Artscape is an arts festival in Baltimore, and we went there today.
Think of it as an enormous art themed block party.
The whole family went down, saw a lot of art, saw a show from Baltimore Improv Group, and got a little too much sun. (Temps topped 95°F and high humidity)
It’s on tomorrow as well, if you want to check it out.
We landed on the f%$#ing moon.
These days, we are tweeting pictures of what we had for breakfast.
I find this state of affairs profoundly depressing.
I vaguelly recall seeing the landing on the TV briefly.
We were driving cross-country from Alaska to Virginia for my dad’s new job.
It’s really a pretty vague memory.
I guarantee you that that Mr. Costa thought that he had a great “gotcha” question here, and Sanders owns his lame ass attempt to put half quotes in his mouth.
if you come at the king pic.twitter.com/uDaO0o02Lz— Current Affairs (@curaffairs) July 16, 2019
An interviewer comes after Sanders with half a quote, and Sanders remembers the whole quote:
MR. COSTA: Let’s stick with that race point you just brought up. In 1974, you said that bussing policies were well meaning in theory but sometimes result in “racial hostility.”
SEN. SANDERS: What else did I say in that?
MR. COSTA: Tell me.
SEN. SANDERS: No, you got it there. Read it. Read the whole quote.
MR. COSTA: I don’t have the whole quote.
[Laughter]
SEN. SANDERS: The whole quote is the federal government doesn’t give a sh%$ about African Americans.
MR. COSTA: Well, that is true. That’s why I didn’t include it.
SEN. SANDERS: All right. Okay.
The point that Sanders was making, and the point that he remembered from 45 years ago, was that the Federal government was refusing to enforce fair housing laws.
Moderate Democrats Warn That AOC Is Distracting From Their Nonexistent Message
The final paragraph pretty much says it all:
If your mission in politics is to cower from controversy — even on issues where your party has a clear advantage, and your constituents have a vital interest — then you shouldn’t be surprised when people aren’t interested in all of the nothing that you have to say.
The House on Wednesday voted to hold Attorney General William P. Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in criminal contempt for failing to provide documents related to the Trump administration’s efforts to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, escalating the fight between Democrats and the White House over congressional oversight.
………
After a string of legal defeats, Trump last week abruptly retreated from his efforts to add the question to the census, announcing that he will instead order federal agencies to provide the Commerce Department with records on the numbers of citizens and noncitizens in the country.
But lawmakers continue to demand answers about the motivations behind the administration’s 19-month effort to ask about citizenship status on the decennial survey. In May, new evidence emerged suggesting that the question was crafted specifically to give an electoral advantage to Republicans and whites. The Trump administration has said it needs the information to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.
………
The impact of the contempt vote is largely symbolic. Those found in criminal contempt are normally referred to the Justice Department for prosecution; in this instance, the Justice Department would not prosecute itself.
I’m not sure if it means much in the grand scheme of things, but I hope that it ends up more than an empty gesture.
This is not surprising.
When they raided his house, prosecutors found thousands of dollars in cash, diamonds, and a fake passport with his picture on it, which fairly screams, “Flight Risk”:
A federal judge on Thursday denied bail for Jeffrey Epstein, the financier facing sex-trafficking charges in Manhattan, rejecting his request to await trial under home detention at his Upper East Side mansion.The judge, Richard M. Berman of Federal District Court, said Mr. Epstein’s “past sexual conduct is not likely to have abated,” and he was concerned that if Mr. Epstein were released, he would continue to abuse teenage girls.
“Mr. Epstein’s alleged excessive attraction to sexual conduct with or in the presence of minor girls — which is said to include his soliciting and receiving massages from young girls and young women perhaps as many as four times a day — appears likely to be uncontrollable,” Judge Berman wrote in a bail decision.
The judge said he had taken into account the statements of two of Mr. Epstein’s accusers — Annie Farmer and Courtney Wild — who he said had “movingly testified” in a hearing earlier in the week that they feared for their safety and the safety of others if Mr. Epstein were to be released.
A federal indictment has charged that between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Epstein and his employees paid dozens of underage girls to engage in sex acts with him at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Fla.
The indictment also accused Mr. Epstein of using some of his victims to recruit additional girls, paying his “victim-recruiters” hundreds of dollars for each girl they brought to him.
