Wednesday’s Forum

Hump Day discussion time.

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Brazilian federal prosecutors have charged the American journalist Glenn Greenwald for cybercrimes in a decision which has prompted outrage among press freedom activists – and celebration by allies of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

    Nobody could’ve seen that coming. s//

  2. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Giving evidence at a military commission on Guantánamo Bay, James Mitchell gave a detailed account of the 2002 decision to interrogate suspected al-Qaida leaders using waterboarding and other techniques which the US later admitted constituted torture.
    ……………………

    In testimony which veered from the gruff to jokey to tearful, Mitchell said the methods he had recommended were based on a course given to US armed services to help them withstand enemy interrogation, known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE). The measures, which included slamming detainees repeatedly against a wooden wall, cramming them in a small box sometimes with insects, and waterboarding, simulated drowning, had been approved by the justice department in July 2002 under the George W Bush administration. Mitchell claimed those measures were within the limits of what was legal, and were designed to force detainees to give up information rapidly that could help prevent a further attack, possibly involving a nuclear weapon.

    “The CIA was never interested in prosecution,” he told the court. “They were going to go right up to the line of what was legal, put their toes on it, and lean forward.”

    Mitchell, who was recruited by the CIA in 2002 to first observe and then apply coercive measures, said the agency was determined to “get tough” and he wanted to make sure it was done within limits.

    “What I was told was: ‘The gloves were off’,” Mitchell, now aged 68, a tall, thin man with a trimmed white beard, dressed in a charcoal suit and red tie. “They were going to use some form of physical coercion … My concern was that they were going to make it up on the fly.”

    Mitchell has accused other CIA interrogators of using waterboarding far in excess of guidelines as well as other unauthorised interrogation techniques. In court on Tuesday he described these excesses as “abusive drift”.

    “When people are left to make up coercive measures, it tends to escalate over time,” Mitchell said. “They dehumanise the detainees. They think they are justified in using a higher level of pressure. They think: If a little is good, a lot is better.”

    He said he had tried to stop several interrogations that had got out of hand, in particular by the head of CIA interrogations of the CIA’s newly formed rendition, detention and interrogation group, an unnamed officer he referred to by the nickname, the “new sheriff”.

    “The agency had not approved the techniques he was using,” Mitchell said. He described the approach underlying the abuses as: “Hurt the person until they tell you what you want to know and then you hurt them some more, to find out if they are lying to you.”

    See? He was one of the good guys.

    “I felt my moral obligation to protect American lives outweighed the temporary discomfort of terrorists who had taken up arms against America.”

    Moral obligation, Temporary discomfort… This is the language of war criminals.

    9
  3. OzarkHillbilly says:

    On Friday, in court filings reported by the Boulder Daily Camera and other outlets, federal officials said they had recovered and were seeking the forfeiture of Turing’s degree certificate, the medal and photos, reports and letters from his time at boarding school.

    The items were stolen in 1984, the filing said, after a woman asked to see the Turing archive at Sherborne. A note was later found which said: “Please forgive me for taking these materials into my possession. They will be well taken care of while under the care of my hands and shall one day all be returned to this spot.”

    In 2018 a woman named Julia Turing offered the items on loan to the University of Colorado Boulder. The court filing said the woman was not related to the British scientist but changed her surname from Schwinghamer in 1988.

    In a letter cited in the filing and reported by the Planet Princeton website, a Sherborne employee wrote: “I am familiar with the eccentricities of Americans but I got the impression that she has a ‘crush’ on Turing.

    The eccentricities of Americans? I wonder if he’s ever met a Brit? 🙂

    “One of my staff took her over to the librarian who gave her access to Turing’s bits n pieces. I did not see her again but she wrote expressing her joy at having a collection of Turing items and included a photo of them laid out on a table – his photo, OBE & so on. I was not aware that she had taken them, nor indeed was the librarian! I asked him to make a list of the missing items but it proved to be incomplete because we had no inventory anyway.

    “I gave up any hope of ever getting AT’s things back ’til one day she wrote saying she was sending them back. A parcel arrived. It contained more than the librarian had listed, which made me cross. I wrote thanking her and she told me she intended to join the US Army and was training hard for the US Olympic team (track). I wished her luck and heard no more.”

    That package evidently did not contain the certificate, medal and other items. In 2018, prompted by their being offered to the Colorado university library, federal officials searched a home and recovered the items. Should they ever reach the market, they could prove valuable: in 2015 one of Turing’s notebooks sold for more than $1m at auction in New York.

    Hopefully, they will find their way home soon.

  4. sam says:

    Barr Once Contradicted Trump’s Claim That Abuse of Power Is Not Impeachable

    Hope somebody brings this up in the Senate. The squirming would be interesting to watch.

    2
  5. Teve says:

    @byHeatherLong

    “I’ll say on the record that I think tax cuts will pay for themselves,” — US Treasury Sec. Steve Mnuchin at #Davos

    He says the first two years — where the deficit has grown nearly 50% — have been “right in line” with his projections. He says revenues are likely to pick up.

    8:59 am 1/21/20

    If you’re still pushing trickle down economics in 2020, you have the same amount of respect for Republican voters as I do.

    7
  6. Teve says:

    @walterdellinger

    Schiff is not just good. Today is one of the most impressive performances by a lawyer I have ever seen.

    6
  7. Teve says:

    @SenWarren

    After 3 amendments, every GOP senator has voted:
    ❌No on subpoenas for White House documents
    ❌No on subpoenas for State Dept documents
    ❌ No on subpoenas for OMB documents
    This is a sham trial.

    10
  8. sam says:

    @Teve:

    “If you’re still pushing trickle down economics”

    The way they go on about it, it’s more like trickle down your leg economics.

    1
  9. Kit says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Moral obligation, Temporary discomfort… This is the language of war criminals.

    Seriously, and without wanting to exaggerate, just what sort of communication, what sort of back and forth, what sort of moral compromise is possible with people who love torture?

