Here we go again!
This news caught me by non-surprise. hahahahah
Political vs. statesmanship?
I dunno, this just underlines the stupidity of the RIGHT.
How can you be right and be RIGHT?
GOD, I hate these people!
THAT'S ALL I GOT FOLKS!
Coming February 6, 2024 . . . MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Pre-order at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
Here we go again!
This news caught me by non-surprise. hahahahah
Political vs. statesmanship?
I dunno, this just underlines the stupidity of the RIGHT.
How can you be right and be RIGHT?
GOD, I hate these people!
THAT'S ALL I GOT FOLKS!
It’s been interesting to observe the large numbers of people who suddenly think they’re experts on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine—both those on the left who blame it on Obama for intervening too much and those on the right who blame it on Obama for not intervening enough.
As someone who has spent his entire academic career analyzing and critiquing the U.S. role in the world, I have some news:
Since the vicious nature of President Putin recently served as the major premise of a deconstruction of Edward Snowden's claims to virtue, I offer for discussion, (especially from NCD and RMRD), an alternative view of the wily KGB Colonel...
By Matt Apuzo, Dealbook @ nytimes.com, March 13, 2014
Four years after President Obama promised to crack down on mortgage fraud, his administration has quietly made the crime its lowest priority and has closed hundreds of cases after little or no investigation, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog said on Thursday.
The report by the department’s inspector general undercuts the president’s contentions that the government is holding people responsible for the collapse of the financial and housing markets. The administration has been criticized, in particular, for not pursuing large banks and their executives.
“In cities across the country, mortgage fraud crimes have reached crisis proportions,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a mortgage fraud summit in Phoenix in 2010. “But we are fighting back.” The inspector general’s report, however, shows that the F.B.I. considered mortgage fraud to be its lowest-ranked national criminal priority. In several large cities, including New York and Los Angeles, F.B.I. agents either ranked mortgage fraud as a low priority or did not rank it at all [....]
The dystopian, post-electricity world of NBC’s sci-fi show Revolution may be a lesfictional possibility than you thought, according to the results of a major federal study on vulnerability in the electricity grids Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal.
A coordinated attack on just nine of the United States’ 55,000 electric-transmission substations on the right day could cause a blackout from Los Angeles to New York City, according to the study conducted by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The study’s results have been known for months to select people in federal agencies, Congress and the White House, but were reported publicly for the first time Wednesday. The WSJ did not publish a list of the 30 most critical substations identified by the FERC study [....]
New York Times, debate between 7 writers on topic, March 13
In announcing the “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, President Obama acknowledged that young men of color confront particularly challenging circumstances, and he called for a broad public-private partnership to address those challenges. Part of the initiative is an emphasis on “masculine” ideals like strength, independence and leadership. And Obama may be implying that dads are uniquely important to parenting sons.
Does the initiative offer hope for young men of color, or reinforce harmful stereotypes?
This conversation was suggested by Darren Rosenblum, a professor of law at Pace Law School.
Last May, a weird story made the news: the FBI killed a guy in Florida who was loosely linked to the Boston Marathon bombings. He was shot seven times in his living room by a federal agent. What really happened? Why was the FBI even in that room with him? A reporter spent six months looking into it, and she found that the FBI was doing a bunch of things that never made the news.
Exploding across the tubez, this plug leads you straight to healthcare.gov, and, btw, it's a really nicely laid out, user friendly site.
Don't know quite how they fucked it up at first, but it's pretty cool now (speaking from my , ahem, medicare perch.....)
If the plug doesn't crack you up, the wingers response will guaranteed put you on the floor laughing...
By Kevin Helliker, Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2014
Research shows that a diet high in protein and low in carbohydrates can help shed pounds and normalize blood-glucose levels, improvements that lower the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
But will you live longer on a high-protein, low-carb diet? Two studies in the current edition of the scientific journal Cell Metabolism suggest the opposite. One involved an experiment conducted on mice, the other an 18-year study of humans who had divulged their dietary habits. Both studies found a strong association between longevity and a low-protein, high-carbohydrate diet, although the human study bore a twist: Beyond age 65, higher protein levels appeared to promote longevity.
"Those high-protein diets were developed with a shortsighted vision," said Valter D. Longo, a University of Southern California professor of gerontology and biological sciences and the lead author of the human study. "On a high-protein, high-fat diet you can lose weight, but in the long run you may be hurting yourself."
These studies are anything but definitive, showing only associations derived from highly limited evidence. But in gerontology, the influence of protein consumption on longevity is a hot topic. Last year, the American Federation for Aging Research hosted a symposium on "Optimal Protein Intake for Older Adults," featuring a panel of scientists from academia and industry. No concrete answers emerged, except perhaps that protein consumption influences health in ways that are complex.
