Lurker > antfair

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1020665661486522368
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What is this, a fair for ants?

There is no population problem
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx

Make of this information what you will
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44898387

A senior French presidential aide is to be dismissed from his job, officials say, after footage emerged of protesters in Paris being attacked by a man wearing a police visor.

The action against Alexandre Benalla was taken after "new facts" emerged in the case, French President Emmanuel Macron's office said on Friday.

Mr Benalla is being questioned over the footage of the May Day protests.

There were calls for him to be sacked after he was identified in a newspaper.

Police are questioning Mr Benalla, an assistant to Mr Macron's chief of staff, over footage filmed by a student activist showing a woman and a man being beaten during the demonstrations on 1 May.

French newspaper Le Monde identified the attacker as Mr Benalla.

While he faces questions over the assault, prosecutors said on Friday that he is also facing charges of impersonating a police officer.

In May, a few days after the incident, Mr Benalla was given a two-week suspension, but nothing was reported to prosecutors. The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says that this suggests that Mr Macron's office may have already been aware of his actions.

A source close to the inquiry said that three police officers had also been suspended on suspicion of providing Mr Benalla with surveillance footage of the demonstration in an attempt to prove his innocence, Le Monde reports.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1020432499082702849
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/14/politics/jeff-sessions-immigration-policy-defense-biblical/index.html

Attorney General Jeff Sessions cited the Bible on Thursday in defending the Trump administration's immigration policies -- especially those that result in the separation of families -- directing his remarks in particular to "church friends."

"I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes," Sessions said. "Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves. Consistent, fair application of law is in itself a good and moral thing and that protects the weak, it protects the lawful. Our policies that can result in short-term separation of families are not unusual or unjustified."

The Catholic Church and other religious leaders have voiced strong criticism of policies resulting in family separations and recent moves Sessions has made to restrict asylum.

On Wednesday, the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized the administration, declaring that separating mothers and children at the US border is "immoral."

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the president of the organization, said in a statement, "Families are the foundational element of our society and they must be able to stay together. While protecting our borders is important, we can and must do better as a government, and as a society, to find other ways to ensure that safety. Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral."

Sessions said Thursday that recent criticisms are "not fair, not logical and some are contrary to plain law."

"It's not as if we just want to see if we can be mean to children. That's not what this is about," he said, saying he's thought about this issue for years.

God told Nehemiah to build a wall when he got back to Jerusalem, Sessions said, once again referencing the Bible.

"That's the first thing he told him to do," Sessions said. "It wasn't to keep people in. It was to keep bad people out. I don't think there is a scriptural basis that justifies any idea that we must have open borders in the world today."

Sessions repeated many of his recent comments that any separation from children is the fault of the parents who choose to bring them into the country illegally, and repeatedly said immigrants should "wait your turn" and try to come to the US legally. He disputed that he's restricting asylum, saying he is merely restoring his view of what the law always has been.

He was referring to his recent use of a power of the attorney general, a political appointee, to overrule a board of immigration judges in their interpretation of the law. Sessions earlier this week announced a new interpretation of asylum law that reversed an earlier decision in declaring that victims of domestic violence and other crimes and violence are generally not eligible for asylum in the US.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

bump
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What is this, a fair for ants?

Perascamin posted...

Is this an interest rate on paying back money or for money sitting safely in a bank?

Both, right?
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What is this, a fair for ants?

Might do a series of these topics. And if I remember to track the results, it could be cool.

For the record, your vote should reflect your personal taste about the genre, how likely you are to play it, etc. Not the quality of it on the whole
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/07/01/tennessee-hardware-store-no-gays-allowed-sign/29552615/

An East Tennessee hardware store owner decided to express his beliefs following the Supreme Court's ruling allowing same-sex marriage by putting up a sign that reads, "No Gays Allowed."

Jeff Amyx, who owns Amyx Hardware & Roofing Supplies in Grainger County, Tennessee., about an hour outside of Knoxville, added the "No Gays Allowed" sign on Monday, because gay and lesbian couples are against his religion.

Amyx, who is also a baptist minister, said he realized Monday morning that LGBT people are not afraid to stand for what they believe in. He said it showed him that Christian people should be brave enough to stand for what they believe in.

"They gladly stand for what they believe in, why can't I? They believe their way is right, I believe it's wrong. But yet I'm going to take more persecution than them because I'm standing for what I believe in," Amyx said.

On Tuesday, Amyx removed the "No Gays allowed" sign and replaced it with a sign that says: "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who would violate our rights of freedom of speech & freedom of religion."

My man has the world's shittiest treehouse.
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://apnews.com/amp/a3521859cf8d4c199cb9a8567abd2b71

After a year spent carefully cultivating two princes from the Arabian Peninsula, Elliott Broidy, a top fundraiser for President Donald Trump, thought he was finally close to nailing more than $1 billion in business.

He had ingratiated himself with crown princes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who were seeking to alter U.S. foreign policy and punish Qatar, an archrival in the Gulf that he dubbed "the snake."

To do that, the California businessman had helped spearhead a secret campaign to influence the White House and Congress, flooding Washington with political donations.

Broidy and his business partner, Lebanese-American George Nader, pitched themselves to the crown princes as a backchannel to the White House, passing the princes' praise and messaging straight to the president's ears.

