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AUG 12, 2022
Real News Today
*EARTH IS SPINNING FASTER THAN IT SHOULD BE AND NO ONE IS SURE WHY
Earth
*‘They all knew’: textile company misled regulators about use of toxic PFAS, documents show(Corporate Criminals)
*Colorado man told Spanish speakers they 'don't belong here' — then doused them with gas and tried setting them on fire: police
Amerikkkans
*Strange Radio Signals From Deep Space Contain Signs of New Physics, Scientists Say
Space News
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
comment/tweet of the day
rob reiner:
a vote for a republican is a vote to destroy democracy
lex: THE FBI RAIDED THE TRAITOR-IN-CHIEF TO RECLAIM THE STOLEN nuclear weapons WHITE HOUSE DOCUMENTS. Connecting the dots: trump was or is selling nuclear info to the saudis and probaly sharing it with his buddy putin that is what greedy traitors do!!!
---
NanceGreggs @du
Total FAIL
No matter how much the Republicans rail against Trump's treatment by the DOJ, the truth will ultimately prevail.
No matter how often they regurgitate their latest talking point that investigating a former "pResident" is unprecedented, it doesn't change the fact that Trump's crimes while holding that office are unprecedented as well.
No matter how many Republicans rant about having their phones seized, their offices raided, their statements and actions scrutinized, the fact remains that the evidence of their criminal behaviour will eventually fall into the hands of the DOJ, and they will be dealt with accordingly.
No matter how hard Republicans try to sell the idea that Trump is being persecuted for political reasons, it doesn't alter the fact that he incited an armed mob to attack the Capitol and overthrow our democracy.
No matter how many media whores play the both-siderism game in pursuit of ratings, the truths that will be exposed over the coming weeks and months will only serve to destroy whatever credibility they have left.
What the GOP has tried desperately to ignore is the idea that certain truths are self-evident - and those self-evident truths are now being revealed on a daily basis.
While cries of "I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house down" may resonate with the braindead GOP 'base', it won't keep the long arm of the law from doing what needs to be done - and, in the end, WILL be done.
I would strongly advise any Republican who participated in, enabled, or furthered Trump's crimes to lawyer-up now - because the way things are going, turning on him is your only viable option.
Biden asked: "What are Republicans for?" They're for 2 things, pretty exclusively...
WHAT PART DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND???
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traitor-in-chief!!!
Evidence Suggests Trump Tried to Sell Out America for Profit
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON - dc report
August 12, 2022
Despite Donald Trump’s many campaign rally boasts that he knows “everything” about nuclear energy, he can’t tell you the difference between an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb. He’s a con artist, a know-nothing, without even rudimentary knowledge of nuclear weaponry (the subject of Barack Obama’s senior college thesis) or national security.
What Trump does know is this: foreign governments whose dictatorial leaders he admires–North Korea, Russia, and Saudi Arabia among them–would pay a fortune to acquire America’s most sensitive nuclear secrets. And what Donald knows is how to find buyers who will pay premium prices for whatever he has to unload.
What had been the unthinkable idea that any American president would sell our national security secrets is suddenly front and center following the execution of a search warrant. From private citizen Trump’s Florida home, the FBI recovered extensive national security materials belonging to our government. No previous American president has been the subject of a criminal investigation, much less one that raises the question of disloyalty for profit.
We should view this week’s events and what follows in light of a 2019 Congressional investigation that drew only momentary attention despite a rich trove of evidence that the Trump administration was lackadaisical about Saudi and corporate efforts to obtain our government’s nuclear secrets.
Journalists covering the FBI and national security also report that signals intelligence materials were also recovered during the search, which adds to concern about what foul deeds Trump was up to.
Ask yourself this: what legitimate reason could Donald Trump possibly have to take to Mar-a-Lago what’s known in spy world as SIGINT or signals intelligence? Our National Security Agency silently gathers SIGINT from telephone calls, emails, and heavily encrypted electronic messaging. No private citizen has any business holding such records.