Ever since his July 6 arrest at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after a flight from Paris, Mr. Epstein, 66, has been detained at the highly secure Metropolitan Correctional Center. His lawyers had proposed allowing him to post a substantial bond and remain in his mansion guarded by 24-hour security guards, at his expense.
I’m hoping that he breaks in the New York MCC, and flips on his clients, but I’m not holding my breath.
Find out who Obama and Clinton’s bundlers favor the most, and vote for someone else.
Hell, vote for anyone else:
Big-money Democratic donors have jumped off the sidelines of the presidential race, and three candidates are the clear winners of their support: Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris.
The bundlers are the a part of the class who wrecked the country, and they have no interest in fixing this, because it would cost them money and power.
Whoever they support should be viewed with a profoundly jaundiced eye.
12. We laugh about all the right-wing welfare publications, but the whole Democratic party is welfare for Ivy-League mediocrities.— Jacob Bacharach (@jakebackpack) November 13, 2016
It’s not a unique point, not even on Twitter, but it the most evocative expression of this sentiment that I have found:
The Democratic Party is less a political party in pursuit of particular policy goals than a professional association organized to defend and advance the careers of its most valued members.— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) July 13, 2019
In a talk to the Congressional Progressional Caucus, Chuck Schumer revealed that he completely was blindsided by Nancy Pelosi’s capitulation on the immigration bill.
He expected the Speaker to but forward a better bill, and make a reasonable compromise in conference committee, not complete capitulation:
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., ventured across the Capitol complex on Tuesday afternoon to meet privately with House members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Schumer’s attendance at a House meeting was unusual, and a handful of CPC members, including Reps. Jared Huffman and Barbara Lee of California, and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, took the opportunity to press Schumer on the Senate’s performance during the fight late last month over an emergency spending bill related to the border crisis.
House Democrats broadly considered the Senate bill to be far too weak, handing President Donald Trump billions of dollars with no real requirements that the federal government improve conditions at the camps where migrants are concentrated. Many House Democrats worried that, under the Senate bill, Trump would be able to siphon money away from humanitarian relief toward policing migrants. The House, in response, passed an alternative bill that mandated that contractors improve conditions or lose contracts. The Senate took up a vote on the House bill and rejected it, instead sending its own version over to the House.
………
Schumer, in response to questions, told the Progressive Caucus members that the Senate had always expected the House to pass a stronger bill, after which the two chambers would negotiate a compromise — either informally or through a conference committee. Instead, House leaders simply waved through the Senate bill without letting him know they planned to cave. Schumer “truly didn’t expect the House to pass the Senate bill unamended,” said one person in the room — a recollection that was confirmed by multiple others.
“He said he was surprised the House didn’t ask for a conference committee. It could have,” said another member in the room. “But he also gave a somewhat lame answer on Senate Dems actions.”
……….
The House bill, which was strengthened after negotiations with the CPC, required detention center contractors to meet certain humane conditions or have their contracts revoked, among other mandates. That bill passed the House but failed in the Senate, and House leaders have blamed the lopsided Senate vote against the House version as forcing their hand.
The House still had the opportunity to move to conference, but elected not to do so. Schumer’s analysis maps with that of Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who made a similar point at the Netroots Nation conference last week. “The complete assumption on the Senate side was that Speaker Pelosi would take it to conference, and she didn’t,” said Merkley.
Seriously, Pelosi is not even trying any more.
Clapping ironically and hippie punching does not make a political leader.
Needless to say, this interferes with my connecting tip the Wi-Fi, son none of my pearls our l of wisdom tonight.
Drat.
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Over at the Black Agenda Report, there is a must read examination of the term, “Black Misleadership Class.”
I have concerns about the current political leadership in the Democratic Party generally, where it seems that geriatric careerism trumps (pun not intended) helping real people.
To the degree that black members of the Democratic Party follow this model, the only cause for additional opprobrium is that the needs of their community is more acute.
That being said, I am profoundly uncomfortable with the term, alternatively feeling that it should be reserved for people of color to use about other POCs.
In any case, it’s worth a read.
Boeing Co.’s 737 MAX planes are unlikely to be ready to carry passengers again until 2020 because of the time it will take to fix flight-control software and complete other steps, an increasing number of government and industry officials say, even as the company strives to get its jet back into service this year.
The situation remains fluid, no firm timeline has been established and Boeing still has to satisfy U.S. regulators that it has answered all outstanding safety questions. But under the latest scenario, the global MAX fleet is now anticipated to return to the air in January 2020, a full 12 months after the plane maker proposed its initial replacement of software eventually implicated in a pair of fatal crashes—one in October and one in March—according to some Federal Aviation Administration officials and pilot-union leaders.