    3
  10. Sleeping Dog says:

    Why Manhattan’s Skyscrapers Are Empty

    The author notes NYC’s homeless crisis and of course the solution is right in front of us. Let the city use eminent domain to appropriate units for housing. It would give true meaning to the term poor door.

    Hillary

    Months ago, I was admonished for stating the Hillary should just shut up, well she’s at it again. As much as I agree with her assessment of Bernie, now is not the time to renew and try to settle your personal grudges. Go back to Chappaqua and take care of the grandchild.

    8
  11. MarkedMan says:

    In another thread I commented that it was unlikely that a single Republican Senator would defy Trump. I pointed out the truism that if a Senator had a backbone or sense of responsibility they would not still be a Republican.

    After claiming, unanimously that they could not talk about any of Trump’s actions until they had the facts and evidence revealed in the trial, they voted, unanimously, to disallow witnesses and prohibit subpoenas for documents in that trial.

    Is anyone still naive enough to think that after that Mitt F*ing Romney or Suzanne F*ing Collins is going to do the right thing?

    9
  12. Teve says:

    If you love how deranged ben garrison’s cartoons are, you’ve got to see this one.

    1
  13. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Kit: None, which is why they obfuscate with language. To tell the unvarnished truth would be tantamount to admitting just exactly who and what they are and the horror of what they’ve done.

    2
  14. Kit says:

    From The Guardian: The poo panacea: inside the strange, surprising world of faecal transplants

    When treating antibiotic-resistant infections, injecting patients with other people’s excrement can be highly effective. Could it be the answer to dementia, anorexia and obesity too?

    The brown gloopy stuff is, depending on your profession and level of politeness, faecal matter, stool, excrement or poo. It has been donated by a generous volunteer and it is almost certainly going to transform the life of the person who is going to receive it.

    Partly, there was a supply problem: where was the poo to come from?… MTC is one of only two licensed stool banks in the UK, and in its first year of operation sent out 150 samples, at a cost of £650 for each 50ml.

    If anyone here at OTB is in need of a donor, never let it be said that Kit doesn’t give a shit. Call me.

    8
  15. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    Even if I adored Trump, I would find this embarrassing.

    3
  16. Kurtz says:

    @Teve:

    Such an idiot. The criticisms of his aesthetic are right on. Specifically that he isn’t using the scene to communicate his point–he resorts to labelling.

    2
  17. Teve says:

    @jasonscambell

    Ignoring Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment, White House impeachment spokesperson Tony Sayegh says it’s “unprecedented” to impeach a president in an election year

    1
  18. Teve says:

    @Kurtz: I love how he overexplains his imagery because he doesn’t trust his audience to figure simple things out. 😀

    1
  19. DrDaveT says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: I had been planning to write a comment over the weekend about how I had concluded that the key place where the GOP went off the rails was in wholly accepting the “end justifies the means” fallacy. Any crime, any unethical behavior, any pettiness or corruption or atrocity can then be rationalized away as “unfortunate but necessary”.

    Just stating it baldly like that is unconvincing, and I don’t have time to lay out all of the examples and reasoning, but I think it’s pretty clear that this is where we are. I doubt the cancer is operable.

    6
  20. Kathy says:

    Various aviation blogs yesterday relayed the news that Boeing expects the maiden flight of the 777X to take place tomorrow.

    This is the latest generation of the 90s era 777. It will be bigger and more fuel efficient.

    We’ll see. Delays in development of even new variants of existing aircraft are common. This time the issue seems to be the engines, which will be the largest ever made for a commercial airliner.

    The 777X and the A350-1000 are likely to be the largest passenger jets in the foreseeable future, as the 747 and A380 end production (the 747-8F freighter version will likely be produced longer), and as frequency and point-to-point travel beats efficiency and hub-and-spoke travel.

  21. Joe says:

    @Kit: Fecal transplants are where medicine meets the ewwww factor. I am not sure how they could impact dementia, but there were a spate of articles a few years about using them as a treatment for Crones disease and other chronic intestinal problems with the theory that this is a simple change of the recipients microbiome. I don’t know how the research has borne out, but I would be disappointed – especially for my friends who suffer from Crones or IBS – if this was dismissed on the sole premise that it sounds gross.

  22. Kurtz says:

    @Teve:

    Maybe he just knows who his primary audience is.

    1
  23. Tyrell says:

    “Gravitational waves hit our planet. Astronomers have no idea where they are from”(Space)
    Scientists are unsure of the effect of these waves on the earth. The number of powerful earthquakes (level 4 and above) seem to be on the increase.

    1
  24. Kurtz says:

    I was catching up pn the last few comments on dying threads. The whole Avenatti thing strikes me as a reason to contain glee when someone sharly criticizes Trump. This is especially the case when the figure is previously unknown.

  25. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    When I see a Garrison cartoon, I wonder if he really believes Trump is a demi-god, or if this is just some cynical ploy to fleece the rubes.

    2
  26. Kathy says:

    I find myself becoming interested in finance, which is a terrible idea. I can tell I understand it the way I understand math: I know what a given instrument is supposed to do, but in most cases I can’t understand the mechanism well enough to truly comprehend how it does it.

    Consider long term savings. I understand well how any interest-bearing instrument, like debt bonds, works in conjunction with regular increases in capital. The trick is to 1) reinvest the interest paid into the same instrument and 2) invest more money every month into it. I can even do a simplified spreadsheet to show how much I can expect to gain, roughly, per year and in a number of years(*).

    I haven’t understood quite how long term savings work with stocks. Perhaps because money invested in stocks doesn’t gain money, but rather value. say you buy 10 shares of Nareednia Inc. at $10 per share. A year hence the shares sell at $11, a 10% gain. but you don’t have $110 in cash (try and buy a latte with a share). You’d have to sell some or all of your shares to get some of the extra money (and pay a trade fee/commission, but we can ignore that for the moment).

