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45 thoughts on “Rinse, Repeat”
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Heidi Przbala made a point worth considering this morning. The NRA’s support for considering bump stock regulation is not the end of the story – that’s just their give – the take will be coming. We just don’t know what they will want in return. Yep, rinse and repeat.
well, it must be Friday… the twit’s favored day for crazy talk and cliff hangers.
the guardian:
At a meeting of military leaders, Trump warned cryptically that those present were witnessing “the calm before the storm”. When asked by reporters what he meant, the president, a former reality TV host, said: “You’ll find out.”
they think it has to do with decertifying iran deal. heck, he’s just as likely to decertify Puerto Rico, fire tillerson and mattis and kelly, call for myrtle to resign, declare martial law and ban pro football. who knows what’s rattling around in his little head.
bbc: Elon Musk says he can rebuild Puerto Rico’s power grid with solar
Renewable energy entrepreneur Elon Musk says he could rebuild Puerto Rico’s shattered electrical infrastructure with his solar energy technology.
The vast majority of the island territory remains without power, weeks after it was hit by Hurricane Maria.
On Twitter, Mr Musk said his technology, which powers several smaller islands, could be scaled up to work for Puerto Rico.
The island’s governor responded to Mr Musk with the message: “Let’s talk”.
“Do you want to show the world the power and scalability of your Tesla technologies? Puerto Rico could be that flagship project,” the Governor of Puerto Rico, Ricardo Rossello, said.
Mr Musk’s Tesla company is famous for its electric cars, but it also incorporates SolarCity – a solar panel firm which specialises in efficiently storing large amounts of electricity in power banks.
The company says it has powered small islands, such as Ta’u in American Samoa. There, it installed a solar grid which can power the entire island and store enough electricity for three days without any sun.
“The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico, too,” Mr Musk tweeted.
But he added that such a project would need the support of Puerto Rico – something the governor appears to be open to.
It is also understood that Tesla has already sent a number of battery systems to Puerto Rico to store energy from the island’s existing solar panels to help offset the energy shortage.
The latest conversation is reminiscent of the bet started on Twitter between Mr Musk and an Australian software entrepreneur which led to plans for the world’s largest battery storage project in South Australia.
That battery installation – which Tesla guaranteed could be working “100 days from contract signature” – was declared half-built within days of the start of construction.
The Puerto Rican governor also used the exact same language – “let’s talk” – as South Australia Senator Sarah Hanson-Young used before the project became a reality.
[…continues…]
speaking of puerto rico
rolling stone
Lin-Manuel Miranda Talks Puerto Rico Benefit Song ‘Almost Like Praying’
“The way music comes out of … every molecule of the place [is] something we share,” playwright says of track featuring Jennifer Lopez and Luis Fonsi
….
“You know how we always tell artists ‘stay in your lane’ anytime they say something remotely political? I’m trying to use what I do in service of this challenge,” Miranda tells Rolling Stone. “We’re facing a humanitarian crisis right now. And the response from our federal government is not commensurate with the previous two hurricanes, much less up to the unprecedented danger of this disaster itself.”
Miranda began work on the song, an adaptation of “Maria” from 1961 musical West Side Story, two days after the hurricane first made landfall. “I knew the name Maria was forever going to have a destructive connotation to this island,” says Miranda. “It’s also the name of my favorite song from West Side Story. So my brain was already looking for a sample to flip … And that’s what we do in hip-hop, right? We take a sample, we flip it and change the meaning. And so the hook of the song is, ‘Say it soft, and it’s almost like praying.'”
[…continues…]
entire article very touching, worthy of reading
@KeithOlbermann 54m54 minutes ago
Hey Moron, where’s your tweet about this? Our economy LOST 33,000 jobs last month. 1st September loss in 7 years. YOU SUCK.pic.twitter.com/wDyz1XR2cF
5:50 AM – 6 Oct 2017
Drug companies make a fortune manufacturing in PR, maybe they’ll kick in some dough for solar.
The hellbound train of the trumpence junta gains speed every day. The regression-du-jour continues. I feel the economy tanking and the predatory commercials are back on tv, online. wilber ross makes questionable claims about NAFTA. Another shady dude of banking fame in the cabinet and I expect things to really get worse next year when health industry crashes and shortages start. Meanwhile, the ruskies and saudis are not so secretly sword dancing in Moscow striking deals. And more deals.
donnie the drain continues and his cabinet from stinky zinke to peanut sessions are stomping-out our rights, left and right. The WH kitchen continues to feed and entertain millionaires and billionaires while average citizens are food insecure. Peanut butter needed for Aggie Cupboard. The bricks and mortar university needs food for students, staff and faculty. Parking fines to be paid with PB.
