#look kamala was getting fed just as much as we were

[gwendyworm]

Kamala: why does the queen of asgaurd call you baby girl-

Carol: let’s stop talking.

[bi-bi-buckleys]

Venting about family/political shit under the cut

So Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I spent the whole day with family members who are Trump supporters. Well, various shades of Trump supporters

You’ve got the one married couple who have not one but TWO Trump flags flying off their garage. Unsettling. They own hats. The guy was wearing a shirt that depicted that stupid image after he "got shot.” They’re like actual MAGA. Actually, if I’m honest, the wife probably wouldn’t be if it weren’t for the husband. She’s insecure and easily influenced and I remember her from before and it’s not really her. She voted for Obama in ‘08 and I was with her (I was 15 and couldn’t vote) and she told me not to tell him. I don’t think he’s tried to influence her because he doesn’t have to, she just goes along with what she thinks she should. But also, the husband, he’s not like a bad guy. He’s always been nice. He’s for defunding the police and said he wouldn’t care if his kids were queer. I just don’t get it. I don’t see how a Trump presidency benefits either of them.

Then the other couple is like, one of them is unaffiliated but said he’s voting for Trump because he’s the “lesser of two bad options” which is insane. He’s old, set in his ways, raised as a southern Baptist, etc. His wife, on the other hand voted for Biden and retweeted hate posts about Trump. She hasn’t been active on twitter for like two years, and she didn’t say much so I’m not sure if/what changed. I do think she voted for him though which just sucks because I thought I’d have one person on my side but nooo.

Then there’s the third couple, the wife being the sister of the man mentioned above, so again old, set in her ways, raised southern Baptist. Her husband doesn’t say much because she speaks too much so who knows where he stands. She said she’d like Kamala but she “talks like she’s more moderate, which I wish she was, but she’s actually very far left.” I wanted to be like maybe she’s appearing more moderate because she understands she needs to appeal to more voters because that’s kinda how politics works BUT ANYWAY.

I’m the youngest there. I’m the adult who doesn’t feel like an adult. The one who has always felt the most isolated. The one who isn’t taken seriously because I’m the baby. If I had said anything, I would have just been ignored or taunted. The wife of the first couple knows my politics and doesn’t bring it up with me. She does the whole well let’s not talk politics because we know we disagree and it doesn’t matter. Like. Girl. Yes it does. It matters that you’re voting for a felon, a racist, a rapist, a misogynist, a homophobe, a transphobe, the list goes on.

The husband of the second couple asked me on the phone who I was voting for and I told him. He joked around for a bit and then changed the subject, because he’s old, well off, white, and male so what does it affect him who wins?

I don’t talk one on one much with the third couple so I’m not sure they know where I stand and it’s none of their business. The wife thinks she’s right about everything and will tell you you’re wrong no matter what. She argued with the wife of the second couple about dog food despite saying she’s fed one of her old dogs said food. Insufferable.

The thing is, these aren’t distant family members. The first couple is my sister and brother in law. The second couple is my dad and stepmom. The third is my aunt and uncle. I love them and it makes me sad. None of them know I’m bi because I don’t know if they would support me. In fact I’m sure they wouldn’t. But I don’t want to lose them.

My sister is a decade older and was there for me when no one else was, took care of me during the times our mom couldn’t. We’ve been through hell together, the kind of trauma no one else will ever understand because they didn’t experience it. We communicate whole sentences with a look. We say things at the same time, or one of us will say something the other was about to. I couldn’t imagine my life without her. I have to hold on to the belief that she’s better than this. That maybe she would actually support me and reconsider her stance. Plus she has kids and I want to be in their lives.

My dad and I are so similar personality wise and we went through rough patches that we worked through, but I don’t get to see him that much. This is the first time I’ve seen him all year. It sucks that I spent it feeling out of place and uncomfortable.

Today I’ve been exhausted and it’s mostly because I spent all three days with my family from like 9 am to 9 pm and it’s a lot. But also just the feeling of wow I can’t believe I’m related to them and would they actually still support me if they knew I was queer and not wanting to know the answer and I kind of wish I was strong enough to cut them off but I think it would hurt me more because I don’t have a lot of people and life hasn’t been especially kind and a loss like that would hurt. I have the fantasy of maybe one day they’ll change, and maybe they will but who knows. It’s just. A lot. And exhausting. And sad.

BUT I voted for who I wanted to vote for, I have friends who are of like mind, my mother is of like mind, and I was able to just rest and recharge today. All I can do is hope and pray that Harris wins and we don’t have to suffer another Trump presidency.

Wow this got long. It’s been bugging me. I just needed to get it out. Truly don’t expect anyone to read it but I needed to say it lmao.

[bllsbailey]

Unraveling: The Dam Breaks As the NY Times Notices Some Things About Kamala Harris' MSNBC 'Interview'

Kamala Harris enjoyed quite the media honeymoon in the aftermath of President Joe Biden being forced out of the presidential race in late July, with her being installed soon after as the Democrat presidential nominee.

For weeks, going into early-mid September, the fawning reporters who among other things tried to absolve her of her border crisis failures largely gave the veep a pass for the calculated tactic of avoiding questions from news organizations outside of the ones the Harris-Walz campaign knew would be especially friendly. 

One example was CNN, where Harris was spoon-fed leading questions in late August from anchor Dana Bash while her VP running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, meekly sat next to her in case she needed help.

SEE ALSO:Another CNN Softball Kamala Interview Clip Is Dropped, and Our Intelligence Gets Insulted Again

The latest sit-down interview on a cable news network was MSNBC, where Harris took questions from fangirl anchor Stephanie Ruhle Wednesday in a pretaped segment.

As RedState reported, Harris as per the norm did not answer a single question asked by Ruhle. But there was some cringe cackling, especially when the topic came to whether Harris truly had worked at a McDonald's. ICYMI:

Ruhle: "At any point in your life, have you served two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions, on a sesame seed bun?"   Kamala: "I did fries ha ha ha!"

Yeah.

Unfortunately for Harris, the positive coverage dam appears to have cracked among some typical media echo chambers like CNN, which shockingly fact-checked some things she said to Ruhle, which we documented earlier.

But over at the New York Times, the journo dam hasn't just cracked; it has broken wide open, as evidenced by their takeaways from the Harris/Ruhle interview, which were shall we say not exactly flattering:

This part was especially biting:

A hard-hitting Harris interview is still yet to come. Since Ms. Harris began granting more interviews in recent days, her media strategy has been to sit with friendly inquisitors who are not inclined to ask terribly thorny questions or press her when her responses are evasive. Nothing about that changed during her interview with Ms. Ruhle before her audience on MSNBC, the liberal cable channel whose viewers overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates. [...] Ms. Ruhle joined Ms. Harris in attacking Mr. Trump (“His plan is not serious, when you lay it out like that”) and avoided posing tricky questions about positions Ms. Harris supported during her 2020 presidential campaign or what, if anything, she knew about Mr. Biden’s physical condition or mental acuity as his own campaign deteriorated. Which is perhaps why Ms. Harris agreed to the interview in the first place.

Harris' hope since becoming the nominee was that she'd be able to skate through to November with the press totally in her corner and continuing to look away as she evaded questions and blathered on about "joy" and "aspirations." While most in the media will do just that, there are some, like the Times, who are demonstrating they aren't going to play along any longer.

It's similar to what happened to Joe Biden in 2021 when he continually avoided doing solo press conferences the first few months of his presidency to the point where even his apologists in the White House press corps were openly grumbling and demanding access, calling him in so many words "worse than Trump" in some instances. 

Once that access was given, the ball game changed and more people were able to see his incoherency and other problems for themselves throughout his time in office and form opinions about the type of president he was.

The same is starting to hold true of Harris. She finally sat down to take (but not answer) questions, first with CNN and now MSNBC. While we didn't learn much about her policy positions, the American people learned an awful lot about how much of a vapid, empty suit she actually is.

The more she does these things, the more people are going to realize that, which is why she doesn't want to do them. 

But she's in a Catch-22 at this point. The more she continues to resist the pressure that is put on her by non-Fox News outlets to put some answers on the record, the worse she's going to look in the eyes of voters who want to know more but who aren't being given the opportunity thanks to her media avoidance strategy, which is still largely in place.

Kamala Harris boxed herself into this corner and now she can't get out of it. It's too delicious for words to watch the unraveling, and the best part about it is that it is Democrat-friendly news organizations like the Times that are bringing it on. More please.

RELATED:A Pre-Taped Kamala Harris Radio Interview Gets Delayed, the Reason Given for Why Is Laughable

[nodynasty4us]

From the March 5, 2024 analysis:

Well, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Colorado ballot-access case yesterday. And our assessment, in a sentence, is this: They reached the right conclusion, but took the absolute worst possible route to getting there. ... You just can't let states have the power to disqualify candidates for president for whatever reason they deem fit, because you cannot guarantee they will operate in good faith. This is obvious enough that the Supremes agreed 9-0 on this point. So, Donald Trump will stay on the Colorado ballot, and those of the other states (Illinois, Maine) that had also booted him. The political impact here is probably a wash. Booting Trump off the ballot [in Colorado, Maine, and Illinois] would have made Democrats feel good, but would not likely have cost Trump any EVs (except maybe one in Maine). At the same time, it would have fed into his "victim" narrative and would have enraged the base. So, while this is nominally a "loss" for Democrats, it's not much of one. And while it's nominally a "win" for Republicans, again, it's not much of one. ... The actual question before the Court was decided 9-0. But... the five conservative men just could not help themselves, and felt the need to go further. So, they added a bunch of extra findings that were not needed. That, in turn, caused Amy Coney Barrett to write one dissent, and the three liberals to write another (that is a scorcher). And so, a decision that is 9-0 on the top line is as bitterly divided as is possible when you look more closely. ... Consider what happens if Donald Trump wins this year's election, and then, on 1/6/2025, Democrats in the House (assuming that party regains the majority) assert their Supreme Court-granted right to reject him as president. Since yesterday's decision is very vague, it's at least possible it could happen, triggering a constitutional crisis, in which both sides claim the law and precedent are on their side. Democrats are not known for their willingness to play hardball like this, but since they (quite reasonably) regard Trump's return to the presidency as a giant constitutional crisis, they'd really be choosing the lesser of two constitutional crises. ... Not only did the five in the majority fail to define what constitutes insurrection, they also did not specify a timeline for the exercise of Congress' newly bestowed authority. And so, consider this situation: Joe Biden is reelected in 2024, but Republicans gain control of both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterms. Not only is there nothing stopping the GOP from passing a bill on Jan. 3, 2027, declaring Biden to be an insurrectionist (and Kamala Harris, along with him, thus putting the Republican Speaker in the White House), they would have clear Supreme Court sanction for doing do. And, assuming the Republicans would be willing to put aside the filibuster in order to steal the White House (which, who are we kidding, of course they would), then they could do it with a bare majority in both chambers. Who needs something as onerous as impeachment under those circumstances? ... To summarize, then, we have a decision that is bitterly divided, undermines the legitimacy of the Court, has no real basis in anything other than hand-waving and wishful thinking, is badly written, does not really solve the problem it was supposed to solve, and brings with it the very real possibility of triggering a constitutional crisis in two different ways. And that's before we get into the fact that the Supremes were willing to fast-track this one, but are sitting on the presidential immunity decision. Nice job, Mr. Chief Justice. Somewhere, Roger Taney is smiling at the prospect of moving up, out of the doghouse.

[madamspeaker]

Can we please talk about the misfunction of the american brain? Sorry to be so rude here, but I simply don't get how they still back up Trump after everything he's messed up. I read some comments under a Nancy press conference the other day and man was I shocked at how mean and vile these comments were. You can basically click every YT Video with Nancy on the Thumbnail and have the same. The whole world is shaking their heads at Trump and they still follow his words and 'ideology'. For real wtf!

It's not just a misfunction of the American brain though - look at the UK, and how easily so many still back Boris Johnson, or at least his party and the whole concept of Brexit, despite now seeing the very real mess that it is, and that he has personally caused. The whole situation is complicated because there is no one answer as to why things are they way they are either side of the Atlantic, and in the American case there are certainly other factors at play that I don't think we can say are presently responsible for the UK's position.