Foreign powers, especially those hostile to the United States, would pay vast sums, potentially billions of dollars, to access our SIGINT. They would look for details about our capacity to intercept such signals and hints to help them identify our spies and human assets in those countries so they could be captured, tortured, and liquidated.
The Right Question
We don’t know for sure what, if anything, Trump sold, attempted to sell, or left open for his Mar-a-Lago guests to peruse. That’s what trial after indictment is for, although public hearings by Congress would also be a brilliant idea.
But the question to ask now is this: what in hell was he doing with these materials? And why didn’t he turn them over when he was issued a subpoena for them months ago?
It’s hard to imagine any other reason that Trump would take from the White House government documents so vital to our national security that authorized officials can examine them only in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or SCIF (pronounced skiff). The same holds for even talking about them. These are documents that Trump has no intellectual capacity to understand and no conceivable legitimate reason to possess.
Trump believes that while in office, he had the power to declassify any document. If he is brought to trial by our federal government, as I fully expect, he would almost certainly assert this as a defense. That would be a typical Trumpian effort to muddy the waters and sow doubt about criminal intent among jurors. The likely defense claim would be that he thought he acted appropriately and made an honest mistake.
Crucial 1946 Law
But what Trump almost certainly doesn’t know is that the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 governs nuclear secrets. Under that law, a president cannot unilaterally declassify materials. Any declassification involves a complex process requiring approval by experts in nuclear weaponry and national security.
Should a federal grand jury indict Trump under that 1946 statute, his ignorance of the law would be no defense.
Clearly, Donald Trump had no right to take any national security documents. He is now just another private citizen.
His possession of these secrets is a federal felony. Prosecution is necessary if he held such documents, especially if any evidence exists showing Trump tried to sell out America for profit.
This is true even though Trump claims he is above the law.
Claim of Unlimited Power
“When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it has to be,” Trump said in 2020. He instantly rejected challenging questions from reporters who understand the limited and temporary power granted to presidents by Article II of our Constitution. He’s also wrongly asserted that our Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want.”
Keep in mind that at issue here are not mundane documents of no consequence but our most sensitive nuclear and intelligence secrets, which only a handful of closely vetted individuals are allowed to see. The FBI would never have conducted a raid over documents of little value. If these were mundane documents, Trump would be claiming that and showing the inventory of items taken, which FBI agents turned over as they departed Mar-a-Lago.
That 2019 Congressional investigation, cited above, showed that Saudi Arabia was trying to buy our nuclear secrets. Astonishingly Trump wasn’t alarmed about this. Indeed, the report indicates that Trump viewed our relationship with that country entirely in financial terms, just as he does everything else.
Love and Facts
At campaign rallies, Trump repeatedly praised the Saudis. He declared his love for them because they had put so much money in his pocket by buying apartments for tens of millions of dollars each and staying at his hotels and golf resorts.
The little-noticed2019 Congressional investigation began “after multiple whistleblowers came forward to warn about efforts inside the White House to rush the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.”
Keep this in mind in the context of four facts:
That Donald Trump overrode the objections of national security experts and granted security clearances to his son-in-law Kushner and his daughter Ivanka, Kushner’s wife, assumes even greater importance in light of the events this week. They repeatedly revised the SF-86 forms that all candidates for security clearances must submit. A single omission or misstatement typically results in denying a security clearance. Trump approved his daughter and son-in-law despite many revisions and against the advice of security experts.
How these facts connect, if indeed they do, won’t be known for some time. But keeping these acts and connections in the forefront of your mind will help you understand what happens as this case progresses.
To be clear, we don’t know what the search warrant specified, a warrant that was calmly and professionally on Monday by FBI agents wearing suits and in the presence of Trump lawyers. However, we know that this search was so vital to our national security that Attorney General Garland personally approved the search. A federal magistrate authorized the search after being presented with an affidavit showing probable cause that Donald Trump committed crimes against the United States.
The harsh reality is that what’s going on is worse than you think.
PS: An atomic bomb uses fission to create an explosion, while a hydrogen bomb monetarily uses fusion, which powers our sun, to produce a much more powerful blast.
