A Sense of Doubt blog post #2056 - "SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE!!!" - WEEKLY HODGE PODGE FOR 2010.04 - on Sunday
30 DAYS - daily election countdown
Usually, the Weekly Hodge Podge debuts on Saturdays, but this one is coming out today, Sunday, because yesterday was my 11th wedding anniversary, a very special day. So, no comic book post this Sunday because both Tuesday and Wednesday coming up will be devoted to comic books for a presentation I am giving on Thursday.
So, let's get after it.
I was thinking my Soylent Green reference was simply thematic of everything happening in the nation, borrowed from Trump Just Gonna Keep Having His Free-Range COVID-19 Fests Until Everyone’s Dead from WONKETTE, in which Stephen Robinson wrote:
Donald Trump held yet another one of his maskless moron conventions in Pennsylvania this weekend. It was a packed crowd of thousands eager to watch Trump gloat after he nominated a Supreme Court justice who'll take away their health care during a pandemic. They'll probably be the first in line at the new Soylent Green plants.
But how SWEET THE IRONY, on Thursday night October first (OCTOBER SURPRISE!!!) news broke that Trump's chief aide has COVID-19 and then that TRUMP AND the FIRST LADY both have COVID-19.
Now, the revelatory exclamation from Heston's character in the film Soylent Green -- that "Soylent Green is people" -- is also prescient in another way.
The months of "down-playing" and denigrating masks and making fun of Biden for wearing a mask comes around to bite some people IN THE ASS.
Welcome, Covid-19, my not-so-old friend, and not really my friend.
Or as the NYTimes wrote: "Mr. President, Karma calling on line 1."
as of 2010.02 10:34 a.m.
What's happening
- POTUS and FLOTUS were tested after adviser Hope Hicks tested positive
- White House chief of staff confirmed Trump has "mild symptoms"
- Trump will not return to the campaign trail for now
- VP Pence tested negative for the virus
- Joe and Jill Biden tested negative for COVID-19, the campaign announced
- Stock markets across the world fell following the announcement
"Biden called Trump a "racist" to his face. He said Trump is the "worst president America has ever had.""
https://www.wonkette.com/donald-trump-is-running-against-america
Of course that's how Trump treats everybody who works for him, of course it is. (Vanity Fair)
The debate was hard to watch because abuse is hard to watch. — Slate
Why did Trump act like that? Because he's scared. — Amanda Marcotte at Salon
The Proud Boys are already intimidating people holding Trump accountable, and Bill Barr is protecting them. (Emptywheel)
By the way, the first major scientific post-debate poll, from CNBC/Change Research, shows Biden opening up a 13-POINT LEAD, YES, THAT'S RIGHT, IT IS 54-41. Also according to that poll, people think Biden won the debate, 53 to 29.
https://www.wonkette.com/trump-campaign-waaaaaah-debates-only-fair-if-trump-gets-to-cheat-waaaaaah
The undocumented pregnant teen being prevented from getting an abortion by the Trump administration just obtained an abortion. Here is her statement: pic.twitter.com/scWIrEX008— Ema O'Connor (@o_ema) October 25, 2017
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| Our House, The People's House, Friday, October 2nd, 2020 |
THE ELECTION
It’s Time for Trump to Resign and Drop Out of the Race
After six months in which the government he leads has failed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus to an extent that has no parallel in any other wealthy nation, Donald Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19 Friday and has been hospitalized.
Trump’s wife Melania has also tested positive for the disease, as have his close advisers Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks, his campaign manager Bill Stepien, the chairwoman of his party (Ronna McDaniel), and two of the senators from his party who are supposed to be preparing to confirm a new Supreme Court justice (Mike Lee of Utah and Thom Tillis of North Carolina).
A number of these individuals attended outdoor and indoor events at the White House last Saturday that were related to the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Attendees at the events did not follow the basic social-distancing and mask-wearing guidelines that are recommended by health authorities all over the world. Nor did Trump or the members of his inner circle follow those guidelines during his subsequent trip to Ohio to debate Joe Biden, or at an indoor event in New Jersey he attended Thursday despite exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms and having already been told Hicks had tested positive. Biden has since tested negative, but could still develop the disease in coming days.
Trump , in sum, has not only failed in the practical execution of his duty to administer the government, and has not only failed to set an example for the country in his personal behavior, but has done so in a way that now threatens to incapacitate his political party, the executive and legislative branches of government, and the man who is currently likely to be the next president as the country attempts to hold an election while managing multiple crises.
There have been failures and breaches of the public trust by American presidents that were so severe the leaders in question resigned or chose not to stand for reelection. Were any of them more senseless than what Donald Trump is putting the country through now?
Biden removing negative political ads following Trump COVID-19 diagnosis
Politics
Democratic nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden is taking all of his negative attack ads off the air in the wake of President Donald Trump’s coronavirus diagnosis.
Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Kate Bedingfield, said Friday that the Democratic presidential contender will continue to air positive ads. The decision to take down the campaign’s attack ads was made before the White House announced Trump would be heading to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for the next few days “out of an abundance of caution.”
Trump announced early Friday morning that he and the first lady had tested positive for COVID-19. Biden said during a Friday campaign trip to Michigan that he had taken two tests, both of which were negative.
Biden and Democratic groups supporting him are heavily outspending Trump and his Republican backers in advertising reservations through the election, according to an Associated Press review of Advertising spending data compiled by Kantar/CMAG.
Trump’s ugly rant in Minnesota shows why Republicans fear he’ll lose
As “lock her up!” chants rang out, Trump added, “I mean, frankly, harvesting’s terrible, but it’s the least of the things that she has done. How the hell — then she tells us how to run our country. Can you believe it? What the hell is wrong with you people? What the hell happened?”
Before his rant was through, Trump suggested that another Congress member of color — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) — should also be imprisoned for no reason in particular.
“[Omar’s] been crooked for a long time. This is the least of it. It’s time, and you know what, AOC also. It’s time. It’s time. If you take a look at what they — the corruption. The disgusting corruption,” he said. “Biden will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp.”
"Biden will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp" -- Speaking in a state with one of the largest Somali populations in the country, Trump goads his fans into booing refugees, prompting "lock her up!" chants directed at Ilhan Omar pic.twitter.com/dT2yuHxFDZ— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 1, 2020
Well, this is a lot to digest! New York Times got that son of a bitch's taxes. And you're going to be MAD. (NYT)
My, that was an hour WELL-SPENT. See you soon!
There's been a whistleblower on "political interference in Trump's IRS audit" since early 2019, just as a reminderer. (Old tab, HuffPost)
You know who else didn't pay any taxes for a decade? Jared Kushner, surprise! (Old tab, NYT)
Maybe we should enforce the tax laws we still have? — Old tab, American Progress
And why didn't the House already have them? Ask Richard Neal. (Old tab, Prospect)
How the IRS was gutted. — Old tab, ProPublica
The nation's poorest region, the Mississippi Delta, is the most audited. — Old tab, Mississippi Today
Fuckin' tell em Frank.
OH, HIS TAXES!!!
It's not quite October but this is still a pleasant surprise. The New York Times dropped a bomb on Donald Trump's overpriced head Sunday. The paper obtained Trump's tax information for more than two decades, and it's a doozy: Trump paid no — as in zero — taxes for 10 of the 15 years prior to his presidency. However, President Deadbeat wrote Uncle Sam a big check for $750 in 2016. That's right. He paid the federal government less than his cable provider. He paid another $750 in 2017. If your income was greater than $20,000 last year, you likely paid more in federal income tax.
How did he pull this off?
From the Times:
His reports to the I.R.S. portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes.
That's not the description of a “businessman." It's the plot of The Producers. Trump is a walking one-man Ponzi scheme who plays everyone he meets for a sucker. This includes the current first lady, who negotiated a fat prenup settlement on the taxpayer's dime, but Trump could never pay it. He's really, most sincerely broke.
Give the lady credit; she was four for four.
Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, responded defensively to the Times expose.
GARTEN: Over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.