Now, in December 2017, Broidy was ready to be rewarded for all his hard work.

It was time to cash in.

In return for pushing anti-Qatar policies at the highest levels of America's government, Broidy and Nader expected huge consulting contracts from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to an Associated Press investigation based on interviews with more than two dozen people and hundreds of pages of leaked emails between the two men. The emails reviewed by the AP included work summaries and contracting documents and proposals.

The AP has previously reported that Broidy and Nader sought to get an anti-Qatar bill through Congress while obscuring the source of the money behind their influence campaign. A new cache of emails obtained by the AP reveals an ambitious, secretive lobbying effort to isolate Qatar and undermine the Pentagon's longstanding relationship with the Gulf country.

A lawyer for Broidy, Chris Clark, contended the AP's reporting "is based on fraudulent and fabricated documents obtained from entities with a known agenda to harm Mr. Broidy."

"To be clear, Mr. Nader is a U.S. citizen, and there is no evidence suggesting that he directed Mr. Broidy's actions, let alone that he did so on behalf of a foreign entity," Clark said.

The AP conducted an exhaustive review of the emails and documents, checking their content with dozens of sources, and determined that they tracked closely with real events, including efforts to cultivate the princes and lobby Congress and the White House.

The cache also reveals a previously unreported meeting with the president and provides the most detailed account yet of the work of two Washington insiders who have been entangled in the turmoil surrounding the two criminal investigations closest to Trump.

Lobbying in pursuit of personal gain is nothing new in Washington Trump himself, in fact, turned the incestuous culture into a rallying cry when he promised to "drain the swamp."

"I will Make Our Government Honest Again -- believe me," Trump tweeted before the election. "But first, I'm going to have to #DrainTheSwamp in DC."

Broidy's campaign to alter U.S. policy in the Middle East and reap a fortune for himself shows that one of the president's top money men found the swamp as navigable as ever with Trump in office.

Nader's lawyer, Kathryn Ruemmler, declined comment. A senior Saudi official confirmed that the government had discussions with Nader but said it had signed no contracts with either Nader or Broidy.

Neither Broidy nor Nader registered with the U.S. government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a law intended to make lobbyists working for foreign governments disclose their ties and certain political activities. The law requires people to register even if they are not paid but merely directed by foreign interests with political tasks in mind.

This article goes on into really impressive detail about all this
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/missing-files-motivated-the-leak-of-michael-cohens-financial-records

Last week, several news outlets obtained financial records showing that Michael Cohen, President Trumps personal attorney, had used a shell company to receive payments from various firms with business before the Trump Administration. In the days since, there has been much speculation about who leaked the confidential documents, and the Treasury Departments inspector general has launched a probe to find the source. That source, a law-enforcement official, is speaking publicly for the first time, to The New Yorker, to explain the motivation: the official had grown alarmed after being unable to find two important reports on Cohens financial activity in a government database. The official, worried that the information was being withheld from law enforcement, released the remaining documents.

The payments to Cohen that have emerged in the past week come primarily from a single document, a suspicious-activity report filed by First Republic Bank, where Cohens shell company, Essential Consultants, L.L.C., maintained an account. The document detailed sums in the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Cohen by the pharmaceutical company Novartis, the telecommunications giant A.T. & T., and an investment firm with ties to the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.

The report also refers to two previous suspicious-activity reports, or SARS, that the bank had filed, which documented even larger flows of questionable money into Cohens account. Those two reports detail more than three million dollars in additional transactionstriple the amount in the report released last week. Which individuals or corporations were involved remains a mystery. But, according to the official who leaked the report, these SARS were absent from the database maintained by the Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN. The official, who has spent a career in law enforcement, told me, I have never seen something pulled off the system. . . . That system is a safeguard for the bank. Its a stockpile of information. When somethings not there that should be, I immediately became concerned. The official added, Thats why I came forward.

Seven former government officials and other experts familiar with the Treasury Departments fincen database expressed varying levels of concern about the missing reports. Some speculated that fincen may have restricted access to the reports due to the sensitivity of their content, which they said would be nearly unprecedented. One called the possibility explosive. A record-retention policy on fincens Web site notes that false documents or those deemed highly sensitive and requiring strict limitations on access may be transferred out of its master file. Nevertheless, a former prosecutor who spent years working with the fincen database said that she knew of no mechanism for restricting access to SARS. She speculated that fincen may have taken the extraordinary step of restricting access because of the highly sensitive nature of a potential investigation. It may be that someone reached out to fincen to ask to limit disclosure of certain SARS related to an investigation, whether it was the special counsel or the Southern District of New York. (The special counsel, Robert Mueller, is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election. The Southern District is investigating Cohen, and the F.B.I. raided his office and hotel room last month.)

Whatever the explanation for the missing reports, the appearance that some, but not all, had been removed or restricted troubled the official who released the report last week. Why just those two missing? the official, who feared that the contents of those two reports might be permanently withheld, said. Thats what alarms me the most.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

LIsJustice posted...

What about OnRush? Looks more fun to me.

They're very different genres of game. I don't care much for online play, so I'm not all that interested in Onrush
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://thecrew-game.ubisoft.com/the-crew-2/en-us/beta/
May 31 to June 4th
"Thanks to the live replay menu, you will be able to create stunning screenshots and short movies, directly from the game"
"You will be able to explore the entire open world in freedrive (!!!) and also discover the first four disciplines of the game: streetracing, powerboat, rally raid, and aerobatics."