What Trump does know is this: foreign governments whose dictatorial leaders he admires–North Korea, Russia, and Saudi Arabia among them–would pay a fortune to acquire America’s most sensitive nuclear secrets. And what Donald knows is how to find buyers who will pay premium prices for whatever he has to unload.
What had been the unthinkable idea that any American president would sell our national security secrets is suddenly front and center following the execution of a search warrant. From private citizen Trump’s Florida home, the FBI recovered extensive national security materials belonging to our government. No previous American president has been the subject of a criminal investigation, much less one that raises the question of disloyalty for profit.
We should view this week’s events and what follows in light of a 2019 Congressional investigation that drew only momentary attention despite a rich trove of evidence that the Trump administration was lackadaisical about Saudi and corporate efforts to obtain our government’s nuclear secrets.
Journalists covering the FBI and national security also report that signals intelligence materials were also recovered during the search, which adds to concern about what foul deeds Trump was up to.
Ask yourself this: what legitimate reason could Donald Trump possibly have to take to Mar-a-Lago what’s known in spy world as SIGINT or signals intelligence? Our National Security Agency silently gathers SIGINT from telephone calls, emails, and heavily encrypted electronic messaging. No private citizen has any business holding such records.
Foreign powers, especially those hostile to the United States, would pay vast sums, potentially billions of dollars, to access our SIGINT. They would look for details about our capacity to intercept such signals and hints to help them identify our spies and human assets in those countries so they could be captured, tortured, and liquidated.
The Right Question
We don’t know for sure what, if anything, Trump sold, attempted to sell, or left open for his Mar-a-Lago guests to peruse. That’s what trial after indictment is for, although public hearings by Congress would also be a brilliant idea.
But the question to ask now is this: what in hell was he doing with these materials? And why didn’t he turn them over when he was issued a subpoena for them months ago?
It’s hard to imagine any other reason that Trump would take from the White House government documents so vital to our national security that authorized officials can examine them only in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility or SCIF (pronounced skiff). The same holds for even talking about them. These are documents that Trump has no intellectual capacity to understand and no conceivable legitimate reason to possess.
Trump believes that while in office, he had the power to declassify any document. If he is brought to trial by our federal government, as I fully expect, he would almost certainly assert this as a defense. That would be a typical Trumpian effort to muddy the waters and sow doubt about criminal intent among jurors. The likely defense claim would be that he thought he acted appropriately and made an honest mistake.
Crucial 1946 Law
But what Trump almost certainly doesn’t know is that the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 governs nuclear secrets. Under that law, a president cannot unilaterally declassify materials. Any declassification involves a complex process requiring approval by experts in nuclear weaponry and national security.
Should a federal grand jury indict Trump under that 1946 statute, his ignorance of the law would be no defense.
Clearly, Donald Trump had no right to take any national security documents. He is now just another private citizen.
His possession of these secrets is a federal felony. Prosecution is necessary if he held such documents, especially if any evidence exists showing Trump tried to sell out America for profit.
This is true even though Trump claims he is above the law.
Claim of Unlimited Power
“When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it has to be,” Trump said in 2020. He instantly rejected challenging questions from reporters who understand the limited and temporary power granted to presidents by Article II of our Constitution. He’s also wrongly asserted that our Constitution gives him “the right to do whatever I want.”
Keep in mind that at issue here are not mundane documents of no consequence but our most sensitive nuclear and intelligence secrets, which only a handful of closely vetted individuals are allowed to see. The FBI would never have conducted a raid over documents of little value. If these were mundane documents, Trump would be claiming that and showing the inventory of items taken, which FBI agents turned over as they departed Mar-a-Lago.
That 2019 Congressional investigation, cited above, showed that Saudi Arabia was trying to buy our nuclear secrets. Astonishingly Trump wasn’t alarmed about this. Indeed, the report indicates that Trump viewed our relationship with that country entirely in financial terms, just as he does everything else.
