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Calm Before the Storm
What Did President Trump Mean by ‘Calm Before the Storm’?
President Trump was clearly looking to make some kind of news, but about what, exactly, was not clear. And the mystery, as it often does with a president whose statements baffle even his staff, only deepened the next day.
On Thursday evening, the White House told the presidential press corps that Mr. Trump was done with his public schedule for the day. But around 7 p.m., Mr. Trump summoned reporters who were still at work to the State Dining Room, where he was throwing a dinner for military commanders and their spouses.
Gesturing to his guests, he said, “You guys know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”
“What’s the storm?” asked one reporter.
“Could be the calm before the storm,” Mr. Trump repeated, stretching out the phrase, a sly smile playing across his face.
“From Iran?” ventured another reporter. “On ISIS? On what?”
“What storm, Mr. President?” asked a third journalist, a hint of impatience creeping into her voice.
As the generals shifted from foot to foot, Mr. Trump brought the game of 20 Questions to an end. He praised his beribboned guests as the “world’s great military people” and excused the stymied reporters, who returned to their workstations to start another round of: What was the president talking about?
By Friday, the White House was still unable to shed light on the matter; several of Mr. Trump’s aides said they had no idea what the president meant. But the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, wanted to make one thing clear: Mr. Trump wasn’t just teasing his favorite antagonists. He was sending a message.
“I wouldn’t say that he’s messing with the press,” Ms. Sanders told reporters. “I think we have some serious world issues here. I think that North Korea, Iran both continue to be bad actors, and the president is somebody who’s going to always look for ways to protect Americans, and he’s not going to dictate what those actions may look like.”
Suddenly, Mr. Trump’s preprandial banter took on an ominous tone. Maybe he was foreshadowing war with North Korea, which he has already threatened with “fire and fury” if the reclusive country aimed its missiles at the United States. Or perhaps he was predicting a clash with Iran, a week before he is expected to disavow the nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
“He certainly doesn’t want to lay out his game plan for our enemies,” Ms. Sanders declared.
Anheuser-Busch wants your thoughts on its NFL sponsorship
Anheuser-Busch wants your thoughts on its NFL sponsorship in light of protests
By Kara Berg
kberg@bnd.com
October 02, 2017 9:42 PM
Anheuser-Busch wants to know how you feel about the NFL.
If you call 1-800-342-5283 and press one, you can tell the company how you feel about its sponsorship of the NFL, which has been under fire lately after an unprecedented amount of players kneeled or remained in the locker room during the national anthem.
When you call, you get this message:
“At Anheuser-Busch, we have a long heritage of supporting the nation’s armed forces, veterans and military dependents. The national anthem is a point of pride for our company and for the 1,100 veterans we employ. Please feel free to share your feedback after the tone.”
An Anheuser-Busch representative told Fox2 that the company was receiving a high volume of calls after many on social media asked the company to sever its sponsorship with the NFL.
The company released the following statement about the addition of the phone line.
“At Anheuser-Busch we have a long heritage of supporting the institutions and values that have made America so strong. That includes our armed forces and the national anthem as well as diversity, equality and freedom of speech. We proudly employ over 1,100 military veterans and we work every day to create an inclusive environment for all of our employees. Because only together can we achieve our dream of bringing people together for a better world.
The Anheuser-Busch phone line has always been available for consumer inquiries on a variety of topics, but we are not conducting a survey regarding our NFL sponsorship.
We have many long-term sports partnerships, including our NFL sponsorship, and while we may not agree on everything, we still believe in the power of sport to bring people together and overcome their differences. We have no plans to end our NFL sponsorship.”
Americans are sharply divided on whether NFL players should be allowed to kneel during the national anthem, according to a CNN survey. Overall, 49 percent say kneeling players are doing the wrong thing and 43 percent say it’s the right thing. But these views change sharply with age and race. Older white Republicans were more likely to say the players were doing the wrong thing, CNN found.
http://www.bnd.com/news/local/article176690196.html
U.S. House of Representatives Passes 20-Week Abortion Ban
House passes 20-week abortion ban
The measure passed heavily along party lines, 237-189.