Seems neat. Sign tf up
@Chill02
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fiscal-republicans/trump-proposes-15-billion-spending-cuts-targets-childrens-health-program-idUSKBN1I829L

U.S. President Donald Trump will request a package of $15 billion in spending cuts from Congress on Tuesday, including some $7 billion from the Childrens Health Insurance Program championed by Democrats, senior administration officials said on Monday.

The proposal comes as the White House and conservative Republicans in the U.S. Congress were edging away from a threat to pick a new budget fight with Democrats after Republicans initially floated some $60 billion in cuts a few weeks ago.

Senior administration officials said the initial package of proposed cuts was targeted at federal funds that were sitting unspent. It would not affect a two-year budget deal agreed in February.

More rescission packages, including a large one that would address cuts Trump wants from that deal, would be forthcoming, one senior administration official said.

The proposed cut to the CHIP program drew a rebuke from U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.

It appears that sabotaging our health care system to the detriment of middle-class families wasnt enough for President Trump and Republicans; now theyre going after health care dollars that millions of children rely on, especially during outbreaks of the flu and other deadly illnesses, he said in a statement after an initial report about the CHIP proposal.

The senior administration official, speaking to reporters on a conference call, said the cuts would not hurt the program. Of the total amount, $5 billion came from an account from which the money is not authorized to be spent under the law, he said.

The administration is also proposing $4.3 billion in cuts from an advanced technology vehicle loan program, which the official said had not made a loan since 2011.

The pullback from a larger figure comes after Republican Party elders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, warned against cuts that would unravel the two-year budget deal enacted with the help of Democrats in February.

The senior official said the package was never intended to be $60 billion.

Even the reduced cuts could antagonize Democrats, whose votes will be needed in months ahead to help pass bills to keep the government running in the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1.

The conservative group Americans for Prosperity, backed by the billionaire industrialist Koch Brothers, floated spending cut proposals on Monday totaling about $45 billion. Most reductions were aimed at non-defense spending, including nearly $1.5 billion in child nutrition programs, $700 million in student grants and $2.2 billion in international disaster aid. Such spending programs are typically defended by Democrats.

Washington was consumed for much of 2017 by fiscal infighting that pitted conservative Republicans against moderates in their own party and Democrats, with the federal deficit and national debt soaring in the background.

Congressional elections also loom in November, as Republicans battle to maintain control of both the House of Representatives and Senate.

Democrats in the House and Senate were withholding judgment on Trumps scaled-back cuts, pending more details.

Some lawmakers worried that some of the targeted unspent money was still needed, such as funds earmarked for fortifying U.S. coastlines against hurricanes. That money was enacted after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

In an op-ed published by the Washington Examiner newspaper, House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy wrote of giving the bloated federal budget a much-needed spring cleaning.

McCarthy is hoping to replace House Speaker Paul Ryan next year. To do that, McCarthy would need the support of conservative House Republicans, who spoke last month of taking an aggressive approach to budget rescissions.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nbc-bet-69-million-on-megyn-kellythen-viewers-vanished-1524667220

Megyn Kelly was supposed to bring star power to NBC News and a bigger, broader audience of morning viewers to its Today show franchise.

Instead, the three-year, $69 million bet to woo Ms. Kelly from her conservative prime-time perch at Fox News is backfiring.

Since taking over the 9 a.m. hour of the lucrative morning show in September and rebranding it Megyn Kelly Today, Ms. Kelly has struggled to make the shift to daytime broadcast television, with its delicate balance of soft features and hard news. Her ratings declines and higher production costs have been a drag on a critical franchise for NBC.

I need to introduce myself to people who dont know me or know some bastardized version of me that theyve gotten from a website or a TV show, Ms. Kelly said in an interview. There are definitely some who only know me through some caricature they learned about on The Daily Show.

Some of NBCs affiliate TV stations are unhappy with the drop in viewers, and staffers on other NBC News shows have been grumbling about Ms. Kellys lofty budget. Hollywood publicists started steering their A-list talent away from the program when a feud erupted with Jane Fonda after Ms. Kelly asked the actress on-air about her plastic surgery.

In addition, Ms. Kellys Sunday night newsmagazine, which premiered to disappointing ratings last summer, has been reduced to occasional prime-time specials.

NBC News Chairman Andrew Lacks big bet on Ms. Kelly was a throwback to the golden age of broadcast news when networks routinely awarded so-called star anchors huge contracts, believing the face delivering the news was as important as the news itself.

Today, the landscape of network and cable television is so big that there isnt one person who necessarily draws the kind of audience to justify that cost, said Marcy McGinnis, a 30-year veteran of CBS News who is now a consultant.

The turmoil during Ms. Kellys first year at NBCalong with the high-profile exits of NBCs Matt Lauer and CBSs Charlie Rose due to sexual-harassment allegationshave shaken up morning TV news, underscoring the big risks of high-stakes wagers on celebrity news personalities.

With the audiences for morning and evening news shows on a slow decline for decades, the focus of most network news managers is on profit margins and reducing the high salaries of the former era.