Love and Facts
At campaign rallies, Trump repeatedly praised the Saudis. He declared his love for them because they had put so much money in his pocket by buying apartments for tens of millions of dollars each and staying at his hotels and golf resorts.
The little-noticed2019 Congressional investigation began “after multiple whistleblowers came forward to warn about efforts inside the White House to rush the transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.”
Keep this in mind in the context of four facts:
- Trump’s refusal to sanction the Saudi regime for murdering an American journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in a Saudi consulate. Our government concluded the de facto dictator, Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, ordered his most trusted guards to kill.
- Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner developed a very close relationship with MBS, as the dictator is known, during the Trump era. Including hours-long late-night telephone calls
- The $2 billion that MBS gave Kushner to manage despite warnings by numerous Saudi financial advisors that Kushner lacked competency in money management and charged outrageously high fees.
- Trump took the side of the Saudis and their friends in the United Arab Emirates against the government of Qatar, home to America’s most important military base in the Middle East, after the Qataris declined to extend a risky $800 million loan to Kushner.
That Donald Trump overrode the objections of national security experts and granted security clearances to his son-in-law Kushner and his daughter Ivanka, Kushner’s wife, assumes even greater importance in light of the events this week. They repeatedly revised the SF-86 forms that all candidates for security clearances must submit. A single omission or misstatement typically results in denying a security clearance. Trump approved his daughter and son-in-law despite many revisions and against the advice of security experts.
How these facts connect, if indeed they do, won’t be known for some time. But keeping these acts and connections in the forefront of your mind will help you understand what happens as this case progresses.
To be clear, we don’t know what the search warrant specified, a warrant that was calmly and professionally on Monday by FBI agents wearing suits and in the presence of Trump lawyers. However, we know that this search was so vital to our national security that Attorney General Garland personally approved the search. A federal magistrate authorized the search after being presented with an affidavit showing probable cause that Donald Trump committed crimes against the United States.
The harsh reality is that what’s going on is worse than you think.
PS: An atomic bomb uses fission to create an explosion, while a hydrogen bomb monetarily uses fusion, which powers our sun, to produce a much more powerful blast.
Sinema received over $500K from private equity before shielding industry from tax hikes
Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams -RAW STORY
August 09, 2022
Senate Democrats passed a pared-backed reconciliation package on Sunday, but only after a pair of widely supported provisions that would have made it harder for Wall Street tycoons to reduce their tax bills were removed at the behest of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema—the right-wing Arizona Democrat who has taken more than $500,000 in campaign contributions from private equity executives during the current election cycle.
"Remember the days when taking half a million bucks from an industry, and then passing legislation that only benefits that industry, while passing the costs onto everyone else, would be called corruption?" Brown University political economist Mark Blyth asked on social media. "Today it's just lobbying as usual."
Last week, Sinema agreed to back the Inflation Reduction Act as long as the so-called "carried interest loophole," which benefits hedge fund managers and private equity moguls by allowing their investment income to be taxed at the long-term capital gains rate of around 20% rather than the ordinary top income rate of 37%, was preserved.
Democrats, who needed Sinema's support to pass the filibuster-proof bill through the evenly split Senate, obliged, forgoing a modest reform that would have raised an estimated $14 billion in federal revenue over a decade by increasing the holding period for investments to qualify for preferential tax treatment from three to five years.
As the Financial Times noted Monday, the Arizona Democrat "is a beneficiary of significant contributions from the private equity industry—whose lobbying machine and political influence have grown increasingly powerful over the past two decades."
Citing Federal Election Commission filings, the newspaper reported:
Sinema has received more than half a million dollars in campaign donations from private equity group executives in this election cycle alone, representing about 10% of her fundraising from individual donors. This includes individual donations totalling $54,900 from executives at KKR, $35,000 from Carlyle, $27,300 from Apollo, $24,500 from Crow Holdings Capital and $23,300 from Riverside Partners.
The securities and investment sector as a whole has donated more than $2.2 million to Sinema since she was elected in 2017, according to OpenSecrets. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich quipped last week, amid reports of Sinema's plans to undermine her party's efforts to hike taxes on corporations and the wealthy, that Wall Street is "getting a huge return on their investment."
