WOMEN’S STUDIES PROF: ‘I Wish Someone Would Just Shoot’ Trump.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
July 31, 2017
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: ‘World of Warcraft’ video game currency now worth more than Venezuelan money.
WHIPLASH: So Anthony Scaramucci just got fired.
YUGE: Japan, US agree to take ‘all necessary measures’ against North Korea.
On Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that he and President Donald Trump have agreed to take further actions against North Korea after the communist country’s latest missile test.
North Korea conducted its second missile test in a month Friday, this time sending the missile toward the coast of Japan, where it splashed down into the East Sea, between the Korean peninsula and Japanese coast.
According to Fox News, Abe told reporters Monday he and Trump had a phone call after 10 hours of conducting U.S. Air Force B-1B bombers bomber drills, alongside South Korean and Japanese forces, over the Korean peninsula on Saturday. The drills were in response to North Korea’s missile test.
According to Abe, both he and Trump have agreed that both countries will “take all necessary measures to protect” Japan. Abe praised Trump’s commitment to do so.
If there’s any meat to Abe’s statement, it’s an unprecedented postwar posture for Japan.
BLUE ON BLUE: California’s bullet train is likely to face more environmental hurdles after a high court ruling.
In a 6-1 ruling last week written by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye, the California Supreme Court decided that federal rail law does not usurp California’s tough environmental regulation for state-owned rail projects.
The decision has broad significance, lawyers in the case said.
It clears the way for opponents of the $64-billion bullet train to file more lawsuits as construction proceeds and also allows Californians to challenge other rail uses, such as the movement of crude oil from fracking.
A federal court could later decide the matter differently, ruling that U.S. law trumps state regulation.
But lawyers in the field said they expect a similar case pending in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to be dismissed and expressed doubt that the U.S. Supreme Court would review last week’s ruling.
And: “More lawsuits are expected when the rail authority finalizes plans for construction in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California.”
The state is so swamped by progressive regulations that even progressive dream projects are choking on them.
THE TAX REFORM OF AUGUST: Ways and Means chairman calls it “exactly why Republicans came to Congress.”
THE 21ST CENTURY IS NOT TURNING OUT HOW I’D HOPED: Man ‘marries’ his laptop, sues for state recognition and a wedding cake.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Women’s March Declares War on HBO’s ‘Confederate.’
The show hasn’t cast a single star yet. No script has been written. No air date has been released.
That hardly matters to its detractors. The group heard the show’s basic premise and demand the series never see the light of day.
Why?
The series features an alternate history where the South seceded from the United States during the Civil War … and retained slavery. The ugliest of institutions didn’t go away but became entrenched in 21st century America.
It’s a provocative theme, no doubt. And it could be revolting if not handled delicately.
Yet in recent years we’ve seen another tale that chilled us, too. “The Man in the High Castle” envisions a world in which Hitler’s Third Reich won the second World War. America got partitioned into several pieces under the command of Germany and Japan.
That’s different because shut up.
BUT OF COURSE: Not Being Stupid Is ‘Cognitive Privilege’ Now, Which Is Just Like White Privilege.
The Daily Iowan revealed the discovery of this new privilege earlier this week.
Garden-variety white privilege “is an important topic that deserves a public discussion,” the op-ed on “cognitive privilege” explains, but it is also “prudent to at least mention the wider concept contained therein: that of privilege itself.”
Privilege in general is “the receipt of certain benefits wholly through accident of birth and it is “undeniable that privilege itself is a reality,” the student newspaper explains.
As with skin color and much else, Daily Iowan author Dan Williams argues, people have no control over how smart they are. Life is a huge cosmic lottery full of winners and losers.
Cognitive privilege is one of “many kinds of privilege besides white privilege.”
Also, Williams declares, robots will wipe out manual labor jobs but will somehow not affect jobs available to members of a special cognitive elite.
“Thus, the accident of having been born smart enough to be able to be successful is a great benefit that you did absolutely nothing to earn. Consequently, you have nothing to be proud of for being smart.”
In that last sentence, the op-ed’s author may have used the incorrect subject.
WHO SAYS IRONY IS DEAD? Protestors Dressed as Nazis Tried to Shut Down Ann Coulter During a Free Speech Panel.
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Can millennials afford a future in Illinois?
THIS SEEMS OVERDUE: Pentagon Would Ban Contractors That Don’t Protect Data.
WELL, THIS IS THE 21ST CENTURY, YOU KNOW: A gun that squirts molten metal? Certainly, sir.