When Diane Sawyer stepped down from anchoring ABCs World News Tonight in 2014, relative unknown David Muir was given the job and ratings actually went up. After Katie Couric gave up anchoring CBS Evening News, she was replaced by the less-known Scott Pelley, who has subsequently been replaced by the even lesser-known Jeff Glor without a hit to ratings. Those anchors commanded significantly lower salaries than Ms. Sawyer and Ms. Couric.
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Since joining Today, Ms. Kelly is averaging 2.4 million viewers an episode, 18% below what the hour was pulling in last season, according to data from Nielsen. The ratings have declined sharply for the past two months, dipping to a low of 1.9 million, after getting a lift from the networks coverage of the Winter Olympics in February.

Among adults aged 25 to 54, the key demographic that the show targets, ratings are down 28% since last season.

Ms. Kellys ratings are also hurting the 10 a.m. hour of Today with Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford, according to Nielsen data. That hour of the show, which focuses on lighthearted lifestyle and celebrity news, is down 6% in viewers and 19% among adults 25-54.

You may also recall that Greta Van Susteren was a flop at MSNBC: http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/29/media/greta-van-susteren-msnbc-out/index.html
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What is this, a fair for ants?

*Ends up buying four*

I don't know what happened, it was all so sudden
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What is this, a fair for ants?

bump
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://wapo.st/2HLXJXe

A California man who built a sizable business out of recycling electronic waste is headed to federal prison for 15 months after a federal appeals court in Miami rejected his claim that the restore disks he made to extend the lives of computers had no financial value, instead ruling that he had infringed Microsofts products to the tune of $700,000.

The appeals court upheld a federal district judges ruling that the disks made by Eric Lundgren to restore Microsoft operating systems had a value of $25 apiece, even though they could be downloaded free and could be used only on computers with a valid Microsoft license. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit initially granted Lundgren an emergency stay of his prison sentence, shortly before he was to surrender, but then affirmed his original 15-month sentence and $50,000 fine without hearing oral argument in a ruling issued April 11.

Lundgren, 33, has become a renowned innovator in the field of e-waste, using discarded parts to construct things such as an electric car, which far outdistanced a Tesla in a test on one charge. He built the first electronic hybrid recycling facility in the United States, which turns discarded cellphones and other electronics into functional devices, slowing the stream of harmful chemicals and metals into landfills and the environment. His California-based company processes more than 41 million pounds of e-waste each year and counts IBM, Motorola and Sprint among its clients.

This is a difficult sentencing, Senior U.S. District Judge Daniel T.K. Hurley told him last year, because I credit everything you are telling me, you are a very remarkable person.

Before he launched his company, IT Asset Partners, Lundgren lived in China, learning about the stream of e-waste and finding ways to send cheap parts to America to keep electronics running. One of his projects was to manufacture thousands of restore disks, usually supplied by computer-makers as a way for users to restore Windows to a hard drive if it crashes or must be wiped. The disks can be used only on a computer that already has a license for the Windows operating system, and the license transfers with the computer for its full life span. But computer owners often lose or throw out the disks, and though the operating system can be downloaded free on a licensed computer, Lundgren realized that many people didnt feel competent to do that, and were simply throwing out their computers and buying new ones.
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Initially, federal prosecutors valued the disks at $299 each, the cost of a brand-new Windows operating system, and Lundgrens indictment claimed he had cost Microsoft $8.3 million in lost sales. By the time of sentencing, a Microsoft letter to Hurley and a Microsoft expert witness had reduced the value of the disks to $25 apiece, stating that was what Microsoft charged refurbishers for such disks.

But both the letter and the expert were pricing a disk that came with a Microsoft license. These sales of counterfeit operating systems, Microsoft lawyer Bonnie MacNaughton wrote to the judge, displaced Microsofts potential sales of genuine operating systems. But Lundgrens disks had no licenses and were intended for computers that already had licenses.
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Still, Hurley decided Lundgrens 28,000 restore disks had a value of $700,000, and that dollar amount qualified Lundgren for a 15-month term and a $50,000 fine.
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Randall Newman, Lundgrens lawyer on the appeal, said there was no basis to seek a rehearing from the full 11th Circuit. Lundgren said an appeal to the Supreme Court would be a costly long shot.

But he said the court had set a precedent for Microsoft and other software-makers to pursue criminal cases against those seeking to extend the life span of computers. I got in the way of their agenda, Lundgren said, this profit model thats way more profitable than I could ever be.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/mulvaney-consumer-financial-protection-bureau.html

Mick Mulvaney, the interim director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told banking industry executives and lobbyists on Tuesday that they should increase their campaign donations to influence lawmakers, revealing that he would meet only with lobbyists who contributed to his campaign when he served in the House.

We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress, Mr. Mulvaney, a former Republican lawmaker from South Carolina, told 1,300 bankers and lobbyists at an American Bankers Association conference in Washington. If youre a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didnt talk to you. If youre a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.

Mr. Mulvaney, who also runs the White House budget office, is a longtime critic of the Obama-era consumer bureau, including while serving in Congress. He was tapped by President Trump in November to temporarily run the bureau, in part because of his promise to sharply curtail its enforcement actions.

Since then, he has frozen all new investigations and slowed down existing inquiries by requiring career employees to produce detailed justifications for their work and by sharply restricting the bureaus access to bank data, arguing that its investigations created unnecessary online security risks. And he has scaled back the agencys efforts to go after payday lenders, auto lenders and other financial services companies accused of preying on vulnerable consumers.