In addition to stripping the carried interest provision from the Inflation Reduction Act, Sinema protected private equity-owned corporations from a new 15% minimum tax on billion-dollar firms.
"Remember the days when taking half a million bucks from an industry, and then passing legislation that only benefits that industry, while passing the costs onto everyone else, would be called corruption?" Brown University political economist Mark Blyth asked on social media. "Today it's just lobbying as usual."
Last week, Sinema agreed to back the Inflation Reduction Act as long as the so-called "carried interest loophole," which benefits hedge fund managers and private equity moguls by allowing their investment income to be taxed at the long-term capital gains rate of around 20% rather than the ordinary top income rate of 37%, was preserved.
Democrats, who needed Sinema's support to pass the filibuster-proof bill through the evenly split Senate, obliged, forgoing a modest reform that would have raised an estimated $14 billion in federal revenue over a decade by increasing the holding period for investments to qualify for preferential tax treatment from three to five years.
As the Financial Times noted Monday, the Arizona Democrat "is a beneficiary of significant contributions from the private equity industry—whose lobbying machine and political influence have grown increasingly powerful over the past two decades."
Citing Federal Election Commission filings, the newspaper reported:
Sinema has received more than half a million dollars in campaign donations from private equity group executives in this election cycle alone, representing about 10% of her fundraising from individual donors. This includes individual donations totalling $54,900 from executives at KKR, $35,000 from Carlyle, $27,300 from Apollo, $24,500 from Crow Holdings Capital and $23,300 from Riverside Partners.
The securities and investment sector as a whole has donated more than $2.2 million to Sinema since she was elected in 2017, according to OpenSecrets. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich quipped last week, amid reports of Sinema's plans to undermine her party's efforts to hike taxes on corporations and the wealthy, that Wall Street is "getting a huge return on their investment."
In addition to stripping the carried interest provision from the Inflation Reduction Act, Sinema protected private equity-owned corporations from a new 15% minimum tax on billion-dollar firms.
from under a rock
educating the stupid is a waste of time!!!
THE DAILY TRASH REPORT featuring today's despicables
you cannot measure stupidity!!
Sen. Roger Marshall compares the FBI to Nazi police. What ever happened to ‘Back the blue’?
Texas GOP lawmaker floats government shutdown to force Democrats to repeal their signature law
Lawsuit Targets ‘Ghost Gun’ Regulation
SARAH OKESON - dc report
August 11, 2022
A North Dakota gun dealer and Republican state prosecutors in 17 states are using the recent Supreme Court decision on guns to try to invalidate new federal restrictions on ghost guns.
The federal lawsuit filed in North Dakota by Morehouse Enterprises, gun owner Eliezer Jimenez and the prosecutors asks a judge to declare the rule unlawful and issue an injunction prohibiting the ATF from enforcing it.
“The legal tests on which the final rule relies have been resoundingly rejected by the court,” attorneys for the gun dealer wrote.
The rule, which is scheduled to become effective Aug. 24, would require manufacturers of kits to build guns to be licensed. It would also require them to put serial marks on the weapons and keep records of who buys the kits and would make the kits firearms under the Gun Control Act.
Guns made from kits are called “ghost guns” because they don’t have serial numbers used to trace them. Police found 45,240 suspected ghost guns at potential crime scenes from 2016 through 2021, including 692 homicides or suspected homicides.
In June, the Supreme Court threw out the two-part test that federal and state courts have used since a 2008 Supreme Court decision to reject most Second Amendment arguments of gun rights activists.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the 6-3 decision that relying on history is a “more legitimate” way to make a ruling, especially given a “lack [of] expertise” by judges about firearms.
Trump’s three NRA-approved judges all voted to throw out a 111-year-old New York law that limited who can carry guns on the streets.
Jake Charles, the former executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, said the Supreme Court decision will have a huge impact.
“The court changed the entire standard for evaluating Second Amendment claims,” Charles said.