Pogo, what’ll you bet they define “bump stock” so narrowly it’s a meaningless regulation, then they’ll claim gun control is now a done deal. Any so-called restriction the NRA supports is bogus prima facie.
Nothing quite like black history on a wonderful T-Shirt
Nice Custer reading, Jamie…..moocha gratsky
Meanwhile, while we argue over plastic parts and recoil from the horror of another mass killing by a pilot. Just like the one who flew the plane into the Alps? The WH is sinking DACA via miller, sessions’ boy. DOJ abandons transgender protections. Deportations continue to tear-up families.
House votes on tax reform, from commondreams.org —
Below is an explanation of the tax cuts proposed under the Trump-GOP tax framework compared with the spending cuts proposed in the House budget resolution.
The aim of the GOP is to murder any and all hope for anything decent.
klepper last night on fake news
best line was re facebook blaming it’s algorithm…”sounds plausible to me, most things are al gore’s fault”
Just found a station that is all classical 24-hrs/day sponsored by USF broadcast from Sarasota. Right now it’s playing Mozart’s 8th, you know, the one composed when he was twelve. Here is a painless way of getting to the station (and others of similar ilk.)
tip of the hat to Jaime
Pat, damage from the first two hurricanes is the proximate cause for the job loss. Unemployment itself is at a many-year low.
I understand that I’m in the minority when I say I dislike Olbermann’s brand of journalism. IMO his shouting demands that the listener check the numbers and draw conclusions independent of his rant du jour; conclusions that may or may not support his position.
I think everyone had made a huge mistake in not challenging the facts that PG voters use to support their allegiance to the drunk moron we elected president.
There is no evidence he is a good businessman even if your only definition is money. He has no talent for business – he is a con, a scam artist and a legal bully.
The people who support him are deplorable and I blame the media for not doing its job in anyway shape or form. PG is a white, male supremacist and every time he accidentally does something that appears reasonable everyone is willing to anoint him, actual President. He’s scum we elected our drunk uncle president and most people have no idea of the consequences. He has us all focused on the possibility of getting us into a war with just about anyone. In the meantime he is tearing down America.
Trump’s jobs numbers ARE bad pre-hurricane unemployment is not at an all time low – the drop is due to people dropping out of the jobs search
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-jobs-20170703-htmlstory.html
But the decline in May was largely for the wrong reason — about 429,000 people dropped out of the labor force.
During the presidential campaign, Trump criticized the declining unemployment rate (it had been 10% in October 2009) as not reflecting the true state of the economy.
In a speech in August, Trump called the then 4.9% unemployment rate at the time “one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics” because it didn’t take into account the number of people who had dropped out of the labor force.
jim.puzzanghera@latimes.com
I’m just glad to see someone shouting…..and it helps to know he’s right…..
when radio off npr becomes intolerable (standard am/fm ford truck radio, c 96) (usually takes no more than 10 minutes, max) and npr#1 is at the time yakking about something I’m not interested in, for whatever reason; I go to npr#2 for the classical stuff….sometimes even they play stuff which just doesn’t groove…..but it’s always the last ditch. After that, radio silence, and the Road Angel Choir…..
And a tip of the Hatlo Hat to Ms BW for giving me a delightful couple of hours with one Jimmy Hatlo.
Jimmy’s History
KGC, during that period there was no significant change of policy. Looking at the graph later in the linked article I see a very healthy set of figures–it shows me a leveling of the rate of decline as the economy has approached what many have believed tyo be the zone of full employment–somewhere around 5-pct. As we have slid (gently) below that level, we need to rethink where we are and what is full employment now.
In the past the 5-pct accounted for the people who had lost their jobs for one reason or another (business closures, dissatisfaction, moving, etc.). Now that things are less gloomy the factors causing frictional unemployment (people in the groups I listed above) have lessened so the unemployment rate has declined to a point where it is closer to 4-pct than 5-pct.
Will it continue dropping? Maybe. New plants are opening in SC. They are being built by oversea owners. That will lower local unemployment and bring back people that have dropped from the labor force. Suddenly you have more workers there, fortunately there are new jobs to support them.
But, what about the Mid-West? It still looks grim in most places. As people stop looking for work there, they either retire in place or move to another area where there are jobs. Either way they are no longer counted as part of the local unemployed workforce. The local figures improve even though no jobs have materialized.