Fundamentally you have two "leaders" who lied to advance an agenda that primarily benefited just them and their friends, and they packaged that lie by appealing to very base notions - nationalism, America First/Take Back Control- praying on fears and stoking ideas that "other" is dangerous, that "other" is taking jobs, and that "other" is the reason your life isn't good. It's no coincidence that both Trump and Johnson used immigrants as the bad guys, a target that appeals to the racism in two countries that have very dark histories featuring white surpremacy (slavery and empire), and who for some those histories still remain a source of pride rather than shame. The fact that the big lie has been revealed to be just that won't change followers opinions of them for two reasons. One, both Trump and Johnson have enabled racism and hateful language to come back out of the shadows, and it is going to take an extraordinary effort to push that back under its rock again. They empowered racism and hate rhetoric, and for some that alone is enough to remain as their supporters. And two, followers don't want to admit that they were wrong, or worse, that they were stupid enough to buy into the con - so they double down. It's a pride thing. Couple all this with the fact that government and civics are not taught, or at least aren't mandatory, in schools in either country, and you have a recipe for disaster. People who don't know how their actual government works, buying into the lies told to them by supposed leaders who know of that civics information gap and exploit it. As for Nancy Pelosi aspect, well that is a whole other thing - misogyny. We've seen it time and time again, with Nancy but one in a long list of women whose very existence triggers a section of society who a) don't think women should do anything but serve men, or b) who have been fed a bunch of lies about these women to the point that they have been demonised into some grotesque caricature (true of the far right and left) that is so far removed from the reality of what any human could be. You see it in the supposed art of Eli Valley on the far-left as well as pretty much every GOP ad. There seems to be a very specific thing in America whereby ambitious women aren't be to trusted, and it comes from the same sickening place that argues against a woman's right to choose. For this group, women should be controlled not be in control, so when someone like Nancy comes along (or Hillary, or Kamala), a women very much in control - of her life, her destiny, and with very real power to affect change across the country, naturally these puritanical assholes have an anuerism. I mean let's be honest, the same mentality that produced the Salem Witch Trials is still very much present in America today, particularly in evangelicalism. It's not about love of god, it's about love of an ideology that promotes the idea of women being chattels of men, and someone like Nancy is the very antithesis of that, and unapologetically so.

[zamgoods]

Polar Express Heroine and Hero:  Kamala Joe Ticket

Tuesday November 11.24.2020       This eerie 11.10.2004 Christmas fright fest for a children’s movie may contain Easter Eggs of how 2021-2024 will be under Biden-Harris presidency.  You have got to see this movie again to see the parallels. No way I’m making this up. 

This movie is included in the 113 code.  Obvious meaning is 11/3, regarding November 3, 2020 US Presidential election.  We have previously noted other movies like Cars, Chicken Little, Taking of Pelham 123, and Deja Vu using this code.

Well in PE, Billy the Loner’s address is mention several times at the end of the movie to be 11344 Edbrooke Ave, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEfVgIcYNG8&t=4378s

1st of all spoiler alerts galore. Officials and executives who run the world are chosen as children.

2nd of all. Who has a movie where the main characters aren’t given names?  It’s obviously a riddle.  We are supposed to figure out who they are. The main protagonists are just referred to as Hero Boy and Hero Girl in the credits.  But we could call them by hot drinks and you’ll make the connections yourself.  

There is a tantalizing scene where creepy cloned dancing men leave the stolen kids stunned in their seats with brown mustaches and in a drunken state after serving them...”you’ve got it...hot chocolate!”  Later in the movie a cup of “joe” for Hero Boy offered up by a grinchy/scrooge like hobo.  

Now that you know who Hero Boy really is, guess who is the chocolate hottie?  You’ve got it!  Kamala Harris who was bussed to school as a girl, now she is being trained to the North Pole.  Look at the real resemblance of her as a girl at Christmas and Hero Girl.  It’s almost like they copied main elements of this character from this photo, with the exception of the facial features.  Another clue is the barrettes in Hero Girl’s hair.  The reddish lotus like flowers.  It’s what Kamala means. 

See Kamala celebrating Christmas with pig tales, tree and similar attire to Hero Girl.

Third of all.  The Hero girl loses her ticket because of “Cup of Joe,” Hero Boy, taking it, just like Kamala lost her presidential ticket to Joe Biden in the Demo Primaries.  She is taken out of the car as punishment to who knows where by the Ticket Master/ Conductor (Tom Hanks).  Her ticket goes to the wolves and eagles before getting her ticket back from Hero Boy. 

 Remember Kamala was the first to enter the Demo race for President but dropped out early and then on the fateful Aug 11 in 2020, Biden puts her back on the Presidential ticket as his VP.  

Hero Girl goes on to get the honorable LEAD punched into her ticket at the end of the movie because her confidence and sure footed leadership drove the train and pointed the way to the gifts and Santa Claus.  She could hear what Joe couldn’t hear, The music, the jingling bells.  

4th of all. Cup of Joe boy becomes a Believer and can hear the Silver bell. He is s-elected to get the first present by Santa himself.   Wearing a blue robe.  Democratic Blue.    to the left in blue (dem) robe and Kamala to his right.  Hero Boy (left) and Hero Girl  Billy lonely boy(right).  

Joseph Robinette Biden is portrayed in real life as growing up as just your “average Joe.”

Grand Rapids, Michigan is a catch all for present news.  How so?  The 25th Amendment that is all over the news and at the Capitol was ratified on account of the 38th President said to have been raised in Grand Rapids, Gerald Ford.  His accomplished wife, Betty Ford even worked at Herpolsheimers.

Little golden hair boy named Billy to far right.  They help out the lonely little guy, Billy, from the  “wrong side of the tracks” of Grand Rapids, Michigan giving him a cup of hot chocolate and befriending him.  He gets a Christmas gift for the first time ever.  He gets a transforming ticket whose words change yet boil down to the word TRUST.  Put it all together,  Billy can Trust he will start getting money from the Dollar Bill, FED, Treasury, etc.  Maybe even the poor will start getting money.  Stimulus Checks.  Raise in pay, wages.  Who knows...

There is a character known as Know It ALL.  His PJs have Jupiter C printed on it. It also says Explore on his top.  All of the characters represent significant ideas, offices, and much more... The Elves at Santa’s gift headquarters are clearly depicted, they do the accounts, judge who is naughty or nice enough to receive gifts for Christmas and seem like they speak Yiddish.  The use the word Mashooganah. Later Know it all is told that he doesn’t belong.  Think what you want.

5th of all watch the signs.  There is also this pudgy boy with bulls and XXXI and V down the middle of his shirt.  Always look at the signs and x’s.  Roman numerals X is ten. I is one.  V is five.  KNow it All with the classes has a rocket blasting off.  

Perhaps the Ride on Top of the World song sung upon departing from the North Pole, is a clue for the Railroad Ride or being railroaded because it’s all a dream.  Or is it?  

Please note that Time stops at 11:55 pm most of the movie. Until midnight when Santa leaves to drop his Pandemic gifts to the world’s kids from his giant red balloon.  

There’s so much information to gather with this movie.  No wonder so much money was invested in it.  hundreds of millions of dollars.  Yet the computer graphics don’t look so great for the time.  I mean Shrek and other contemporary animation movies were much more appealing.

Just look at the movie with this in mind and see what you think.  It is a crazy ride with so much danger, ups and free falls.  A real horror movie.  So get ready for the scariest 4 years ever.

[calliecat93]

ST: TNG S5 Watchthrough Episodes 18-21

Cause and Effect: Who’s ready for the ST equivalent of Groundhog Day? Yep, we have a time loop episode. This is actually my mom’s favorite episode so I’ve been waiting for this one XD.So the episode opens with the Enterprise blown up… and after the titles we have a poker game as though nothing happened. But Crusher begins to have deja vu and as the loops continue, so do the others. So... If you’ve seen time loop stories you more or less know how this goes. Though unlike most of the oens I’ve seen where just one person becomes aware of it, while Crusheris the first the others also begin to take notice. The don’t remember everything, but they start picking up on it and figuring out that something’s up. Again, I appreciate the cast being written as competent and not stupid cause it’s very easy to do with this kind of plot. Not sure I at all understand Data’s explanation on how he figured out how to end the loop... but hey, it ended. So it was good. Nothing mind-blowing but very much enjoyable. Any time that Crusher gets prominent screentime I’m happy, but again I just appreciate the cast being intelligent. Also the Kelsey Grammer cameo at the end, Hell yes~! 3.5/5.

The First Duty: Okay Wesley, second guest star appearance. Let’s see how it goes. Which, haha... it’s not a happy episode for him. There’s been an accident at the Academy and while thankfully Wesley is alright aside from an injured arm, one of his classmates has died. Well… that’s sad. That n and of itself could fuel a story all its own. But as a hearing is held, it becomes clear that something more is going on. As it turns out, Wesley’s teammate died because the entire squadron not only performed an illegal flight procedure… but lied about it. First that it was an accident, then that the accident and his own demise was his own fault. Why? To save their own skins. Now to be fair it’s clear that they’re scared, but it doesn’t change the fact that they’re essentially lying/disgracing a dead person to save themselves. Even the kid’s own father gets convinced of this, which only adds to Wesley’s guilt. I actually felt really bad for Wesley and I kinda feel like Picard, upon confronting him, was… pretty harsh. Wesley’s actions were wrong, but again he was clearly scared and felt guilty for it. Thankfully he does ultimately do the right thing, accepting the consequences. Hopefully, Wesley can push through it and grow from it if he shows up again. My mom doesn’t like this episode I guess because of how it portrayed Wesley, but honestly? I like it for that exact reason. Welsey isn’t portrayed necessarily as bad, he’s reacting like… well… a scared nineteen-year-old. He made a major mistake, and he paid the price for it, though it certainly wasn’t the worst punishment that he could have received. While Picard was rather harsh when confronting him, it was the push that Wesley needed to do the right thing. I think that this was the kind of episode that Wesley needed, where he commits a huge screw-up and unlike when he was a regular, pays the consequences for it… it’s just a shame that they did it after he stopped being a regular. I can see why some may dislike this one because of Wesley’s portrayal, but I think it was good and was long overdue for the character without villainizing him. He’s intelligent and capable of greatness, but he’s got a lot to learn, especially after this. Let’s hope that he does. 3.5/5.

Cost of Living: It’s another Lwaxana episode folks… yay. Okay despite my complaints about her episodes, the last one’s issues I had was more due to the subject matter than the character. If anything, she was the best part of it. So maybe this time things will be better. So this time, Worf is having parenting problems with Troi trying to help him and Alexander make it work. Lwaxana is on the Enterprise as she’s getting married, to Troi’s exasperation and Picard’s utter relief, and ends up butting in. Oh and the ship malfunctions because it’s Star Trek. So… it was okay I guess? The Holodeck scene was just utterly bizzare and I’m still trying to wrap my brain around WTF just happened. To be honest, Troi is the best part of this episode. She’s trying to reasonable help Worf with his parenting issues, Alexander with his lack of discepline/responsibility, her mother marrying a guy she never met and bending agains the Betazoid traditions that she usually follows, and she’s clearly just fed up with everyone especially her mother. It makes her such a joy to watch, haha! Lwaxana was… alrigh. On the one hand, it ws not at all her place to butt into the whole Alexander situation especially since Troi was handling it. On the other hand, the episode does go more into how lonely Lwaxana is and make her manhunting/desire tog et married more sympathetic. Te previous episodes always played it mainly as a joke/a condition of her species at her age, but it never allowed her to actually delve into why she’s so desperate. How she’s fears rowing older and being all alone without someone to love her… and gosh I’ve absoluteley seen this before and it’s just sad. Consideirng that this came out the same year that Gene Roddenberry, majel Barret’s husband and of course as we know the franchise creator, has passed… I can only imagine how rough this had to be for the poor woman. But if she wad channeling that into her performance, she did a fantastic job. Also Lwaxana’s fiance? He was played by freakin’ Tony Jay. The man is a freakin’ legend the voice acting world (probably best known as Frollo in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by far his darkest performance yet probably his best) and it’s the first time I’ve seen him in a live aciton role. He plays a snobish asshole and obviousy the marriage falls through in the end, but he made the episode worth it! So yeah, I’m still not a big Lwaxana fan but they are trying to add more to her and overall it was fine. It’s not great, for example the Enterprise’s plot felt tacked on to fill in the runtime, the pacing was rouh, and the storylines were not at all balanced out well. But it was overall fine, though i think Half a Life did her better. Troi, some legit Lwaxana development, and getting an appearance by Tony Jay made it worth it XD 2/5.

The Perfect Mate: While preparing for a peace treaty, the Enterprise picks up two Ferengi, one of which messes with the cargo, and releases a young woman named Kamala, a mutant amongst her kind whose abilities let her become the perfect mate for any man, from suspended animation. She was meant to stay that way until the ceremony... and was meant to be a ‘gift’ to one of the sides. Yeah... that’s not at all messed up. Due to the Prime Directive, the crew can’t interfere... and we find out that there was a more complicated reason as to why Kamala was as she was. This is pretty much the TNG version of Elaan of Troyius from TOS. Kamala is completely different from Elaan, more composed and well-mannered while Elaan was more aggressive and upfront. Looking back I do feel I was too harsh in calling Elaan a brat considering the conditions she was under, but the episode certainly didn’t give he much sympathy from anyone (aside from Kirk) while they do better calling out the arrangement here. Then again it’s been months since I watched the episode so I may be remembering wrong. But it does ultimately end with Kamala entering an unhappy marriage, but she bonds with Picard and ends up acting as his perfect mate, so... hope that goes well. The whole empath/metamorph thing felt necessary as well, you didn’t need a reason to make men attracted to her for this episode to work. Which yes it only works on men, remember this is the 90’s folks. I’m kind of baffled as to why Troi wasn’t in this one considering we have another empath, that could have added a more interesting layer and justified that part. But I shall repeat what I said in Elaan when they put Kirk under that tear-induced love spell: you don’t need those elements to keep a plot spicy. The Ferengi we're also utterly pointless. While I feel that the subject is better done than in TOS and it felt more evenly paced... I’m still not a fan of it. It has more of the nuanced debate on the arranged marriage plot that I was annoyed that Elaan didn’t have... but I’m still pretty meh about it overall. it’s alright, but just that: alright. 2.5/5.