WINNING: U.S. Companies Post Profit Growth Not Seen in Six Years.
America’s largest companies are on pace to post two consecutive quarters of double-digit profit growth for the first time since 2011, helped by years of cost-cutting, a weaker dollar and stronger consumer spending.
Earnings at S&P 500 companies are expected to rise 11% in the second quarter, according to data from Thomson Reuters, following a 15% increase in the first quarter. Close to 60% of the firms in the index have reported second-quarter results so far.
Corporate America’s strong earnings performance comes as several policy initiatives that were expected to help boost companies’ bottom line—corporate-tax cuts and increased government spending on infrastructure—have been sidetracked amid political infighting in Washington, D.C., which culminated with the recent failure of the health-law bill.
“Get the hell out of my way!” the wise man once said.
NIKKI HALEY: US ‘Is Done Talking About N. Korea.’
“The time for talk is over” on North Korea, so the United States isn’t planning to call a United Nations Security Council meeting for discussion of the country’s latest ICBM launch, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley says. In a statement, Haley said there would be no point holding such a session if it produces “nothing of consequence.” She said Pyongyang is already subject to plenty of international sanctions that it flouts with impunity, and adding yet another toothless resolution would be “worse than nothing because it sends the message to the North Korean dictator that the international community is unwilling to seriously challenge him,” the BBC reports.
“China must decide whether it is finally willing to take this vital step,” Haley said.
China seems to have made up its mind already.
CHANGE IT BACK: Labor Department Considers Rolling Back Obama-Era Overtime Rule.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: ‘A new stage of the struggle begins.’
Venezuela’s ruling Socialist Party has vowed that a newly elected legislative super-body will begin passing laws quickly after a vote that was boycotted by the opposition and slammed by foreign governments as an affront to democracy.
At least 10 people were killed in protests on Sunday by opponents of unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro, who insists the new “constituent assembly” will bring peace after four months of protests that have killed more than 120 people.
The country’s CNE elections authority said 8.1 million voters went to the polls on Sunday. The opposition estimated only 2.5 million ballots were cast.
Maduro’s critics characterized the election as a naked power grab meant to keep him in office despite repudiation over an economic crisis that has spurred malnutrition and left citizens struggling to obtain basic products in the nation of about 30 million people.
Once the new assembly has given Maduro his “wider powers,” he will have to find himself a new set of scapegoats. Such is the struggle for the leader of the vanguard party.
21ST CENTURY CRIME: Indiana man kills doctor who refused to prescribe wife opioids.
PERHAPS SARAH HOYT WILL LET ME BORROW HER SHOCKED FACE: Cantor comes clean, admits he didn’t believe his own ACA rhetoric.
Asked if he feels partly responsible for their current predicament, Cantor is unequivocal. “Oh,” he says, “100 percent.”
He goes further: “To give the impression that if Republicans were in control of the House and Senate, that we could do that when Obama was still in office….” His voice trails off and he shakes his head. “I never believed it.”
He says he wasn’t the only one aware of the charade: “We sort of all got what was going on, that there was this disconnect in terms of communication, because no one wanted to take the time out in the general public to even think about ‘Wait a minute – that can’t happen.’ ” But, he adds, “if you’ve got that anger working for you, you’re gonna let it be.”
This is how the GOP got Trump.
BERNIE SANDERS GETS A VERY PUBLIC EDUCATION ON SINGLE PAYER: That and more in Liz Sheld’s morning brief.
ACTUALLY, THIS MAKES A LOT OF SENSE: Oakland gives pot convicts first chance to open marijuana businesses as part of reparations for war on drugs.
The Drug War took a couple generations of entrepreneurs and made them into criminals.
EQUALITY IS FINE SO LONG AS IT HAPPENS TO OTHER PEOPLE: Democrat Freaks Out After Trump Threatens to Take Away Congress’s Special Obamacare ‘Carve-Out.’
“What they were saying is, ‘We want a little special carve-out,’” Henry said. “Now, will the president be able to do away with that? Who knows. Maybe it’s just rhetoric. But he is pointing out that these lawmakers, who didn’t have the courage of their convictions … he’s saying, ‘Maybe I am going to expose your special deal.’”
Henry argued that Trump’s message “resonates” with a lot of Americans.
It resonates because the American ruling class is entitled, intolerant, and incompetent — and the internet has made it impossible for Washington’s media gatekeepers to cover for them.