    Partly, too, it’s because the stock market is one step removed from the purpose of stocks. That is, a company sells stock to raise capital to invest in the company. Well and good. But once Narrednia sold shares at its IPO, any further sales between Hillary and Bill and Joseph and Mary net absolutely nothing to the company.

    Of course, higher share prices means higher value for the company, which allows the owners fo the controlling shares to sue them as collateral for a loan, for instance, which nets more investment capital.

    Then you get things like securitized debt, like the sub-prime mortgage mess, derivatives, swaps, etc. which are even further removed from the reason that stocks were sold in the first place.

    I seriously need to find a new interest to explore…

  27. Teve says:

    @CSK: i wondered the same thing, but he’s also bigtime anti-Vaxxer and QAnon guy.

    1
  28. Kathy says:

    I don’t know. There is some high level of irony when the head of a modern tech company complains that his privacy was invaded and his data stolen.

    On a related note, I’m sharply reducing my use of facebook. I’d stop it entirely, except it is the one way to stay loosely in touch with some friends abroad.

  29. Teve says:

    @Kathy: it’s the only way I can keep in touch with scientist friends spread across the world or I’d be long gone.

    One day FB won’t have that monopoly and the right database APIs will be opened up and there will be competition in that space.

    Right now FB is like if JVC hadn’t opened up the VHS standard.

    1
  30. Teve says:
  31. gVOR08 says:

    @Teve:
    A tweet from Kurt Andersen

    @KBAndersen
    Dear @MittRomney:
    This is the character-testing moment of your life. This is your opportunity to make history, become a leader, even a hero. You have more power this week and next than any senator apart from @senatemajldr. Use it.
    11:06 AM – 1/21/20

    People keep telling me Republicans in Utah aren’t as nuts as the rest of them. I hope they remember until his next election that Romney has the power to stop this farce and is choosing not to.

    3
  32. Jax says:

    @gVOR08: Long comments section on this article out of Utah. I haven’t had time to read through them all yet, gotta go feed cows, but it seems to be a mixed bag so far.

    https://www.ksl.com/article/46707227/romney-among-gop-senators-who-pushed-mcconnell-for-new-impeachment-trial-rules

  33. Teve says:

    @Kathy: no, finance is amazing. I kind of wish I knew that when I was 10 years old, my life would be totally different.

    My fantasy of putting Tesla guts in a Jaguar type E would be reality, for instance.

    And I would pronounce jaguar like Jeremy Clarkson.

  34. Mikey says:

    https://twitter.com/weijia/status/1219953112817045506

    I asked Trump why he said no Americans were hurt after Iran retaliated for the Solemaini strike even though 11 US service members were airlifted. He said he heard they had “headaches” but does not consider potential traumatic brain injuries to be serious compared to losing limbs.

    What a fucking imbecile.

    4
  35. Kathy says:

    @Teve:

    no, finance is amazing.

    So is math. That didn’t help me when I failed analytic geometry in high school.

  36. Mister Bluster says:
  37. Fortunato says:

    Before departing Davos, Switzerland, the POTUS stepped before the world’s press a few hours ago and bemoaned the fact the Sean Hannity and “the great Rushbo” haven’t yet been awarded Pulitzer prizes.

    Our newly lawless president, very possibly headed for second term, then declared our country would be much better if the US press “could be straightened out,”.

    Our generation really screwed the pooch, didn’t we.

    4
  38. Kit says:

    @Kathy:

    I haven’t understood quite how long term savings work with stocks. Perhaps because money invested in stocks doesn’t gain money

    Aren’t you forgetting dividends?

  39. Kurtz says:

    @Kathy:

    Any of the derivative instruments get into heavy math. The markets for them function slightly differently too–in the case of options, you are buying a contract predicated on the price of the underlying asset at a specific time.

    Most contract traders do not ultimately take valuable contracts till the expiration date. They sell them before. If you buy an oil future and the price goes up and you fail to sell it, you better find a place to park that 100 barrels, because you are contractually obligated to buy them.

  40. Kathy says:

    @Kit:

    Yes, I am.

    But I also get mixed signals on that. It’s unclear when and why a company pays dividends, even when it makes profits year after year.

    Also, I’ve never heard of anyone recommending a stock because it pays dividends. it’s always “because the share price will go up.”

  41. Bill says:

    @Kathy:

    So is math. That didn’t help me when I failed analytic geometry in high school.

    So are we going to talk the usefulness of knowing what an isosceles triangle is again?

  42. Kit says:

    @Kathy:

    Also, I’ve never heard of anyone recommending a stock because it pays dividends. it’s always “because the share price will go up.”

    If I’m not mistaken, once upon a time stocks like IBM and AT&T were famous for paying regular dividends. Honestly, I have no idea where things stand today, now that financial firms have their fingers in every pie. Still, some companies must be paying. Then again, that will surely be priced into the stock. My advice would be to find a nice index fund based on companies ready to clean up once the world goes to hell. Or to put it all on red the next time you visit Vegas.

    1
  43. Bill says:

    @Fortunato:

    bemoaned the fact the Sean Hannity and “the great Rushbo” haven’t yet been awarded Pulitzer prizes.

    Did you know Rush and Howard Stern share the same birthday? So does Jeff Bezos, Kristie Alley, Herman Goerring, Edmund Burke, Joe Frazier, and Jack London. What a crowd and you can throw me in too but I’m not famous.

  44. CSK says:

    @Fortunato:

    I don’t think there’s a Pulitzer Prize category for “inflammatory drivel.”

    4
  45. DrDaveT says:

    @Bill:

    So are we going to talk the usefulness of knowing what an isosceles triangle is again?

    Back when I had hair, I would routinely pull it out when trying to explain to high school geometry teachers that no, the point of teaching geometry was NOT to give people geometry skills in case they became surveyors — it was to teach them the concept of a formal proof, and let them practice it in a safe and intuitive environment.

    4
  46. Mike in Arlington says:

    @Kit: I just googled that question and found a list of 25 high dividend paying stocks.
    https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/high-dividend-stocks/

    1
  47. Kurtz says:

    @Kit:

    Many high-tech firms eschew dividends for putting money into projects that require a lot of resources.