"High protein diets may be effective to lose weight rapidly," said Elena Volpi, a professor of geriatrics at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. "But very high protein diets may also be harmful." [....]
Associated Press in Denver, March 10, 2014
Lawyers for the man charged with killing 12 people in a Colorado movie theater asked the supreme court to require a Fox News reporter to identify her sources for a story about the defendant.
The attorneys said Monday they asked the justices to review a New York state court ruling that Colorado cannot force New York-based reporter Jana Winter to reveal who told her that Holmes sent his psychiatrist a notebook containing violent images before the July 2012 attack.
Holmes’ lawyers say whoever spoke to Winter violated a gag order and should be punished. They also say that officers might have lied when they denied under oath being Winter’s sources, undermining their credibility as potential trial witnesses [....]
By Andrew Soloman, The New Yorker, March 17, 2014 issue and available online now
[....] Since the shootings, Peter has avoided the press, but in September, as the first anniversary of his son’s rampage approached, he contacted me to say that he was ready to tell his story. We met six times, for interviews lasting as long as seven hours [....]
Interview subjects usually have a story they want to tell, but Peter Lanza came to these conversations as much to ask questions as to answer them. It’s strange to live in a state of sustained incomprehension about what has become the most important fact about you. “I want people to be afraid of the fact that this could happen to them,” he said. It took six months after the shootings for a sense of reality to settle on Peter. “But it’s real,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be understood to be real.” [....]
By Amanda Hoh, Sydney Morning Herald, March 11, 2014
As fears for the 239 passengers missing on a Malaysia Airlines flight continue to rise, speculation as to what may have happened to MH 370 are flying high. While Malaysian officials have appealed for people to avoid spreading rumours about the cause of the missing flight, conspiracy theories are emerging online - from a terrorist attack to spontaneous explosions and a wild stunt [....]
Remember "The Bermuda Triangle"? I think it may have been my introduction to the concept of conspiracy theories as a kid, the first one I ever heard. There's something about air travel, where we as passengers have zero control (can't even jump out a door, for example), so it's comforting to have a narrative where somebody's in control.
As a White House special adviser on health policy, Ezekiel Emanuel had a ringside seat for the sometimes tortured process that produced the Affordable Care Act. He explains why it was so difficult to pull the law together.
Ezra Klein, that is. His new site is warming up and there is a new Twitter account @voxdotcom that went from 0 to almost 18,000 followers in three hours, the same three hours when people were live tweeting Cosmos and True Detective. Impressive.
"Ukraine is for Putin pretty much what Cuba was for US president John F. Kennedy, only with much more justification."
"That these Slavic siblings are feuding again is sad, but also routine, banal and not really the outer world’s business. The EU-led attempt to portray this as a moral clash between East and West is unfounded historically, and will backfire politically."
The author recommends neutrality in the Crimean conflict.
How humankind unwittingly joined an experiment on antibiotics and weight gain.
By Pagan Kennedy, New York Times Sunday Review/Opinion, March 8/9, 2014
IF you walk into a farm-supply store today, you’re likely to find a bag of antibiotic powder that claims to boost the growth of poultry and livestock. That’s because decades of agricultural research has shown that antibiotics seem to flip a switch in young animals’ bodies, helping them pack on pounds. Manufacturers brag about the miraculous effects of feeding antibiotics to chicks and nursing calves. Dusty agricultural journals attest to the ways in which the drugs can act like a kind of superfood to produce cheap meat.
But what if that meat is us? Recently, a group of medical investigators have begun to wonder whether antibiotics might cause the same growth promotion in humans. New evidence shows that America’s obesity epidemic may be connected to our high consumption of these drugs. But before we get to those findings, it’s helpful to start at the beginning, in 1948, when the wonder drugs were new — and big was beautiful [....]
Al Jazeera, 9 March, 2014
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of supporting fighters in Iraq and effectively declaring war on the country.
The rare direct attack on the Sunni Gulf powers, comes with Iraq embroiled in its worst prolonged period of bloodshed since 2008, with more than 1,800 people killed already this year, ahead of parliamentary elections due next month [....]
Maliki, a Shia, has in the past blamed unnamed regional countries and neighbours for destabilising Iraq, the AFP news agency reported.
But in an interview with France 24 broadcast on Saturday, the Iraqi premier said allegations he was marginalising Sunnis were being pushed by sectarians with ties to foreign agendas, with Saudi and Qatari incitement.
"They are attacking Iraq, through Syria and in a direct way, and they announced war on Iraq, as they announced it on Syria, and unfortunately it is on a sectarian and political basis," he said [....]