Is Garten finished? Well, allow the Times to retort:
With the term "personal taxes," however, Mr. Garten appears to be conflating income taxes with other federal taxes Mr. Trump has paid — Social Security, Medicare and taxes for his household employees. Mr. Garten also asserted that some of what the president owed was "paid with tax credits," a misleading characterization of credits, which reduce a business owner's income-tax bill as a reward for various activities, like historic preservation.
During his reign of terror, everyone's been after Trump's tax returns with limited success. The information that the Times got its hands on is what Trump's personally disclosed to the IRS and it still makes him look like The Biggest Loser instead of the Apprentice, unless you want to learn from the master how to dodge taxes.
But it's inaccurate and unfair to compare Trump to Al Capone, who was a successful if not legitimate businessman. He was, in today's dollars, a real billionaire. Trump avoided taxes by shamelessly taking advantage of every available loophole for rich creeps. Your idiot Trump-supporting relative might defend him as a savvy businessman, but he flat-out loses more money than he ever earns. And he manages money like a twentysomething credit card surfer.
In 2012, he took out a $100 million mortgage on the commercial space in Trump Tower. He took nearly the entire amount as a payout, his tax records show. His company has paid more than $15 million in interest on the loan, but nothing on the principal. The full $100 million comes due in 2022.
Trump's primary “business" was fooling people into thinking he was a businessman, so he perhaps believed it justified to write off every single penny of his living expenses as a “business expense." Or he's just a cheat. That last one also works.
Take for instance, as the IRS eventually will, Trump's Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, New York. Trump lists it as an investment property but the law requires that you have "an actual and honest objective of making a profit." You can't just live in it like a common poor person while writing off $2.2 MILLION in property taxes as a business expense, which Trump does, while limiting other people's deductions for all state and local taxes to $10,000.
Eric Trump, his second idiot son, doesn't bother hiding that Seven Springs is a personal residence.
In 2014, Eric Trump told Forbes that "this is really our compound." Growing up, he and his brother Donald Jr. spent many summers there, riding all-terrain vehicles and fishing on a nearby lake. At one point, the brothers took up residence in a carriage house on the property. "It was home base for us for a long, long time," Eric told Forbes.
Trump originally planned to develop Seven Springs into one of his tacky hunting lodges for rich weirdos, but the residents thwarted him. Stuck with the property, he settled for a more reliable mark, the government. He agreed not to develop the property, which he couldn't do anyway, in exchange for a $21.1 million tax deduction. This is called "a conservation easement," and the Seven Springs deduction is one of four that he's claimed over the years. This is the bulk of his "charitable giving" — about "$119.3 million of roughly $130 million in personal and corporate charitable contributions reported to the I.R.S." He's like a Santa Claus who instead of giving toys to children agrees not to leave the North Pole at all in exchange for a significant tax break.
Mr. Trump has written off as business expenses costs — including fuel and meals — associated with his aircraft, used to shuttle him among his various homes and properties. Likewise the cost of haircuts, including the more than $70,000 paid to style his hair during "The Apprentice." Together, nine Trump entities have written off at least $95,464 paid to a favorite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump.
Schoolteachers are paying for school supplies out of their own pocket but at least Trump's gotten a break on his onerous personal hair care expenses.
The Trump Corporation also recently wrote off as a "business expense" legal fees related to representing Donald Trump Jr.'s dumb ass during the Russia investigation. This is not entirely on the up-and-up because that had nothing to do with the running of his business. Although, it's long been argued that Trump only ran for president in the first place so he could improve his fading brand.
Trump's most successful turn as a businessman was playing one on TV. The Times reports that "The Apprentice" earned Trump a total of $427.4 million. Johnny Depp made more money from those pirates movies, and he lost it all in more entertaining ways. Trump's investment in golf courses was another stinker. He's reported losses of $315.6 million. He also desperately sold off most of his stocks just before he might've made real money from them. So much winning!
Trump has gotten away with paying zero taxes, even while boasting of how wealthy he was during his presidential campaign, because he's leveraged almost $1 billion in business losses, effectively pleading poverty to the government while living a life of luxury.
Ronald Reagan would've called him a “welfare queen," but he's not a poor Black woman.
The Times can't confirm how legitimate most of Trump's deductions are, though many look fishy. Ivanka Trump reported payments totaling $747,622 from a consulting company she co-owned.
Those payments “coincidentally" match tax deductions the Trump Corporation claimed. Considering Ivanka was already a paid employee, this would seem like double-dipping and raises the “legally perilous" question of whether Trump was illegally transferring wealth to avoid gift taxes. His best defense is that he has no real wealth to transfer.
The true threat to Trump and the nation is that his party is ending. Trump is on the hook personally for loans and debts totaling $421 million, most of which come due in the next few years. He's in trouble unless he can unload some magic beans in a hurry. It's somewhat important that Americans know just who has that great a hold over the president. The piper is set to be paid. If he were to win re-election, his creditors could be in the position of having to foreclose on a sitting president. While that's hilarious, it's likely Trump would do anything to avoid financial ruin and that makes him compromised.
Any normal person in such dire financial straits would rightly be considered a security risk. And even if Trump loses in November, he still has access to national security secrets and information that are of greater value than anything Trump owns. It's very tempting collateral for yet another foreign bailout.
by Daniel Shaviro
September 28, 2020
Sunday night’s New York Times article on Donald Trump’s taxes has a great deal of content that will take time (and additional supporting detail) to digest fully. What’s more, this article is apparently just the start, as the Times says it will be publishing follow-ups that go into greater depth on particular issues. All that said, however, the following ten takeaways already appear clear.
1) Tax is the least of it. The article offers direct evidence of Trump’s impending financial liability to unknown lenders, and of pervasive conflicts of interest as president, that are of grave national security concern.
2) Trump appears to be an absolutely terrible businessman. This is a man who netted $606 million over nineteen years (from 2000 to 2018) through The Apprentice, licensing and endorsements, and investments and businesses run by others, and yet has created enormous financial peril for himself by buying prestige business properties for high prices, and then pouring cash into them without thereby generating positive net returns. Even with the cash infusions, his personally run businesses have continued to lose a great deal of money (even leaving aside depreciation deductions that might or might not be accompanied by actual declines in economic value). One therefore suspects that he is simply funding the negative cash flow, not creating new value that might pay off in the future. (Even the enhanced revenues at some U.S. properties from their being used by lobbyists have failed to eliminate the pattern of losing a great deal.)
Meanwhile, perhaps to fund the ongoing cash infusions, he has been taking out loans and making one-time asset sales that imply a danger of simply running out of money soon if there is no turnaround. The $421 million in personal liability debts that the Times says are due soon add to the impression of an approaching risk of financial breakdown. However, beyond just the financial peril that he may be facing, the pattern looks like one of recklessly and improvidently burning through one’s cash for as long as it lasts, rather than of investing prudently to create future value.
3) As a matter of net worth, Trump appears not to be rich (despite his having inherited a large fortune). The impending financial liabilities, and selling off of assets (plus taking out of loans) to keep the cash flowing is only one reason for concluding that, as a matter of net worth (as distinct, from say, lifestyle), Trump does not appear to be rich. Consider that, from 2000 to 2018, his net profit from assets – his own businesses, plus investments in businesses run by others – is only $4.2 million (the excess of his investment gains over his business losses).
This is about $220,000 per year. Just as a very general ballpark comparison, if you were earning $220,000 per year from assets that offered, say, a regular 4 percent annual return, that would imply that you were worth only $5.5 million. To be sure, we have here (a) a fluctuating asset pool rather than a fixed one, (b) personal assets (such as homes) that yield untaxed consumption value rather than business profits, (c) tax losses that may exceed economic losses, (d) consistently money-losing assets that might nonetheless be saleable for positive amounts (whether due to their liquidation value, or the view that they could make money if competently run), and possibly (e) appreciating assets (such as art or non-dividend-paying stock) that don’t throw off current taxable income. So this is not by any means an actual computation of net value. Still, however, the point remains that someone with a lot of wealth generally ought to be earning large annual returns on it, at least over an extended period.