    Utility companies pay regular dividends, IIRC.

    Index funds are probably the way to go.

    2
  48. Michael Cain says:

    If I’m not mistaken, once upon a time stocks like IBM and AT&T were famous for paying regular dividends.

    Long ago when I went to work at Bell Labs, AT&T still paid a fixed quarterly dividend. Instead of going up and down with the rest of the stock market, AT&T’s share price behaved like a bond price, moving with interest rate changes. At that point in time, the end-of-December paycheck always arrived in January after the first of the year. At some point in history, it had been necessary to delay the payroll in order to meet the dividend payment. Up through the time I worked at the Labs, no one had figured out a way to easily shift that pay check back into the “proper” year (employee tax considerations and etc).

    2
  49. CSK says:

    Tulsi Gabbard is suing Hillary Clinton for defamation. Gabbard claims Clinton engaged a in whispering campaign that Gabbard was being prepped to run by Russians.

    2
  50. Michael Cain says:

    @Kurtz:

    Many high-tech firms eschew dividends for putting money into projects that require a lot of resources.

    IIRC, for a long time Intel was spending more than 20% of their gross revenues on corporate R&D each year. Sort of necessary when you’re in a business where the entire product line will be obsolete (in terms of new sales) in less than five years.

    1
  51. Michael Cain says:

    @CSK: Tulsi’s an elected official, currently running for president. The bar for proving defamation in court is going to be really high.

    2
  52. gVOR08 says:

    @CSK: Goddammit, Hillary said Republicans. FTFNYT reported it as Russians and now everyone is saying Russians. NYT corrected the story, but very quietly. Another application of Clinton Rules. Has even Gabbard got it wrong.

    1
  53. Teve says:

    The Brutality of Cheer

    The sport, not the attitude.

  54. Teve says:

    @Michael Cain: why is Intel having such catastrophic problems moving to smaller processes? Other chip companies don’t seem to be having those problems.

  55. Neil Hudelson says:

    As Indianapolis and Indiana move towards reforming their criminal justice systems, like many states they are considering broadening the use of Electronic Monitoring Services. I’ve been researching EMS effects, in preparation to launching an opposition campaign against this move. This Pro Publica article is fascinating, and does a great job of covering human, fiscal, and justice impact of EMS.

    It’s an article that defies excerpting, so here are a few money quotes:

    By far the most decisive factor promoting the expansion of monitors is the financial one. The United States government pays for monitors for some of those in the federal criminal-justice system and for tens of thousands of immigrants supervised by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But states and cities, which incur around 90% of the expenditures for jails and prisons, are increasingly passing the financial burden of the devices onto those who wear them. It costs St. Louis roughly $90 a day to detain a person awaiting trial in the Workhouse, where in 2017 the average stay was 291 days. When individuals pay EMASS $10 a day for their own supervision, it costs the city nothing. […]

    “There are a lot of judges who reflexively put people on monitors, without making much of a pretense of seriously weighing [the cost, to a municipality or the defendant] at all,” said Chris Albin-Lackey, a senior legal adviser with Human Rights Watch who has researched private-supervision companies. “The limiting factor is the cost it might impose on the public, but when that expense is sourced out, even that minimal brake on judicial discretion goes out the window.”

    As the movement to overhaul cash bail has challenged the constitutionality of jailing these defendants, judges and sheriffs have turned to monitors as an appealing substitute. In San Francisco, the number of people released from jail onto electronic monitors tripled after a 2018 ruling forced courts to release more defendants without bail.

    Yet like the system of wealth-based detention they are meant to help reform, ankle monitors often place poor people in special jeopardy. Across the country, defendants who have not been convicted of a crime are put on “offender funded” payment plans for monitors that sometimes cost more than their bail. And unlike bail, they don’t get the payment back, even if they’re found innocent. Although a federal survey shows that nearly 40% of Americans would have trouble finding $400 to cover an emergency, companies and courts routinely threaten to lock up defendants if they fall behind on payment.

    Many local judges, including in St. Louis, do not conduct hearings on a defendant’s ability to pay for private supervision before assigning them to it; those who do often overestimate poor people’s financial means. Without judicial oversight, defendants are vulnerable to private-supervision companies that set their own rates and charge interest when someone can’t pay up front. Some companies even give their employees bonuses for hitting collection targets.

    t’s not only debt that can send defendants back to jail. People who may not otherwise be candidates for incarceration can be punished for breaking the lifestyle rules that come with the devices. A survey in California found that juveniles awaiting trial or on probation face especially difficult rules; in one county, juveniles on monitors were asked to follow more than 50 restrictions, including not participating “in any social activity.” For this reason, many advocates describe electronic monitoring as a “net-widener”: Far from serving as an alternative to incarceration, it ends up sweeping more people into the system.

    With all of the restrictions and rules, keeping a job on a monitor can be as difficult as finding one. The hours for weekly check-ins at the downtown EMASS office — 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. on Mondays — are inconvenient for those who work. In 2011, the National Institute of Justice surveyed 5,000 people on electronic monitors and found that 22% said they had been fired or asked to leave a job because of the device.

    As it currently stands, Judges have the most influence on whether or not to employ EMS. So what is their line of thinking?

    Judges are anxious about what people released without posting bail might do once they get out. Several told me that monitors may ensure that the defendants return to court. Not unlike doctors who order a battery of tests for a mildly ill patient to avoid a potential malpractice suit, judges seem to view monitors as a precaution against their faces appearing on the front page of the newspaper. “Every judge’s fear is to let somebody out on recognizance and he commits murder, and then everyone asks, ’How in the hell was this person let out?’” said Robert Dierker, who served as a judge in St. Louis from 1986 to 2017 and now represents the city in the bail lawsuit. “But with GPS, you can say, ’Well, I have him on GPS, what else can I do?’”

