The Execution of Keith Lamont Scott

by 2:15 pm. It has 165 Comments.

Undercover cops show up to serve a warrant on someone else, encounter a man who we now know had a TBI recently, don’t do one damned thing to de-escalate the situation, and then shoot him dead for no reason in front of his family. And shit is about to blow up if this becomes widely seen:

This stinks. We have a serious policing problem in this country.





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The Lies of Big Pharma: Hormone Replacement Therapy Edition

by 12:55 pm. It has 61 Comments.

If you are a woman, or love a woman, or want a textbook case of the corruption of our medical system by Big Pharma, you need to watch, and share, this video.

(Edit – sorry, I can’t the embed to work, so please follow the link.)

(Edit2: Adam here – I went in and fixed it for you.)

Reminds me of the recently revealed news about how the sugar industry, with the help of a couple of bought-off Harvard researchers, successfully derailed studies on the negative health impacts of sugar, almost certainly contributing to the illness and premature death of…thousands?…millions?

Related: a bunch of links from Dr. Greger (the guy narrating the video) about dietary links to breast cancer. Also, a large-scale study concludes that soy alleviates menopause symptoms and another useful link on that.


Orangmandias

by 10:54 am. It has 263 Comments.

orangmandias

Y’all may have already heard this, but it has been confirmed that President Obama’s humiliation of Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner five years ago is indeed what set Trump off on his quest for the presidency:

After the humiliation of President Barack Obama raking him over the coals for pushing birther conspiracy theories, a top surrogate for Donald Trump said he will have his “ultimate revenge” when all of his critics have to “bow down” to him in the White House.

In a clip previewing an upcoming special from PBS Frontline, published online Thursday, Omarosa Manigault spoke about the abject humiliation Trump felt after Obama did an extended bit about the real estate mogul at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner.

“Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump,” Manigault said. “It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump confidant [and crackpot scumbag! — ed.] with loose ties to the campaign, called the 2011 event “the night that [Trump] resolved to run for president.”

Yeah, nothing deranged and egomaniacal as fuck about that! Since this confirmation is coming from a top campaign surrogate, maybe Lester Holt could ask Trump to explain how the public pantsing he got from PBO figured into his decision to run and whether it’s appropriate to make the American people and indeed the world’s entire population bit-players in Trump’s ego-driven psycho-drama.

While he’s at it, Holt might also ask both candidates to weigh in on the question of whether or not the U.S. president is really the “most powerful man in the universe.” Have leaders throughout the entire universe been considered, not just the Magellanic Clouds (large and small) and Andromeda?


Portrait of a Winnable

by 8:42 am. It has 22 Comments.

Not every 2010 redistricting was a win for Republicans. One of our winnable districts, CO-6, is a great example.

The sixth is Tom Tancredo’s old seat, and that racist windbag was able to rack up 60/40 wins until he retired in 2008 so he could fail, badly, at running for President. But the 2010 redistricting changed that. It moved the mostly Republican southern suburbs out of the district, and added in urban, Democratic Aurora. In 2012, a Democrat came within 2 points of beating Mike Coffman, who won the seat after Tancredo retired.

Back in the old CO-6, Coffman could say anything he wanted about abortion or the gays and get away with it. Now, Coffman’s near loss had him running scared, backtracking on personhood laws, and voting for ENDA. Still, as he tries to navigate the gulf between what he really believes and what his new constituents will tolerate, his opponent, Morgan Carroll, is holding his feet to the fire by pointing out that he co-sponsored an abortion bill containing “forcible rape” language.

Morgan was the President of the Colorado Senate. She’s a smart, personable lawyer. 2016 is the year she can forcibly retire Mike Coffman by sending him to the Tom Tancredo home for old bigots. That’s why she’s on our list of winnables this year. If you want Morgan and others like her to have some money to throw out assholes like Coffey, you know what to do:

Goal Thermometer





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Friday Morning Open Thread: Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor…

by 5:36 am. It has 132 Comments.

Apart from being reassured that some Americans still understand the ideals upon which our commonwealth was founded, what’s on the agenda as we wrap up another week?