The process of developing and certifying revised software and pilot-training changes has been repeatedly delayed, with airlines scrambling to cope with slips month after month.
When this is juxtaposed with what appears evidence that Boeing will be forced to rename the airliner:
A Boeing 737 Max due to be delivered to Ryanair has had the name Max dropped from the livery, further fuelling speculation that the manufacturer and airlines will seek to rebrand the troubled plane once it is given the all clear to fly again.
Photos have emerged of a 737 Max in Ryanair colours outside Boeing’s manufacturing hub, with the designation 737-8200 – instead of 737 Max – on the nose. The 737-8200 is a type name for the aircraft that is used by aviation agencies.
It needs to be noted that these problems are absolutely self-generated by Boeing.
If Boeing hadn’t spent most of its money on stock buybacks, it would have money for a full development program for a successor to the 737.
Basically, anything indicating a move toward a Taiwanese declaration of sovereignty, and the People’s Republic will completely lose their sh%$, and if they tie this to Hong Kong protests, I would expect a military intervention there:
The protests in Hong Kong which have reverberated around the world have had more impact on Taiwan than anywhere else.
The anxieties they triggered about Beijing’s intentions toward Taiwan came to the boil in demonstrations in Taipei. On Sunday June 23, for example, a rally by around 5,000 mostly young people against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill was followed by a much larger protest involving hundreds of thousands criticizing Chinese influence on Taiwan’s media.
They urged the government to take action against the so-called “Red Media,” a reference to local outlets purchased by business people with interests in China.
While the Red Media are at the front of the Taiwanese protesters’ complaints, the extradition law is clearly not far behind. The fear that Beijing is tightening its grip on the former British colony exacerbates Taiwanese people’s fears about their own futures — and brings Taiwanese and Hong Kongers closer together.
I have a bad feeling about this.
We are repeating not particularly old, but remarkably destructive, patterns.
It appears that low and no money down mortgages are surging again:
What does the chart show?
It illustrates the growing proportion of UK mortgage lending at loan to value (LTV) ratios of 90 per cent or higher. Figures from the Bank of England last week found this type of lending had reached its highest level as a share of the total since the financial crisis, topping 18.7 per cent of all lending in the first three months of 2019.
The data appeared in a July report published by the BoE’s Financial Policy Committee, which monitors potential risks to the financial system. It is based on product sales data from the Financial Conduct Authority and the central bank’s own calculations.
Admittedly, this is the UK, which is a smaller real estate market, and is facing unique challenges **cough** Brexit **cough** at this time, so it may be an outlier, but this has unsettling echoes to the 2008 meltdown.
Natalie has had a tough week, so I took her up for drinks. (She forgot her ID, so she ended up pouring a virgin Marguerite)
Recommendation: Give Buffalo Wild Wings a pass.
I read unimpressed by said wings.
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Rather unsurprisingly, it turned into a complete sh%$ show, with Kansas’ budget, economy, and infrastructure turning into a complete sh%$ show.
Well, now that he has been replaced by someone who is ……… well ……… sane, Kansas’ economy and budget have made an impressive turn-around:
Residents of one midwestern state can be forgiven if they have a feeling they are not in Kansas anymore. The Sunflower State finishes a respectable No. 19 overall in this year’s CNBC America’s Top States for Business rankings. That is a 16-place jump from 2018, making Kansas this year’s most improved state.
One year ago Kansas was still nursing a hangover from a disastrous tax-cutting experiment by former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, who slashed individual income-tax rates and eliminated taxes on “pass-through” income from certain businesses. Even though a bipartisan super-majority of the state legislature had repealed the Brownback program over his veto in 2017, the state was still dealing with a residual $351 million revenue shortfall for fiscal 2018, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. In addition to its No. 35 overall ranking last year, Kansas finished a dismal No. 45 in the Economy category.
This year the full force of the repeal has taken effect: The state is running a budget surplus. In addition to the 16-point improvement in its overall ranking, Kansas rises 16 points in the Economy category.
“We are returning to our roots as a very progressive, thoughtful, forward-looking state,” Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, told CNBC in an interview. Kelly was elected last year as part of the backlash over the Brownback plan.
Delusiona economics are a cruel mistress.