    “The fundamental question is, What purpose is electronic monitoring serving?” said Blake Strode, the executive director of ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit civil rights law firm in St. Louis that is one of several firms representing the plaintiffs in the bail lawsuit. “If the only purpose it’s serving is to make judges feel better because they don’t want to be on the hook if something goes wrong, then that’s not a sensible approach. We should not simply be monitoring for monitoring’s sake.”

    I encourage you to read the whole piece.

    2
  56. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    @Mikey:

    He said he heard they had “headaches” but does not consider potential traumatic brain injuries to be serious compared to losing limbs.

    Coming from Cadet Bone Spurs…meaningless drivel.
    He also claimed today that Americans invented the wheel. Not kidding. See the video here.
    https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-seems-to-think-an-american-invented-the-wheel?via=desktop&social=Reddit

    2
  57. Kathy says:

    @Kit:

    My advice would be to find a nice index fund based on companies ready to clean up once the world goes to hell. Or to put it all on red the next time you visit Vegas.

    Yes, but which companies are those?

    As to Vegas, putting all your money on the Pass Line in craps is a better bet.

    @Kurtz:

    The thing is I got a raise and finished paying off a loan, so I have a little left over each month. What I plan is to divide it, for now, into three parts.

    Half goes into government debt bonds. One quarter gets added to the company handling my retirement account. And the last quarter goes to an index fund, as soon as I can figure out a way to do that and settle on a given fund (likely funds).

    1
  58. CSK says:
  59. CSK says:

    @Daryl and his brother Darryl:
    I suppose that if you’re a dedicated member of Cult45 you can either blithely ignore these nonstop idiocies…or you can believe them.

    2
  60. Mister Bluster says:

    @Teve:..Cheer

    Watch this to the end…

  61. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @sam: You keep forgetting that the rules of what’s impeachable vary depending on what your last name is, what letter of the alphabet goes after your name when your role in government is described, and which party is in power at the particular moment of the proposed impeachment.

    2
  62. sam says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Yeah, you’re right.

    1
  63. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    Is anyone still naive enough to think that after that Mitt F*ing Romney or Suzanne F*ing Collins is going to do the right thing?

    Just for the record, I never believed that any Republican was going to do *the right thing*d on impeachment. It’s part of the reason I was okay with passing on this particular dog and pony show. Why anybody ever thought differently was and still is a puzzle to me.

    Don’t hunt if you can’t (or won’t) kill.

    1
  64. Mikey says:

    @Daryl and his brother Darryl: “We have to protect Thomas Edison…” News flash, stable genius: Edison’s been dead a while.

    And I’m pretty sure Trump is entirely unaware of the irony of saying we have to protect Edison in the context of Elon Musk, who named his car company after…Nikola Tesla.

    2
  65. Daryl and his brother Darryl says:

    @Kathy: \
    @Kurtz:
    S&P 500 Index Fund.

  66. Fortunato says:

    @CSK:
    Although “inflammatory drivel” hasn’t succeeded in garnering many literary awards, Roger Ailes has proven it to be the ideal substrate upon which to build and maintain countless empires. The right wing entertainment complex thrives.

    And like a slug’s slimy trail, inflammatory drivel can also be crafted into a path that will lead one to occupy the most powerful office on the planet.

    Inflammatory drivel is apparently akin to the world’s finest Crack to the Lizard brained that flourish among Murrica’s right.

    2
  67. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Teve: Well count me among the idiots who can’t understand simple things then because I don’t think I would have made the connection to multi-dimensional chess without the explanation. I would have preferred to ascribe my lack of understanding to a combination of not caring, low quality message, and the artist’s inability to transmit said message graphically, but I will bow to your superior understanding of idiots.

  68. Kurtz says:

    @Kathy:

    There are some roboadvisors that allow picking funds based on your views (e.g. green energy). If you want something more broad, they often allow you to adjust your risk profile by percentage.

  69. Kurtz says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Nah, he’s chosen genre is too much for his creativity. Kind of like Paul L.’s attempts at subversion.

  70. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK:

    …or if this is just some cynical ploy to fleece the rubes.

    That’s a rhetorical question, right? I mean, seriously, you don’t actually wonder that, do you?

    1
  71. Kurtz says:

    @Kathy:

    Index funds follow algorithms so that their portfolio tracks the price of a common index. There are several different methods used to this, depending on the fund and the index it is tracking.

  72. Teve says:

    @green_footballs

    I talked to a German friend last night, and she said everyone she knows is very worried about the US. She’s pretty far left so she didn’t have a high opinion of America to start with. But now she’s afraid she’s seeing the rise of a new fascist super-power.

    3
  73. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Kathy: I don’t see a lack of understanding, I see a misunderstanding. Start thinking of the equities market as a casino rather than as a bank equivalent and I think it will become clearer to you.

    But you are absolutely right about how the gains work. Exactly the same rule–you haven’t won any money until you leave. (And yes, I know that for large scale equity holders, that rule is not true, because they have leverage due to the size of their stake.)

  74. Kylopod says:

    Clip from a movie in the Fantasy genre:

    https://youtu.be/x3Y8vlJxymo

    1
  75. CSK says:

    @Fortunato:
    God, that’s depressing.

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    It could be both, I suppose.

  76. Teve says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker: I don’t think the chess thing was an over explanation.

    The over explanation is, he’ll have an evil looking doctor saying “let me just give you this untested vaccine” and the doctor is holding a big green syringe with some toxic looking chemical inside, and ‘untested vaccine’ will be written in a scary font, and the doctor isn’t just wearing a lab coat and having one of those reflectors on his forehead, but he’s also labeled Big Pharma, and his jacket says MD, and the syringe says Poison, and has a skull and crossbones, and behind the doctor will be like fresh graves, and the gravemarkers will say like Vaccine Injuries, and there will be a buzzard on a tree branch staring down at the fresh graves…

  77. sam says:
  78. sam says:

    Ah, that’s old news. Sorry. But it is an object lesson.

  79. Teve says:

    @sam: I was just telling someone the other day that I will only consider buying e-books if I can save a PDF.