Because we generally do not include human capital (i.e., personal earning potential) in net wealth computations, all this ignores the fact that, at least in the past, Trump has been able to make a lot of money from his name, along with his personal participation in ventures such as The Apprentice. This can be a true source of economic wellbeing, even if we exclude it from conventional wealth measures. However, his continued ability to keep doing this is unclear, reflecting not only the apparent decline of some of these income sources but also his age.
4) There is nothing wrong in principle with using true economic losses to offset the tax that would otherwise be due on gains – but it also isn’t clever tax planning. The late, great Martin Ginsburg – a famous tax lawyer and the spouse of the recently deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg – once jokingly described what he called the “Herman tax shelter.” The idea was that, if you need, say, a $1 million tax deduction, your fictional accountant Herman could say: “Give me $1 million, I’ll steal it from you and go to a country where you can’t reach me, and voila, you have a $1 million theft loss.”
The joke was that it isn’t actually beneficial to generate tax deductions by actually losing money. For example, if the tax rate that you face is 37 percent, losing $1 million that is fully deductible generates a tax saving of only $370,000. So you are still $630,000 behind from the loss after tax. For this reason, the key to effective tax shelter planning has always been to generate tax losses that substantially exceed true economic losses (which can happen legally under appropriate circumstances). Trump therefore was not doing himself any good insofar as he actually lost money that he then got to deduct. (And the Times article notes that his tax losses substantially exceeded the amount of his depreciation deductions on business property).
Trump famously said in 2016: “I love depreciation.” And well he might, given its legally authorizing deductions for supposed losses in the value of properties that may actually, so far as one knows, be gaining value the entire time. However, losses well in excess of depreciation deductions offer evidence, admittedly not definitive, of “Herman tax shelter”-type results.
A related point is that there is no tax abuse as such in using losses incurred in one year to offset taxable income earned in another year, if the tax system allows such use of the “net operating losses.” Suppose that Taxpayer A earns zero in both Year 1 and Year 2, while Taxpayer B has a $5 million loss in Year 1 and a $5 million profit in Year 2. They have both netted to zero net income over two years (ignoring the negative time value of B’s having incurred losses before gains). So we shouldn’t mind if, in full legal compliance with the rules, B manages to avoid paying any tax in Year 2 because the loss carryforward offsets his net income for the year.
We therefore should distinguish between (a) Trump’s losing so much money over the years – be it from bad luck, bad judgment, or incompetence – and (b) his also taking a number of tax positions that, as I discuss next, appear to be questionable or even fraudulent. The real losses rightfully offset tax on the gains, insofar as using them in the way he did was legally permissible, and the adverse inferences to be drawn from them lie outside the tax system (although again, as per the fallacy in the “Herman tax shelter,” they do not reflect clever tax planning).
5) The ongoing IRS audit dispute regarding a $72.5 million loss deduction looks very bad for Trump. The Times article suggests that the key issue, for most or all of this claimed loss, is a “worthless stock deduction” from abandoning his interest in the disastrous Atlantic City casino venture. Many years ago, when I was in tax practice, I actually worked on this precise legal issue (for a corporate client of my law firm), so I am quite familiar with it. When you own equity (such as Trump’s partnership interests in the Atlantic City activity) that has lost enormous value, typically the equity constitutes a “capital asset.” If you sell it for an enormous loss, that is only a capital loss, and deduction of the loss is limited to the sum of (a) net capital gains for the year, and (b) $3,000. Disallowed losses are carried forward, but at $3,000 per year they may be worth very little, unless your income in future years includes large capital gains. But if the investment is utterly worthless and you abandon it for zero consideration, it becomes an “ordinary” loss (i.e., one that is not subject to the limits on deducting capital losses).
Trump apparently did this with his Atlantic City partnership interests, and claimed an ordinary loss that seems to have made up much or all of the $72.5 million. But he received back a 5 percent interest in the stock of the new entity. As the Times article rightly notes, this could establish that the entire abandonment loss claim was legally invalid. He would merely have sold his once-valuable asset for a large capital loss, the use of which would be sharply restricted as described above. The Times notes that losing on this issue – as it appears he should, if the stated facts are accurate and relevantly complete – would cause him to owe the IRS about $100 million, given interest on the prior refund. This leaves aside the possibility of civil or criminal tax penalties for claiming an abandonment loss despite receiving consideration back.
6) The consulting fees that Trump’s various foreign businesses paid to Ivanka Trump and others look potentially fraudulent. The Times article cites 20 percent consulting fees that foreign Trump businesses regularly deducted by reason of paying them to unnamed consultants. Some of these fees pertained to activities in which Trump’s role as an investor was ostensibly entirely passive, meaning that he wasn’t engaged in making any of the business decisions. Consulting fees also appear to have been paid to family members such as Ivanka Trump. She got consulting fees with respect to businesses for which she simultaneously worked as an executive, and thus as an employee.
Based on what the article says, several different types of fraud may have been involved here. Fees paid to family members who did not provide services in return would be improper deductions. Fees paid to “consultants” who were employees might be properly deductible by the business – as salary – but would potentially trigger 3.8 percent payroll tax liability by the recipient under the so-called Medicare payroll tax. Fees that were actually gifts to family members were not properly deductible, and also may have generated gift tax liability on Trump’s part that the mislabeling helped to conceal.
7) Other improper deductions that may have been claimed fraudulently. The Times article notes several different types of improper deductions for business expenses that appear to have been personal, and hence not allowable under the federal income tax. An example is the more than $70,000 paid to hair stylists in relation to The Apprentice. Tax law is quite clear that such items cannot generally be deducted unless their use is limited exclusively to the business appearance itself. For example, suppose Trump paid $500 for TV makeup, for an Apprentice shoot, and the makeup was washed off right afterwards. That likely would be deductible. However, the cost of a haircut generally cannot be deducted, even in part, because one still has the haircut after the show is over. Similarly, people who need fancy business suits for meetings with clients or customers, and who claim they would rather dress in T-shirts and jeans, cannot deduct the suits’ cost.
Similarly, the Times article raises serious questions about deductions for a residential property, described by Eric Trump as the family “compound,” on the ground that it was an investment property being held for profit. The very year after the investment designation was made, Trump claimed a deduction for a charitable easement that precluded development of much of the property. Happening just a year later (and possibly foreseen), this would only add to the difficulty of establishing the requisite profit motive.
A further instance of potential fraud relates to deducting legal fees that may have related to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, rather than to his business activities. This may even include the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, if it was improperly amalgamated with actual legal fees.
Like the Times article itself, I am focusing here on federal income tax issues. However, state and local income tax liability (in New York State and New York City) is also an issue in many of the fact patterns described in the article, extending not just to amounts due but to the owing of interest and penalties.
8) Trump appears to have used substantial foreign losses to offset tax that would otherwise have been due on domestic source income. This tax use of foreign losses is legally permissible, under appropriate circumstances that may have been met here, but it raises an admittedly secondary issue about the effect of any “overall foreign losses” that he may have claimed, with respect to his money-losing foreign operations, on any foreign tax credits that he may have claimed on his U.S. tax returns. In 2017, for example, when he apparently voluntarily paid $750 in U.S. taxes – based, the Times says, on his deliberately not using all available tax credits – he and his companies paid more than $300,000 in foreign taxes to Panama, India, and the Philippines. These might ordinarily be creditable, but only to offset the U.S. tax that would otherwise have been due on net-positive foreign source income. It would be worth checking whether his returns properly treated foreign tax credits, in light of the foreign losses.
9) The 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow raises troubling issues (albeit not tax-related) about the potential funneling of cash from a Putin associate to Trump. According to the Times article, Trump and NBC, who were 50 percent partners in his Miss Universe pageants, split $4.7 million of profits in 2013, whereas they lost $2 million in 2012 and $3.8 million in 2014. A key reason for the 2013 profit was that the Agaralov family – Russian billionaires, closely tied to Putin, who later helped set up the 2016 Russia meeting about dirt on Hillary Clinton – paid in $12 million for the event and took out only $2 million. Perhaps the Agaralovs simply made a bad business investment, but it looks like it could also have been a way of funneling cash to Trump (albeit, shared by NBC) for other reasons.