Okay folks, we’re five episodes away from finishing S5. So far... it’s only been alright. There’s been a couple of strong episodes, but overall it’s remained firmly in the average range. Maybe S4 hyped me up too much, IDK. I’m still having fun, but maybe I’m just starting to get fatigued from TNG. But we don’t have much more to go, and there’s still plenty of time for S6 to change my mind, so we’ll see how things go from here.

[punkrockpolitix]

Strap in for an Ugly Ride

by Mitch Maley — This week, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden did the most Joe Biden thing left to do in announcing that centrist NeoLiberal Senator Kamala Harris would be his running mate. The establishment left swooned and suburban liberals rejoiced, while the lunatic right clutched their collective pearls at such a “radical” choice. Meanwhile, the rest of us yawned as the stage was set for an absurd, bizarro world, alternative-reality election that will take place in the midst of the most unstable American society in modern history.

The chaos created by the 45th President of the United States has a way of wearing the reasonable mind rather thin. After all, who aside from the angry mobs of nativists does not long for a return to the normalcy of the early aughts when all we had to worry about was forever wars in the Middle East, an infinitely-expanding wealth gap, 50 million Americans without healthcare, and trade policies that had hollowed out the middle class. Sure, the children of white collar elites would continue to thrive (so long as they could avoid pill mills and heroin needles). Meanwhile, the offspring of former factory workers who couldn't afford an increasingly cost-prohibitive college education would toil in Amazon warehouses with few benefits and no shot at the kind of modest defined-benefit pensions that had allowed their parents to enjoy some modicum of prosperity in their twilight years and increasingly gloomier chances of even enjoying the social security payments that have kept millions more from abject poverty once their working days were behind them, but that was certainly a little easier to swallow than 2020 has thus far been.

Sure, automation had already begun eating away at more jobs than even offshoring had, we'd done nothing to address the climate crisis beyond symbolic, feel-good policies that avoided pissing off the wrong special interests, and the only amber waves of economic growth in the past 30 years had been driven by engineered bubbles. So what? Wall Street was happy (the stock market tripled under Obama) even if the big party was being floated by artificially-cheap credit, and besides, we could all go to sleep each night relatively certain that we wouldn't face a zombie apocalypse type situation on any given morning which is more than you can say about our current situation.

But let's not forget where things had gotten by 2016 when populist spasms on both sides of the ideological spectrum saw our traditional two party-driven political process totally upended. Harnessing the power of the internet had been largely responsible for President Obama successfully splintering the Democratic establishment in 2008, but let's not over-romanticize the grass or the roots. Obama was the product of an inter-party schism that saw a large number of career Dems break from the Clinton dynasty and its requirement for complete fealty to the party's grudge-bearing first family.

Obama was not an anomaly. He was Wall Street approved, Bilderberg-blessed and mainstream media anointed because, regardless of what others projected upon him, he was a typical center-right Dem who wouldn't rock any of those boats. Yes, the right labeled him a dangerously-radical liberal, but those who paid attention in the 2008 primary will recall that the actual semi-progressive candidate, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, had to be actively cropped out of the debates in order for that narrative to take hold. After all, it wouldn't do to have Kucinich onstage talking about Medicare for All and explaining how to get out of Iraq tomorrow any more than it would do for Ron Paul to be onstage in Republican debates calling out the NeoCon likes of Mitt Romney and John McCain.

Under Obama, the war machine kept rolling, taxes remained at historic lows, deportations skyrocketed and we expanded warrantless surveillance and other Big Brother police state tactics, including sending "surplus" tanks and other military armament to your local police forces. In other words, most of the things liberals hated most about the Bush era continued only they didn't hate them as much anymore. That said, institutional norms remained in place, our allies were quite happy and Americans, or at least those who weren't driven mad by the thought of someone with brown skin holding the highest public office, could hold their heads high knowing that they had an intelligent and articulate statesman at the helm who wouldn't embarrass them with Bush's tangled English or Clinton's infidelities. He was a family man who loved his wife and children and treated even his most vile-mouthed opponents with the courtesies of polite society. Yes, it's easy to grow nostalgic for such normalcy in the age of Trump.

However, years of bailing out Wall Street banksters who'd crashed the economy, allowing hedge fund managers to pay lower tax rates than teachers and failed companies to hand out huge bonuses often paid for by the taxpayers themselves took its toll. Millions of Americans who'd seen their homes foreclosed upon were scolded for buying into the worthless products being pushed by those same banksters—reverse mortgages, sub-prime interest-only loans, etc.—and lectured about "personal responsibility" and the "moral hazard" of bailing them out, even as those same fat cats who'd been rescued themselves swooped in to buy up all of those empty houses for cheaply-borrowed pennies on the dollars in order to make money hand over fist renting them back to the creditless schmoes who'd been kicked to the curb. It turns out a lot of people were fed up.

Enter Bernie Sanders and Donald J. Trump, two men, as different as can be, who nonetheless each managed to harness enough of the sometimes dangerous power of populist anger to finally upset the apple cart that had been two-party politics. While their platforms were radically different, the essential nature of their messaging was the same: you're getting screwed and have been for a long time. Their message was particularly well-received by working-class whites in formerly industrial states who'd been ignored by both parties for decades, beyond rhetoric from the right about it being the fault of illegal immigrants and rhetoric from the left about educational programs that would retrain the working class for the jobs of tomorrow. Regardless of whether they believed in or even understood the solutions either candidate was offering didn't matter so much as someone at last acknowledging that the reality they'd been experiencing actually existed.

The Clinton machine, with the DNC's foot on the scale and the MSM distorting perception, was able to (barely) keep Sanders at bay. Meanwhile, the GOP may have been able to do the same had it not been for the sheer giddiness of legacy media outlets like WAPO, the New York Times, MSNBC and CNN for what they saw as the death of the modern Republican party should it actually nominate a crass, foul-mouthed blowhard of a third-rate reality TV star (who'd until recently been a Democrat) for President. Make no mistake, Clinton's people desperately wanted to take on Trump, believing it amounted to not only an easy win, but a path toward retaking Congress, despite having been gerrymandered out of contention (for those of you who came to politics late, the GOP's electoral success in 2010, saw them take over a majority of state legislatures just ahead of the once-every-decade reapportionment that follows a census, allowing the party to gerrymander Congressional districts to such a degree that Democrats could not gain ground, despite regularly receiving millions more total Congressional votes than Republicans each cycle).

Everyone inside the beltway was caught sleeping in 2016. The Republican establishment never saw Trump coming and didn't know what to do with him when he arrived. Remember how sad Jeb Bush seemed in the debates? Remember how ineffective Marco Rubio was when he tried to sink to Trump's name calling? By the same token, the Democrats were so tone-deaf as to who Bernie was appealing to (far more aging New Dealers and working-class labor Democrats than the teen radicals they imagined) that they actually thought making trans-bathroom laws a wedge issue would drive turnout for their side. Imagine living in Michigan and working the counter at a Dollar General because the stamping factory you used to work at moved to Mexico, wondering whether your kid's rehab from Oxycodone would finally stick this time while being told that the real fight to be won was about where the gender fluid would take a leak.

That's not to say that trans rights aren't a worthy issue, so much as to point out how out of touch you would have had to have been to think it was a winning one in that moment of time. And if you think there was something more altruistic behind it, ask yourself how much energy has been expanded by the party on the same subject since. Like abortion-related ballot referendums used by Republicans to drive evangelicals to the polls, out-of-touch Beltway Dems thought that identity politics was the path to uniting the left-wing of their party and getting the Bernie crowd to turnout for Hillary, even after the DNC got caught smoothing her path to victory. After all, the donor class Dems never mind looking woke, especially if it prevents them from having to get behind things like a living minimum wage that might actually mean less coins falling into their coffers. And that my friends is what created the relatively small yet curious "I voted for Bernie in the primary and Trump in the general" demographic, not sexism, spite or misogyny.

Fast-forward to 2020 and Bernie is finally poised to emerge as the resistance candidate. Despite the MSM again selling alternative facts that kept explaining away his success, his path to the nomination looked inevitable until the Democratic establishment again intervened, this time with Obama in the role of Clintonesque king maker, convincing moderate establishment favorites Pete Buttiegeg and Amy Klobuchar to take one for the team ahead of Super Tuesday so that a path could be cleared for a sputtering Biden campaign to claim the nomination. For his part, Biden's 40-year record is as right of center as a Democrat can be without going full Joe Lieberman, so the remaining question was how not to repeat 2016 in alienating so much of the left-wing as to ensure Trump another four years.

Then, like a gift from the political gods, Trump began shooting himself in the foot so frequently in his responses to the pandemic and civil unrest that his approval rating—which has never even hit 50 percent even once during his presidency (not surprising considering he won the White House with a smaller share of the vote than either Romney or John Kerry managed in losing)—sunk to a pathetic 35 percent, convincing the NeoLiberal bosses that it was no longer necessary to kiss any rings on the far left. Bernie, Elizabeth Warren and even Tulsi Gabbard and AOC had already bent a knee to Uncle Joe, imploring their supporters to vote blue no matter who, so why not instead go after the moderate Republicans and Bush-era Never Trumpers whose ideology make the Democratic donor class feel much more comfortable than the progressive left’s anyway?

Enter Kamala Harris, who, to the Democratic donor class at least, signals nothing less than a female Barack Obama. And they’re not exactly wrong in that she’s a highly-articulate, ideologically-flexible politician capable of putting a friendly, progressive veneer on the modern NeoLiberal platform. That’s probably why the left-leaning corporate media outlets tried so hard to give her a push in the primary, even though voters simply didn’t find her to be a compelling candidate. Despite a healthy fundraising machine and the focused attention of MSNBC and CNN, Harris didn’t even make it to Iowa, dropping out ahead of what surely would have been a bottom tier finish in her home state of California. In that sense, it’s hard to see what she brings to the ticket in terms of electoral success. Fortunately, she won’t have to deliver her home state, but while much has been made of the fact that she’s the first woman of color to be on a major party ticket, it’s worth noting that there’s little to suggest she’ll help turn out the African American vote as most polls had her fourth of fifth even among black voters, who preferred Biden, Warren and even Sanders over the Senator from California.

As long as we’re on the subject of Harris’s race, however, it’s worth noting that the we're-not-racist right immediately went down the rabbit hole with birther conspiracies disgustingly-similar to those used against Obama that, within moments of the announcement, were used to question her eligibility to ascend to the presidency and fear monger that it was all a plan to install Nancy Pelosi when an aging Biden stepped down soon after being elected. Harris was born in the United States and, furthermore, born to two U.S. citizens. Her eligibility shouldn’t be in question to anyone who’s taken a junior high civics class, yet from what we’ve seen already, I’m sure it won’t be long until someone asks to see her birth certificate.

That said, despite the RNC's painting Harris as the most radical choice possible, her politics are no more progressive than Biden's, as evidenced by the two articles in the Wall Street Journal about Wall Street “breathing a sigh of relief” at her selection. In fact, one of the audition rounds for the veepstakes included hosting a Biden fundraiser and insiders have suggested that it was deep-pocketed Obama donors and not Uncle Joe himself who put her over the top. In Harris, the NeoLiberal establishment has all but cordoned off the progressive wing of the party, perhaps for a decade to come. Like Obama, she allows them to market a progressive package to make affluent suburban liberals feel good without making Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Tech, or the military industrial complex the least bit nervous. In fact, in a communication to investors, Goldman Sachs essentially said that even if it means the Trump tax cuts go away, the stability and predictability of a Biden administration would be at least as good for the 1 percent's bottom line.

To hear the Trump campaign tell it, however, Biden's selection of Harris is nothing less than a signal that, in his cognitive decline, Sleepy Joe has acquiesced to becoming nothing more than a puppet for far left radicals like Bernie, AOC and the rest of The Squad. In their narrative, if elected, he’d be doing the bidding of Antifa, while doing away with everything from God and religion to guns and even the suburbs, and the dangerously radical Harris is only further proof of that. In one of their weirdest turns yet, the Trump campaign is literally showing clips of what America has become under Trump himself and warning that this is what will happen if Biden is elected and only by reelecting the man that brought it to you in the first place and has failed to end it by uniting the country (or even trying) can you stop our present from becoming our future. When taken literally, it is a message that says the world I brought you is the world my opponent will bring you and the only way you can stop that from happening is by keeping the guy who brought it to you! If that doesn't make sense, congratulations, you're not an imbecile.