Early Morning Open Thread: Trump’s Grifting the Secret Service

by 4:15 am. It has 45 Comments.

I’d have assumed such behavior would fall under an extremely intense version of the old rule “Never be rude to people who could spit in your food.” But then, I’m not a commanding visionary business leader like Donald ‘The Grifter’ Trump. From the Politico article:

… It’s standard practice for the agency — which is tasked with protecting presidential candidates as well as presidents and other federal officials — to reimburse presidential campaigns for the cost of traveling with the candidates.

In fact, the Secret Service has reimbursed the Clinton campaign, too: $2.6 million so far this cycle.

The difference with Trump is that one of his companies, TAG Air, Inc., owns the plane, so the government is effectively paying him.

The Clinton campaign, by contrast, mostly has been chartering planes from a private company called Executive Fliteways in which the Clintons do not have any ownership interest.

“The taxpayers are actually reimbursing Trump for the travel of the Secret Service agents,” said Brett Kappel, a campaign finance lawyer at the law firm Akerman LLP. “It’s just another example of how the Trump campaign has taken an unprecedentedly large amount of its money and spent it at Trump-owned facilities.”…

A POLITICO analysis of FEC records found that, through the end of August, Trump’s campaign has spent at least $8.2 million at Trump’s own businesses, including to hold events at his hotels, buy food from his restaurants and rent office space for its headquarters in his Manhattan office tower…

If Trump was a character on a TV comedy, he’d be rejected as “too exaggerated”.


Late-Night ‘Exactly What You Expected’ Open Thread: Don Trump, Yer LAWN ORDURE Candidate!

by 1:28 am. It has 43 Comments.

“They know who has has a gun, who shouldn’t be having a gun.” If they can’t pass the time-honored paper bag test, for instance. Or just if it’s obvious they’re “not from around here.” THOSE people. Does he need to spell it out any more clearly?

‘But racism didn’t exist until you outside agitators riled up our colored folk!’ – NC legislator


Breaking News: Police in Charlotte are Moving Protestors Ahead of the 12:00 AM EDT Curfew

by 11:02 pm. It has 80 Comments.

Tremaine Lee of MSNBC is reporting live that police in Charlotte have just fired rubber bullets and what he’s describing as pepper spray (most likely pepper ball less than lethal rounds) into fleeing protestors that were marching peacefully towards I277 over an hour before the midnight curfew. Lee is reporting that the police are moving into the area, they then set up a phalanx, move towards the protestors, and as the protestors begin to move out, the police then fire the rubber bullets and pepper rounds towards them.

Here’s the link to WBTV 3 Charlotte’s live feed.

The next major conflict point will be at 12:00 AM EDT when the Mayor of Charlotte has called a curfew to clear the streets from midnight to 6:00 AM EDT. It is unclear how law enforcement in Charlotte plan to enforce that curfew given the several hundred peaceful protestors and demonstrators in the streets of Charlotte. Earlier this evening Reverend Barber in an interview on MSNBC indicated that the Mayor of Charlotte had agreed during a meeting with faith leaders earlier today not to impose and enforce a curfew.

For everyone in the Charlotte area please stay safe.

I’ll update as new information becomes available.

Update at 11:15 PM EDT

Mayor Jennifer Roberts just told Brian Williams on MSNBC that:

We are 45 minutes away from finding out what this means in practice.

Update at 12:00 AM EDT

The Charlotte municipal curfew is now in effect. Significant number of demonstrators/protestors are still out on the street. Hopefully things stay peaceful.

Update 12:07 PM EDT

Update at 12:12 PM EDT

Update at 12:35 AM EDT

Update at 12:52 AM EDT:


On Hillary Clinton Asking People with Disabilities for Their Votes

by 10:18 pm. It has 138 Comments.

As Tip O’Neill famously said, Everybody likes being asked! And a cynic might say HRC knows what it’s like to live with a disability, because her lack of a penis has been treated as such by every misogynist & pundit for the last 40 years. Should we be happy that more people are finally getting the voice they deserve, or ashamed that it took this long?