But he wants Congress to go further and has urged it to wrest funding of the independent watchdog from the Federal Reserve, a move that would give lawmakers and those with access to them more influence on the bureaus actions. On Tuesday, he implored the financial services industry to help support the legislative changes he has requested to diminish the bureaus power by increasing campaign donations.

Mr. Mulvaney said that trying to sway legislators that way was one of the fundamental underpinnings of our representative democracy. And you have to continue to do it.

If you came from back home and sat in my lobby, I talked to you without exception, regardless of the financial contributions, said Mr. Mulvaney, who received nearly $63,000 from payday lenders for his congressional campaigns.

Asked about the comments, John Czwartacki, a spokesman for Mr. Mulvaney, said: He was making the point that hearing from people back home is vital to our democratic process and the most important thing our representatives can do. Its more important than lobbyists and its more important than money.

In his remarks, Mr. Mulvaney also announced a series of moves intended to reduce the bureaus power. The agency was championed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democratic of Massachusetts, and Richard Cordray, who served as the bureaus director from its inception until last year.

Such moves include shutting off public access to the bureaus online database of consumer complaints, which the agency had used to help guide its investigations and enforcement actions.

I dont see anything in here that says I have to run a Yelp for financial services sponsored by the federal government, he said, suggesting the posting of suspected misdeeds by lenders was comparable to bad reviews on the popular online review site.

Mr. Mulvaney also said he would begin calling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by its official statutory name, the more obscure Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. Administration officials said the rebranding was an attempt to diminish the agencys public profile.

Mr. Mulvaneys political appointees at the agency have asked The Associated Press, which sets the style standard for many publications and broadcasters, to change how it refers to the bureau.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

Should have been exit 69
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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/04/deficit-budgets-spending-democrats-republicans

Deficit hand-wringing is a venerable American political tradition, a staple of rhetoric on both sides of the aisle especially for the party out of power. But heres the rub: hardly anybody can say exactly how a high deficit leads to serious economic problems, and its not actually clear that it does. Increasingly, left-wing (and even not-so-left-wing) economists are urging us to rethink the accepted notion that government debt is a harbinger of a nations future insolvency. In fact, these economists point out, its far from clear that deficits have any macroeconomic effect at all. Meanwhile, more public social spending is correlated with a host of positive social outcomes for everyone except the wealthiest few.

The deficit-scolding script is familiar: Republicans attack every Democratic effort to increase spending on social programs by agonizing over the nations mounting debt, vowing that soaring numbers spell imminent ruin. Democrats claim that this or that military campaign or top-bracket tax cut is bad because it will break the bank often at the expense of actual political arguments against war or inequality. Not even progressive Democrats hell, not even Bernie Sanders can resist the temptation to use this weapon, even though their own progressive policies rely on a diametrically different logic: namely that social investment is important in its own right, and that reducing inequality is more essential to building a healthy society than frugality in the abstract.
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Much of the 2000 presidential election debate focused on what should be done with the Clinton surpluses, with Al Gore tying the surplus to Social Security and promising to put it in a lockbox. Of course, his Republican opponent, George W. Bush, had no such self-defeating scruples in fact, he justified his tax cuts by openly critiquing Clintons surplus:

The last time taxes were this high as a percentage of our economy, there was a good reason . . . We were fighting World War II. Today, our high taxes fund a surplus. Some say that growing federal surplus means Washington has more money to spend. But theyve got it backwards. The surplus is not the governments money. The surplus is the peoples money.

In 2002, Dick Cheney went a step further and admitted that deficits are a non-issue, famously saying that Reagan proved deficits dont matter. This was, in essence, correct. But at the time, it was a truth that only Republicans were willing to acknowledge.

Of course, once Obama was in office, Republicans quickly forgot that deficits dont matter. The Tea Party made the recession-era deficit the centerpiece of its anti-Obama attacks showing once again how the Right sees the issue solely as a matter of political expediency. In response, Obama followed the liberal script and embraced the deficit issue with utter seriousness, launching (ultimately fruitless) grand bargain negotiations with the GOP in which he conceded what would have been significant cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and other programs.
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Now the Trump administration is doing what Republicans do, spending government money like crazy just not on our public schools, housing, health care, or anything else that improves ordinary working peoples economic prospects and quality of life. And once again, Democrats have leapt at the opportunity to deride Trump as a reckless philistine, constitutionally incapable of real-world budget discipline.
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Attempting to balance a commitment to deficit reduction alongside a theoretical responsibility to protect and expand public programs, Democrats end up imposing false limitations on themselves and neutering their own supposed political agenda.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/23/world/middleeast/yemen-wedding-bombing.html

An airstrike on a wedding party, carried out by the Saudi-led coalition waging war in Yemen, killed more than 20 people and wounded dozens of others, including the groom, Yemeni officials said Monday.

The strike hit an isolated village in northwestern Yemen, where families had gathered to celebrate, late Sunday. After the attack, people posted online what they said were survivors collecting mangled and charred bodies. One widely shared video showed a young boy clinging to the shirt of his dead father, crying, No, no, no.