However, if you buy the narrative that the radical left has taken over the Democratic Party then I'm sorry to report that such may not be the case. Biden-Harris is literally the most Law & Order ticket I can imagine either party fielding. It’s the guy who brought us the Crime Bill, supported the private prison industrial complex and paved a smooth road for Clarence Thomas paired with the AG who wanted to jail young single mothers whose kids missed too much school, blocked access to DNA evidence of the wrongfully convicted, supported marijuana criminalization and pretty much accumulated the least progressive record any prosecutor could ever hope for. 

So no, Harris's pick wasn't to appease the progressive left. It was a middle finger to them, just like the initial convention lineup which didn't even feature AOC or Andrew Yang, the two stars of that set. Meanwhile, NeoCon warmonger John “life starts at the first heartbeat” Kasich is in primetime, along with Jeb Bush acolyte Anna Navarro. AOC finally got space for a 60-second pre-recorded (read vetted) afternoon spot, and the Yang Gang was able to kick and scream until their candidate was given a low-billing slot as well. In other words, if you don’t see that the progressive left is not only not running the show at the DNC but is all but powerless in the party’s politics, you’re simply not paying attention.

Why are NeoLiberals more interested in Bush-era Republicans than the media rock stars on the left who seemingly hold the future votes of the party in their hands? Simple, there's less of a difference in platforms, which means unlike working with the left, they don't really have to give anything up to court NeoCons. That’s because the age of Trump has seen those Republicans give up on social issues they never actually cared that much about from gay marriage to abortion in exchange for a seat at the table on the issues they do—things like energy policy, deregulation, aggressive foreign policy and, above all, jockeying their snoots into the trough of money that the winning team gets to eat from.

Excited because a Black Lives Matter protester is going to Congress? Slow down, Ace, as the hallowed halls are also about to get their first QAnon member. We've reached peak lunacy under Trump, this much is true, but the wheel has spun back to same old song and dance, remixed for 2020. The American empire is falling apart and one side is offering four more years of the lunatic king, while the other is betting that such a thought will scare voters enough to accept the same brand of politics that brought us that President in the first place. All that remains to be seen in whether Dems finally got the calculus correct. Are progressives so infuriated by life under Trump that they'll vote blue no matter who, or have they picked off enough white suburban Republican women for it not to even matter? We'll find out, though likely not until weeks after November 2, assuming we aren't fighting each other in the streets by then.

Dennis “Mitch” Maley has been a journalist for more than two decades. A former Army Captain, he has a degree in government from Shippensburg University and is the author of several books, which can be found here. 

[maswartz]

IN THE PROGRESSIVE COLLEGE TOWN where I live, one sees a lot of “Bernie” bumper stickers on a lot of Subarus. Probably these are remnants of 2016, when the Independent from Vermont masqueraded as a Democrat, dividing the party and hobbling Hillary Clinton’s campaign just enough to fuck up the final tally. Although I held with HRC then as now, I don’t begrudge anyone who supported Bernie Sanders in the primaries four years ago, when we first became acquainted with the ugly font and awful shade of blue on his campaign merch. But to support him today, after Trump, after Mueller, is akin to insisting, on Christmas 2019, that despite ample evidence to the contrary, Michael Jackson is innocent, because you really dig Off the Wall.

“Don’t they know?” I scream when I see these Bernie stickers. “Don’t they realize who he really is?” Apparently not. But then, to them, and to most on what Sean Hannity might call the “radical left,” Bernie is not a person as much as an ideal: A sort of liberal Santa Claus who will come down our collective chimney to deliver free healthcare and free college, and, with the aid of his ineffable North Pole magic, break up the banks, slay the patriarchy, eliminate racism, end income inequality, and tax corporations into insolvency—all while raising the minimum wage for his workshop elves. How he plans to actually accomplish any of this he only hints at—Bernie rarely deigns to answer process questions and usually gets grouchy when pressed for details—but it all sounds so wonderful we want to believe, just as we every year insist that yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, the flesh-and-blood Bernie Sanders, if elected, would not have the requisite power to fulfill his lofty promises—any more than the tipsy Macy’s Santa will leave the mall on a sleigh driven by flying reindeer. Bernie is a real person, and he is deeply, perhaps fatally, flawed. He would be a horrible candidate in the general election—like, McGovern-in-’72-level bad—and, more urgently, his nomination would ensure that, whoever won, the White House remained in Russian hands.

The Bernie extolled by the bros is a myth, just like the Trump that MAGA adores—just like Neverland, and just like Santa Claus. We need to face some cold, hard truths, before Sanders scolds and finger-wags his way to a second term for Donald Trump. We cannot permit this egomaniacal fraud to spoil yet another election.

Bernie is a socialist—but of the Union of Soviet Socialists variety.

Hey, there’s a reason Santa Claus wears red!

Bernie is a self-styled “socialist” who has bought, hook line and sinker, the Stalinist propaganda about Marxism and the glories of the Soviet Union. This was understandable if you were Dalton Trumbo in 1947. After all, the governing philosophy of communism is “let’s share everything so there is no want,” which is kind of appealing, especially next to the “fuck you, pay me” mantra of unvarnished Trump-variety capitalism. Seven-plus decades later, alas, the naïveté borders on delusional.

From the Young Peoples Socialist League to his membership in the Liberty Union Party, which sought to nationalize (and not just “break up”) the banks, to his time at the Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim, which extolled Stalin—who slaughtered more people than Hitler—as “Sun of the Nations,” to his hanging a Soviet flag in his Burlington mayoral office, Soviet boosterism is the thruline of Bernie's career.

Bernie took his wife to the Soviet Union for their honeymoon, as one does. For years, he extolled the virtues of the USSR. Rather than grok that it’s all KGB-fed propaganda and lies, he’s been a staunch Bolshevik apologist for his entire adult life.

I mean, the guy has a dacha, ffs.

Look, our healthcare system is flawed. I’d love some sort of universal coverage like they have in every other developed country. But the best person to promote the de facto nationalization of the healthcare system is not a Soviet apologist who once wanted to nationalize the banks, too.

Bernie is unpopular with Black voters.

To be fair, Sanders (likely) really does want equality and all those nice things he talks about. Good for him. The problem is that his vision of “socialist” utopia is absolutist and focuses too much on the (white, male) working class that he, like his beloved Marx, idolizes and idealizes.

Despite some high-profile Black supporters, Bernie remains unpopular with Black voters, particularly Black women. This, and not “the rigged DNC,” is why HRC kicked his ass in the primaries. Could it be that Black voters have made Bernie as a BS artist? Those are his initials, after all.

The failure of the United States to properly examine and make amends for slavery contributes mightily to the country’s enduring racism, on which MAGA feeds. Not to even discuss reparations is madness. Unsurprisingly, Bernie does not understand this:

Marcus H. Johnson@marcushjohnson

Bernie Sanders thinks reparations is "just writing a check" instead of a redress for state sanctioned terrorism, violence, and being shut out of the economic, political, and legal systems for 250+ years. How is reparations "just writing a check," and free college not?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar

Bernie Sanders on reparations on The View: "I think that right now our job is to address the crises facing the American people in our communities, and I think there are better ways to do that than just writing out a check." https://t.co/FXso34iSbs

March 1st 2019

470 Retweets1,065 Likes

To win the resounding victory necessary to defeat Trump and the Russian hackers threatening to sabotage yet another election, overwhelming African-American voter turnout is essential. Black voters are more likely to turn out in big numbers for Joe Biden—especially if he runs with Kamala Harris, as we K-Hivers hope—than yet another elderly New Yorker who makes pie-in-the-sky promises he can’t possibly keep.

Bernie is lazy.

Sanders spent the early part of his career flitting between low-paying odd jobs:

He bounced around for a few years, working stints in New York as an aide at a psychiatric hospital and teaching preschoolers for Head Start, and in Vermont researching property taxation for the Vermont Department of Taxes and registering people for food stamps for a nonprofit called the Bread and Law Task Force.

Then as now, he was more given to talking the talk than walking the walk. In 1970, the 30-year-old Liberty Union Party socialist was kicked out of a Vermont commune for not doing his share of the work. His days there were instead spent in “endless political discussion.”

Sanders’ idle chatter did not endear him with some of the commune’s residents, who did the backbreaking labor of running the place. [Kate] Daloz writes [in her history of the commune] that one resident, Craig, “resented feeling like he had to pull others out of Bernie’s orbit if any work was going to get accomplished that day.” Sanders was eventually asked to leave. 

Eventually, Bernie found a career that would allow him to talk a big game but accomplish precious little: politics. For the decades he’s been in Congress, his record is pretty scant. Seven bills in 28 years, including two that name post offices, is nothing to write home about (unless you’re writing home to one of those post offices)—although Sanders has been a quiet champion of gun rights for most of his Congressional career, as well as a dependable “nay” vote on Russian sanctions, so I guess there’s that.

But hey, I’m sure a guy who has avoided labor as assiduously as possible for 78 years will magically turn into a workaholic as an octogenarian. That heart attack no doubt jump-started his engines. Speaking of which…

Bernie is old, and he just had a heart attack.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t actually a heart attack. Maybe it was just a life-threatening cardiac issue that required emergency surgery. We don’t know, because Sanders has not yet released his medical report. But he has promised to do so, just as he promised to release his taxes and then waited a million years to make good. Will he bring the receipts before next week, as he said he would?

The Speaker's Basilisk⚖️@PelosiLegatus

Why hasn’t @BernieSanders released his medical records yet? He just has a heart attack three months ago, which he lied about. What is he hiding from the American people? Why is the press so afraid to dig into his dishonesty?

December 23rd 2019

173 Retweets444 Likes

Even if his medical report checks out, I mean…there’s ageism, and then there are actuarial tables. A President Sanders would turn eighty in 2021, his first year in office. That would make him the oldest first-term president by a significant margin. He can’t live forever; in that way, he’s not like Santa Claus.

Bernie is a misogynist.

That Bernie Sanders is some sort of radical feminist, a paradigm for how men should be in the post-Third-Wave world, is almost as ridiculous as his stubborn refusal to comb his hair.

Before he launched his political career, he was a deadbeat dad. Remember, Bernie was a graduate of the prestigious University of Chicago, in an era when college degrees were relatively rare. Instead of putting food on the table, he was running quixotic political campaigns as the standard-bearer of a barely functional party. As Spandan Chakrabarti writes:

In 1971, Vermont was debating a tenant’s rights bill. One of the testimonials to Vermont’s State Senate Judiciary Committee came from one Susan Mott of Burlington, who said the legislation did not go far enough in prohibiting discrimination against single mothers and recipients of welfare benefits. Mott had one child and was on welfare. That one child…was Levi Sanders, Bernie Sanders’ son. Which begs the question, why did Bernie Sanders’ (former?) girlfriend and his son have to be on welfare? Where was the University of Chicago graduate’s considerable marketable skills? What was 5-year-old Levi’s father doing that he couldn't afford to support his own child? It turns out he was too busy coming in third with single digit votes.

To be fair, Bernie did bring home a little bit of bacon writing stuff like this:

A man goes home and masturbates [to] his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.

A woman enjoys intercourse with her man—as she fantasizes [about] being raped by 3 men simultaneously.

Even if those lines were intended as a provocative rhetorical flourish to be shot down later in the essay, I mean…what feminist ally would write something like that?

And then there’s the more recent sexual harassment issues that seem to be pervasive in his campaign offices. He missed one of the Russian sanction votes because he was busy dealing with it:

The only one to miss the vote was Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. He was meeting with women who had accused his 2016 presidential campaign of sexual misconduct, his spokesman, Josh Miller-Lewis, told CNBC.

As if to confirm his misogynist bona fides, Sanders this month endorsed the candidacy of Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur, no feminist ally—before the bad optics forced him to reverse course:

“As I said yesterday, Cenk has been a longtime fighter against the corrupt forces in our politics and he’s inspired people all across the country,” the Vermont senator said. “However, our movement is bigger than any one person. I hear my grassroots supporters who were frustrated and understand their concerns. Cenk today said he is rejecting all endorsements for his campaign, and I retract my endorsement.”

That Cenk is running for the California seat vacated by rising star Katie Hill, a victim of criminal revenge porn who was shamed into stepping down, makes the gaffe even worse.

Bernie is not a Democrat.

Of all the idiotic narratives spewed by the “Bernie bros” about 2016, the most asinine was that the process had to be rigged because the DNC clearly preferred Hillary Clinton to Bernie Sanders. Um…why would it not? Just as a New York Yankees fan club would want its leader to be a ride-or-die Yankee fan rather than a waffler who rooted for either the Bronx Bombers or the Red Sox depending on which was doing better that year, so the Democratic National Committee wants an actual Democrat to be its nominee. Duh.

And this was not any nominee. HRC was practically funding the operation herself, to help with the down-ballot races Bernie could give a shit about. Anyone can scold the country about big banks and wage inequality, but to actually, you know, govern requires working well with other people, a skill that seems to have eluded Sanders for the last 30 years.