The federal lawsuit filed in North Dakota by Morehouse Enterprises, gun owner Eliezer Jimenez and the prosecutors asks a judge to declare the rule unlawful and issue an injunction prohibiting the ATF from enforcing it.
“The legal tests on which the final rule relies have been resoundingly rejected by the court,” attorneys for the gun dealer wrote.
The rule, which is scheduled to become effective Aug. 24, would require manufacturers of kits to build guns to be licensed. It would also require them to put serial marks on the weapons and keep records of who buys the kits and would make the kits firearms under the Gun Control Act.
Guns made from kits are called “ghost guns” because they don’t have serial numbers used to trace them. Police found 45,240 suspected ghost guns at potential crime scenes from 2016 through 2021, including 692 homicides or suspected homicides.
In June, the Supreme Court threw out the two-part test that federal and state courts have used since a 2008 Supreme Court decision to reject most Second Amendment arguments of gun rights activists.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the 6-3 decision that relying on history is a “more legitimate” way to make a ruling, especially given a “lack [of] expertise” by judges about firearms.
Trump’s three NRA-approved judges all voted to throw out a 111-year-old New York law that limited who can carry guns on the streets.
Jake Charles, the former executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, said the Supreme Court decision will have a huge impact.
“The court changed the entire standard for evaluating Second Amendment claims,” Charles said.
payback is a bitch!!
congratulations REPUBLICAN DIABETICS!!!
SNAP Recipients Now Required To Prove Need By Eating All Their Groceries On Spot
the onion
8/10/2022
WASHINGTON—In an effort to better verify participants’ eligibility, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday that recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits would now be required to eat all of their groceries on the spot. “Our mission has always been to help families in need, but if they’re not immediately scarfing down every morsel of food we give them, including a part of the packaging, how can we know they really need it?” said Marie Rubin, a spokesperson for the federal program, who slammed a gallon jug of whole milk onto the podium before her, along with three loaves of bread and a 55-ounce can of baked beans. “Hungry? Prove it. It will be the responsibility of the cashier to make sure not a single crumb is left behind at checkout. Once you’re done, you’re done for the month. We’ve got to move on and feed the rest of the people. If the eggs are raw, that’s not our problem.” At press time, Rubin added that SNAP recipients would become ineligible if they weren’t able to keep their groceries down for at least five minutes.
Bites from Real News
*8/12/2022*
*Judge denies motion to dismiss: Trump org and ex-CFO Weisselberg criminal fraud and tax evasion case will proceed
*The Chinese Exclusion Act May Be in the Past, But Racism Still Drives Most Immigration Policies
In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which prohibited the immigration of workers from China for ten years, became law in the United States. It was the first significant piece of legislation to restrict immigration into the country, and the first time a Western state explicitly shut the door to a specific racial group.
*In the Army, You’re More Likely to Be Detained for Drugs Than Sexual Assault
A first-of-its-kind analysis reveals that, on average, Army soldiers had to face at least eight counts of sexual offenses before their commanders jailed them ahead of trial as often as soldiers charged with drug or burglary crimes.
*What Is It that Republicans Actually Do Love?If this was just routine political corruption by a few rogue politicians, it would be a problem but not a crisis - however - this cynical embrace of strongman oligarchy has put America itself at risk
*Stop the Medicare “Advantage” Scam Before Medicare is DeadAt the very least, let’s stop the egregiously deceptive advertising. Only Medicare should be able to call itself “Medicare.”
*Subminimum Wages Were Always Deplorable. Inflation Is Making Them Worse. Organizers are pushing hard to end policies that allow some workers to earn less than the $7.25 federal minimum wage.