ORLANDO — Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton is pushing intensively to win over a group of voters who don’t typically get much attention during elections but who have become an increasingly potent political force: disabled people and their families…

Clinton is also targeting Hispanics, women, caretakers of the elderly and sick, and families of gun-violence victims, among other constituencies focused on specific issues. In the case of the disability community, which cuts across all partisan and demographic divides, Clinton may be trying to attract not only ­Democratic-leaning voters who are not excited by her candidacy, but also voters who may be leaning toward Trump — notably disabled veterans.

One very visible piece of the effort came Wednesday in a policy speech here devoted to initiatives to more fully integrate those with disabilities into the nation’s economy. It is an issue, Clinton said, that “really goes to the heart of who we are as Americans.”

Speaking in a packed community-center gym in this presidential battleground state, Clinton pledged to fully support “a group of Americans who are, too often, invisible, overlooked and undervalued, who have so much to offer but are given too few chances to prove it.”…

“A lot of families and people with disabilities are single-issue voters, where this is the primary issue in deciding who to vote for,” said Allison Wohl, executive director of the Association of People Supporting EmploymentFirst, a group that seeks employment and self-sufficiency for people with disabilities. “So the campaign sees an opportunity.”

Before Wednesday’s speech, Wohl participated in a conference call between campaign aides and disability advocates to preview what the candidate would say.

And behind the scenes, the campaign had already enlisted more than 200 advocates for disabled people, who have been vouching for Clinton on social media, developing policy positions and raising some $1.3 million for her campaign, according to a Clinton adviser…


No, Deplorables, Immigrants Aren’t Stealing Your Jobs

by 8:37 pm. It has 137 Comments.

Since we know that facts have a left-wing bias, this will probably fall on deaf ears:

Immigration has an overall positive impact on economic growth in the United States and has small-to-no effects on wages and employment for native-born workers, according to a new report.

Prepared by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the report looked at immigration trends over the past 20 years to assess the economic impact of the now more than 40 million people living in the United States who were born in other countries. It found that immigration has an overall positive long-term impact on the economy.

It’s true that first generation immigrants can take more money from state, local and federal governments than native-born citizens, and that especially on a state and local level, it can be costly to educate the children of immigrants. But the report found that as adults, children of immigrants in the next generation are huge boosters of the economy, contributing more to the government in taxes than either their first-generation parents or native-born citizens.

So another hole in the vote Trump bullshit “argument.”


Open Thread: The Not-Yellow Rose of Texas

by 6:10 pm. It has 203 Comments.

Anybody from the area want to comment? From what I can see, the assumptions seem to be that this is (a) putting down a marker for future elections; (b) a way to encourage voters to show up for down-ballot races; and/or (c) a relatively low-cost way of messing with Trump/Cruz/the Texan GOP…


Read more →


Open Thread: Trump’s ABGs — Always Be Grifting

by 5:27 pm. It has 114 Comments.

Dana Houle is a Democratic campaign professional, sitting this cycle out while he’s primary caregiver for his two-year-old twins. His twitter feed has been a great resource and a comfort to me, because he’s got the professional’s eye for the seams in Trump’s Potemkin village campaign.

Apart from always keeping in mind that Trump’s a con artist, what’s on the agenda for the evening?

[warning: autoplay]


Gimme money, that’s what I want

by 2:20 pm. It has 136 Comments.

Kevin Drum made an interesting observation this morning – a lot of major central banks would like to see more inflation right now, but so far no one has pulled it off. A bunch of people replied that maybe one of the central banks should try printing a lot of money, so Drum pointed out that Japan already did that.

So the conclusion is…free money is really free? Can we print out the entire federal deficit? Alexander Hamilton would roll over in his grave, but think of the positive side. America would finally qualify for a decent mortgage rate. The Fed could mail fat envelopes of cash to everyone with a social security number. I bet that would poll pretty well.