Alas, the incorrigible Senator has learned nothing from 2016. He’s still playing the hackneyed “rabble-rousing outsider” card:

The Hill@thehill

Sen. @BernieSanders: "We are going to take on the Democratic establishment."

December 22nd 2019

426 Retweets1,930 Likes

The election of 2020 is, or should be, a referendum on Trump. It’s not about taking on the Democrats. That sort of internecine divisiveness is exactly what Putin wants. Which makes perfect sense when we consider that…

Bernie is (at a minimum) a Useful Idiot for Putin.

The bots go on the offensive whenever I tweet that Bernie is a Useful Idiot for Russia. But he is Useful, in that he operates as a divisive force in the Democratic Party, which aids Putin. And he’s certainly an Idiot, in that he doesn't realize the damage he’s done. But does he really not know?

The Mueller Report makes it clear that Russian IC was helping the Sanders campaign. Either Bernie didn’t realize this, and is an idiot, or he did realize it and played along, and is a traitor. Either way, the guy who hired former Paul Manafort chum Tad Devine to run his campaign cannot be trusted with standing up to Putin and the powerful forces of transnational organized crime, no matter how passionate his anti-Wall Street screeds.

(Sidenote: Tad Devine is now peddling his Kremlin-y wares for Andrew Yang, which perhaps explains Yang’s recent remark that he is open to granting Donald Trump a pardon. This, needless to say, is disqualifying).

Put it this way: Are we sure that a Nominee Sanders—an almost-eighty-year-old who just had a heart attack—would not pick the Russophile cult member Tulsi Gabbard as his running mate? The “anti-anti-Trump Left,” as Jonathan Chait calls it, is alive and well, sharing, “in addition to enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders, [a] deep skepticism of the Democratic Party’s mobilization against the president.” So: traitors, basically. Would not Sanders, if given the chance, throw meat to this rabid fan base, if only to generate more adulation? Do we really trust the judgment of the guy who can’t ensure that his own campaign headquarters is not a hostile work environment?

Bernie still, years after the fact, cannot understand that he contributed to HRC’s defeat—just as he can’t see that his ideas about the Soviet Union and communism have been debunked. He doesn’t have it in him to realize, much less admit, he was wrong. And why should he? As long as well-meaning people—especially young people; especially young women; especially pretty young women—keep “feeling the Bern,” he will continue to happily soak up the attention, like the insufferable narcissist he is. Why Millennials support the guy instead of OK-Boomering him to oblivion is a head-scratcher. Maybe it’s because he was born two months before Pearl Harbor and is therefore older than the Boomers?

Bernie Sanders is the Trump of the Left. Repeat: Bernie Sanders is the Trump of the Left. He’s an egomaniac who believes his own hype, like Trump. And like Trump, Bernie is selling snake oil; we just happen to like his brand of snake oil. He’s a bad mall Santa, promising everyone a pony, when all he can deliver is a lump of coal. And make no mistake: far from assuring a worker’s paradise, his nomination would bring about the end of the republic.

It’s not a “revolution.” It’s a con job. And it’s got the full support of the Russians.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

the correlation between ‘lock her up’ chants and criminal behavior continues to strengthen

If you really can’t absorb any more of Trump’s Ukrainian caper, the broadest points to know about recent developments are probably: 

There were quite a few legally inadvisable connections between Trump and Ukraine before he tried to shake down President Zelensky. 

These contacts included several people who were just arrested on campaign finance violations, two of whom were supposedly part of Trump’s legal team. 

It’s looking more and more likely that former NYC mayor and current CNN comic relief character Rudy Giuliani is going down.

I’m not going to predict which aspects of these developments are going to be important in the next few weeks, but there are enough connections to the impeachment investigation that it’s probably worth being able to follow the basics.

The central non-American figure is a Ukrainian “legitimate businessman” named Dmitry Firtash. Imagine if Tony Soprano was a Koch brother in hock with the Kremlin. When Paul Manafort’s old boss Viktor Yanukovych was the president of Ukraine, Firtash used his position at a Russian gas company to funnel money to pro-Russian politicians like Yanukovych. After Yanukovych fell, Firtash fled Ukraine to Vienna. The US has been trying to have him sent here for the past few years because *waves hands* lots of crimes.

These guys who were arrested earlier this month are closely connected with Firtash and Giuliani. Two of them were arrested at an airport, where they had one-way tickets to Vienna. They were busted for running a cartoonishly sketchy super PAC which funneled inappropriate contributions to a number of Republican politicians. A lot of that money came from the American oligarchs you expect to see pumping money into conservative campaigns – but remember, Firtash’s specialty is laundering rubles for pro-Kremlin politicians outside of Russia. One of them helpfully shared photos of himself with many of these new contacts on social media. This might be a rich dude doing a dumb thing for the ‘gram, though it would also be a perfectly good method of communication if, say, your boss was overseas and he wanted to know who might be open to bribes, and you couldn’t report directly him because he was almost certainly under surveillance. For example. (“Dmitri, if you’re listening...”)

These guys, again, are doing this shady stuff with Firtash while they are also on Donald Trump’s legal team. This is a distinction they share with the former mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani is right in the middle of the Ukrainian shakedown that’s getting Individual-1 impeached, and had been under both criminal and counterintelligence investigations for months when he – totally coincidentally, I’m sure – made plans to join his buddies on that trip to Vienna. He was part of the cover-up of Trump’s payoffs to his exes. He’s also deep into the misconduct in the FBI’s New York field office during the 2016 election. There’s more, but you get the idea.

Giuliani acts like just another Trump-adjacent crook. If that’s how you think of him, he deserves it. Unlike most other Trump-adjacent crooks, though, it is at least explicable why a lot of people got the wrong idea about him. Before being cast as Donald Trump’s TV “lawyer,” he was a shady businessman and Republican candidate for president in his own right. Before that, he was the mayor of New York City. And before that, he was the United States attorney at SDNY (that’s the chief federal prosecutor in Manhattan). Before that … he was presumably still a racist, authoritarian asshole, but in ways that are less relevant to the issue at hand.

Whether or not he was substantively good at those jobs, he had a knack for convincing politically moderate white people he was good at them. He ran the SDNY when the feds were rolling up the Italian mafia, and he was savvy about using arrests for PR. He happened to be the mayor in the 1990s as violent crime rates were falling all over the US, so people really did experience the city getting a lot safer during his term. The EPA probably deserved more credit than Rudy, but like, when you notice there are a lot fewer murders in your neighborhood, it’s natural to feel good about that and not care too much about why it’s happening. And, although he reverted to form soon afterward, he really did reassure the public in the hours and days after the 9/11 attacks. Which, yes, was literally his job, but the impression a person makes during a traumatic event can be hard to shake.

This doesn’t excuse what he’s up to now. If anything, it makes him look worse, since a former US attorney doesn’t have Junior’s defense of being too stupid to be a criminal. And it’s not to depict him as a tragic hero, because fuck him. We get our news from people, many of them New Yorkers, who tend to have filters and biases, and acknowledging those filters can give us a clearer picture of the information they give us. A lot of them have been genuinely thrown by Giuliani’s behavior, and not just because of the unearned generic white man credibility they’ve projected onto the more conventional Vichy Republicans. 

Weirdly, Giuliani’s reputation might actually be part of why this story is sticking when so many haven’t. Trump being a crook is dog bites man. America’s Mayor turning out to be Saul Goodman? That’s entertainment.

It’s probably not totally irrelevant that Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign fell apart right around the time one of the Democratic contenders memorably savaged him for only ever wanting to say “a noun, a verb, and 9/11.” That was the senior senator from the great state of Delaware, a kindly-looking gentleman named Joe Biden. Biden’s anti-corruption work in Ukraine, unsurprisingly, messed things up for Firtash. That probably explains why Biden was the first of the 2020 Democrats to be targeted like this, but he won’t be the last. So next time you catch some jackass in your Facebook feed rambling on about “Kamala is a cop” or making fun of Elizabeth Warren’s Native American grandmother, just remember, that’s getting pushed by this band of geniuses. They don’t need your help.

[creepingsharia]

A Month of Islam in America: April 2019

April was a busy month. While the media was focused on their multi-year collusion with Democrats - a treasonous fraud perpetrated on the American people - Muslims were busy being Muslims.

After they took over the House in the 2018 elections, Democrats stopped producing the House Homeland Security monthly report on terror, aka the Terror Threat Snapshot, so most people, politicians included, are unaware of the ongoing threat.

This is our version with a focus on Islamization in the U.S. that is much broader than just terror (jihad). It's only what we had time to aggregate.

Click any hyperlink below to read the full story, then share to your social media sites using the buttons on the bottom of each post.  Note: The sharia police at Wordpress did not want you to see this information so original links will not work until we have time to update them all.

Use the links in parenthesis or search the headline in any non-Google search engine.

Future generations will thank you!

April 2019

Jihad & Terror

Maryland: Muslim who harbored hatred for “disbelievers” planned to drive U-haul truck into crowds at National Harbor (DOJ)

Federal prosecutors say a man inspired by the Islamic State group stole a U-Haul truck with plans to drive it into a crowd at National Harbor, the popular dining and entertainment hang out just outside of Washington, D.C. 'For two years,

Rondell Henry, 28, has harbored ‘hatred’ (in his words) for ‘disbelievers’ who do not practice the Muslim faith.'

Montana: Albanian Muslim immigrant who discussed US attack arrested at gun range (NBC)

Fabjan Alameti, 21, an Albanian national who talked about joining ISIS and attacking random people to avenge a shooting at a New Zealand mosque was arrested at a gun range in Montana, authorities said Thursday.

Maryland: Muslim arrested after using car to strike and injure woman; kill woman in Virginia (MCP Press Release)

The Montgomery County Department of Police – 5th and 6th District Investigative Sections, have charged Muhammad Taha, age 29, of the 23300 block of Observation Drive in Clarksburg, with crimes related to two incidents occurring in Germantown and Gaithersburg. The same individual was arrested in Prince William County, Virginia, and charged with 2nd Degree Murder, Felony Hit & Run, and other charges for events that occurred on March 24, 2019, in the Manassas area.

California: Muslim arrested in planned attack on Santa Monica Pier, Long Beach rally as “retribution” for mosque attack (ABC)

Mark Steven Domingo, 26, was taken into custody Friday on domestic terrorism charges.

Domingo expressed “support for violent Jihad and an aspiration to conduct an attack in the Los Angeles area.” As part of the plot, Domingo allegedly purchased several hundred nails to be used as shrapnel inside the IED. “Domingo said he specifically bought three-inch nails because they would be long enough to penetrate the human body and puncture internal organs,” U.S. Attorney Nicola Hanna said.

Michigan: Dearborn Muslim charged with receiving terror training from ISIS (DOJ)

Islamic State fighters provided military-style training to a machine-gun toting Dearborn man captured on a Syrian battlefield last summer, prosecutors said Wednesday. Prosecutors leveled the allegations in a new indictment against

Ibraheem Musaibli, 28, who was brought back to Metro Detroit last year and charged with conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

Michigan: Muslim terrorist tells judge ‘still has jihad in his heart, regrets he didn’t kill cop, kill more people’; gets life sentence (WXYZ)

Fifty-one-year old Amor Ftouhi will spend the rest of his life in prison. Federal Judge Matthew Leitman imposed the sentence in Flint after hearing Ftouhi say he regrets he didn’t kill the cop, regrets he didn’t kill people, and regrets he couldn’t get a machine gun.

He told the judge he still had Jihad in his heart and Jihad in his blood.

Texas: Muslim teen pleads guilty to plotting mass shooting jihad at Frisco mall (DOJ)

A state judge sentenced Matin Azizi-Yarand to 20 years in prison Monday for solicitation of capital murder and making a terroristic threat, state and federal prosecutors announced. The 18-year-old is eligible for parole after serving 10 years.

Azizi-Yarand was arrested last May for plotting to shoot civilians and police at a Frisco mall in a rampage authorities said he was timing to coincide with Ramadan

Wisconsin: Muslim pleads guilty, faces 20 years in prison for attempt to join ISIS (DOJ)

Federal prosecutors said Yosvany Padilla-Conde, a Cuban national, agreed to assist Jason Ludke in an attempt to join ISIS by traveling from Wisconsin through Mexico to Syria and Iraq in order to work under ISIS’ direction and control.

New York: Muslim Sentenced to 20 Years Prison for Attempting and Conspiring to Provide Material Support to ISIS (DOJ)

Adam Raishani, aka “Saddam Mohamed Raishani,” 32, of the Bronx, New York, was sentenced to 20 years in prison to be followed by 20 years of supervised release for attempting to provide and conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Illinois: Bosnian refugee woman pleads guilty to funding fellow Muslim who died waging jihad in Syria (DOJ)

An Illinois woman on Thursday pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists for her role in funding a St. Louis County man who fought and died in Syria.

