!

Effective January 1, 2018, The Department of Transportation is amending its drug-testing program regulation to add hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, and oxycodone to its drug-testing panel; add methylenedioxyamphetamine as an initial test analyte; and remove methylenedioxyethylamphetamine as a confirmatory test analyte. The revision of the drug-testing panel harmonizes DOT regulations with the revised HHS Mandatory Guidelines established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for Federal drug-testing programs for urine testing. This final rule clarifies certain existing drug-testing program provisions and definitions, makes technical amendments and removes the requirement for employers and Consortium/Third Party Administrators to submit blind specimens.

On November 10th 2017, The United States Department Of Transportation (DOT) announced they will be amending the mandatory 5-panel drug screen to include expanded opiates, and expanding on CFR 49 Part 40. Effective January 1st, 2018, the mandatory urine drug screening for all safety sensitive positions guided under CFR 49 Part 40 will include hydrocodone, hydromorphone, oxymorphone, and oxycodone. This new revision of HS Mandatory Guidelines with which the NPRM proposed to harmonize Part 40, comes in two parts.

Part 1

Previous to this newly added regulation, the mandatory drug screening was a 5-panel urine which consisted of testing for the 5 most common street drugs. A 5-Panel Urine Analysis consists of : Amphetamines (Meth) Cocaine Marijuana Opiates Phencyclidine (PCP) As of January 1st, 2018, under the new revisions of CFR 49 Part 40, a DOT drug screening will test for four semi-synthetic opioids (i.e., hydrocodone, oxycodone, hydromorphone, oxymorphone). Some common names for these semi-synthetic opioids include OxyContin®, Percodan®, Percocet®, Vicodin®, Lortab®, Norco®, Dilaudid®, Exalgo®. A 5-panel expanded opiates urine analysis consists of: Amphetamines (Meth) Cocaine Marijuana Opiates Hydrocodone Hydromorphone Oxymorphone Oxycodone Phencyclidine (PCP)

What has caused this new DOT Part 40 Amendment?

Since President Donald Trumps declaration of the Opioid Crisis, America has become much more familiar of the hurriedly progressing trouble of drug addiction.On October 26th, 2017, President Trump directed the Department of Health and Human Services to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency, striving to take action on this salient soar effecting the lives of American citizens today.

Opioid Addiction Statistics

A governmental account of drug overdose statistics shows that from the year 2015 to 2016 the death toll due to drug overdose rose 22 percent. This upwards trend of overdose has been on a steady incline since the year 2000 and was likely to continue until President Trump declared the opioid crisis. Knowing the disease of addiction himself through the actions of his brother, President Trump can understand the difficulties those who struggle from addiction direction, making it known and urging Americans to remember the phrase "prevention not punishment".

in the past the Opioid Crisis Americans have been made queenly up to date of theconsequencesand statistics of drug abuse. How the opioid crisis has affected the American economy, the American workplace, and just Americaas a whole. Many now know that you don't have to be an addict yourself to tone the effects of addiction.

Policy makers have quickly taken notice of these growing trends and decided to take swift action.

The DOT is one of the most prominent government sectors. The dot itself employs about 55,000 Americans, not including the employees in each DOT regulated agency. Federal Motor Carriers Safety Administration (FMCSA) "As the lead federal government agency responsible for regulating and providing safety oversight of commercial motor vehicles (CMVs), FMCSA's mission is to reduce crashes, injuries, and fatalities involving large trucks and buses." Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) "The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) operates in a dynamic and challenging environment. The scope and complexity of our safety mission will continue to grow, requiring that we fundamentally rethink how we will use data, information, and technology to achieve our safety goals." Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) "Our continuing mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world." Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) "The Federal Railroad Administration's mission is to enable the safe, reliable, and efficient movement of people and goods for a strong America, now and in the future." Federal Transit Administration (FTA) "The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) provides financial and technical assistance to local public transit systems, including buses, subways, light rail, commuter rail, trolleys, and ferries. FTA also oversees safety measures and helps develop next-generation technology research." "Improving Public Transportation for America's Communities". UNITED STATES COAST GUARD (USCG) The Coast Guard does not fall under the Department of Defense. Until recently, the Coast Guard was under the Department of Transportation.

