Tuesday, November 3, 2015

SAR #15307


There is a big difference between a business and a movement.
No Show, No Tell: The last person jailed in the Waco biker shootout is being released. There were nine deaths and 20 injuries that day, yet no one has been charged. Of course we haven't been told whose guns fired the fatal bullets.
No, Really: Larry Lessig has ended his quest to become the Democratic presidential nominee.
And the Winner Is: The FBI has pointed out that the “new” chip cards are pretty much not a great improvement over the old cards, but that chip and PIN – like used in the rest of the world – are the real deal. But US customers can't get access to the more secure cards because the card companies are afraid they'd lose money keeping you from losing money.
Fieldwork: Maybe Jeb's guys should have run his new slogan past a focus group. It turns out that “Jeb Can Fix It” does not actually apply to his campaign.
Smugly Satisfied: On average, the states that rejected Obamacare's Medicaid expansion ended up spending $2 billion a year more on their Medicaid program while rejecting $20 billion a year in federal Medicaid tax funding. What kind of people would refuse to extend healthcare to their poorer citizens and pay $22 billion a year to do so? Republicans, proudly.
It's A Gas: The Pentagon spent $43 million to build a compressed gas filling station in Sheberghan, Afghanistan, anticipating a huge increase in environmentally conscious motorists.
Summation: What is it like to “attend” an on-line charter school? It is exactly like not going to school at all. So says a Stanford University study. “The average student who attends might as well not enroll.”
The Washing Of Hands: TOTE Maritime, the owners of the El Faro, in a preventative strike, have filed their own lawsuit claiming it was not their fault that they rushed the freighter into the path of a monster hurricane, and besides they lost money too.
Free-Agency: Marco Rubio has been optioned by billionaire investor and would-be kingmaker Paul Singer for an undisclosed amount rumored to be in the mid 8-figures.
Barefoot & Ignorant: The Texas Supreme Court is to decide if parents who believe the world is soon going to end in The Rapture actually have to teach their homeschooled kids anything at all. Like being able to read.
Stirred, Not Shaken: New research confirms that East Antarctica’s biggest glacier is melting from below and West Antarctica, which would raise global sea levels over 10 feet were it all to melt, is going to melt. The only question is how soon.
The Wrong Arm Of The Law: The FBI had compelling and convincing evidence that Jared Fogle was molesting children for over four years before they got around to arresting him. Can the kids sue the Bureau for criminal facilitation?
Asked & Obvious: Would taxing the rich reduce inequality? If it was done right, of course.
Logical Conclusion: A Texas judge ruled that a cop cannot be charged with murder for murdering an unarmed black man because the cop was working “with the FBI” at the time. And apparently the FBI can kill anyone, anywhere, anytime...
War And So On: Over 90% of those killed and wounded by our weapons being used by the Saudis against Yemen are civilians. Mostly women and children.
Office Work: A woman who accidentally called a Senate committee office was conned out of several thousand dollars by the man who answered the phone. Comes natural to 'em.
Porn O'Graph: The talk.

3 comments:

McMike said...

re The Talk. Beautiful. It captures a real parenting dilemma. My generation was raised to believe a lot of soft-focus BS about American exceptionalism, Christian charity, and endless possibilities promised by the American Dream.

We want to teach hour kids about the essential decency of people, and the potential of Democratic government and responsible capitalism, and we'd rather not lay a heavy bummer on them, but cannot figure how to have that conversation without doing so

And yet we have arrived at the conclusion that Everything is Broken, good deeds are punished and evil is rewarded, and the psychopaths and morons are in charge. The best thing we can hope for is that this is just a cyclical dip, a generational regression, before another phase of expanded consciousness and human growth comes(along the lines of "The Fourth Turning" theory) - hopefully delivered by our kids by virtue of our great parenting.

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I imagine that parents in the depression, or early twentieth century union organizers, or black families in the south, or French families in WWII or east Germany afterwards, &cetera, did not suffer from this dissonance. I wonder what they said to their kids when they described politics, power, justice, and finance.

Anonymous said...

Maybe "Jeb can fit it" is a slogan aimed at the other candidates in search of a vice president. Jeb has good contacts with Florida election officials, you know.

Anonymous said...

​"The Democrats have changed the rules" again. They've been doing it since Gerry, the violent force of volumes of money decelerating into the leadership's pockets has thrown that beast off on a new track nearly every week since 1812. At least Tammany Hall was "Honest Corruption".