Mediha Medy Salkicevic, 38, of Schiller Park, Illinois, agreed with prosecutors’ claims that she sent money via PayPal to co-defendant Ramiz Hodzic, who then used the money to buy supplies that he sent to Syria. Salkicevic could face up to 15 years in prison at her sentencing in June

Missouri: Muslim Refugee Pleads Guilty to Providing Material Support to Terrorists (DOJ)

Armin Harcevic, 41, pled guilty today to an indictment in this case that charged him with one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and one count of providing material support to terrorists.

Missouri: (Another) Muslim Refugee Pleads Guilty to Providing Material Support to Terrorists (DOJ)

Ramiz Zijad (aka Jihad) Hodzic, 44, of St. Louis County, Missouri, pleaded guilty today to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and one count of providing material support to terrorists.

Wisconsin: Muslim woman pleads guilty to providing support to ISIS (DOJ)

Waheba Dais posted videos with instructions for making explosive vests and bombs — and exchanged information with other suspected ISIS sympathizers on how to make poison.

More Jihad in April

California man threatens to kill First Baptist Dallas pastor ‘in the name of Allah’ (Dallas News)

South Carolina: “Submit to God thru Islam” and “Muhammed is his prophet” spray painted on church on Palm Sunday (Charlotte Observer)

Last Two Muslim Terrorists Involved in Kidnapping and Beheading American Journalist Daniel Pearl Arrested in Pakistan (NY Times)

New York: Muslim Limo Company Operator Indicted in Crash That Killed 20 (NBC)

Minnesota: Somali used machete in string of Target store robberies in St. Paul (CBS)

Judicial Jihad and Dhimmitude in America

Feds Give Up – Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is Not A Federal Crime

Texas: DOJ Forces Islamic Cemetery on Farmersville, Against Citizens Wishes

San Francisco: Judge frees Muslim terror suspect who had one-way ticket, talked of killing U.S. soldiers

Michigan: Court affirms sharia, orders $50k payment in Islamic marriage agreement

Utah: Teen who left homemade bomb in high school, swapped school flag with ISIS flag, gets probation

Minneapolis: Judge sharply restricts media, public access to trial of Muslim cop who killed unarmed woman

Islamic Rape & Violence Against Americans

Texas: Muslim Couple Who Enslaved African Girl for 16 Years Get Just 7 Seven Years in Prison

Immigration Jihad in America

ICE: More Than 10,000 Illegals From Terror States Still in U.S. After Ordered Removed

California: How did a Muslim refugee – arrested for ISIS cop killing – get into the U.S.? (VIDEO)

Texas: Jordanian (Muslim) pleads guilty to smuggling Yemeni (Muslims) into the U.S.

California: Convicted Muslim terrorist-turned-US citizen to be deported following 9-month prison sentence

California: Muslim refugee researched deadly Islamic terrorist attack in N.Y. before running down Jews at L.A. synagogue

Sharia in Your Community

Philadelphia Int’l Airport submits, allows Muslim cabbies to keep makeshift (illegal?) mosque on property

New York: More on the NYPD-looking Islamic Patrols in Brooklyn

Illinois: Muslims unveil plans for new multi-million dollar mosque near golf club

Sharia in American Education

Detroit: Another school district will close for Muslim holiday, as Islamization continues

Utah: 50 Salt Lake City teachers to be “trained” by Islamic groups on ‘how to grasp the needs of Muslim students’

Minneapolis: Public elementary school kids get coloring project on anti-American Muslim Ilhan Omar

Kansas State University Muslim Group Hijacks Holy (Maundy) Thursday for “Hijab Day”

Islamic Jew Hatred in America

California: Muslim doctor who tweeted she’d purposely give all Jews wrong meds is fired by second hospital

CAIR Official: “i wish hitler was alive to f*** up the jewish ppl”

California: Muslim refugee researched deadly Islamic terrorist attack in N.Y. before running down Jews at L.A. synagogue

Sharia Adherents in Elected Office

Democrats Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris Want to Allow Islamic Terrorists Like Boston Bomber to Vote

More Terror-linked Muslim Groups on Capitol Hill as Rashida Tlaib and AOC Host AMP

Minnesota: Rep. Ilhan Omar pushes for release of jailed Muslim Brotherhood leader

Fraud for Jihad in America

Michigan: 4 Muslims charged in $70M health care fraud scheme

New Jersey: Muslim Couple Plead Guilty in Illegal $4M Food Stamp Fraud Scheme

Louisiana: Muslim husband and wife – who had multi-million dollar business – busted receiving Medicaid

Ohio: Muslim charged in illegal halal slaughterhouse, dumping animal blood in waterways

Video: New book exposes Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood’s financing and Islamization network

Victories Against Sharia in America

Oklahoma: CAIR dismisses lawsuit against “Muslim-Free” gun range

Minnesota: City of St. Cloud Orders Cease-and-Desist on Mosque’s Look-alike Police Car

And if that weren't enough - the Islamic invasion and the sharia supremacists leading it are targeting Utah this year:

Utah: Newly Formed Muslim Group Working to Elect…Muslims

             =========================================

As we have been warning for 11 years, if the threat of sharia is not stopped in its tracks, you will lose your right to speak freely, and even commenting or criticizing Islam and Muslims will become a crime.

This has become such a reality that Wordpress has implemented sharia law and will not allow any criticism of Islam or reporting on terrorism committed by Muslims. Despite the sources of the information being the DOJ, FBI, CNN and other large media outlets.

Sharia law is in effect in America.

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

2:00PM Water Cooler 7/29/2019

Digital Elixir 2:00PM Water Cooler 7/29/2019

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Politics

“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51

“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune

“2020 Democratic Presidential Nomination” [RealClearPolitics] (average of five polls). As of July 25: Biden up at 29.3% (28.6), Sanders flat at 15.0% (15.0%), Warren down at 14.5% (15.0%), Buttigieg flat at 5.0% (5.0%), Harris down 11.8% (12.2%), others Brownian motion. Harris reminds me of Clinton, in that her numbers are like a hot air balloon, which sinks unless air is pumped into it.

* * *

2020

Biden (D)(1): “Biden’s Medicare Lie” [Jacobin]. “Speaking at a forum sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons in Iowa earlier this month, Joe Biden fearmongered about Medicare for All. ‘Medicare goes away as you know it,’ said Biden. Under Bernie Sanders’s plan, ‘All the Medicare you have is gone.’… It’s clever politics, but it’s a total lie. Medicare for All does exactly what it says in the name: it extends the benefits associated with Medicare to the rest of the population…. Medicare for All would effectively be a Social Security income boost of thousands of dollars per year to seniors. It accomplishes this by eliminating all co-pays, premiums, and deductibles; by covering all long-term care costs for seniors; and by capping prescription drug costs at $200 a year…. All told, the US government only pays for 65 percent of seniors’ medical spending right now. Medicare for All would make that nearly 100 percent.” • 65%? Yikes. That’s a rip-off!

Delaney (D)(1): “Delaney proposes ambitious mandatory national service plan” [CNN]. “Several 2020 candidates, including Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg have proposed national service initiatives tied to college tuition or job training, but Delaney’s ambitious proposal, which would provide up to three years of free college tuition for those who participate in public service projects, is the first to mandate youth participation in service…. [I]nstead of offering voluntary service, it would be compulsory for all Americans upon high school graduation or upon turning 18. The proposal would apply only to those born after 2006, and would phase in over time, according to the campaign. The plan would provide two years of free tuition at a public college or university, and three years of tuition for those who extended their national service year to two years. Tuition could also be applied to vocational or technical training, the Delaney campaign told reporters.” • Who asked for this?

Harris (D)(1): “Kamala Harris Unveils ‘Medicare For All’ Plan That Preserves Private Insurance” [Bloomberg]. “Under her proposal, Americans could opt for Medicare Advantage, a program that allows beneficiaries to get coverage from a private insurer. Harris’s plan would put all Americans into Medicare over a 10-year transition period while allowing the participation of private insurance plans under a set of rules.” • Harris seems more than a little nimble in her positioning:

In which Jake asks Kamala Harris whether people would be able to keep their private insurance, if they prefer, under Medicare For All system — and she rejects that. "Let's eliminate all of that. Let's move on." pic.twitter.com/A1AY2TOT4g

— Rebecca Buck (@RebeccaBuck) January 29, 2019

Harris has also put herself on the same side as Trump:

Here’s Trump official @SeemaCMS last week bashing Medicare for All and public option – essentially Bernie and Biden plans – as “largest threats” to US health care.

But in same speech, praising Medicare Advantage as model. pic.twitter.com/VFKcbEL4lc

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) July 29, 2019

Perhaps that was the goal. Both Delaney and Harris seem to be sending messages to donors, not voters.

Sanders (D)(4):

On the Bern App profile page, under religion, there are many religions listed but NOT Eastern Orthodox. That will be a problem. Especially in Alaska. @fshakir

— Alice Marshall (@PrestoVivace) July 28, 2019

* * *

“Democratic 2020 race up for grabs: Half of voters have changed their minds since spring, poll shows” [Politico]. “The volatility has a limit, however. The vast majority of voters who switched since April moved among the top four candidates or between them and undecided status. The mass of candidates languishing at 1% or lower hasn’t benefited.” • No Trump-like breakout figure on the Democrat side so far.

“DCCC in ‘complete chaos’ as uproar over diversity intensifies” [Politico (RH)]. “POLITICO reported last week that black and Hispanic lawmakers are furious with Bustos’ stewardship of the campaign arm. They say the upper echelon of the DCCC is bereft of diversity, and it is not doing enough to reach Latino voters and hire consultants of color. In addition, several of Bustos’ senior aides have left in the first six months of her tenure, including her chief of staff — a black woman — and her director of mail and polling director, both women.” • In other words, DCCC should become more like the Sanders campaign?

2019

“Pelosi backers feel vindicated after tumultuous stretch” [The Hill]. “Part of Pelosi’s strategy in the first seven months of the new Congress has been to protect vulnerable centrists like O’Halleran and freshman Reps. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), Max Rose (D-N.Y.) and Joe Cunningham (D-S.C.) — the so-called majority-makers — whom Republicans will be targeting in 2020 in a bid to retake the House.” • (Spanberger and Rose are MILOs; all three are Blue Dogs. We’ll see how Pelosi’s DINO strategy works out, I guess.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The Ultra-Rich Are Ultra-Conservative” [Jacobin]. “Billionaires are a politically active bunch…. Between 2001 and the end of 2012, 92 percent of the country’s hundred richest billionaires (combined wealth: $2.2 trillion) contributed to a political cause…. Yet they’re also eerily quiet…. As the trio of political scientists write, ‘many or most billionaires appear to favor, and quietly work for, policies that are opposed by large majorities of Americans’.” • Well worth a read. Since it would be irresponsible not to speculate, what if the 0.1% were “eerily quiet” about being pro-Jackpot? Thinking big, as billiionaires do, and thinking bigger than relatively minor efforts like gutting Social Security.

Stats Watch

Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey, July 2019: “Texas manufacturing activity bounced back but not as much expected in July” [Econoday]. “The survey’s demand indicators were mixed but mostly stronger…. Today’s report shows Texas manufacturing recovering in July from June’s slide more strongly than the headline suggests, and will probably not strengthen the case for more accommodation by the Fed.”

Shipping: “Carriers across the sector are throttling back profit projections for 2019 as they wrestle with the hangover from last year’s freight boom” [Wall Street Journal]. “Freight demand isn’t far off last year’s high levels, but rates have been sinking. Measures of spot-pricing for truckload business are down by double digits from last year, and customers are cutting shipping costs rather than looking for trucks.”

The Bezzle: “California steers toward a future of self-driving cars” [CalMatters]. “The future can be glimpsed at a former Navy base near the Bay Area city of Concord, converted to the nation’s largest autonomous-vehicle proving ground where computer-driven cars are let off their leashes and are free to roam across 2,100 acres. The facility, GoMentum Station, run by the American Automobile Association, is an innovation hive where Silicon Valley marries its futuristic vision to the automobile industry’s traditional know-how. • OK… More: “But it’s a significant step from allowing testing of automated cars in protected, supervised settings to unleashing them solo on the road, which experts say remains on a far horizon. There is much to be perfected: how best to turn left in traffic, for example, a maneuver that bedevils many human drivers.” • Wait. After many billions, we don’t have an algo to turn left in traffic?

Rapture Index: Closes down one on Israel. “Israel Has been generally quiet the past few weeks.” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. Remember that bringing on the rapture is a good thing.