My fingers hurt
Just sayin nothing Trump ever says about anything including his impact on the economy is true
The truth would be we are still in the Obama economy and so far however terrible Tump is – his policies have not impacted the economy yet.
The point the Olberman made is correct
I want to be associated with KGC’s 12:36 remarks…
flatus, it was the “Hey Moron” by ko that got my attention in that it gave me a few joyful seconds imagining how much the twit must hate reading it. ko could have followed it up with a “nyahh nyahh nyahh” or “so’s your old man” instead of statistics and I still would have posted it.
In an opinion piece for the July 22, 2013, Wall Street Journal, “A Tip of the Hat to Social Media’s Granddad,” veteran journalist Bob Greene characterized Hatlo’s daily cartoons, which credited readers who contributed the ideas, as a forerunner of Facebook and Twitter. Greene wrote: “Hatlo’s genius was to realize, before there was any such thing as an Internet or Facebook or Twitter, that people in every corner of the country were brimming with seemingly small observations about mundane yet captivating matters, yet lacked a way to tell anyone outside their own circles of friends about it. Hatlo also understood that just about everyone, on some slightly-below-the-surface level, yearned to be celebrated from coast to coast, if only for a day.”
Wiki
apologies for the length, but gotta give joe his bully pulpit now and then
the guardian:
‘We’re walking down a dark path’: Biden hammers Trump in scathing speech
Joe Biden, the former US vice-president, has taken off the gloves with a scathing denunciation of Donald Trump and the existential threat he poses to the postwar international order.
Passionate and pugnacious, his voice sometimes erupting in anger, Biden warned on Thursday that the US was heading down “a very dark path” and urged Washington’s foreign policy establishment to take a stand.
It is rare for ex-presidents or vice-presidents to criticise their successors’ actions. So far Barack Obama has carefully picked his targets, issuing a few pointed remarks or written statements. But Biden, 74, speaking to an invited audience at a thinktank, decided to let rip.
“I really feel incredibly strongly that the women and men sitting before me, who have been the intellectual backbone of the foreign policy establishment in this country for decades, have to start to speak out,” he said. “President Obama and I have been very quiet and respectful, giving the administration time, but some of these roots are being sunk too deeply. I believe it’s time to challenge some of the dangerous assumptions that are attempting to replace that liberal world order.”
Biden, who spent four decades serving in high public office, was receiving the Zbigniew Brzezinski annual prize at the Center for Strategic and International Studies thinktank. The auditorium was packed, with many people standing, and hushed as he offered a damning verdict on the Trump presidency.
Acknowledging that many Americans feel left behind by globalisation, he said: “The appeal to populism and nationalism is a siren song, a way for charlatans to aggrandise their power, raise themselves up, break down those mechanisms that were designed, whether in our constitution or internationally, to limit the abuse of power, and destabilise the world.
“It’s not alarmist. We’re walking down a very dark path that isolates the United States on the world stage and, as a consequence, endangers – not strengthens – endangers American interests and the American people.”
In a dig at Trump’s past career as a New York property developer, Biden said: “Rather than building a shared narrative of freedom and democracy that inspires nations to unite in common goals, this administration casts global affairs in a dog-eat-dog competition, like it’s a competition: who gets that plot to build the new high-rise building.”
Biden, tipped as a possible Democratic candidate for president in 2020, showed his willingness to hammer the president hard. “Among the many problems plaguing this administration’s foreign policy: ideological incoherence, inconsistent and confusing messaging, erratic decision-making, unwillingness or inability to solve problems caused by understaffing. When’s the last time, in the state department, you can stand on the seventh floor and yell and hear an echo?”
There was some laughter from the audience but Biden pointed and chided: “No, you think I’m kidding. It’s irresponsible. It’s this brand of zero-sum thinking that I find the most disturbing and dangerous.”
Both Democratic and Republican administrations in the past had worked to uphold the liberal international order, he continued. “The president’s vision, in contrast, is grounded in a disturbing admiration for autocrats and an apparent faith that the world will mistake bluster and bullying for strength.”
He derided Trump’s recent appearance at the UN, where the president emphasized national sovereignty and self-interest. “To stand in the well of the general assembly, and wave the flag of narrow nationalism, while warning of a future vulnerable to ‘decay, dominion and defeat’ marks a dangerous revision of political small-mindedness that led the world to consume itself in two world wars in the last century, and it abandons America’s hard-won position as the indispensable nation, as a leader that inspires more than fear.”
The former vice-president criticised Trump for pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and threatening to scrap the Iran nuclear deal, which Biden said would isolate the US rather than Iran: “Next time, we’re not going to have the world on our side.” Such a move would have a knock-on effect on negotiations with North Korea, he contended, where Trump’s aggressive rhetoric has already caused untold damage.