10) There is an old saying that one can never detect tax fraud purely on the face of a tax return – but this comes closer than usual. – Even wholly fraudulent tax returns generally do not proclaim their fraudulence on their face. The Trump returns presumably are no exception, and much of the evidence suggesting possible fraudulence was developed in the Times article through the use of other sources. Nonetheless, with that aid, the Times article makes a powerful initial case, clearly meriting investigation, that substantial tax fraud may have occurred.
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| https://www.wonkette.com/september-jobs-report-shows-everything-perfectly-fine |
And so Donald Trump goes into the election with the most job losses of any president since the Labor Department started tracking employment statistics in 1939. How he'll spin that as Barack Obama's fault remains to be seen.
Donald Trump Is Running Against America
September 30, 2020 10:52 AM
THE DEBATE - BEST VERSION
THE DEBATE FACT CHECKING
Let's jutst leave these links right here...
https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/sep/30/fact-checking-first-2020-presidential-debate-joe-b/
https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/sep/30/fact-checking-first-2020-presidential-debate-joe-b/
Trump Administration Reportedly Plans Pre-Election ICE Raids of Sanctuary Cities as Political Ploy
President Donald Trump, in need of another dose of fear to keep his sputtering reelection bid afloat, is now, officially, throwing the kitchen sink of chauvinism at American voters: casually rehashing racist tropes directed at suburban women, a nod to white supremacists, tough guy law and order calls from the cheap seats for whoever that works for, and… what else? … ICE raids! We’re talking too much about the deadly pandemic that flourished under Trump’s leadership; let’s get the wall back in play. To make that happen, the Trump administration is going to use American taxpayer dollars and is planning a series of immigration enforcement operations in so-called sanctuary cities, the Washington Post reports, with such “sanctuary ops” starting as soon as this week in California. The publicity stunt would then move to swing states, Denver and Philadelphia, officials told the Post, with the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf slated to tag along on the ground to help focus the spotlight on the stunt. Of those three American cities, you can bet Wolf will pop up in the one located in Pennsylvania.
Upping the pressure on sanctuary cities ahead of the election has been floated around the Trump administration, but the idea was put on hold in the spring due to the coronavirus, which resulted in far fewer ICE raids and arrests. But that could be about to change. “Trump has inveighed against sanctuary jurisdictions throughout his presidency, and he has expanded those attacks to include Democratic mayors in cities convulsed by racial justice demonstrations and sporadic rioting after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis,” the Post notes. “The immigration operation would sync with two themes of Trump’s reelection campaign: his crackdown on immigration and his push to vilify cities led by Democrats, whom he blames for crime and violence.”
While extraordinary in its cravenness, it doesn’t seem that unusual for a president that held his party convention at the White House, contrary to American political norms and literal laws. Even the Trump administration admitted the operation is, essentially, a last-minute political play. “Two officials with knowledge of plans for the sanctuary op described it as more of a political messaging campaign than a major ICE operation, noting that the agency already concentrates on immigration violators with criminal records and routinely arrests them without much fanfare,” the Post reports. Expect a sudden surge of fanfare.
Words Voters Used to Describe Trump’s Debate Performance: “Crackhead,” “Un-American,” “Unhinged”
There will be many, many real polls and opinions about what happened Tuesday night when, for the first time, President Donald Trump and Vice President Joe Biden shared the same stage. But for now, let’s enjoy the responses of veteran GOP pollster Frank Luntz’s Zoom focus group of 15 undecided voters in swing states. Immediately after the debate came to a close, Luntz sprung to action conducting digitally (this year) what is normally done in a blank room in a business park somewhere in the suburbs of an anodyne American city.
By Luntz’s count, the most [insert adjective] debate in American history left nine (nine!) focus group participants still undecided. One, who did not remain undecided was nouveau American icon “Ruthie from Pennsylvania,” who unleashed a real corker of the internet age, describing Trump’s debate performance as trying to “win an argument with a crackhead.” When the rest of the undecideds—nine of which were men and six women—were asked to use actual words to describe the two candidates and their performance Tuesday night, this is what they had to say (via Politico):
Despite their indecisiveness, most described Trump in a negative
light, including one of the participants who was leaning toward voting for the
president. The voters characterized Trump as “unhinged,” “arrogant,”
“forceful,” a “bully,” “chaotic” and “un-American.”
When asked to describe Biden they offered: “better than
expected,” “politician,” “compassion,” “coherent,” and a “nice guy lacking
vision.”
Uncle Joe’s Gonna Flip Nebraska’s Second District On Trump’s Ass
Republicans are overall pleased with Donald Trump's (allegedly) drug-free performance at the first presidential debate Tuesday. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany boasted that her boss “steamrolled" Joe Biden and “exposed" the former vice president, presumably by pulling down his gym shorts during PE.
Trump is a bully with no actual accomplishments, but former South Carolina Governor and current Trump stooge Nikki Haley repeated the president's canned zinger that he'd “done more in 47 months" than Biden has done in 47 years. That's true. Trump has shredded the Constitution and permanently damaged America's global standing in record time. And if, like the president, you ignore all the Americans who died this year, Trump has nailed the dismount in his first term.
Yet, there's one niggling little detail that's keeping conservatives from popping open the champagne. McEnany alludes to it, despite herself, in one of her nonsense tweets from last night.
Notice the chryon in the picture: Breaking News: Trump Creates Chaos At First Debate, Non-Stop Lies And Insults, Refuses To Condemn White Supremacists. Maybe that is in fact “exactly what Donald Trump wanted." It's certainly not what Republicans wanted. GOP strategist Scott Jennings suggested that the president “clean this up," but cuddling with white supremacists isn't a gaffe. It's Trump's core competency.
It's a problem but not like Fonzie's inability to say he was wrong. Trump is exclusively the commander-in-chief for white supremacists, bigots, and all Klan-adjacent Americans.
Never shall sun that morrow see.
Last night, Rick Santorum claimed that Chris Wallace, who we are told was in attendance at last night's debate, put Trump in an awkward situation when he asked him to condemn violent racists. This is the same Rick Santorum who grossly said Barack Obama and George W. Bush “gave Muslims a pass" by not directly connecting their faith to terrorist violence.
So, He Who Shall Not Be Googled, why do white supremacists dig Trump so much? It can't just be about the low marginal tax rates.
MSNBC's Hallie Jackson asked perpetual stupid machine Peter Navarro why Trump didn't denounce the Proud Boys “more strongly" (or, you know, at all), and Navarro blamed Wallace, who is not the president.
Navarro claimed Trump was all set to condemn white supremacists but Wallace “cut him off," and as the few surviving viewers of last night's debate can confirm, Trump never once talked over Wallace or Biden when he wanted to say something.
You'd think prominent Black Republicans such as Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott might find it troublesome that the Proud Boys took Trump's words as a call to fuck up people who look like them. But maybe they're stuck in the 1996 Chris Rock routine about “good" and “bad" Black people (one Rock has since repudiated). If so, good luck assuming that white supremacists bother to see any difference.
Scott was asked today about Trump's refusal to say anything mean about white supremacists, and his response was pathetic.
Giphy
He didn't “misspeak," Senator. There was no “misspoke." Also, even Stevie Wonder could see that Trump's body language, tone, and language were far different when he was ranting about antifa, Hunter Biden, and puppies than when he asked his Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by."
Meanwhile, some of the whitest white people who ever whited have pushed back against President Klan Robe's latest hate crime.
This morning on “Fox & Friends," Brian Kilmeade said it was real rude-like of Biden to call the president a “clown" and a “racist." Then he wondered why Trump “ruined the biggest layup in the history of debates by not condemning white supremacists." Well, gee, that's probably because Trump is a racist clown as Biden so rudely pointed out.