Warning: For conspiracy buffs, this will be a very disappointing narrative. Also disappointing for those who think at least some of the world's leaders are capable of playing eleventy dimensional chess.
By Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, March 7/8, 2014
[....] An examination of the seismic events that set off the most threatening East-West confrontation since the Cold War era, based on Mr. Putin’s public remarks and interviews with officials, diplomats and analysts here, suggests that the Kremlin’s strategy emerged haphazardly, even misleadingly, over a tense and momentous week, as an emotional Mr. Putin acted out of what the officials described as a deep sense of betrayal and grievance, especially toward the United States and Europe [....]
By Jeremy W. Peters, New York Times, March 7/8, 2014
[....] At least 26 more physicians are running for the House, some for re-election. In all, 20 people with medical degrees serve in Congress today, 17 in the House and three in the Senate, a number that has doubled over the last decade [....]
Why are so many physicians willing to trade their white coats — not to mention the autonomy, respect and high salary — for a job that can be so frustrating that it is now sending one veteran politician after another into retirement?
“Medicine has so changed, and it’s not necessarily the Affordable Care Act,” said Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who had a family medical practice before being elected to the House and later to the Senate.
The senator said today’s doctors have watched the profession undergo tremendous realignments that are shifting doctors’ responsibilities away from patient care, changes they attribute to the government’s inefficacy. And many of them believe they can reverse the course.
“They’re just frustrated,” he said. “They practiced medicine when you could actually spend time with a patient, spend time to listen to them, figure out what’s wrong with them.”
The House’s only psychiatrist, Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, offered a more Freudian explanation: the desire for control [....]
By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, March 7/8, 2014
A dispute over a classified C.I.A. report has led to a bitter fight between the agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee, with each side accusing the other of spying.
sorry for the Fox News link, but interesting all the same.
I figure much of the problem is rich Russians vacationing in the Crimea - all that oil money has to go somwehre.
Oscar Wilde described marriage as the triumph of hope over experience. In finance and geopolitics, by contrast, experience must always prevail over hope, and realism over wishful thinking.
A grim case in point is the confrontation between Russia and the West in Ukraine. What makes this conflict so dangerous is that U.S. and EU policy seems to be motivated entirely by hope and wishful thinking. Hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin will “see sense” — or at least be deterred by the threat of sanctions to Russia’s economic interests and the personal wealth of his oligarch friends. Wishful thinking about “democracy and freedom” inevitably overcoming dictatorship and military bullying.
Note that this opinion piece is on whether the secession of Crimea can be morally justified and does not address the question about what to actually do if the voters do vote to secede (or if fraudulent election results say that they do).
By Amy Davidson, Close Read @ newyorker.com, March 6, 2014
[...] “You have said that the Francis-mania will not last long,” the Corriere della Sera interviewer said. “Is there something in your public image that you don’t like?” The Pope replied, “I don’t like the ideological interpretations, a certain ‘mythology of Pope Francis’ ”:
"If I’m not wrong, Sigmund Freud said that in every idealization there is an aggression. Depicting the Pope to be a sort of superman, a type of star, seems offensive to me. The Pope is a man who laughs, cries, sleeps calmly and has friends like everyone. A normal person"
Not everyone sleeps calmly; there is a difference between being human and being normal. There are all sorts of traps for the adored, including fastening too much on a sense of one’s own humility, piety, or helpfulness, or one’s transgressive charm. Francis, impressive as he is, still has to show that he can keep from falling into them. There is a certain grumpiness that tinges his answers, even some of the cheerful ones, which might prove to be an anchor against sanctimony [....]
Also see:
Full Transcript of Pope Francis’ March 5 Interview With ‘Corriere della Sera'
English translation, By CNA/EWTN NEWS 03/05/2014
A couple months ago, a Gallup poll recorded a small uptick in the percentage of Americans who identify as “liberal” — to 23 percent, or what Gallup, eliding the margin of error in the poll, called a “new high.” My Post colleague Chris Cillizza wondered if liberal was “no longer a dirty word.”
We will see. After all, there were far more conservatives in that Gallup poll, which, for some, means we’re still a “center-right nation.” But whether people call themselves “conservative” isn’t necessarily that telling in the first place. A recent book by two political scientists shows that liberal may be a dirty word, but liberalism is alive and well — even among people who call themselves “conservative.”
In Ideology in America, Christopher Ellis and James Stimson describe a striking disjuncture. When identifying themselves in a word, Americans choose “conservative” far more than “liberal.” In fact they have done so for 70 years, and increasingly so since the early 1960s.