Saftey Sensitive Positions

A safety-sensitive position refers to a job in which the employee is blamed for his or her own or extra people's safety. It also refers to jobs that would be particularly dangerous if performed under the influence of drugs or alcohol. For this reason, Safety-sensitive positions are often the focus of drug and alcohol testing. Generally, DOT regulations cover safety-sensitive transportation employers and employees. Each DOT agency (e.g. FRA, FMCSA, FTA, FAA, and PHMSA) and the USCG have specific drug and alcohol testing regulations that outline who is subject to their testing regulations.

DOT Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy and Compliance

The Director of the DOT Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy and Compliance, Patrice Kelley, has been creating processing substance abuse policies for many years. Under her jurisdiction, the new amendment to CFR 49 will help serve to uphold the ODAPC mission statement. "Ensure that the drug and alcohol testing policies and goals of the Secretary of Transportation are developed and carried out in a consistent, efficient, and effective manner within the transportation industries for the ultimate safety and protection of the traveling public. This is accomplished through program review, compliance evaluation, and the issuance of consistent guidance material for DOT Operating Administrations (OAs) and for their regulated industries."

Part 2

HHS Mandatory Guidelines remove methylenedioxyethylamphetamine (MDEA) as a confirmatory test analyte from the existing drug-testing panel and add methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) as an initial test analyte.

What does this mean?

An analyte is by definition a substance whose chemical constituents are being identified and measured. For example, morphine is the target analyte for codeine/morphine testing. The DOT will now focus on the MDA analyte for its testing analysis, rather than the previous MDEA. This could lead to a test confirming positive due to the difference in the initial test analyte.

Initial test analyteInitial test cutoff concentrationConfirmatory test analyteConfirmatory test cutoff concentrationMarijuana metabolites50 ng/mLTHCA 115 ng/mL.Cocaine metabolites150 ng/mLBenzoylecgonine100 ng/mL.Opiate metabolitesCodeine/Morphine 22000 ng/mLCodeine2000 ng/mL.Morphine2000 ng/mL.6-Acetylmorphine10 ng/mL6-Acetylmorphine10 ng/mL.Phencyclidine25 ng/mLPhencyclidine25 ng/mL.Amphetamines 3AMP/MAMP 4500 ng/mLAmphetamine250 ng/mL.Methamphetamine 5250 ng/mL.MDMA 6500 ng/mLMDMA250 ng/mL.MDA 7250 ng/mL.MDEA 8250 ng/mL

Other recognizable CFR 49 Part 40 revisions

Creating a name change from the word opiates to opioids now expands the drug testing panel to 6 commonly abused illicit and licit drugs (Heroin); Codeine; Morphine, Hydrocodone; Hydromorphone; Oxymorphone; and Oxycodone.

The DOT added a new section reiterating that, in the DOT testing program, only urine specimens can be collected and analyzed.

The DOT added language further emphasizing the existing DOT prohibition on the use of DNA testing on DOT drug testing specimens.

The final rule made minor modifications to certain section headings.

The final rule moved the list of Substance Abuse Professional certification organizations from the rule text to ODAPC's website.

The final rule moved the MIS instructions from Appendix H to ODAPC's website.

Outdated compliance dates were removed and links were updated.

Appendices B, C, D, and H were updated.

The revision of the drug testing panel harmonizes DOT regulations with the revised HHS Mandatory Guidelines established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for Federal drug-testing programs for urine testing. For any questions regarding DOT Drug Testing, or DOT compliance please visit us at www.Accrediteddrugtesting.com or call (800)221-4291.