  80. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Teve:

    My fantasy of putting Tesla guts in a Jaguar type E would be reality, for instance.

    That’s sacrilege.

  81. sam says:

    I have a couple of Amazon Fires, and there’s an app I run on them called EbookDroid which is first-rate for reading PDFs. It’s on Playstore.

    By the way, I’m watching Rep. Schiff’s presentation. Impressive. I’d like to think it would engender a modicum of shame in the Republican senators. But I think, sadly, that I know better.

    2
  82. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Fortunato: It’s why I contend that Boomers are the actual “greatest generation.” The environment, the schools, the political system, the social fabric, all destroyed on our watch. Add to that the economic rending of our society into the rich (who believe that they are only middle class even though their incomes are in the top fifth of the top quintile) and above and the relatively economically fragile to destitute (comprising roughly 75 to 80% of the balance, with a tiny actual middle class), and one has to ask, what other generation could have done it?

    Ok Boomer indeed!

    3
  83. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Kathy:

    Also, I’ve never heard of anyone recommending a stock because it pays dividends. it’s always “because the share price will go up.”

    You are talking to short term investors, buy/sell people, and stocks don’t always go up, just ask Chris Collins.

    A long time buddy of mine who started investing in the stock market 40 yrs ago got a dividend check last year of, iirc, $60K. One years dividends. He doesn’t get that every year, it was by far the largest he’d ever gotten, but that’s what he got last year.

    Back when he was still working, he’d reinvest his dividends. Now that he’s retired he does whatever the fuck he wants with it.

  84. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: They were all quoting the NYtimes.

    ETA: The bad quote came from a one on one interview Hillary had with a NY Times reporter.

  85. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Kit: Growth v. Income is still a thing. The change is that dividends seem to be a small portion of total consideration because price to earnings ratios have become huge. A while ago, I happened across an article where someone was making the case that a price to earnings ratio of 16-20 to one was really a good return on investment. When I was young, a P/E ratio of 10 to one was considered the baseline for investing in an income strategy.

    On the other hand, when I was young, my checking account paid 6.5% interest and one year I got a 12% raise from a recently agreed to COLA adjustment in the union contract I was working under. (I had little idea how rich I actually was in those days because inflation was starting to balance against my position. My children, had I had any, would never have lived the life that I had in the type of employment I did then. That industry now pays barely above minimum wage in cities like Seattle and Portland. Ironically, that was the highest wage job I ever had.)

    2
  86. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Don’t hunt if you can’t (or won’t) kill.

    DEMs are hopeful that the impeachment will work like a Komodo dragon’s bite. The bite itself is not fatal but the saliva is so full of toxins that the victims fate is sealed. The dragon need only keep his prey in sight.

    1
  87. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @DrDaveT: You must be one of those sketchy *liberal arts* guys. 😀

    2
  88. Kathy says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    Oh, I know casinos. I understand them, too (except Pai Gow*).

    Stock markets are more a form of gaming the system, in a way, and also of the various collector manias that afflict us now and then (tulips, beanie babies, I’d argue some old toys and comic books, too).

    If shares of stock are how business obtains capital (or one such way), then the only payoff investors should expect are dividends. after all, if they own a piece of the company, they own a piece of the company’s profits.

    As it is, the whole things seems circular: why do people want to buy stocks? because they go up in value. why do they go up in value? because people want to buy stocks.

    But that’s only part of it. If Apple sells more overpriced phones every year, it makes more money, gains more profits, and the company is worth more. Ergo the 2 billion shares (or however many) that represent ownership in the company ought to be worth more.

    Except a stock price is not a simple formula like stock = company value / number of shares. the value of the company is just one part of the value of the stock.

    Casinos are simple in comparison.

    (*) Meaning Pai Gow tiles, not Pai Gow Poker; I do understand the latter.

  89. Gustopher says:

    @gVOR08: You either have to assume that Gabbard is a moron, or that falsely accusing Clinton is pandering to her supporters.

    I would suspect the latter. Dragging us Clinton as much as possible and creating more fake Clinton scandals is what her Russian paymasters would want her to do.

    I would be amused if Clinton sued Gabbard for repeating this lie with obvious negligence and/or malice. I don’t think Clinton would win, but she has a stronger case.

  90. Gustopher says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:

    I don’t see a lack of understanding, I see a misunderstanding. Start thinking of the equities market as a casino rather than as a bank equivalent and I think it will become clearer to you.

    With a casino, you are often betting on independent events — the little ball goes in red, etc.

    With the stock market, you are betting on where everyone else will bet. It’s more like baseball cards.

  91. Teve says:

    @Sleeping Dog: A rough calculation shows that a Tesla S p100d power train in a jaguar type e car would give you a 0 to 60 speed of about 1.7 seconds.

    The bonus is it wouldn’t break down every three weeks like a real Type e. 😀

    “It was an elderly Jaguar, built in that very special time in the company’s history when they were making cars which had to stop more often for repairs than for petrol”

    1
  92. Gustopher says:

    @Kathy: Ah, you got to beanie babies while I was reading the thread, before commenting on stuff.

    Yes, stocks are beanie babies. But, beanie babies in a world where the president’s performance is measured largely in the value of beanie babies. Which is insane.

    Except a stock price is not a simple formula like stock = company value / number of shares. the value of the company is just one part of the value of the stock.

    No, no, the value of the company equals the value of all the stock. But the value of the company often has nothing to do with the value of the companies assets and obligations.

  93. Teve says:

    @DriverMinnie

    I was lost, on my way to an audition in 1992. Rather desperately, I stopped a man for directions. He started to explain but then said it would be easier to show me. He walked me there, told some stories, then came in to charm the casting director because I was late. #TerryJonesRIP

    3
  94. Kathy says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    You are talking to short term investors, buy/sell people, and stocks don’t always go up, just ask Chris Collins.

    More like a small time investor. Given dividends pay like cents per share, there being very many shares, you’d need a lot of capital to capitalize on dividends.