I would guess* the answer has more to do with the psychological side of finance. Maybe printing money has no effect as long as everyone thinks that the bank is still being responsible. If international investors get nervous that the bank is really shooting the moon, maybe they will all get worried at the same time and all the bad stuff we associate with an inflation spike will kick in irreversibly all at once. Or maybe it’s not enough for the Fed to print money. Rich folks mostly just squirrel excess cash away in in some foreign account where it gathers fees and puffs up investment bubbles and generally doesn’t do anyone much good.

Perhaps you also need to get that scratchola into the hands of people who will reliably stimulate the economy with it. That is to say, poor people. If you give a poor person ten dollars they will spend most of it right away, in America, on stuff that supports jobs in America. Poor people all having enough money to buy eggs (and a refrigerator) will pretty much a priori make eggs (and refrigerators) more expensive. In my happy fantasy world where Republicans return the value of the air they consume, I can imagine coupling a major QE push with a comparable surge in infrastructure/jobs and safety net spending. Betcha ten bucks we would hit two percent inflation pretty quickly, and without the likely very bad consequences of the Fed just leaving the presses running until China and Europe hit the panic button.

(*) Professor Krugman is trying to knock a stuck bag of Welch’s fruit snacks free from a vending machine, so I’m just going to sit in his chair here for a minute and write this. Don’t tell him, ok?


The best things in life are free

by 12:20 pm. It has 130 Comments.

The second best are very expensive, like political campaigns.

We’re raising money faster than ever before. Let’s see if we can hit 20 today.

Goal Thermometer





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Instastupid

by 11:56 am. It has 138 Comments.

As mentioned below, deplorable:

Twitter agreed to unblock the account of a University of Tennessee law professor Thursday morning after the faculty member and contributing columnist for USA TODAY and the News Sentinel agreed to delete a post that urged motorists to run over demonstrators blocking traffic in Charlotte, N.C.

In response to a tweet from a TV news station in Charlotte that showed protesters on Interstate 277, the @Instapundit account wrote, “Run them down.”

Glenn Reynolds, the creator of the Instapundit blog, tweets from the handle @Instapundit.

He posted to Twitter shortly after 10 a.m. that his account had been unblocked.

UT College of Law Dean Melanie D. Wilson said in a statement Thursday morning that she and university administrators are investigating the matter.

Wilson called the tweet an “irresponsible use of his platform.”

“The university is committed to academic freedom, freedom of speech, and diverse viewpoints, all of which are important for an institution of higher education and the free exchange of ideas,” she wrote. “My colleagues and I in the university’s leadership support peaceful disobedience and all forms of free speech, but we do not support violence or language that encourages violence.”

She called the concerns about the tweet from students and staff, along with those from citizens across the country, “serious and legitimate.”

Reynolds defended his tweet earlier Thursday.

“Yes, that was my post,” he wrote in an email to the News Sentinel. “ It was brief, since it was Twitter, but blocking highways is dangerous and I don’t think people should stop for a mob, especially when it’s been violent.”

I don’t think he should be banned from twitter, because he wasn’t specifically harassing individuals. I also don’t think he should be fired for this, because I think getting people fired for saying stupid things is wrong. I can’t control when companies drop people for saying and doing stupid things because they want to protect their brand, but I don’t support campaigns to get people canned. I’m pretty sure Glenn hasn’t been as charitable to people on the other side of the aisle in similar circumstances, but I’m too lazy to google it because it would require reading more Glenn Reynolds.

Having said that, his defenses are complete bullshit. He wasn’t making a nuanced argument about self defense (and the latest arguments about Reginald Denny are nonsense, too). He was just being his usual dickish self. He’s spent the last two decades as an internet tough guy, spouting off wingnut bullshit and masquerading as a libertarian. This is just a case of a well known asshole tweeting something shitty.

Having said all that, he’ll be fine. He’s says he’s quitting twitter after making a few more “points” and behind the scenes is probably scrambling to negotiate with UT that his quitting twitter will end the issue, he’ll still be on the wingnut welfare gravy train at PJ Media and other outlets, and he’ll probably manage to parlay this into more martyr money somehow.

In essence, it is the story of modern America in a nutshell- “Asshole says something awful, profits.” See Trump, Donald.





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