The Biosphere

“Coase, Hotelling and Pigou: The Incidence of o Carbon Tax and CO2 Emissions” [Geoffrey Heal, Wolfram Schlenker NBER Working Paper 26086]. “Using data from a large proprietary database of field-level oil data, we show that carbon prices even as high as 200 dollars per ton of CO2 will only reduce cumulative emissions from oil by 4% as the supply curve is very steep for high oil prices and few reserves drop out. The supply curve flattens out for lower price, and the effect of an increased carbon tax becomes larger. For example, a carbon price of 600 dollars would reduce cumulative emissions by 60%. On the flip side, a global cap and trade system that limits global extraction by a modest amount like 4% expropriates a large fraction of scarcity rents and would imply a high permit price of $200. The tax incidence varies over time: initially, about 75% of the carbon price will be passed on to consumers, but this share declines through time and even becomes negative as oil prices will drop in future years relative to a case of no carbon tax. The net present value of producer and consumer surplus decrease by roughly equal amounts, which are almost entirely offset by increased tax revenues.” •

“Even a summer heat wave can’t light up fading natural gas prices. Some of the country’s largest natural gas producers are tearing up their drilling plans…. as natural-gas futures tumble to multiyear lows just as the calendar and the climate suggest rates should be rising” [Wall Street Journal]. “Producers point to the Permian Basin in West Texas, where oil producers are unleashing vast volumes of gas as a byproduct of drilling for crude. That’s offsetting high demand from utilities that are shifting from coal to gas, and even all-time high exports to Mexico and other overseas markets. Natural gas has been so plentiful in West Texas at times this year that the price has turned negative, meaning that producers have to pay pipeline operators more to deliver gas to market than what the fuel fetches once it reaches buyers.

“Deforestation in the Amazon is shooting up, but Brazil’s president calls the data ‘a lie’” [Science]. “Deforestation is shooting up again in the Brazilian Amazon, according to satellite monitoring data. But Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, whom many blame for the uptick, has disputed the trend and attacked the credibility of Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), which produced the data. Bolsonaro called the numbers ‘a lie’ during a 19 July breakfast talk with journalists, and suggested INPE Director Ricardo Galvão was ‘at the service of some [nongovernmental organization].’ ‘With all the devastation you accuse us of doing and having done in the past, the Amazon would be extinguished already,’ he said.” • Hmm. “[S]ome [nongovernmental organization]”?

“Climate Change in a Coastal County: Think Global, Act Hyperlocal” [Pew Trusts Stateline]. “[T]oday, sea level rise in Dare County [Virginia] is among the most precipitous in the nation, an average 0.18 inches a year in some parts, enough that scientists come from around the world to study the land… The resilience projects will carry the community only so far. Beach nourishment, for example, typically lasts five to seven years — though a single hurricane this fall could wipe out all the millions of dollars of new sand laid this summer. At some point, Nags Head and other Dare County communities will hit a tipping point and decide the return isn’t worth the investment. ‘I don’t know when that day is,’ said [Mayor Ben Cahoon, a Republican], the mayor. ‘But it’s out there.’ When that happens, [Reide Corbett, a coastal oceanographer and geochemist] said, communities will have to approach a final step in coastal resilience: retreat. Just move folks inland and out of danger entirely.”

Games

“Why the ending of Game of Thrones elevated the worst of fan culture” [Vox]. “‘Curatorial fandom’ is a general term for the area of geek culture that emphasizes amassing as much canonical knowledge as possible, no matter how minute… The other side of fandom is “transformative fandom.” If curatorial fandom is about enshrining an authorial version of canon, transformative fandom is about changing it. Transformative fandom is centered on fanworks, like fanfiction, fan art, or fan critique, all of which use the source text as the jumping-off point for original interpretations. The idea of “transformative fandom” is a core concept of fanworks-based fandom because transformativity is part of the legal framework that protects fanfiction (i.e. it’s a “transformative work”)….. Bran embodies the stereotype of a fannish geek who spends his entire day sitting surfing the internet…. Bran is a human database of facts and knowledge that he acquired from ‘reading’ the history/canon presented to him through his nebulous abilities as the Three-Eyed Raven. Not only that, but his first official act as king was to essentially go gaming in search of Drogon the dragon, while Tyrion and the small council were left to run the kingdom. These characteristics and behaviors make Bran easy to read as an avatar for curatorial fandom.” • Fandom is alien territory to me, but this certainly sounds plausible.

Health Care

“Turning 26 Is A Potential Death Sentence For People With Type 1 Diabetes In America” [Buzzfeed]. “Laverty faces a health care problem unique to many millennials with Type 1 diabetes who’ve been booted off their parents’ stable health insurance. The price of insulin, the drug that keeps them alive, tripled in the US from 2002 to 2013 — and a recent study found that, from 2012 to 2016, its average annual cost increased from $3,200 to $5,900…. That’s an impossible price tag for a generation still feeling the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and saddled with massive student loan debt and increasing housing costs. Studies show that US millennials are far worse off financially than previous generations, with an average net worth below $8,000. The result is that these young adults are rationing, stockpiling, and turning to the black market for the medication they need to stay alive — incredibly risky and desperate measures that could result in long-term harm or death.” • So Obama’s much-beloved policy of letting adult children stay on their parents’ policies until the random age of 26 — why not 25? of 27? — turns out to be an ancien regime-like added layer of complexity that fails the people who need it most. Everything’s going according to plan!

People love their health insurance companies:

Dear Blue Cross Blue Shield, Thank you for your help during this difficult time. pic.twitter.com/HV017ntjQC

— Nate Charny (@natecharny) July 19, 2019

An ObamaCare navigator speaks:

When I got a job as an ACA 'navigator' to help people who'd never had it sign up for & use health insurance, and the vast majority of them (myself included) could only afford the lowest-tier, most bare bones plans. Just disappointing people all day long.

— erik (@erikdstock) May 5, 2019

The “When did you become radicalized by the U.S. health care non-system?” is an important archive of horror stories.

Neera’s plan (Medicare Extra):

Therapist: And what do we do when the Center for American Progress keeps pushing a healthcare plan that would still cost people up to $1500?

Me: Point out how offensive it is to call that “progress” when most Americans don’t have even $1000 for emergencies

Therapist: Wow yeah

— DSA for Medicare for All (@dsam4a) July 23, 2019

“Judge OKs Trump’s expansion of short-term plans” [Modern Health Care]. “A federal judge on Friday ruled the Trump administration’s expansion of so-called short-term, limited-duration health insurance plans can move ahead, rejecting an insurer group’s attempt to strike down the move. The plaintiff, the Association for Community Affiliated Plans, immediately said it will appeal. The group represents not-for-profit health plans deeply invested in the Affordable Care Act exchanges…. The rule, finalized in August 2018 and in effect since early October 2018, allows up to 12 months of coverage through short-term plans. People can renew this coverage for up to 36 months. The plans don’t have to cover people with pre-existing conditions, nor are they subject to the ACA’s mandates such as coverage for the 10 essential benefits, includinge mental healthcare, maternity care and prescription drugs.”

“The Effects on Hospital Utilization of the 1966 and 2014 Health Insurance Coverage Expansions in the United States” [Annals of Internal Medicine]. From the abstract: “Past coverage expansions were associated with little or no change in society-wide hospital use; increases in groups who gained coverage were offset by reductions among others, suggesting that bed supply limited increases in use. Reducing coverage may merely shift care toward wealthier and healthier persons. Conversely, universal coverage is unlikely to cause a surge in hospital use if growth in hospital capacity is carefully constrained.”

“Blue-Collar Workers Had Greatest Insurance Gains After ACA Implementation” [Health Affairs]. From the abstract: “Analyzing national survey data, we found that workers in traditionally blue-collar industries (service jobs, farming, construction, and transportation) experienced the largest gains in health insurance after implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2014. Compared to other occupations, these had lower employer-based coverage rates before the ACA. Most of the post-ACA coverage gains came from Medicaid and directly purchased nongroup insurance.”

“Health websites are notoriously misleading. So we rated their reliability” [STAT News]. “NewsGuard was co-founded last year by journalist and entrepreneur Steven Brill (known in part for his health care reporting) and former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz. In rating news and information sites in the U.S., Italy, U.K., France, and Germany, it has discovered a diverse spectrum of health sites. These range from green-rated peer-reviewed medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine to hundreds of red-rated conspiracy-minded sites such as NaturalNews.com and Collective-Evolution.com…. This plague of health misinformation comes in many fevers, from the seemingly innocuous (there is no solid evidence behind the idea that Epsom salt baths heal sore muscles) to the potentially dangerous (if you take amygdalin, vitamin B17, or laetrile, different names for the same long-debunked “cancer cure” made from fruit pits, you can experience side effects that mirror the symptoms of cyanide poisoning).”

Our Famously Free Press

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette boss J.R. Block sounds like a real piece of work. Thread:

Since it’s out there, next week will be my last at the Post-Gazette. It’s been a privilege to work with talented journalists who have covered intensely challenging stories (the Tree of Life massacre, local fallout from Catholic clergy sex abuse, Antwon Rose) with humanity. (1/) https://t.co/BhmFEatJgW

— Trevor Lenzmeier (@trevlenz) July 27, 2019

Police State Watch

“Lafayette public defender found in contempt after filming duct taping of defendant” [Acadiana Advocate]. “[Michael Gregory, a] Lafayette public defender was found in contempt of court Friday after filming a bailiff duct taping a defendant during a sentencing hearing July 18…. [Amanda Koons, a public defender in the Harris County Public Defender’s Office in Houston said] she’s never seen physical force like what occurred July 18. She said duct taping someone isn’t appropriate or humane, especially when the option to temporarily remove the defendant from the courtroom exists.” • Plus, they had the duct tape handy. I don’t imagine they drove to a hardware store to get some.

Black Injustice Tipping Point

A walking tour of Charlottesville’s monuments (mostly Confederate); thread:

Saturday, July 27, 8:30 am (when it's cool!): Dr. Andrea Douglas of @JSAAHC & I will lead a walking tour of #Charlottesville's downtown Confederate monuments & the newly-installed @eji_org historical plaque for lynching victim John Henry James. Meet at courthouse on Jefferson St. pic.twitter.com/EmGxeT75ak

— Jalane Smash the Fash Schmidt

(@Jalane_Schmidt) July 24, 2019

Guillotine Watch

“Cosmopolitan”:

Jeffrey Epstein was Cosmo magazines' July Bachelor of the Month, in 1980 pic.twitter.com/aAsCDzwWJq

— Historic.ly (@historic_ly) July 29, 2019

News of the Wired

Speaking of collapse:

Why not “dark ages”? Why Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages matter? This is an experiment trying to argue for it in 10 tweets (w/footnotes). It is subjective, but hopefully balanced. Not meant to replace, but to inspire other (twitter) takes on the subject. A thread. (a) 1/ pic.twitter.com/FmH31TysPh

— Mateusz Fafinski (@Calthalas) July 8, 2019

“Another side of Samuel Beckett” [Guardian]. • A long read on Beckett’s life. Well worth a read and might expand his fan base!

“Tokyo subway’s humble duct-tape typographer” [Medium]. “Sixty-five year old Sato san wears a crisp canary yellow uniform, reflective vest and polished white helmet. His job is to guide rush hour commuters through confusing and hazardous construction areas. When Sato san realised he needed more than his megaphone to perform this duty, he took it upon himself to make some temporary signage. With a few rolls of of duct tape and a craft knife, he has elevated the humble worksite sign to an art form…. Sato san’s purpose is simple: he strives to make life better for the millions of commuters who negotiate station construction sites. His unassuming dedication to craft and service embodies the best side of the Japanese approach to work.”

“Grasshoppers invade Las Vegas thanks to Luxor hotel light beam” [Yahoo News]. • Nature’s buffet!

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Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, (c) how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal, and (d) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. Today’s plant (JN):

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2:00PM Water Cooler 7/29/2019

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[cloudvelundr]

With The Sun At His Back

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

Almost another half year. But it lives.

If you’ve forgotten or wonder if you care: Prompt: Your body plays a game of hot and cold to locate your soulmate, the hotter you are the closer you are to your soulmate, the colder, the farther away. Cloud-centric.

The green dragon’s dying screech was still echoing in the caverns when the flashing glimmer of gold caught against his spell-work and led Cloud down to the creature’s hoard. It was probably the largest one he’d seen, he thought with a low whistle, the stolen and shattered shipping container that saw this dragon reported hardly added to the mass. It was going to be a hell of a job sorting the mess out, and he was quietly glad it wouldn’t be his problem, bar maybe spotting any cursed items. At a glance he could feel at least three.

Considering the pile he hummed.

“I wonder if I can have dibs on any weapons they find.”

Kamala looked up from her own perusal, “Assuming there’s anything unclaimed, I’m sure you can. You did good Strife.”

“Thanks sir,” Cloud grinned, “and there definitely should be. That dragon could have gotten a good little hoard but this? It probably stole it from another dragon who stole it from another... or maybe an old blue died and it took over. The junk at the bottom’s gonna be old.” Maybe he could get a decent bracer or a spelled blade if he played his cards right.

The colonel shrugged. “You’re the expert. I’ll take your word for it – I know arcs not greens.” She stood with a grunt, “But this all isn’t going anywhere. Let’s clear the caves and report in. There’s a flight from Rocket back to base this afternoon and I want on it. You with me?”

Cloud bounced up from poking tarnished gil: “Yes mam!”