Well, in a feat of profound stupid cowardice, House Democrats are planning to water down their minimum wage bill, because, I guess, actually helping the working man is scary:
Top House Democrats are eyeing a major tweak to the caucus’ signature minimum wage proposal, part of a last-minute bid to bolster support among moderates just days before a floor vote.
Democratic leaders are floating a more gradual path to a federal minimum wage of $15 per hour, which would mark a concession to some centrists who had been hesitant to back the bill for fear of aggravating small businesses, according to multiple sources familiar with the ongoing discussions.
Under the proposal, employers would have six years to phase in the wage hike rather than five.
The House plans to vote on the bill next week. And while top Democrats like Majority Leader Steny Hoyer have said they’re confident it will have enough votes to pass, they have worked behind the scenes to shore up more support and avert any drama on the floor.
………
Democrats have long worried that a GOP procedural maneuver on the floor — in which Republicans use a “motion to recommit” to put forward their own changes — could ultimately tank the entire effort.
If Republicans win support from about two dozen Democrats, they could force changes to the bill all within a few minutes. That could result in others in the caucus, including progressives, choosing to revolt and vote it down.
They are worried about faux Dems knifing them in the back, so they are pre-capitulating, because they have no guts.
You know, maybe Nancy Pelosi should spend less time clapping ironically or slagging real Democrats in her caucus, and instead whip the phony Democrats to vote for raising the minimum wage, which, after all, is overwhelmingly supported across the partisan divide.
This sort of crap is why people don’t believe it when Democrats say that they will help ordinary people, because when push comes to shove, they cave so badly they should be wearing spelunking helmets.
I was at 7-Mile Market, the largest kosher market in Baltomore today, and they had some kitchen tools hanging from a display, an onion splitter, a strawberry corer, and an ………OYSTER KNIFE????
I know of one use for an oyster knife, and that is for opening oyster.
It’s basically a paring knife with a heavy spine and a handle suited to prying up shellfish.
Shellfish are (of course) not kosher, so I am unsure as to who would be inclined to buy this knife at 7-Mile Market.
The US defense establishment has completely lost their sh%$ over this, claiming that it is a security issue, though there is nothing about the F-35 that an S-400 in Istambul could get that an S-400 in Kaliningrad would not.
My conclusion has always been that the Pentagon and its web of contractors are upset because they cannot get their fingers into these pies.
It’s not even the first NATO nation to use a Russian SAM system, Greece has been operating the S-300 for over a decade.
So the US has been threatening sanctions, including withdrawal of F-35 sales to Turkey, while Turkey has insisted that it would take shipment of the systems.
Well, Turkey has now begun to receive the shipments of the system, so, as the saying goes, “It is on.”
I do not see either side backing down:
Turkey has begun taking delivery of Russia’s S-400 air defense system, the Turkish Defense Ministry said Friday, completing a deal that has threatened its standing in NATO and is likely to trigger sanctions from the United States.
The first components for the system arrived Friday at Murted Air Base in Ankara, the Turkish capital, the ministry said in a statement. Turkish television stations broadcast footage of the delivery throughout the morning as Russian cargo planes arrived at the base and equipment was offloaded.
The purchase underscored President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s increasing willingness to coordinate with Russia and risked a new crisis in relations between Turkey and the United States. Although U.S. law mandates sanctions against countries making “significant” deals with the Russian defense industry, the Trump administration has given mixed signals about how exactly it might respond if Turkey went through with the purchase.
A basket of measures listed under legislation passed in 2017 — from which the administration is required to select at least five — includes economic sanctions, revocation of visas and prohibition of all Turkish procurement of U.S. defense equipment.
It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out.
It appears that Juggalo makeup prevents facial recognition software fail:
Last year, Ticketmaster and LiveNation invested in a former military facial recognition company, with the hope that the technology could be used to both strengthen and speed up event entry. If that prospect thoroughly creeps you out, here’s a simple life-hack to defeat Big Brother: become a Juggalo. In a revelation that is sure to freak out the FBI, Insane Clown Posse’s passionate fan base have unintentionally unlocked the secret to thwarting facial recognition.
It turns out that Juggalos face makeup cannot be accurately read by many facial recognition technologies. Most common programs identify areas of contrast — like those around the eyes, nose, and chin — and then compare those points to images within a database. The black bands frequently used in Juggalo makeup obscure the mouth and cover the chin, totally redefining a person’s key features.
I’m considering wearing the makeup in my day to day life.