Discovery of Polio Virus in NYC Sewage Indicates It’s Spreading Locally
ALARMING
Rachel Olding
Breaking News Editor
Published Aug. 12, 2022 11:00AM ET
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
City and state health officials made the alarming announcement Friday that the polio virus has been detected in New York City’s sewage, indicating that it has been spreading locally for some time. The country’s first polio case in almost a decade was found in Rockland County, just north of New York City, in late July but wastewater analysis later showed the virus was circulating in the area weeks earlier. “For every one case of paralytic polio identified, hundreds more may be undetected,” New York State Health Commissioner Mary Bassett said Friday. Officials urged unvaccinated New Yorkers, especially children, to get a polio shot immediately. Most adults were vaccinated against polio as children and don’t need to get another shot, but around 14 percent of kids in New York are believed to be unvaccinated.
Alarm at Seabrook Nuclear Plant Telling Beachgoers to Flee Was Triggered by ‘Human Error’
DON’T PRESS THAT!
Dan Ladden-Hall
News Correspondent
Published Aug. 12, 2022 6:23AM ET
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
A false alarm at a nuclear power plant in New Hampshire that caused panic last month was caused by “human error,” an investigation found. Beachgoers were terrified on July 12 when the Seabrook plant’s PA system sent out a verbal alarm over loudspeakers telling people to evacuate the area. A probe by NextEra Energy confirmed that a siren technician’s mistake was to blame for the false alarm, which occurred when the worker inadvertently activated the PA system during what was supposed to be a routine silent test of the plant’s emergency-siren system. The test had previously been conducted every two weeks for 30 years without incident, officials said. NextEra Energy spokesman Bill Orlove said Thursday that the plant had implemented new procedures to avoid a similar mistake in future.
*What's Inside*
*OIL COMPANY PROFITS BOOM AS AMERICANS REEL FROM HIGH FUEL PRICES
OIL
*THE CORPORATE NARRATIVE ON INFLATION IS BOGUS
REALITY
*RESEARCH SHOWS THAT ARRESTS FOR SERIOUS CRIMES ARE QUITE RARE.
POLICE SOLVE JUST 2% OF ALL MAJOR CRIMES(GESTAPO USA)
*URBAN PLANNING AS A TOOL OF WHITE SUPREMACY – THE OTHER LESSON FROM MINNEAPOLIS
WHITE SUPREMACY
*ABORTION, RACISM, GUNS AND THE RIGHT
WHITE SUPREMACY
*REPORT: CEOS ARE DRIVING “GREEDFLATION,” RAISING PRICES TO PAY THEMSELVES MORE
CAPITALISM
*IN A YEAR, AMAZON DISCIPLINED WORKERS 13,000 TIMES AT NOW-UNIONIZED WAREHOUSE
SLAVERY 21ST CENTURY
*late news of interest*
A Meditation On Practical Applications Of Stupidity
The Mystery of Anti-Vax & Anti-Mask
Kat Ignatz - DAILY KOS
Sunday August 01, 2021 · 5:00 AM PDT
...“The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity” seems as good a way as any to explain the insane situation we’re in. It’s speculative, but in my opinion, guessing is all we’ve really got right now.
In his essay, Cipolla divides human beings into four categories and builds his theory on these characteristics.
His categories are:
And he presents his theory as five laws:
Taking Cipolla’s laws and looking for correlations with anti-vax/mask behavior, you can map out anti-vax/mask actions like this:
And you could do the same matching of Cipolla’s laws with anti-vax/mask actions, and together, we could come up with a big, five-part list of parallels between Cipolla’s theory and the anti-vax/mask movement.
And it would prove nothing.
But looking at it might make you wonder, like me, if there’s anything but dangerous, illogical, and incomprehensible behavior there.
Cipolla doesn’t explain stupid people. He simply says that they exist, and they’re irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. He states that irrational people can’t be understood by rational minds and cautions against getting involved with irrational people because it always comes with a cost that’s often a big cost.
He says the only hope is for rational people to create more gains than the losses that irrational people cause. He was an economist so his theory is all gains and losses, and another way to think about his four human traits is total gain, loss/gain, gain/loss, and total loss.
And maybe that’s the real answer here. Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger to our country, states, cities, friends, families, and selves, and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.
I like Cipolla’s theory, and I find it to be a compelling model for many of the problems we’re experiencing—like, for instance, Republicans.