There was little else to do in these caves – less sprawling than the yawning early tunnels had suggested, or even as much as the other dens they’d tracked down had been. They wound just far enough to keep a steady temperature year-round but not so deep as the dragons nearer to home had to burrow to escape the harsher winters there. The bulk seemed to be water-carved by a stream they found towards the back, but there was nothing else living apart from the bugs so they called it a day.

Leaving the cave mouth they did their best to camouflage the entrance. It would be at least a few days until a retrieval team could make it out there with the trucks necessary to haul the frankly ridiculous loot pile back to an airfield warehouse for sorting and it wouldn’t do for someone to notice it. Or worse – for another dragon to try moving in. Retrieval was unlikely to have a SOLDIER guard. Once they were satisfied with their work they set out for the rendezvous point to meet their ride.

The hilltop was a good ways off but they were nearly there before they finally got back into phone range and as one their PHS’s lit up. Cloud heard Zack’s ringtone several times, and a few of his old squad too and he worried what prompted it – he shared a heavy look with the colonel, and frowning they both stopped to read.

“Not mission orders?”

“No... Well. Could be. There’s been a flareup in Wutai.” The news was a few days old now as they’d been out of contact hunting for most of the week but it was concerning.

“No, that’s too small for this much noise.”

“Hrmf. Maybe.”

A minute passed in silence until Kamala dragged a hand through her hair and sighed.

“Finally.” She said, flipping her phone shut. “They’ve ‘reassigned’ the Seconds to Midlands and the Strand Airbase. Probably send some West too. No word what prompted it though.”

“... An accident, I think.”

“‘Accident’ you mean?”

Cloud shook his head. “Don’t know. The army only knows about the move but... I know some Firsts. They’re talking about an incident with at least one them.” He grimaced. “Someone they know from the sounds of it – they’re not usually very flappable. Might be unrelated though.”

“Well, nothing we can do from here. I think I hear the chopper – let’s go home.”

They arrive back in Junon late that evening, reports completed on the flight over and the news parsed for anything more than the updates they’d been sent, but all Cloud could find was more of the same. Thin details suggesting a splinter cell in Wutai, possibly AVALANCHE, and a general outrage that it took so long to remove ‘those menaces in the Second’ - a turn of phrase Cloud found personally offensive even if he knew what they meant. The Second... wasn’t harmless, they were too good at their jobs for that but they weren’t dangerous. The Second Classes however were ticking time bombs no matter what force they were assigned to, but there was no word on what finally triggered their move. Nor was there news about any of the Firsts, and no one seemed to be around so he would simply have to wait until morning to get someone to fill him in.

Until then, he bid the Lieutenant Colonel goodnight and went to find his bike – his kitchen was calling.

Halfway home he scrapped the thought and picked up some takeaway instead. It had been a long week and the shower and bed were calling too.

Some hours later, well fed and still damp Cloud roused from his cozy doze on the couch and drifted to his apartment’s window high over Junon. Distantly he could see the familiar silhouette of the base and it's airfield aswarm with more lights than usual but he closed his eyes to it and the military jet turning onto the runway. Instead he felt for the glaze of warmth that had lured him out, no greater than a candle flame before him, to bask like a moth before he could pull away.

“Going back again, huh?” he asked the light, “Well, at least they weren’t panicked over you.”

He leaned, closed eyed and tired against the glass until the fire dimmed and pulled the feeling from his toes.

“Well, then, maybe next time.”

But next time didn’t come.

[kalesandfails]

scary stories

My Macmo, my oldest kid, is seven now, and his teeth are falling out at a rate that feels less like a rite of passage and more like a weird omen, something out of a surreal lucid dream or an episode of what I imagine Black Mirror would be like, had it come out when I was young and watched TV besides Peppa Pig . 

More disconcertingly, one prominent tooth got knocked out prematurely (by my child’s own knee. Because of genetics.). It’s grown-up replacement isn’t overly eager to join the party in his mouth. I had a boyfriend (fiancé; I was once engaged to) a man whose diet consisted almost entirely of refined carbohydrates and meat products: an intentional choice because, he explained, he found it anxiety provoking, how long it took to eat lettuce. You just have to keep chewing it, he told me once, with that precious expression grown adult men make when they have never wondered whether the thing they are saying is cute or psychotic. So sure, that guy was obviously bad news but his approach is not without its plus side if you actually don’t have any teeth.

Anyway, Mac’s not worried about it. 

What he’s worried about, though, is sleeping in his bed at night. His brother and sister, one and four years old, respectively, have age-appropriate meltdowns over bedtime, but their little bodies are too weak to sustain the drama their spirits are willing, even eager, to initiate around six each night. Eventually they collapse in such tortured postures that one can hear Ice Cube intone solemnly, “The victim didn’t go down without a fight”.

Mac’s night terrors are more existential. There are bad guys and they are going to get him. He seems to believe that these bad guys won’t get him if he’s sleeping in bed with his dad and me, which is heartbreaking. 

I promise I won’t let anything hurt him because it’s a thing you say, because I’d like him to believe it, and because if I tried to explain how things actually are, neither of us would be able to sleep. Baby, why would a bad guy come after you here when your school is right down the street?

The world has always been scary. I think we all feel scared-er now because for awhile we hit this groove where we thought we all agreed we wanted things to be better: we wanted people to be equal, kids to be safe, cancer to be cured, babies fed. And now the inmates are running the asylum and the people in charge of important things like who gets to kill children seem to actively wish those around them ill. The president of the United States spent Memorial Day weekend weighing which war criminals to pardon. One of these inspiring true stories stabbed an injured fifteen year old to death while medics were attending to him; another picked off civilians like Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List. The most appealing of the men up for pardon is the one pissing on corpses. This, friends, is our new culture of life.

Here is the little force field I am building around myself and my babies today, though:

It’s really easy for us to be part of the bad side, because the bad guys look a lot like us (us meaning me and my son, here), but we can try every day to do a little better, starting with listening to the people being hurt.

Sometimes the people hurting others are really loud and powerful, but that’s not the same thing as being strong. Less than a week after Alabama resoundingly concluded that women’s lives are expendable, Senator Kamala Harris reintroduced a bill to find out how we can keep black mothers and babies from dying so much. (An, if I may,  let’s insert a sidebar noting that if you are a voter and a potential canvasser and donor and volunteer, you actually have the ability to decide whether or not someone is “electable”). 

There are heroes everywhere. There are heroes who are quietly doing wonderful things, and then there are heroes who are keeping the world good and who don’t get attention in proportion to what they do because of the color of their skin. Two I found just last week are Awesomely Luvvvie, whose blog is fun and joyful and smart and important, and also a huge force of black women running for office and supporters of these women, remaking the world while everyone sits rapt, wondering what our President and his cavalcade of sloppily drawn cartoon villains will do next. (Let me help you: it will be something stupid and awful and you won’t get any of these moments back, so feel free to sit a round or two out. You won’t miss anything). 

Guys, we can’t control what’s going on outside our house, no matter how tightly those of us who maybe built our lives and characters around believing we could would like it if we could. We can’t keep people from hurting us or our kids or our world. But that scary story, however true, is not the only story. There are other, equally true stories, and some days the best and only thing any of us are here for is telling them to each other.  

[billehrman]

Put America First

The White House and Congress are playing with fire not agreeing on a broad-based stimulus bill to replace the Cares Act that expired a few weeks ago. Trump’s executive orders are just band-aids and the most important one, extended unemployment payments at $400, will run out in 6 to 8 weeks. Then what? His executive orders exclude much-needed money for schools, states, hospitals, and small/medium-size businesses who are desperate for more support.

The surge in coronavirus cases has peaked and our economy has indeed re-accelerated which will be seen in August. Why stop the momentum? We need a new stimulus bill in the range of $1.5 trillion without special-interest carve-outs. Unfortunately, politics during an election year seems more important than doing right for Americans. Did you know that the Dems are demanding $25 billion for the post office so that they are prepared for a home voting? Since Trump does not want that, it alone appears to be a deal-breaker. And the Dems won’t do a partial deal without it. Nuts!  Put America first!

If not for the failure of our government to make a deal (which we still expect as the ramifications of no deal would be bad for both parties) our outlook for Fed policy, the coronavirus, the global economy, the stock market, and specific company results are only getting better. And we have gotten more even concerned about bond yields as the global economy improves, utilization rates rise, and with it, inflation. Just look at the CPI and PPI data last week.

MMM, a global industrial company, reported 6% year over year revenue increase in July after a large decline from March to June.  Large companies are in far better shape than small to medium size companies to come through the pandemic due to their financial strength. Cisco said as much in their earnings call last Thursday. This is another reason why we need a broad-based stimulus bill now. And we need to help the schools as they open. Right now, it appears that only half will open fully which is an incremental positive.

The news on vaccines and therapeutics remains favorable. There are close to 140 pharmaceutical companies working on this problem and we feel confident that we will have at least 3 vaccines available before year-end as well as many additional therapeutics/cocktails to manage those with the virus. We listened to five-plus calls from heads of research at major pharmaceutical companies last week and were impressed by the confidence each imbued as well as their different approaches. Merck stood out. Their approach may take longer to complete but they expect to have the best in the class vaccine by next spring that will be highly effective, over 80%, long-lasting, and with an easy delivery system. The government signed agreements with several companies last week to lock in supply for this year and next. All of this is very good news as it will be positive for growth as we move through 2021, 2022, and into 2023. You need to think long term, as an investor.

The Fed is all in and may even have to expand their buying programs as government issuance rises dramatically to finance the deficit. Several Fed governors spoke last week, and their economic outlook was universally cautious focused on the virus and government stimulus. It is very important to note that the futures market has rates for short term instruments near zero for several more years.  That says it all! Think like an investor discounting future earnings/cash flow using a historically low discount rate supported by the treasury market. Stocks remain undervalued using earnings yield and free cash flow yields relative to 10-year Treasuries.

Our government remains unable to represent the people. It’s all about politics, posturing, and getting elected. It is clear what needs to be included in this stimulus bill: more unemployment benefits ($400 is fine); money for small and medium-sized businesses; money for schools, states, hospitals; eviction, and liability protection.  Does anyone disagree? There is over one trillion left from prior plans that should be unlocked immediately as well an additional $1.5 trillion to help take us to the other side. That should do it. Hopefully, a new plan is agreed to over the next few weeks which is our base case as the alternative would be devastating for all.

We were satisfied with Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his Vice-Presidential running mate. Our concern remains that Biden’s agenda would move too far to the left overly influenced by the fringes of the party while we have known him and his running mate to be closer to the center. Regardless of what their platform may be on taxes, which is a concern of ours, we doubt that if he wins that there will be any tax increases when unemployment is so elevated which will continue in 2021 and even 2022. We would expect demand stimulus programs to be introduced by both Biden, if he wins, or Trump, if he wins, in 2021 and 2022 to boost the economy.

We must put America first!

Investment Conclusion

We believe that the markets may be in a holding pattern waiting to see whether there will be a new stimulus bill. The economy has gotten better which is sustainable if our government puts politics aside and puts America first. It is simply amazing how much liquidity is in the system, far more than the needs of the economy. While all companies can access the bond market to raise funds, it is extraordinary how low long-term cost of funds are for great companies like Apple and Google. Less than 3%. Think about that when you value them.

What is the proper discount factor to use?  The same goes for the over-all stock market. Look at earnings yield and free cash flow yield relative to 10-year Treasuries.  The market remains undervalued today for all of these reasons plus we expect operating margins, profitability, and cash flow to surprise on the upside as managements right size costs having learned so much during the pandemic. There was a 7.4% increase in second-quarter productivity.

We expect favorable news in the months ahead on both additional therapeutics and vaccines. We would not be surprised to see at least three vaccines successfully conclude Phase 3 testing this fall followed by the FDA permitting usage for extreme cases before year-end. And it will get only better in 2021 as we expect great companies including J & J and Merck to successfully conclude testing and begin supplying billions of doses by the end of 2021. All of this is good for the market, again, thinking like an investor in 2021 and 2022.

We expect the Fed to keep rates low as evidenced by the futures market combined with improving economy/earnings translates into higher overall prices but not all stocks will perform equally. Herein lies our strength.

While we continue to own the new normal winners, as we expect these trends to be long-lasting, we have added in economic sensitivity, too, in great companies that have successfully navigated the pandemic and will come out even stronger in the future. Each of these companies has great managements, winning strategies, above-average yields, and generate lots of free cash flow.

Finally, we strongly recommend owning defensive growth companies yielding around 3+% as an alternative to cash, money market funds, and bonds.

Our weekly investment webinar will be held on Monday, August 17th at 8:30 am EST. You can join the webinar by entering https://zoom.us/j/9179217852 into your browser or dialing +646 558 8656 and entering the password 9179217852.

Remember to review all the facts; pause, reflect, and consider mindset shifts; look at your asset mix with risk controls; turn off your business news; do independent research and …

Invest Accordingly!

Bill Ehrman Paix et Prospérité LLC

917-951-4139