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab countries, with support from Britain and the United States, have been bombing Yemen for more than three years to try to remove an Iranian-aligned rebel group known as the Houthis from the capital, Sana, and to restore the internationally recognized government. The civil war is part of a larger regional power struggle between the Sunni monarchy in Saudi Arabia, and the Shiite rulers of Iran.

The conflict has killed more than 10,000 people, displaced millions and caused what United Nations officials have called the worlds worst humanitarian crisis. Yemen was the Arab worlds poorest country before the war, and it now suffers from spreading poverty and a large outbreak of cholera.

Officials from the Saudi-led coalition could not immediately be reached for comment about the airstrike, but one told Reuters that it was taking the report very seriously and would investigate.

Ayman Madhkoor, the head of the health office for the governorate of Hajjah, where the strike took place, said it hit the wedding after dark on Sunday, killing at least 21 and wounding more than 50 others. Many of the dead and wounded were children, he said.

Rescue workers struggled to reach the site because of its rugged terrain and because fighter jets remained in the air, spreading fear that more strikes were coming.

Eissa al-Rajihi, a Yemeni photographer who said he had visited the hospital where the survivors were taken, reported a painful scene, saying that some of the children were missing limbs or had lost eyes. About 17 of the wounded were children, he said, and the groom had shrapnel scattered across his body.

He was speechless and appeared in a bad psychological state as some of his relatives had been killed, Mr. Rajihi said.

The United Nations has repeatedly criticized Saudi Arabia and its allies for attacks on markets and weddings that have killed civilians, as well as for imposing an economic blockade that has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis. Many Yemenis also criticize the United States and other Western nations for selling billions of dollars of weapons to the Saudis and Emiratis, much of which is used in Yemen.

Saudi officials blame the Houthis, saying their fighters hide in civilians areas and divert aid meant for civilians to take care of their fighters. They say they have poured money into Yemen to help the humanitarian response.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/world/africa/migration-european-union-sudan.html

At Sudans eastern border, Lt. Samih Omar led two patrol cars slowly over the rutted desert, past a cows carcass, before halting on the unmarked 2,000-mile route that thousands of East Africans follow each year in trying to reach the Mediterranean, and then onward to Europe.

His patrols along this border with Eritrea are helping Sudan crack down on one of the busiest passages on the European migration trail. Yet Lieutenant Omar is no simple border agent. He works for Sudans feared secret police, whose leaders are accused of war crimes and, more recently, whose officers have been accused of torturing migrants.

Indirectly, he is also working for the interests of the European Union.

Sometimes, Lieutenant Omar said, I feel this is Europes southern border.

Three years ago, when a historic tide of migrants poured into Europe, many leaders there reacted with open arms and high-minded idealism. But with the migration crisis having fueled angry populism and political upheaval across the Continent, the European Union is quietly getting its hands dirty, stanching the human flow, in part, by outsourcing border management to countries with dubious human rights records.

In practical terms, the approach is working: The number of migrants arriving in Europe has more than halved since 2016. But many migration advocates say the moral cost is high.

To shut off the sea route to Greece, the European Union is paying billions of euros to a Turkish government that is dismantling its democracy. In Libya, Italy is accused of bribing some of the same militiamen who have long profited from the European smuggling trade many of whom are also accused of war crimes.

In Sudan, crossed by migrants trying to reach Libya, the relationship is more opaque but rooted in mutual need: The Europeans want closed borders and the Sudanese want to end years of isolation from the West. Europe continues to enforce an arms embargo against Sudan, and many Sudanese leaders are international pariahs, accused of committing war crimes during a civil war in Darfur, a region in western Sudan.

But the relationship is unmistakably deepening. A recent dialogue, named the Khartoum Process (in honor of Sudans capital) has become a platform for at least 20 international migration conferences between European Union officials and their counterparts from several African countries, including Sudan. The European Union has also agreed that Khartoum will act as a nerve center for countersmuggling collaboration.

While no European money has been given directly to any Sudanese government body, the bloc has funneled 106 million euros or about $131 million into the country through independent charities and aid agencies, mainly for food, health and sanitation programs for migrants, and for training programs for local officials.

While we engage on some areas for the sake of the Sudanese people, we still have a sanction regime in place, said Catherine Ray, a spokeswoman for the European Union, referring to an embargo on arms and related material.

We are not encouraging Sudan to curb migration, but to manage migration in a safe and dignified way, Ms. Ray added.
...
Critics argue the evolving relationship means that European leaders are implicitly reliant on and complicit in the reputational rehabilitation of a Sudanese security apparatus whose leaders have been accused by the United Nations of committing war crimes in Darfur.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

In just the past week, he has
- Made parolees eligible to vote: https://twitter.com/ShaneGoldmacher/status/986627673798709249 (this is good! But it's clear why he's doing this now and not in any of his first seven years in office)
- Had an advisor say he is "in lock-step with Bernie Sanders on policy" http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/bernie-sanders-adviser-pol-not-lock-step-cuomo-article-1.3937002
- Said "I am an undocumented person," which, fact check, he is not

We should have primaries every year
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http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2018/04/upstate_ny_farmer_says_ice_officers_stormed_his_farm_without_a_warrant_cuffed_hi.html

John Collins was standing outside the milk house at his dairy farm this morning when he heard yelling coming from inside. He ran in, he says, and saw his worker, Marcial de Leon Aguilar, pinned up against the window by armed men.