The president of the United States shouldn't give out day-old condemnations of white supremacists, like it's the stale bread your cheap-ass nana serves: “Just pop it in the toaster. It'll be fine." No, we demand fresh-baked, piping-hot denunciations of violent bigots. A lot of damage can occur between the president's “gaffe" and the reassuring clean-up statement penned by Stephen Miller, a white supremacist.
Trump has not issued any clarifying statements yet today because what he said last night was already clear as crystal. He continues to deny the so-called “good" Republicans any plausible deniability. He's a racist, but he'll keep their taxes low, and that's good enough for millions of Americans who are ultimately no better than he is.
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
Trump is a bully with no actual accomplishments, but former South Carolina Governor and current Trump stooge Nikki Haley repeated the president's canned zinger that he'd “done more in 47 months" than Biden has done in 47 years. That's true. Trump has shredded the Constitution and permanently damaged America's global standing in record time. And if, like the president, you ignore all the Americans who died this year, Trump has nailed the dismount in his first term.
Yet, there's one niggling little detail that's keeping conservatives from popping open the champagne. McEnany alludes to it, despite herself, in one of her nonsense tweets from last night.
Notice the chryon in the picture: Breaking News: Trump Creates Chaos At First Debate, Non-Stop Lies And Insults, Refuses To Condemn White Supremacists. Maybe that is in fact “exactly what Donald Trump wanted." It's certainly not what Republicans wanted. GOP strategist Scott Jennings suggested that the president “clean this up," but cuddling with white supremacists isn't a gaffe. It's Trump's core competency.
JENNINGS: He has to clear it up. It's the wrong answer ... There's a clear right answer to this question, which is anyone who's committing violence — left, right, white, Black, up, down ... if you're in a city and you're committing violence and you're doing it in the name of white supremacy or antifa or anything else, you're all the same. You're hurting America. It's always been that clear. And the fact that he can't look into the camera and say it is a problem.
It's a problem but not like Fonzie's inability to say he was wrong. Trump is exclusively the commander-in-chief for white supremacists, bigots, and all Klan-adjacent Americans.
JENNINGS: I hope that they come out later tonight or tomorrow or whenever and clean it up.
Never shall sun that morrow see.
Last night, Rick Santorum claimed that Chris Wallace, who we are told was in attendance at last night's debate, put Trump in an awkward situation when he asked him to condemn violent racists. This is the same Rick Santorum who grossly said Barack Obama and George W. Bush “gave Muslims a pass" by not directly connecting their faith to terrorist violence.
SANTORUM: He was asking the president to do something he knows the president doesn't like to do, which is say something bad about people who support him.
So, He Who Shall Not Be Googled, why do white supremacists dig Trump so much? It can't just be about the low marginal tax rates.
MSNBC's Hallie Jackson asked perpetual stupid machine Peter Navarro why Trump didn't denounce the Proud Boys “more strongly" (or, you know, at all), and Navarro blamed Wallace, who is not the president.
NAVARRO: I think that moment for me underscored just how poor Chris Wallace did as a debate moderator. There's an expression in boxing, there is a cutman in a corner. Chris Wallace functioned, essentially, as Joe Biden's cutman and also as a second debater on the president.
Navarro claimed Trump was all set to condemn white supremacists but Wallace “cut him off," and as the few surviving viewers of last night's debate can confirm, Trump never once talked over Wallace or Biden when he wanted to say something.
You'd think prominent Black Republicans such as Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott might find it troublesome that the Proud Boys took Trump's words as a call to fuck up people who look like them. But maybe they're stuck in the 1996 Chris Rock routine about “good" and “bad" Black people (one Rock has since repudiated). If so, good luck assuming that white supremacists bother to see any difference.
Scott was asked today about Trump's refusal to say anything mean about white supremacists, and his response was pathetic.
SCOTT: I think he misspoke. I think he should correct it. If he doesn't correct it, I guess he didn't misspeak.
Giphy
He didn't “misspeak," Senator. There was no “misspoke." Also, even Stevie Wonder could see that Trump's body language, tone, and language were far different when he was ranting about antifa, Hunter Biden, and puppies than when he asked his Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by."
Meanwhile, some of the whitest white people who ever whited have pushed back against President Klan Robe's latest hate crime.
This morning on “Fox & Friends," Brian Kilmeade said it was real rude-like of Biden to call the president a “clown" and a “racist." Then he wondered why Trump “ruined the biggest layup in the history of debates by not condemning white supremacists." Well, gee, that's probably because Trump is a racist clown as Biden so rudely pointed out.
KILMEADE: I don't know if he didn't hear it.He heard it.
KILMEADE: But he's gotta clarify that right away.
The president of the United States shouldn't give out day-old condemnations of white supremacists, like it's the stale bread your cheap-ass nana serves: “Just pop it in the toaster. It'll be fine." No, we demand fresh-baked, piping-hot denunciations of violent bigots. A lot of damage can occur between the president's “gaffe" and the reassuring clean-up statement penned by Stephen Miller, a white supremacist.
Trump has not issued any clarifying statements yet today because what he said last night was already clear as crystal. He continues to deny the so-called “good" Republicans any plausible deniability. He's a racist, but he'll keep their taxes low, and that's good enough for millions of Americans who are ultimately no better than he is.
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
Kamala Harris, supported by a sea of sisters
Members of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Kamala Harris’s sorority, are mobilizing a formidable army of support nationwide. Along with other members of the “Divine Nine” black sororities and fraternities, they form a national network to get out the vote.
THE PANDEMIC
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| Cynthia Adinig, pictured in the courtyard of her apartment complex in Alexandria, Va., finds it difficult to explain her symptoms to those who haven't experienced them. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post) |
Covid ‘long haulers’ have nowhere else to turn — so they’re finding each other online
By the time Kimmy Campbell stumbled upon a long-hauler support group on Facebook 2½ months into symptoms, she had seen 10 specialists and had zero answers. Until then, the 39-year-old family therapist and mother of four in Pembroke Pines, Fla., was unsure whether she had the virus, but the group was a revelation. Scrolling through the stories of unending headaches and shortness of breath, she sat at her dining room table with her husband and cried for two hours. “It didn’t matter whose story I read. There was a piece of me in every single one,” she says.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/10/02/0251258/550-million-chinese-traveling-in-biggest-holiday-since-covid-19
550 Million Chinese Traveling In Biggest Holiday Since COVID-19
hackingbear shares a report from CNN:As October 1 arrives, hundreds of millions of people in China are expected to pack highways, trains and planes for the National Day holiday, one of the busiest times for travel in the world's most populous country. In a sign of the government's confidence in keeping the virus under control, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said last week that domestic travels can be arranged "as normal" for the upcoming holiday, given all cities in mainland China are marked as low risk for the coronavirus. The expected 550 million trips during the 8-day holiday will be a much-awaited boost to Chinese economic recovery. "I think China has (the virus) under pretty good control," said a 29-year-old traveler flew from Guangzhou to Shanghai. "I'm wearing masks and bringing alcohol wipes with me to clean my hands, especially before eating -- although in Shanghai, few people wear masks now." More than eight months on, China's restrictions on domestic movement have all been lifted. Officially, some cities still require passengers to produce a green health code on their smartphones at train stations and airports to show they're safe to travel, but implementation can be lax in practice. China has not reported any locally transmitted symptomatic case since mid-August, and is rigorously screening overseas arrivals and workers at risk of exposure to the virus.In other coronavirus-related news, vaccine trial participants are reporting day-long exhaustion, fever and headaches -- but say it's worth it. Slashdot reader gollum123 shares a report from CNBC:Luke Hutchison woke up in the middle of the night with chills and a fever after taking the Covid-19 booster shot in Moderna's vaccine trial. Another coronavirus vaccine trial participant, testing Pfizer's candidate, similarly woke up with chills, shaking so hard he cracked a tooth after taking the second dose. High fever, body aches, bad headaches and exhaustion are just some of the symptoms five participants in two of the leading coronavirus vaccine trials say they felt after receiving the shots. While the symptoms were uncomfortable, and at times intense, they often went away after a day, sometimes sooner, according to three participants in the Moderna trial and one in Pfizer's as well as a person close to another participant in Moderna's trial. Hutchison said he's concerned that the pharmaceutical manufacturers have not sufficiently informed the public about potential side effects. If the vaccines are approved, he fears, it might cause a widespread backlash if word spreads, which is why he decided to go public now.
THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT
I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:
A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.
ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.
WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT - JOHNS HOPKINS
Anyway, as usual, here's the weekly links to the data about cases (lower than reality) and deaths (lower than reality, also) due to COVID-19.
Data can be found here, as always:
This is also a good data site:
Last updated: October 04, 2020, 16:43 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
7,613,291
Deaths:
214,362
Recovered:
4,831,029
About Worldometer
Worldometer manually analyzes, validates, and aggregates data from thousands of sources in real time and provides global COVID-19 live statistics for a wide audience of caring people around the world.
Our data is also trusted and used by the UK Government, Johns Hopkins CSSE, the Government of Thailand, the Government of Vietnam, the Government of Pakistan, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, and many others.
Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been requested by, and provided to Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the U2 concert, and many others.
Worldometer is cited as a source in over 10,000 published books and in more than 6,000 professional journal articles and was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.
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POLICE BRUTALITY AND OTHER DEMONIC POSSESSIONS
Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-antifa-trump.html
What Is Antifa, the Movement Trump Wants to Declare a Terror Group?
President Trump has blamed anti-fascist protesters for inciting violence at protests and tried to link “far left” activists to his mainstream Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
By Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and
As President Trump and his Democratic opponent Joseph R. Biden Jr. enter the final stretch of the presidential campaign, a loosely affiliated group of far-left anti-fascism activists, known as “antifa,” has been the focus of a series of misleading rumors and false claims.
Seeking to assign blame for the protests against racial injustice that spread across the United States this summer, President Trump has said that the United States would designate antifa as a terrorist organization. The president’s critics noted, however, that the United States does not have a domestic terrorism law and that antifa, a contraction of the phrase “anti-fascist,” is not an organization with a leader, a defined structure or membership roles.
Rather, antifa is more of a loose movement of activists whose followers share some philosophies and tactics. They have made their presence known at protests around the country in recent years, including the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
Mr. Trump has also sought to tie Mr. Biden to “radical left” groups, including antifa — even though Mr. Biden opposes defunding the police, has repeatedly condemned violence and property damage associated with the protests, and has called for “arsonists and anarchists” to be prosecuted.
Who are the members of antifa?
It is impossible to know how many people count themselves as members. Its followers acknowledge that the movement is secretive, has no official leaders and is organized into autonomous local cells. It is also only one in a constellation of activist movements that have come together in the past few years to oppose the far right.
Antifa members campaign against actions they view as authoritarian, homophobic, racist or xenophobic. Although antifa is not affiliated with other movements on the left — and is sometimes viewed as a distraction by other organizers — its members sometimes work with other local activist networks that are rallying around the same issues, such as the Occupy movement or Black Lives Matter.
Misinformation about the group often spreads through personal networks online. In many cases, false or misleading claims appear first in a tweet, Facebook post or YouTube video before they are shared through community texting networks, Facebook groups or the neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor.
What are its goals?
Supporters generally seek to stop what they see as fascist, racist and far-right groups from having a platform to promote their views, arguing that public demonstration of those ideas leads to the targeting of marginalized people, including racial minorities, women and members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community.
“The argument is that militant anti-fascism is inherently self-defense because of the historically documented violence that fascists pose, especially to marginalized people,” said Mark Bray, a history lecturer at Rutgers University and the author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.”
Many antifa organizers also participate in more peaceful forms of community organizing, but they believe that using violence is justified because of their views that if racist or fascist groups are allowed to organize freely, “it will inevitably result in violence against marginalized communities,” said Mr. Bray, whose defense of the anti-fascist movement incited criticism and generated support at Dartmouth College when he was a lecturer there.
When did the movement begin?
Although the Merriam-Webster dictionary says the word “antifa” was first used in 1946 and was borrowed from a German phrase signaling an opposition to Nazism, more people began joining the movement in the United States after the 2016 election of Mr. Trump, to counter the threat they believed was posed by the so-called alt-right, Mr. Bray said.
One of the first groups in the United States to use the name was Rose City Antifa, which says it was founded in 2007 in Portland, Ore. It has a large following on social media, where it shares news articles and sometimes seeks to dox, or reveal the identities and personal information of, figures on the right.
The antifa movement gained more visibility in 2017 after a series of events that put a spotlight on anti-fascist protesters, including the punching of a prominent alt-right member; the cancellation of an event by a right-wing writer at the University of California, Berkeley; and their confrontation of white nationalist protesters in Charlottesville who turned violent.
What distinguishes antifa from other protest groups?
Mr. Bray said antifa groups often use tactics similar to anarchist groups, such as dressing in all black and wearing masks. The groups also have overlapping ideologies, as both often criticize capitalism and seek to dismantle structures of authority, including police forces.
How have politicians and others reacted?
The movement has been widely criticized among the mainstream left and right. After the protests in Berkeley, Calif., in August 2017, Speaker Nancy Pelosi decried “the violent actions of people calling themselves antifa” and said they should be arrested.
Conservative publications and politicians routinely rail against supporters of antifa, who they say are seeking to shut down peaceful expression of conservative views. These critics point to moments during which purported antifa members have been accused of sucker-punching Trump supporters.
But overblown fears and false claims about antifa can be dangerous in and of themselves. In Oregon, for example, after a wave of misinformation about left-wing activists intentionally setting fires began to interfere with firefighters’ efforts to contain the blazes there, law enforcement officials begged people to “STOP. SPREADING. RUMORS!”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University who studies fascism, said she was worried that antifa’s methods could feed into what she said were false equivalencies that seek to lump violence on the left with attacks by the right, such as the killing of a protester in Charlottesville by a man who had expressed white supremacist views.
“Throwing a milkshake is not equivalent to killing someone, but because the people in power are allied with the right, any provocation, any dissent against right-wing violence, backfires,” Professor Ben-Ghiat said in an interview last year.
Between 2010 and 2016, 53 percent of terrorist attacks in the United States were carried out by religious extremists — 35 percent by right-wing extremists and 12 percent by left-wing or environmentalist extremists, according to a University of Maryland-led consortium that studies terrorism.
Militancy on the left can “become a justification for those in power and allies on the right to crack down,” Professor Ben-Ghiat said. “In these situations, the left, or antifa, are historically placed in impossible situations.”
Jacey Fortin contributed reporting.
HowTrump amassed a red-state army in the nation’s capital — and could do so again
Kyle Rittenhouse, Conservative America’s Teen Dream Killing MachineBy the end of that day, over 400 more National Guard troops would arrive from South Carolina, 300 from Mississippi and nearly 200 from Indiana. Following them were 300 from Missouri, over 500 from Florida and 1,000 from Tennessee.Inside the D.C. Armory, ammunition and supplies from each arriving state piled up and the usually quiet gymnasium became a mess hall.
What is there to say about people who think it was acceptable for cops to shoot up Breonna Taylor in her own home (damaging precious dry wall in the process) but that Kyle Rittenhouse, who broke actual laws, is an American hero?
They are obviously racists obsessed with white innocence. Young Rittenhouse is just a poor boy from a poor family.
Last Thursday, Rittenhouse's mother, Wendy, and his lawyer, John Pierce, attended a Wisconsin Republican event in Waukesha County. Perpetual rage machine, Michelle Malkin, brought Wendy Rittenhouse on stage where the audience gave her a standing ovation for raising a child who murdered two people and gravely injured a third. This might make sense if they were Klingons, who believe a child is a man “the day he can first hold a blade," but these people claim to follow the teachings of noted cuck Jesus Christ.
Malkin shared a photo on Twitter of herself with Wendy Rittenhouse and her son's homicide attorney. She boasted that she'd spoken to Kyle Rittenhouse on the phone and “thanked him for his courage." It takes as much courage to shoot someone as talent was required to produce that Justice League movie.
