Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[hack]

Suddenly people are going apeshit that it's now a corvette, you mean? I have noticed that. I don't agree --it's still a container ship until Trump proves that a disregard for rules and norms can cause big changes fast.

[iam416]

No, I mean -- I'm not petrified of DJT because I very much think it's the Queen Mary or a container ship. So, it's easy for me to sort of glide over that stuff to the politics of it all.

[entropy]

Warren also has the problem of claiming Cherokee heritage... and I don't think the tribe agrees. I'm not so sure her story doesn't also carry risk..

[Dr. Strangelove]

Press conf today was something

[hack]

Well, that's the thing -- she bootstrapped her way into academia and politics, on merit and as a single mom. And she talks very directly not about values or merits, but about legal reforms that would help and protect the mass of voters against abuse by a small and elite element of commerce. And, yet, you are exactly right. People could very well get hung up on that.

[hack]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alimwatkins/the-strange-case-of-the-russian-diplomat-who-got-his-head-sm?utm_term=.xxLGkwqED#.cb8gGYnjo

Anyone read this? I thought it was an absolutely fantastic story, because it was very traditional. It didn't veer off into analysis or rely on outside experts. It just explained something and was transparent on how it determined the value of that something. In doing so, I for one felt drawn into the reporter's process and found it a great read.

[froot loops]

The Queen Mary doubles in size when you have a rank amateur like Trump. Crying unfair every day is an awful strategy to get things done. Like the great Tommy Lasorda said, "nobody wants to hear about your problems, 80 percent don't care and the other 20 percent are glad you are having them."

[hack]

Did he say that? That's a great one.

Anyhow, I basically tend to agree, but it is clear that someone who doesn't give a crap about the process can potentially turn faster when the right ingredients are there to make it happen. They haven't been so far. The law has constrained him, and the intelligence community is trying to and having some degree of success. He could hit on something. In the process he is going to test some institutional walls, and whilst some will hold, others will break. Which is bad.

Meantime, it's gonna be interesting to see how long before the Koch wing of the party starts to get angry. If it's true that now we're waiting on Obamacare before doing tax reform, that's some serious bullshit. The policy approaches around the edges are where it gets partisan, but there is no right/left issue with the basic approach of lowering the tax rate and eliminating all the tricks that keep your revenue out of the tax base. Every actor agrees, both national and international. That needs to get done, and the longer they go the worse it gets for US taxpayers. The EU is already coming after unrepatriated profits. It takes a whole lot for me to side with a multinational, because it is truly their world right now, but this is a situation where they really are suffering at the hands of Washington.

[entropy]

I haven't researched the subject, but I saw WikiLeaks is now saying the CIA was involved in the last French election.

[hack]

Seems like the wikileaks narrative is coalescing around the idea that Putin found Kompromat on Assange just after the rape charges materialized. That's the spot to which you can trace back to wikileaks end of any talk of dealing in leaks that damage Russia.

Did I post this before? https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n05/andrew-ohagan/ghosting. It's Assange's one-time ghostwriter, talking about how Assange was a bit weird from the get-go but became much more distorted over time. It's a great commuter listen. Power corrupts, and that goes for people in government, business, religious authority, or anything else.

[Da Geezer]

Warren also has the problem of claiming Cherokee heritage... and I don't think the tribe agrees. I'm not so sure her story doesn't also carry risk..

Fauxohantas does have that problem. No one will say anything about it, but the Big 10 voters will look with a jaundiced eye on that kind of gaming "affirmative action".

[hack]

I don't think that's what she did, actually. But you can tell Big Ten voters she did, and plenty of them will believe you anyways.

That said, the shot of whomever it was presenting Trump with the facts about his electoral-college "landslide" in today was astonishing. He backed down IMMEDIATELY. Maybe before we assume we're in a post-truth world media should just go back to sticking with the facts and dropping the interpretations and contextual stuff. Try that first. Go back to the idea that media can't tell you what to think, but it can tell you what to think about.

[Da Geezer]

... but there is no right/left issue with the basic approach of lowering the tax rate and eliminating all the tricks that keep your revenue out of the tax base. Every actor agrees,...

True.

I heard that the US corporate rate is the highest in the world, but that the "take" of the Corporate Tax is fourth from the bottom when compared to the economy's size. This should be a lay-up. Cutting to 15% would probably produce more income to the treasury within a couple of years. Corporate tax relief is why the market continues to go up, IMO.

Also, retailers pay the full-boat 35% while heavy industry pays under 5% (kind of goes to Entropy's question long ago about what corporations actually pay). I heard those stats when the discussion was about the border adjustment tax.

[entropy]

https://theringer.com/how-sportswriting-became-a-liberal-profession-dc7123a5caba#.vhfoznlyu

saw some sports writers respond to this article on twitter...

[SeattleLionsFan]

SLF:

Utter nonsense. Comey drew a distinction between "gross negligence" and "extreme carelessness" which no one could explain. Hillary did, in fact, violate the Espionage Act, as Comey explained in July. What she did was illegal, but the DOJ decided not to prosecute a candidate who was the presumptive president-elect.

I'd appreciate a link where a Republican wanted her killed.

Nope. He did not. He said the FBI was recommending against prosecution because there was insufficient evidence of the intent necessary to prove a crime had occurred. (I.e. In his mind she couldn't be convicted)

As to your second point, here's one article. http://m.pe.com/articles/ready-80974...epublican.html

Let me know if you want more examples. There's plenty. "Lock her up" and all that.