The men did not identify themselves and were screaming at Aguilar, Collins said.

"I run and say, 'What the hell is going on in here?'" Collins said.

Then the men told Collins they were officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He asked them for a warrant or some paperwork to explain what they were doing. They had none, he said, so he ordered them to get off his property and leave Aguilar alone.

As this happened, Collins said, Aguilar's children watched. They were waiting nearby for the school bus to come. Collins said the officers put Aguilar in handcuffs and took him across the rural road to their vehicles. At least seven officers had come onto the small farm, Collins said.

Adrian Smith, a spokesman for ICE, said he was looking into the situation and would comment when he knew more.

Collins said he followed the officers cross the street and asked them why they were taking Aguilar, but he didn't get a straight answer. He also continued to ask for paperwork, but was not offered any by the ICE officers.

Aguilar and his wife, Virginia, are Guatemalan. Aguilar has worked for Collins for about nine months, Collins said. Aguilar, his wife, and his children live in a home on Collins' property.

Collins said Aguilar had proper documentation to work for him. And he's been paying taxes since working for Collins.

Aguilar's wife, Virginia, and the couple's four children were not in the U.S. until recently. She was caught crossing the border, illegally, with the children. Collins said she has been meeting with ICE officers since she arrived, and is seeking asylum for herself and the children because of the violence in Guatemala. Collins said Virginia met with ICE officers as recently as last week, and has another meeting scheduled for this Friday. At times, Aguilar has accompanied his wife, who is pregnant, to some of the meetings, Collins said.

Collins said he isn't sure why ICE officers came for Aguilar and he was upset that they came onto his property without any notification or permission and roughed up Aguilar in front of his four children.

Just like police officers, ICE officers are required to provide a warrant before they go onto private property.

"ICE needs a warrant. If they go on someone's property without one, they are violating the law," said immigration law expert and Cornell law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr.

Collins said the officers gave him nothing when he continued to ask.

Collins followed the ICE officers across as they took Aguilar, in handcuffs, to their three waiting vehicles.

"I told them you can't come in here without a warrant," Collins said. "They can't take someone and throw them up against the wall because of the color of their skin."

Collins attempted to take photos and video with his phone. When he did that, he said, one of the ICE officers grabbed his phone and threw it into the road. Then they handcuffed him and threatened to arrest him for hindering a federal investigation, he said.

But then the officers uncuffed him and left with Aguilar in the backseat of a dark Dodge Caravan.

"This was something you see on TV," Collins said. "You don't expect it to be here."

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What is this, a fair for ants?

Wasn't he convicted?
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What is this, a fair for ants?

They also cut out Bob Seger. Big creative mistakes imo
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What is this, a fair for ants?

averagejoel posted...

I have over half the posts in this topic including the OP, ignored, so I can't read whatever it is they posted. I assume it's from Breitbart or something

The Economist, if you're curious
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What is this, a fair for ants?

The Admiral posted...

This is a great example of why the social democratic welfare policies that so many people on CE love could never work in a country like the U.S. The slightest bit of cultural diversity and the system becomes completely untenable.

I'm not convinced that this is the immutable law you make it out to be. Yes, racial diversity does pose an obstacle to creating strong, universal social programs. You can make an easy case that the black-white divide in the U.S. is responsible for our failure (in contrast with Europe) to create a strong labor movement and safety net.

But just as racial tensions can be developed and manufactured, they are something that can be combated and beaten back. We've seen efforts, and successful ones, to do that in American history. Fighting these diversions and working to create cross-racial solidarity is an imperative because the alternatives: either having a Jim Crow, apartheid style racial caste system or America's gutted safety net, are in my mind intolerable.
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What is this, a fair for ants?

You ever read James Joyce's letters?
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What is this, a fair for ants?

More alt-right than when? I don't think it's significantly moreso than say, a year ago, but the alt-right presence has definitely increased since 2014. Open nationalism is far more common here than - just to put a neat date on it - when the Trump campaign kicked off.

Having said that, CE remains a largely liberal board, and just as we've seen more open members of the far right, we also have more open leftists than I can ever recall. I remember ~2008 when Scintillante was considered to be way the hell out there for espousing views that are fairly commonplace today.

I've done polls just asking people how they identify, but there are always joke votes, and equally weighting each user isn't a fair representation of a board where some of us (such as myself) are far more prolific posters than others.

If I had to put percentages on our political discussion
20% alt-right
10% conservative
30% liberal
20% leftist
20% people who spout off about how they hate "both sides" without ever espousing views of their own

But so much gets bent by the U.S. political lens, so it can appear at times 75-25 to the left because that's how many disapprove of Trump.

We're ideologically diverse in a way that the NYT op-ed page can only dream of.
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What is this, a fair for ants?

In MLB and MLS, the teams play in different parts of the area: the Galaxy are in Carson, the Angels are in Anaheim. That plays a part in deciding whose games you're more likely to go to.

For a while, the choice between Lakers and Clippers was about whether you'd rather be a front runner or root for the underdog, but those lines have become blurrier
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What is this, a fair for ants?

When Alan Dershowitz is the voice of reason
https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/986051583996760064
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What is this, a fair for ants?

A lot of regular people in post #22, lemme tell ya
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What is this, a fair for ants?