In this writings, Cipolla makes a point of dividing bandits into Intelligent Bandits and Stupid Bandits. Intelligent bandits cause an equal amount of loss and gain, and they get everything they take from others. Stupid bandits cause more loss than gain, and they only get part of what they cause others to lose.
When I read that, I think about how Republicans are actively working to crash the US so they can keep their wealth and power. And then I think that they’re going so far with it that they may have moved from being stupid bandits to fully stupid because it’s irrational to think they’ll keep much of anything if the country collapses.
I also start thinking about how prevalent stupid banditry is in the world—as if it’s the only way to do business. The “bigs” are especially dangerous: big agriculture, apparel, chemical, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals, retail, etc.
We’re all losing our lives in one way or another to these dubious ventures.
But that’s my mind drifting on to a topic for another diary, and I’ll stop this one here.
In his essay, Cipolla divides human beings into four categories and builds his theory on these characteristics.
His categories are:
- Intelligent People whose actions benefit others and themselves
- Helpless People whose actions harm them but benefit others
- Bandits whose actions harm others but benefit them
- Stupid People whose actions harm others but don’t benefit them and may, in fact, harm them, too
And he presents his theory as five laws:
- Everyone always underestimates how many stupid people there are.
- Stupidity is unrelated to any other human trait.
- Stupid people cause losses to others without gain and, possibly, with losses to themselves.
- Non-stupid people always underestimate how harmful stupid people are.
- Stupid people are the most dangerous type of person.
Taking Cipolla’s laws and looking for correlations with anti-vax/mask behavior, you can map out anti-vax/mask actions like this:
- How many: 30% of the US population is hesitating, resisting, or outright refusing to get a coronavirus vaccine.
- Unrelated to other traits: Health care workers are protesting against getting vaccinated.
- No gain and possible losses: Not even the threat of death is changing anti-vax/mask behavior.
- How harmful: Who would have predicted that Missouri would end up in such terrible condition?
- Most dangerous: Anti-vax/maskers are bringing the systems we rely on for our safety and health to the brink of crashing.
And you could do the same matching of Cipolla’s laws with anti-vax/mask actions, and together, we could come up with a big, five-part list of parallels between Cipolla’s theory and the anti-vax/mask movement.
And it would prove nothing.
But looking at it might make you wonder, like me, if there’s anything but dangerous, illogical, and incomprehensible behavior there.
Cipolla doesn’t explain stupid people. He simply says that they exist, and they’re irrational, unpredictable, and hazardous. He states that irrational people can’t be understood by rational minds and cautions against getting involved with irrational people because it always comes with a cost that’s often a big cost.
He says the only hope is for rational people to create more gains than the losses that irrational people cause. He was an economist so his theory is all gains and losses, and another way to think about his four human traits is total gain, loss/gain, gain/loss, and total loss.
And maybe that’s the real answer here. Maybe, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with why anti-vax/maskers act like they do. Perhaps, we should simply accept them as an incredible danger to our country, states, cities, friends, families, and selves, and we should just do everything we can to do more good than they do harm.
I like Cipolla’s theory, and I find it to be a compelling model for many of the problems we’re experiencing—like, for instance, Republicans.
In this writings, Cipolla makes a point of dividing bandits into Intelligent Bandits and Stupid Bandits. Intelligent bandits cause an equal amount of loss and gain, and they get everything they take from others. Stupid bandits cause more loss than gain, and they only get part of what they cause others to lose.
When I read that, I think about how Republicans are actively working to crash the US so they can keep their wealth and power. And then I think that they’re going so far with it that they may have moved from being stupid bandits to fully stupid because it’s irrational to think they’ll keep much of anything if the country collapses.
I also start thinking about how prevalent stupid banditry is in the world—as if it’s the only way to do business. The “bigs” are especially dangerous: big agriculture, apparel, chemical, electronics, oil, pharmaceuticals, retail, etc.
We’re all losing our lives in one way or another to these dubious ventures.
But that’s my mind drifting on to a topic for another diary, and I’ll stop this one here.
