Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[froot loops]

Trillion dollars was the minimum they should have been doing for that type of panic. It worked but barely, it was successful enough that the peanut gallery forgets the dire straits the banking system was in.

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Dr. Strangelove]

[Da Geezer]

Say what you will about Rachel Carson, and I have plenty of negative thoughts there about her impact, but we certainly do have her to thank for the assured long-term existence of this creature:



We have nothing to thank Geezer for. He's done nothing other than to pretend he's a self-made person and not a trust-fund elite who needed daddy's money to get him going.

How'd I get dragged into this? There are no facts that prove that DDT makes the shells of bird eggs thinner, which I believe was her thesis. Banning DDT on a worldwide basis DID cause a spike in malaria cases in underdeveloped countries. It only amounted to 2,000,000 extra deaths for at least 10 years because the poor countries couldn't afford a DDT substitute. DDT was safe, cheap, and effective. I used to spray it on the butts of cows when we got them into the barn to be milked. The flies would drop like, well... flies.

And hack, I'm certainly not a trust fund elite, heh! But what I made, I made myself with no help from my family. And I didn't marry a woman who works for the government and makes big money so she can support me. Get a job!

From Bastiat:

[Da Geezer]

Trillion dollars was the minimum they should have been doing for that type of panic. It worked but barely, it was successful enough that the peanut gallery forgets the dire straits the banking system was in.

Froot, serious question. Do you think banks would have made all those defaulting loans if the banks had to keep those loans in-house rather than selling them to the government?

IMO, pre-2008, the banking business was considered to be in good shape with all the mortgage insurance they purchased (through AIG) making the loans blue-chip properties. I believe what happened was that there was a confluence of bad underwriting, bad politics, and complacency. You have read about the tulip bulb bubble in Holland. Suddenly people looked around and said, hey these are not worth this much. The same happened with housing.

[Kapture1]

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[hack]

You said your father gave you money when you graduated law school for your first real estate purchase.

[Ghengis Jon]

Hey Geez -

Your statement is on thin eggshells ice:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/145496

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ddt-still-killing-birds-in-michigan/

http://11e.devbio.com/wt2404.html

https://web.stanford.edu/group/stanfordbirds/text/essays/DDT_and_Birds.html

[Dr. Strangelove]

The making of the Fox News White House

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...ws-white-house

Don't think there's a ton that's new in this piece...but:

1) The details on Fox being aware of all the Stormy Daniels stuff in 2016 is interesting. Supposedly Murdoch himself issued an order to not report it. Everyone involved in the original reporting and subsequent cover-up has either been fired or moved on.

2) Roger Ailes being forced out is when Fox switched over completely to fully pro-Trump. For all his faults Ailes insisted upon at least distance from him. There's no one around anymore that can say 'no' to Hannity. Murdoch is a absentee landlord in a sense: Ostensibly in charge but not around a lot.

3) The Federal government has done nothing to block the Fox/Disney merger, with Trump publicly congratulating Murdoch, while at the same time blocked Sinclair Broadcasting from its own merger (Sinclair being a conservative rival to Fox). Trump supposedly personally intervened and ordered Gary Cohn to force the Justice Department to block the AT&T/TIme Warner merger.

The section below also gives a nice indication of the standards for a lot of Fox's programming.

*********************

Those



Townsend is a frequent contributor to the fringe social-media site Gab, which Wired

[Dr. Strangelove]

Oh and I missed it the first go-around but the article also claims that Roger Ailes pulled a Donna Brazille and fed Trump the debate questions ahead of time for the first GOP debate in 2015 (which was on Fox).

[Dr. Strangelove]

Here's Trump testing the waters on a new talking point: Blame the Democrats for the failure of the North Korea summit to accomplish anything

[Jeff Buchanan]

On the Fox issues DSL posts about ...... I wonder how much past administrations tried to or actually did influence media sources. Certainly FDR did and Hollywood infamously collaborated with him to paint a glorious picture of the war in the news reel footage that was shown before every motion picture of that time. I'd believe both Nixon and LBJ called on the news media in private meetings or phone calls to depict the Vietnam war as being won/a success despite overwhelming evidence that it was a futile slog as early as 1970...... certainly, there were reporters out there sending that message if you were paying attention.

On the NK summit failure ..... I think we all knew this excuse was coming. My take is that it wasn't a factor but I thought it a bit unseemly - nothing new there for the opposition. The reason for the failure, IMO, was that Trump bulled his way into having it before any ground work was laid by lower level principals. I've heard it said that summits like these, to be successful, require months of tedious negotiations by lower level staff for the summit itself to be a success. Trump relies way too much on his perception of himself as a great negotiator and a deal maker. He' actually, at least on the international scene, terrible at it and his peers have hinted at that in public statements that are more reserved than condemnatory.

[froot loops]

It sounds like that David Townshend fellow is a real swell guy.

[Dr. Strangelove]

On the Fox issues DSL posts about ...... I wonder how much past administrations tried to or actually did influence media sources. Certainly FDR did and Hollywood infamously collaborated with him to paint a glorious picture of the war in the news reel footage that was shown before every motion picture of that time. I'd believe both Nixon and LBJ called on the news media in private meetings or phone calls to depict the Vietnam war as being won/a success despite overwhelming evidence that it was a futile slog as early as 1970...... certainly, there were reporters out there sending that message if you were paying attention.

On the NK summit failure ..... I think we all knew this excuse was coming. My take is that it wasn't a factor but I thought it a bit unseemly - nothing new there for the opposition. The reason for the failure, IMO, was that Trump bulled his way into having it before any ground work was laid by lower level principals. I've heard it said that summits like these, to be successful, require months of tedious negotiations by lower level staff for the summit itself to be a success. Trump relies way too much on his perception of himself as a great negotiator and a deal maker. He' actually, at least on the international scene, terrible at it and his peers have hinted at that in public statements that are more reserved than condemnatory.

Newspapers prior to the 20th century almost always had a political slant and made no secrets that they were a "Democrat" or "Republican" publication. William Randolph Hearst was a lifelong Democrat who made a sharp turn to the right late in life during FDR's Presidency. His entire media empire was aimed at supporting whatever political inclinations he had at the time, but I don't think he ever worked hand-in-hand with an Administration since he was very much anti FDR/Truman for better part of his last two decades alive.

And yup...FDR, JFK, Johnson, Nixon, Bush, etc. all tried to strongly influence media coverage during wartime.

Also it's not the focus of the article, but if there's really evidence out there that Trump has been interfering in antitrust investigations to help political allies, that's a very serious abuse of office. One more thing for House Dems to issue subpoenas over.

[Kapture1]

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