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quicklyseverebird · 4 years ago

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I would just agree with a slight difference. The issue here is misinformation and panic being utilized to--to be fair, initially probably with the best of intentions due to uncertainty--but devolving into open power grabs and an attempt to utilize it for political ends. “No crisis should go to waste” after all. When the bug first came out, I was all on-board for containment. The projected mortality and transmission rates looked horrific. Ironically, I faced mockery from Left-leaning individuals who dismissed my concerns, even as Chinese authorities literally welded people into their homes and mortality rates were being listed at 6-9%, with a 70% transmission rate. Then we got more data, and the tune changed. Is the Coronavirus real? Absolutely. Is it even close to as deadly as they said it was? Not even close. Were we right to shut down for a while when we weren’t sure? I can grant that on the grounds of better safe than sorry. But now...now it’s absurd. Based on the CDC data, we apparently need on average, about 2.6 co-mortalities for it to take us out, and even then, due to all the co-mortalities, we can’t even say C19 even played a factor. We only know C19 killed 6% of those listed as C19 deaths. The other 94% we just don’t know if it did or not. Add in the non-medical causes of death like suicide, car crashes, etc, that were included to this count only because their blood tested positive for C19, and adding in the fact that the vast vast majority of those who died were over the expected life expectancy of adults in the US and these numbers become even more questionable. It becomes outright absurd when you consider over 50% of those who died caught it in nursing homes, where the most vulnerable people lived, and most of THOSE deaths were due to certain governors literally mandating that sick people be placed IN THESE SAME NURSING HOMES!

Let me be clear here. The largest portion of the “official” death count can be directly attributed to the actions taken to allegedly “control” it. I tend to think its due more to stupidity than malice, but its still undeniable.

So no, the name of the game is no longer about public health and safety. At this point our attempts to control the virus have taken a greater toll than the virus would have on its own. And the media continue to lie to us by showing us the death count that the CDC has itself admitted isn’t accurate. The political left went to mocking Trump’s actions to contain the virus, spending an entire week trying to repeal his decisions, and demanding people ignore it, to flipping and saying he didn’t do enough, soon enough. The media keep touting the death count and talking about how it’s going to keep growing. Well of course it will. A death count can’t go backwards unless we start getting zombies. That’s not how math works. And we already know they will lie about the deaths as they have up till now. The Left has now turned this into a power grab I’ve seen in my own state through vindictive attacks and smears, random and nonsensical restrictions, and blatent power mongering by the governor. And the Left are using this as a means to attack the president. They want it to continue. They aren’t even hiding this fact. They are counting on the idea that the more unhappy and miserable people are, the more ire they can stir up against Trump. After all, they themselves said that there had to be a recession to oust Trump when our economy was doing great. Well they got one. The longer they can drag it out, the happier they will be. After all, we know that they themselves aren’t suffering or even following the same requirements they demand of us.

Man your posts have really got me thinking. I'm seriously starting to become incredibly skeptical of the whole pandemic business. My pcp telling me yesterday that masks aren't very useful and that she hasn't had to deal with the virus has been the final straw. Nobody I know has gotten sick...or known anyone who has died/been hospitalized because of the virus. That's thousands of people. It's been 6 months. I highly doubt I'm just that lucky. Something is really fishy here...

If we believe the New York Times when they say 90% of the test results are meaningless and we believe the CDC when they say 94% of “COVID” deaths had other causes listed, we have to come to the conclusion that the majority of that 94% may not have even had enough SARS-COV-2 in their system to warrant a positive test result and shouldn’t have had COVID listed on their death certificate as a cause.

Which would mean this has all been an elaborate distraction while federal and state governments have seized more and more power.

And it’s not about the masks, or the social distancing, or even about the business closures.

It’s about the precedent. National and local governments all over the world, including ours, have established a precedent that if they declare an “emergency” they can do whatever they want.

Not to mention that while we were all distracted by (false) reports of overwhelmed hospitals in March, the Federal Reserve got permission to meet behind closed doors and act without any public accountability. They have complete control over our currency and are manipulating it to serve their own interests and those of big banks and corporations that they work with.

We were duped. And we are still being duped as long as we act like this is about a virus.

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