It doesn't seem like anyone was wearing masks or socially distancing at this event. Presumably, they were only prepared to gun down COVID-19, preferably in its own bed. The smile on Wendy Rittenhouse's face is very different from the anguish you see from the mothers of Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, and Trayvon Martin. She looks confident that the system is going to work out in her son's favor ... either that or she's very pleased with her chicken piccata appetizer.
This is the same week that the man who killed Taylor was charged with felony wall defacement, so you can understand why we might think Kyle Rittenhouse might never see a day in prison. His “innocence" was openly proclaimed by future QAnon congresswoman, Majorie Taylor Greene.
Wisconsin prosecutors have charged Rittenhouse with a crime, but conservatives like Greene have no problem publicly disagreeing with that decision, while hiding behind Mitch McConnell's pet attorney general's burial of the case against Taylor's killers.
Rittenhouse was a vigilante who placed himself in a dangerous situation after illegally obtaining an assault rifle. You can't claim “self-defense" for a violent altercation you personally initiate. If that theory had any legal merit, Johnny Cochrane would've tried it with O.J. Simpson. Of course, Simpson was only a rich and a celebrity. He wasn't a random white kid.
Greene responded to a tweet from Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, and declared that she'd oppose ALL gun control legislation and will “defend our GREAT Second Amendment always." Yeah, guns are so awesome, two people are dead and another person permanently disabled. Rittenhouse is a coward who never would've been within 1,000 miles of the incident if he wasn't toting artificial, high-caliber “courage." Guns make everything worse. But Greene thinks this was a positive outcome. I enjoy a nice cocktail, but if a teenager got wasted (illegally) and took a car on a joyride (illegally) and killed some people, I wouldn't consider that a great moment for the 21st Amendment.
Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi also defended Rittenhouse last week. She told Sean Hannity that Young Goodman Rittenhouse was a “little boy" trying to “protect his community," which was in a different state where he committed his murders.
From Newsweek:
"You have got a 17-year-old out there trying to protect his state," Bondi said, despite the fact the teenager traveled from his hometown in Antioch, Illinois, to attend the protests on August 25.
Bondi is used to lying — she defended Trump during his impeachment sham trial — but this one is a king-sized Double Whopper. She also kept mentioning that Rittenhouse was only a child of 17, which I suppose was intended to make him seem innocent, but it just reinforces that he was guilty of openly carrying an assault rifle.
Gun rights advocates who adore Rittenhouse have tried to claim he falls under the “just out hunting" exception. However, human beings — even so-called looters and rioters — are never in season.
Rittenhouse was playing-acting as a cop, but all he did was create the sort of “gang violence" conservatives pretend to care about whenever they mention Chicago.
When I was in college, a film professor interpreted the ending of Taxi Driver as Travis Bickle's dying fantasy. It just wasn't realistic that the media and the American people would embrace a violent psychopath as a “hero" just because he killed the “right people." That's a charmingly naive view. Today's Travis Bickle would become a Fox News folk hero and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
[Newsweek]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.
SCIENCE AND SPACE
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/28/0033236/physicists-argue-that-black-holes-from-the-big-bang-could-be-the-dark-matter
Physicists Argue That Black Holes From the Big Bang Could Be the Dark Matter (quantamagazine.org)
Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot quotes Quanta magazine:It was an old idea of Stephen Hawking's: Unseen "primordial" black holes might be the hidden dark matter. It fell out of favor for decades, but a new series of studies has shown how the theory can work...
Their very blackness makes it hard to estimate how many black holes inhabit the cosmos and how big they are. So it was a genuine surprise when the first gravitational waves thrummed through detectors at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in September 2015. Previously, the largest star-size black holes had topped out at around 20 times the mass of the sun. These new ones were about 30 solar masses each — not inconceivable, but odd. Moreover, once LIGO turned on and immediately started hearing these sorts of objects merge with each other, astrophysicists realized that there must be more black holes lurking out there than they had thought. Maybe a lot more.
The discovery of these strange specimens breathed new life into an old idea — one that had, in recent years, been relegated to the fringe. We know that dying stars can make black holes. But perhaps black holes were also born during the Big Bang itself. A hidden population of such "primordial" black holes could conceivably constitute dark matter, a hidden thumb on the cosmic scale...
Following a flurry of recent papers, the primordial black hole idea appears to have come back to life. In one of the latest, published last week in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Karsten Jedamzik, a cosmologist at the University of Montpellier, showed how a large population of primordial black holes could result in collisions that perfectly match what LIGO observes. "If his results are correct — and it seems to be a careful calculation he's done — that would put the last nail in the coffin of our own calculation," said Ali-Haïmoud, who has continued to play with the primordial black hole idea in subsequent papers too. "It would mean that in fact they could be all the dark matter."
"It's exciting," said Christian Byrnes, a cosmologist at the University of Sussex who helped inspire some of Jedamzik's arguments. "He's gone further than anyone has gone before...." And with every subsequent observing run, LIGO has increased its sensitivity, allowing it to eventually either find such small black holes or set strict limits on how many can exist. "This is not one of these stories like string theory, where in a decade or three decades we might still be discussing if it's correct," Byrnes said.
Their very blackness makes it hard to estimate how many black holes inhabit the cosmos and how big they are. So it was a genuine surprise when the first gravitational waves thrummed through detectors at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in September 2015. Previously, the largest star-size black holes had topped out at around 20 times the mass of the sun. These new ones were about 30 solar masses each — not inconceivable, but odd. Moreover, once LIGO turned on and immediately started hearing these sorts of objects merge with each other, astrophysicists realized that there must be more black holes lurking out there than they had thought. Maybe a lot more.
The discovery of these strange specimens breathed new life into an old idea — one that had, in recent years, been relegated to the fringe. We know that dying stars can make black holes. But perhaps black holes were also born during the Big Bang itself. A hidden population of such "primordial" black holes could conceivably constitute dark matter, a hidden thumb on the cosmic scale...
Following a flurry of recent papers, the primordial black hole idea appears to have come back to life. In one of the latest, published last week in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Karsten Jedamzik, a cosmologist at the University of Montpellier, showed how a large population of primordial black holes could result in collisions that perfectly match what LIGO observes. "If his results are correct — and it seems to be a careful calculation he's done — that would put the last nail in the coffin of our own calculation," said Ali-Haïmoud, who has continued to play with the primordial black hole idea in subsequent papers too. "It would mean that in fact they could be all the dark matter."
"It's exciting," said Christian Byrnes, a cosmologist at the University of Sussex who helped inspire some of Jedamzik's arguments. "He's gone further than anyone has gone before...." And with every subsequent observing run, LIGO has increased its sensitivity, allowing it to eventually either find such small black holes or set strict limits on how many can exist. "This is not one of these stories like string theory, where in a decade or three decades we might still be discussing if it's correct," Byrnes said.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/28/0237220/astronomers-discover-possible-60s-era-moon-rocket-booster-heading-back-to-earth
Astronomers Discover Possible 60s-Era Moon Rocket Booster Heading Back To Earth (teslarati.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Teslarati:On August 19th this year, astronomers using the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System observatory in Hawaii spotted an object destined to enter Earth orbit this fall. Designated as object 2020 SO, the item is now believed to be a rocket booster from NASA's Surveyor 2 mission which crash landed on the Moon in 1966 during the Apollo-era of the Cold War's space race.
"I suspect this newly discovered object 2020 SO to be an old rocket booster because it is following an orbit about the Sun that is extremely similar to Earth's, nearly circular, in the same plane, and only slightly farther away the Sun at its farthest point," Dr. Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, explained in comments to CNN.
"That's precisely the kind of orbit that a rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would follow, once it passes by the Moon and escapes into orbit about the Sun. It's unlikely that an asteroid could have evolved into an orbit like this, but not impossible," he said. This specific type of event has only happened once before, namely in 2002 with a Saturn V upper stage from Apollo 12, according to Dr. Chodas.