“Trading insults. Deploying taunting nicknames. Promising to ‘totally destroy’ a country of 25 million people. Such erratic action only worsens the crisis and rejects the possibility of diplomacy.”
Biden, who received a standing ovation and cheers, warned of the threat posed by Russia and accused President Vladimir Putin of seeking to destabilise the west so he could target Ukraine and Georgia. “So far President Trump has been unwilling to call out Putin for Russia’s meddling, even in our own democratic process, or criticise his action. Think of that. Think of the signal it sends around the world, for God’s sake.”
Biden also recalled a meeting with Putin, who was showing off his magnificent office. “I held my arms up, I said: ‘It’s amazing what capitalism will do’ … I said, ‘Mr President, I’m looking in your eyes and you have no soul.’ And he looked back at me and he said: ‘We understand one another.’”
Poobah, nothing will surprise me about the lengths to which the gun lobby and Congress will go to appear to provide gun regulation without actually providing gun regulation.
Oh, and great jobs report, no? No. It was 123000 less than economists predicted – even taking the hurricanes into account. The news outlets are busy trying to put lipstick on the report. It still is oinking away.
So here are the jobs numbers by sector:
Change in number of jobs from August to September, by industry.
Mining and Logging 2,000
Construction 8,000
Manufacturing -1,000
Wholesale Trade 6,700
Retail Trade -2,900
Transportation and Warehousing 21,800
Utilities 0
Information -9,000
Financial Services 10,000
Professional Services 13,000
Education and Health Services 27,000
Leisure and Hospitality -111,000
Other Services -5,000
Government 7,000
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Probably not a surprise that Leisure and hospitality took the big hit considering that FL was shut down for a couple of weeks and there are probably literally thousands of small employers who are still shut down and will be for the foreseeable future. Of course others will rise to take their places in that sector – as long as Disney and Universal are open there will be a crying need for restaurants and t-shirt shops. I can only hope The Holy Land Experience gets shut down forever.
Sounds wonderful, no? No.
And if the jobs numbers weren’t bad enough – drumpf’s admin is narrowing the availability to contraception through employer provided health plans by broadening the religious exemption under the ACA.
“The Trump administration issued a rule Friday that sharply limits the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate, a move that could mean many American women would no longer have access to birth control free of charge.
The new regulation, issued by the Health and Human Services Department, allows a much broader group of employers and insurers to exempt themselves from covering contraceptives such as birth control pills on religious or moral grounds. The decision, anticipated from the Trump administration for months, is the latest twist in a seesawing legal and ideological fight that has surrounded this aspect of the 2010 health-care law nearly from the start.”
WaPo
Pogo, I have not checked what ‘the economists’ have said. You didn’t hear me prognosticate; if I had, it wouldn’t have been some wildly optimistic number. Maybe I should participate in the next poll. Flatus, dues paying member NABE.
Pogo, that list of numbers doesn’t appear to include the job losses caused by Harvey and Irma. Could it be the August numbers? Most of Harvey’s impact wasn’t felt in the petrol area until the last week of that month. That’s the damage that generated the cascading losses throughout the economy.
BTW, Trump is an F’ing maroon. You can quote me.
They can take their Goliath Burger and stick it up their Ark.
When Pontius asked him, “What is truth?”, Jesus shoulda hollered, “Fake News!”
“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”
― Lenny Bruce
I wonder how long the cavemen sat around in the cave making noises and playing with the echos before some butt-munch turned it into Religion.
Can’t go mastodon hunting with you fellers today,…I need to stay behind here and try to appease the Echo-God
Ran into an interesting exercise on Twitter. If you were meeting someone for the first time and wanted them to understand you, which five movies would you want them to watch? I put up these five with the full knowledge that the new person would still be totally confused.
The Chosen
Same Time Next Year
Torch Song Trilogy
Singing In The Rain
Two For The Road
Flatus, those are the September numbers. At least they are what Wapo posted as the September numbers. Considering the losses in leisure I think they are.
Jamie, not identical but would 3 outta 5 still make us twins? at least half sisters?
comments like this indicate he’s gonna eventually chuck it early and go back to lolling around in his pink robe eating bonbons and underlings.
business insider: President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump met with the wife of an imprisoned Venezuelan opposition leader in February and tried to sympathize with her husband’s plight by comparing life in the White House to that inside a Venezuelan prison, The Washington Post reported on Friday.
https://youtu.be/L7zUMnMG1Kw