When he's right, he's right

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What is this, a fair for ants?

thronedfire2 posted...

Anyway, I work in a nursing home kitchen

Lol, when I worked at one I had a couple coworkers get fired for getting into a fight.
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What is this, a fair for ants?

Tag 2
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What is this, a fair for ants?

I'm fine with it; gonna buy the shit out of SSX3
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What is this, a fair for ants?

I'm reminded of this Twain quote...

THERE were two Reigns of Terror, if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the horrors of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terrorthat unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

darkjedilink posted...

CrimsonRage posted...

Intro2Logic posted...

The fascists actually undertook huge amounts of privatization

yup. fascism tends to be very privitisation-friendly.

hence all those fascist dictators installed in latin america by the us government,

You think we install dictators to spread capitalism?

We do it to take advantage of their totalitarianism. If anything, capitalist privatization would be counterintuitive to American goals in these instances.

Man have you heard of Pinochet?
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What is this, a fair for ants?

The Admiral posted...

A pundit is a political figure who is paid to give opinions and has much more limited ethical expectations.

This is no different from op-ed writers.
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What is this, a fair for ants?

The Admiral posted...

Turtlemayor333 posted...

The Admiral posted...

Turtlemayor333 posted...

What we do know based on this is that Hannity should never work as a journalist again after his wild rant about Mueller going rouge, while never mentioning his personal stake in it. This is the biggest embarrassment yet for Fox News.

It's a good thing he's not a journalist.

Hannity has never once pretended he was impartial. He has a personal relationship with Trump, openly endorsed Trump, and has had Trump endorse his program before.

What you're talking about is irrelevant.

He was not transparent at all about Cohen.

Nor does he have any obligation to be since he's not a journalist, he's an entertainment figure.

Do you think he or Fox would agree with that assessment?

How does Hannity differ in role from op-ed writers, who are universally expected to disclose their ties to a subject?
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What is this, a fair for ants?

I applaud your commitment, TC
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What is this, a fair for ants?

darkjedilink posted...

Intro2Logic posted...

The fascists actually undertook huge amounts of privatization

Nope.

He's right
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_fascism

Fascist governments in both Italy and Germany privatized state-owned enterprises at certain times.[33][34][35] These privatizations were carried out in the early stages of both regimes (19221925 for Italy and 19341937 for Germany) and represented a reversal of the policies of the democratic governments which had preceded them. The democratic governments had brought a number of industries under state ownership and the fascists decided to return them to private ownership.[36] In doing so, they went against the mainstream economic trends of their time, when most Western governments were increasing state ownership.[37][38] Fascist privatization policies were driven by a desire to secure the support of wealthy industrialists as well as by the need to increase government revenues in order to balance budgets.[39][40] Significantly, fascist governments were among the first to undertake large-scale privatizations in modern times

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What is this, a fair for ants?

This seems surprisingly good coming from Noah
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What is this, a fair for ants?

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/383340-poll-arizona-special-election-in-dead-heat

The special election for an Arizona House seat is in a statistical dead heat in the final week of the race, according to a poll released on Monday.

A poll from Emerson College found physician Hiral Tipirneni (D) narrowly leading with 46 percent, compared to former state Sen. Debbie Lesko (R), who is at 45 percent well within the polls margin of error.

Mondays poll is an outlier and a huge swing in the direction toward Democrats, with other recent polling showing Lesko winning by double-digit margins. The latest public poll on Friday from OH Predictive Insights and ABC 15 Arizona found Lesko leading by 10 points, 53 to 43 percent.

Arizonas special election has captivated national attention, with Republican groups pouring more resources into a district that President Trump won by 21 points in 2016. The winner of the April 24 race will replace former Rep. Trent Franks (R), who resigned after reportedly discussing paying a staffer to act as a surrogate mother.

Democrats have been overperforming in deep-red districts, most recently when they pulled off a significant upset victory in a Pennsylvania district that similarly went for Trump by 20 points.

The survey found that Hiral, a first-time candidate, leads among independents, 42 to 28 percent. And she has a positive favorability rating, with 49 percent who view her favorably, compared to 29 percent who view her unfavorably.

Forty-three percent of voters view Lesko favorably, compared to 45 percent who have an unfavorable opinion of her. An Emerson College pollster said that Franks could be a drag on Leskos campaign. The former congressman donated $2,700 to Lesko, according to The Arizona Republic.

The poll found that Franks, who resigned late last year, has an underwater favorability rating, with 24 percent approving compared to 49 percent disapproving.

Still, the survey found that theres more enthusiasm on the Republican side. Seventy-nine percent of Republicans consider themselves excited to vote, compared to 52 percent of Democrats.

Thats good news for Republicans in a district where the party has a 17-point voter registration advantage. The demographics of the 8th District trend toward the party it's overwhelmingly white, and 45 percent of the voting-age population is 55 or older.

The poll, which was conducted from Thursday to Sunday, surveyed 400 registered voters through landline calls and online. The margin of error was 5.2 percentage points.

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What is this, a fair for ants?

Hannity is trying to downplay his relationship with Cohen because of the obvious ethical concerns it poses
Cohen, however, is trying to up-play this because he needs to show that he is regularly practicing as an attorney.
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What is this, a fair for ants?

Doesn't seem great, IMO
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What is this, a fair for ants?