"I suspect this newly discovered object 2020 SO to be an old rocket booster because it is following an orbit about the Sun that is extremely similar to Earth's, nearly circular, in the same plane, and only slightly farther away the Sun at its farthest point," Dr. Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, explained in comments to CNN.
"That's precisely the kind of orbit that a rocket stage separated from a lunar mission would follow, once it passes by the Moon and escapes into orbit about the Sun. It's unlikely that an asteroid could have evolved into an orbit like this, but not impossible," he said. This specific type of event has only happened once before, namely in 2002 with a Saturn V upper stage from Apollo 12, according to Dr. Chodas.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/10/01/0048238/googlegallup-kids-arent-drinking-cs-kool-aid-interventions-needed
Google/Gallup: Kids Aren't Drinking CS Kool-Aid, 'Interventions' Needed
theodp writes:Despite the $80+ million Google.org alone spent promoting K-12 CS, a new Google-commissioned Gallup report on students in grades 7-12 shows that "students are generally unconvinced that computer science is important for them to learn," adding that "Interventions from parents, educators, community leaders, policymakers, nonprofits and the technology industry are needed to encourage girls, Black students and Hispanic students to take computer science courses." According to the report, only 22% of boys and 9% of girls "believe it is very important to learn CS."
https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/10/01/0038218/greenlands-ice-melting-faster-than-at-any-time-in-past-12000-years
Greenland's Ice Melting Faster Than At Any Time In Past 12,000 Years (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian:Greenland's ice is starting to melt faster than at any time in the past 12,000 years, research has shown, which will raise sea levels and could have a marked impact on ocean currents. New measurements show the rate of melting matches any in the geological record for the Holocene period -- defined as the period since the last ice age -- and is likely to accelerate, according to a paper published in the journal Nature. The increased loss of ice is likely to lead to sea level rises of between 2cm and 10cm by the end of the century from Greenland alone, according to the study.
These changes, over the relatively short period of less than a century, appear to be unprecedented. Greenland's ice sheet shrank between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, and has been slowly cumulating over the past 4,000 years. The current melting will reverse that pattern and within the next 1,000 years, if global heating continues, the vast ice sheet is likely to vanish altogether. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise strongly, the rate of melting could accelerate further to be four times greater than anything found in the past 12,000 years.
The team behind the latest Greenland study made their estimates by producing a computer model of a section of the south-western region of the ice sheet over the past 12,000 years and then projecting forward to the end of this century. They checked their findings against what we can tell actually occurred with the ice, through satellite measurements and other instruments, and also by mapping the position of boulders containing beryllium-10. These are deposited by glaciers as they move, and measurements of beryllium-10 can reveal how long the boulders have been in position, and therefore where the edge of the ice sheet was when the boulder was deposited.
These changes, over the relatively short period of less than a century, appear to be unprecedented. Greenland's ice sheet shrank between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, and has been slowly cumulating over the past 4,000 years. The current melting will reverse that pattern and within the next 1,000 years, if global heating continues, the vast ice sheet is likely to vanish altogether. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise strongly, the rate of melting could accelerate further to be four times greater than anything found in the past 12,000 years.
The team behind the latest Greenland study made their estimates by producing a computer model of a section of the south-western region of the ice sheet over the past 12,000 years and then projecting forward to the end of this century. They checked their findings against what we can tell actually occurred with the ice, through satellite measurements and other instruments, and also by mapping the position of boulders containing beryllium-10. These are deposited by glaciers as they move, and measurements of beryllium-10 can reveal how long the boulders have been in position, and therefore where the edge of the ice sheet was when the boulder was deposited.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/10/01/2247203/for-the-first-time-ever-scientists-caught-time-crystals-interacting
For the First Time Ever, Scientists Caught Time Crystals Interacting (popularmechanics.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics:For the first time, scientists have observed an interaction of a rare and baffling form of matter called time crystals. The crystals look at a glance like "regular" crystals, but they have a relationship to time that both intrigues and puzzles scientists because of its unpredictability. Now, experts say they could have applications in quantum computing. [...] Researchers say they've collided two time crystals to see what happens next. "Our results demonstrate that time crystals obey the general dynamics of quantum mechanics and offer a basis to further investigate the fundamental properties of these phases, opening pathways for possible applications in developing fields, such as quantum information processing," they explain in a new paper.
In their experiments, they placed two time crystals in superfluid and mixed magnons between them. Magnons are a magnetic quasiparticle that, in this case, led to "opposite-phase oscillations," while the crystals themselves stayed phase stable. What's cool (and, literally, supercooled) is how the matter acts within predictable quantum mechanical ways despite the central quality of wild oscillation patterns over time. "Before this, nobody had observed two time crystals in the same system, let alone seen them interact," lead author Samuli Autti, of Lancaster University, said in a statement. "Controlled interactions are the number one item on the wish list of anyone looking to harness a time crystal for practical applications, such as quantum information processing."
In their experiments, they placed two time crystals in superfluid and mixed magnons between them. Magnons are a magnetic quasiparticle that, in this case, led to "opposite-phase oscillations," while the crystals themselves stayed phase stable. What's cool (and, literally, supercooled) is how the matter acts within predictable quantum mechanical ways despite the central quality of wild oscillation patterns over time. "Before this, nobody had observed two time crystals in the same system, let alone seen them interact," lead author Samuli Autti, of Lancaster University, said in a statement. "Controlled interactions are the number one item on the wish list of anyone looking to harness a time crystal for practical applications, such as quantum information processing."
| The deep Anthropocene |
| A revolution in archaeology has exposed the extraordinary extent of human influence over our planet’s past and its future |
| by Lucas Stephens, Erle Ellis and Dorian Fuller |
https://psyche.co/films/from-landscape-to-dreamscape-using-the-medium-of-hawaiian-lava?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=aa5b975109-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_10_01_11_58&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_411a82e59d-aa5b975109-69113497
Of the article directly below, I am happy to say that I do not really do any of these things, except maybe #5, though not in the version expressed by Blake.
Dear Men — These 8 Statements Are Offensive, Whether You Mean It or Not
1. To the man who tells me to smile
2. To the man who calls me a prude or a bitch because I don’t want to sleep with him
3. To the man who tells me I’m “too much”
4. To the man who comments on my clothes
5. To the man who thinks I’m ungrateful for not thanking him for being a nice guy
6. To the man who says he can’t be sexist, and justifies himself as being a “good guy” simply because he has a wife, sisters, or daughters
7. To the man who tells me “it was just a joke”
8. To the man who defends other men without even acknowledging that there is a problem
Megan Thee Stallion Challenges Patriarchy In Hip-Hop
Although she has a legion of fans, “Hot Girl Meg” is not without her detractors. She’s been criticized for her sexualized image and her affinity for twerking. Responding to the critics, “Tina Snow” argued, “We gotta break these double-standards and get women to loosen up a bit. We gotta show them that we can do what we want to do how we want to do it. If someone doesn’t like it, they can get to stepping.” Meg’s sex-positive, Black Girl Magic is threatening to the misogyny and patriarchy that’s deeply imbedding with Hip-Hop. In a culture that still operates like a “good ole boys club,” her unabashed love for herself and her body intimidates those who subscribe to toxic masculinity. “It’s not just about being sexy” she asserts. “It’s about being confident and me being confident in my sexuality.”
AND FINALLY, ZOMBIE FIRES!!!
https://www.kxan.com/weather/zombie-fires-discovered-in-arctic-as-climate-change-introduces-new-fuel/
Climate change continues to impact the world as we know it – the latest concern originating in the Arctic.
Fire scientists are warning of ‘zombie fires‘, or holdover fires, in the Arctic, an area not known for large fires or substantial fire fuel. Zombie fires occur when a fire from a previous year smolders in carbon-rich peat (organic fuel) underground during the winter, then re-ignite on the surface as the weather warms and the ground thaws the next season. This can lead to even more burning the following year.
Did you know about this band? I didn't...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make-Up_(American_band)
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2010.04 - 10:10
- Days ago = 1920 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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