  95. Kurtz says:

    Despite his frequent claims that the Left is ignorant of economics or just stupid, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/ben-shapiro-the-ocasio-cortez-school-of-economics"Ben Shapiro once again shows that he doesn't understand the Left’s arguments about the free market. Or he’s a disingenuous, nasal weasel. Or both.

    Edited to add the link. That’s what I get for posting from work.

    This was recommended to me by Google’s algorithm in Chrome. You know, the company that suppresses Conservative viewpoints. /s

    1
  96. Michael Cain says:

    @Teve: I don’t pay attention professionally any more, but the “sizes” like 7 nm no longer correspond to any real physical feature size, they’re just labels. Intel runs about double the density of everyone else for a specific label. That is, Intel’s 14 nm process corresponds to everyone else’s 10 nm, Intel’s 10 nm to the other guys’ 7 nm, etc. Intel has asked the people who define the labels to go to something like transistors per mm2 for a standard library instead of using the meaningless nm thing.

    Where everyone is struggling is with contacts and interconnects. Much of Intel’s problem has been that they bet on when they would be able to reliably move to cobalt for a bunch of those, and it’s taking longer than they thought. Applied Materials seems to think they’ve got the fabrication problems for cobalt licked now.

    2
  97. Fortunato says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    When they assume power, I just hope the younger generation(s) continues to limit their disdain for their elders and the wasteland we’ve left them, to:
    OK Boomer.

    After all –
    Soylent Green is.. PEOPLE! It’s, it’s.. ELDERLY PEOPLE!!

    : )

    1
  98. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Gustopher:

    No, no, the value of the company equals the value of all the stock. But the value of the company often has nothing to do with the value of the companies assets and obligations.

    The value of the company is equal to what people are willing to pay for a share of stock times the number of shares. Uber being a prime example of a company which is probably worthless if one looks at the value of the companies assets and obligations, but is worth billions because people are still willing to buy their stock.

    @Kathy:

    Given dividends pay like cents per share,

    I am the last person to give advice on investing in stocks etc because I don’t pay much attention to stocks, bonds, etc etc, but I do read about business and every year I read about companies giving dividends in the dollar or more per share per year range. I also read a lot of reports on quarterly dividends which tend to be in the cents per share range.

    Which ones? I have no idea because I don’t care. To me it is just one of many indicators of how a business is being run.

  99. Teve says:

    @Michael Cain: oh, OK. I’m just seeing headlines that say so-and-so is doing 7 nm, and headlines that say Intel struggling to do 10. Wondering what the fuck was going on there. And since I’m also seeing headlines about how AMD is just killing it these days, that seemed to confirm the other stuff.

  100. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Teve:

    You’d lose the lovely sound of the Jag (and pumping BMW like sound through the stereo is not the same) and the satisfaction of lifting the bonnet and seeing the sun reflect off the cam covers. These alone are worth the time spent wrenching.

    1
  101. Teve says:

    Holy shitballs. I’m not gonna tell you with the latest Jon McNaughton painting is. You just got to see for yourself.

  102. Kathy says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Uber being a prime example of a company which is probably worthless if one looks at the value of the companies assets and obligations, but is worth billions because people are still willing to buy their stock.

    My understanding is that Uber has made not even one penny in profits, but rather it’s sustained by fresh injections of capital as it gains and keeps market share. Except that its facing ever more competition for market share, too, especially in Asia.

    I seriously fail to see how the investors, not to mention those who’ve bought the stock, expect to see a payoff (well, the latter may if they sell when/if the stock goes up). Unless they already have. Three are tons of stories about Uber drivers barely getting by at near- or below-minimum wage. Perhaps that is the payoff.

    It all reminds me of the tech bubble in the last stages. Some companies were making real money and reinvesting it to grow the company (like Amazon). Others were simply hoping to be acquired by a large company, or to cash out on a big IPO. And now and then I hear the same about roday’s start-ups.

    I am the last person to give advice on investing in stocks etc because I don’t pay much attention to stocks, bonds, etc etc, but I do read about business and every year I read about companies giving dividends in the dollar or more per share per year range. I also read a lot of reports on quarterly dividends which tend to be in the cents per share range.

    Good point. I’d not considered that.

    Still, at the levels I can “invest,” I’d need many dollars in dividends.

  103. Fortunato says:

    @Kylopod:
    Good call.

    How about instead of televising Donny Two Scoop’s coming SOTU address, every major network in America instead que up; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

    There’s surely a whole generation of Americans that don’t even know the movie exists. It’s a movie that is likely more relevant today than when released.
    And for those familiar with it, it couldn’t hurt to remind them of the values our nation once held dear.

    My state capital has a plaque affixed above it’s entrance bearing the inscription: “The Salvation of the State is Watchfulness of the Citizen.”

    The saying is credited to Hartley Burr Alexander, a locally renowned native of our state and an accomplished Professor of Philosophy.
    Alexander died in 1939, the same year Mr. Smith Goes.. was released.

    But lest we forget, we’ve got political scientists today telling us it is these Watchful Citizens, aka politically informed “college educated white people”, that are in fact responsible for the ruination of our politics and the demise of our democracy.
    wtf?!

    2
  104. Teve says:

    It all reminds me of the tech bubble in the last stages. Some companies were making real money and reinvesting it to grow the company (like Amazon). Others were simply hoping to be acquired by a large company, or to cash out on a big IPO. And now and then I hear the same about roday’s start-ups.

    Yeah. Amazon burned through billions of dollars and lost money to build huge distribution systems, and AWS, and Prime logistics etc. these were all positive feedback components. Bezos is very smart.

    Uber burned through billions of dollars subsidizing rides to get market share and telling people they were like Amazon. But the money didn’t build any positive feedback system. It just built popularity, and now that money’s gone. There’s no path dependence with Uber. If you spend $1 billion giving away VCRs but now everybody’s stuck buying your VHS tapes, that’s one thing. But nobody’s stuck riding Ubers. All that money is just gone.