The bill allows exceptions in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the woman and wouldn't penalize women for seeking to get abortions after 20 weeks.
The legislation is likely to face a tough sell in the Senate. A similar bill passed the House in 2015 but was blocked by Senate Democrats.
With only a 52-seat majority it would be unlikely Senate Republicans could gather the 60 votes needed to move the legislation to President Trump's desk.
Skin Flutes
Semen-contaminated flutes might have been given to children, California school officials warn (archive)
Several school districts in Southern California warned parents this weekend that flutes and recorders given to children through a nonprofit music program may have been contaminated with bodily fluids. At least one district specified that those fluids could have been semen.
Local, state and federal agencies were investigating a male music teacher who visited schools in Southern California through a program called Flutes Across the World, according to updates from the Saugus Union School District, which serves the Santa Clarita area.
“The performer distributes a flutelike musical instrument made of PVC pipe or bamboo to students during a music lesson, and the allegation is that he contaminated some of these instruments with semen,” Saugus Union Superintendent Joan Lucid said in an email to parents on Saturday. “These allegations are deeply concerning, and I realize they raise many questions.”
The California Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Service were among the agencies investigating the program, the district said. Lucid said children were never alone with the music specialist, who was not a district employee.
Flutes "stained with a man's bodily fluids" issued to California schoolchildren
Flutes Across the World: Japan Edition.
The Walmart subsidies
The argument has since spread all over the place and been used to rationalize all sorts of taxes, minimum wage increases, etc.
There is a rat's nest of nasty deception in this argument which needs to be considered. Even if we ignore that this is based on a sloppy propaganda white paper (extrapolating from a single store to the entire US) by a political faction, we still have some really big flaws with the argument.
The first is simply that the point of subsidies is to encourage behavior we want. Walmart is employing poor people. Usually, that is a desirable goal, particularly for the ideologies that spin this as welfare subsidies, but notice how in this case virtue is transformed rhetorically into vice.
Second, anyone who employs people who receive welfare is by this argument receiving the subsidy. The only way to avoid the alleged subsidy is to employ people who never receive any sort of welfare. Thus, anyone who employs poor people can be accused of this vice.
Thus third, it can't be fixed as long as one pays out welfare benefits of any sort. There is no correction that can ever get rid of the alleged problem because either someone will always employ poor people on welfare and run afoul of the welfare subsidy or no one will, creating a permanent unemployed class of people.
I see this causing problems for universal basic income schemes because since everyone receives the income, every employer can be considered to be "subsidized" and thus subject to whatever crazy scheme or punishment that can be rationalized. It's another failure mode that needs to be considered with UBI systems.
Obama's former nanny "lives in fear in Jakarta slum"
Chinese Uighur Modeling
The LapBook Air
Donald Trump's Howard Stern Interviews Released
How lame can lame get?
Browsed through my email this morning. I can't really remember when or why, but apparently, I've registered with something called academia.edu. Gave them a fake email, fake name, fake species - the works. Academia - you expect them to have some academics, right? Check this out:
Academia.edu
Dear Some Guy,
1,615 people recently read one of the papers that mentions the name "Some Guy".
A total of 819 papers on Academia mention your name.
________________________
Seriously - that is the exact text of the email. Some Guy, the "name" that I use on sites when I'm checking them out. And, apparently 819 academic papers have mentioned my personna, and 1,615 people have read at least one of those papers.
Clicking the link, I arrive at a page that states:
Mentions
818
818 papers mention the name "Some Guy" or "S. Guy"
1,615 people recently read one of them
The Mentions feature helps you find your name mentioned in papers, books, drafts, theses, and syllabi that Google Scholar can't find.
_____________________________
And, these fuckwits take themselves seriously? They hope to pass themselves off as some sub-species of academics?
Should I laugh, or should I cry?
I might be nice if I could remember why in hell I even visited their site to start with. Maybe I was researching something like 'The resurgence of troglodytes in academia'??