    Uber’s 63B market cap is wishful thinking. Most or all of that money is going to evaporate.

    5
  105. Teve says:

    @Fortunato: yeah the demographic ’College Educated White Voter’ went 55% Clinton, 38% Trump. That’s not where the blame lies.

  106. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    You mean Sean Hannity as Paul Revere?

    ETA: McNaughton’s rewrite of Longfellow’s poem is even worse than the painting.

    3
  107. Teve says:

    @CSK: JFC that poem.

    The quality of illustration is on par with the cover of books written under the name Franklin W. Dixon.

    1
  108. just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Teve: I wouldn’t have recognized him w/o the poem (still don’t, in fact 🙁 ). But I disagree, the artwork on Hardy Boys book covers is much better.

    1
  109. Kylopod says:

    @Teve:

    yeah the demographic ’College Educated White Voter’ went 55% Clinton, 38% Trump.

    Where’d you get that stat? According to CNN’s exit polls, Trump beat Clinton among white college grads 48-45%.

    True, it didn’t say how well they did among whites with any college education (including non-grads). Is that perhaps what you were referring to? Were you looking at a different exit poll than CNN?

  110. gVOR08 says:

    I’m doing a bit of a Kurtz here, writing this mostly to clarify, and expose to comment, my own thoughts. Kylopod and I were having a discussion on the Democratic Candidate Quiz thread. That thread’s pretty much dead, and since there’s no topic here… , and as this touches on formal logic and @DrDaveT: gave me a segue:

    Back when I had hair, I would routinely pull it out when trying to explain to high school geometry teachers that no, the point of teaching geometry was NOT to give people geometry skills in case they became surveyors — it was to teach them the concept of a formal proof, and let them practice it in a safe and intuitive environment.

    (I don’t claim any expertise, but I’ve been doing some superficial reading lately.)

    Yesterday I commented that living together requires a little agnosticism, a little willingness to accept that others believe differently. I, somewhat clumsily, cited Bertrand Russell as once saying Hitler’s mistake was not so much in believing Jews should be exterminated, but in not allowing for the possibility he might be wrong. Kylopod replied with a recollection of an essay by Russell in which he appeared to say there was no objective morality. When I replied that that didn’t seem like Russell, Kylopod was kind enough to reply with a link to the essay.

    Russell was a professional philosopher. He worked with formal logic, in fact IIRC, he kind of invented it. It’s easy to see how the quoted paragraphs could be read as saying there’s no “objective morality”. But he’s writing as a philosopher and he is defending consequential ethics against deontoogical, rules based, ethics.

    You believe that stealing a thing is wrong. I believe it and Bertrand Russell believed it. A burglar, or the raccoon thingy in Guardians of the Galaxy, may believe it’s good if they want it more. The raccoon may believe it because his religion says so, or the traditions of his society, or his mother, or his conscience says so. Even if he is an objective, competent logician, it’s a prior assumption and I cannot prove it wrong with a different prior assumption. No set of facts and logic will convince him he doesn’t believe burglary is good. Neither his priors, nor mine, are “deniable” by logic.

    I can, however, argue using facts and logic that accepting burglary will produce an ugly, poor, unpleasant society. It has bad consequences. Russell was clear that Hitler’s actions were wrong, but not because Russell’s conscience said “bad” when Hitler’s said “good”.

    Jeremy Bentham, formulated it as, “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.” At some level of simplification liberalism is basically consequentialism in the political arena. The greatest good for the greatest number. Conservatives want something different.

    3
  111. Teve says:

    @Kylopod: Pew research.

    link

    But by College Educated I should have said Bachelor’s or above, not Some College or AA/AS degree.

  112. Kathy says:

    @Teve:

    One thing I recall in the early internet era, was the generalized bafflement about how were these companies offering free content on the web ever going to make money. Amazon, and a few others, pioneered online retailing, where it was clear whence money came from.

    It seems ludicrous now for a company to grow so large on credit, as Uber and presumably Lyft and others like them have done, when they seem to have a successful business model. Yes Uber charges less than most cabs (caveat, surge pricing), but given the convenience it could charge about as much. So maybe the business model was flawed from the start?

    The big problem is they’ve generated tons of imitators (“We’re going to be the Uber of tiddlywinks!”) who’ve shifted risk to their employees, while removing tons of cash in employee benefits and protections (maybe that is the payoff?). And they’re not even making money.

    BTW, I’ve noticed when it began to gain attention, Lyft and Uber were called “ride sharing” apps. now they are “ride hailing” apps, which is more accurate. the former term kind of suggested a form of carpooling.

  113. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Kathy:

    The early internet companies worked under the assumption that advertising revenue on-line would be consistent with ad revenue from print and TV, they were horribly wrong. The issue with Uber, We Work et.al. is different. In these cases there is far too much investment money chasing too few legitimate investments. A good story, even if it doesn’t make sense can bring millions to a company.

  114. Moosebreath says:

    An excellent interview with Charles Fried, Reagan’s Solicitor General. It really is a read the whole thing, but an excerpt:

    “He [Trump] talks about loyalty. He asks for loyalty. To what? To him personally. Not to the law, which he is supposed to be faithfully executing. This comes up over and over again. Where an official—for instance, the whistleblower—following the law, performing a legally defined duty, following a chain of command, does something that undermines Trump’s personal situation, he defines it as espionage, as sabotage. He looks back to the days when people could get shot for doing that.”

    1
  115. Teve says:

    I mentioned here years ago that voting by phone would destroy voter suppression efforts.

    So Republicans are going to fight this to the death.

    2
  116. Gustopher says:

    @Sleeping Dog: For a while I worked at a company that sold dreams to investors, and redistributed money from the idle rich investor class to the upper middle class. We had a notional product, but it was kind of dumb.

    It was the least evil company I have ever worked for.

  117. Kurtz says:

    @gVOR08:

    From my understanding, that is the way to think about it. The excerpt Kylopod posted points to that.

    Damn, you got me thinking. I was trying not to do that tonight.