Pinback
Pinback's JournalJust finished my iPad sudoku round in 13:13 on Friday the 13th.
It's gonna be a great day!
I've always had a good feeling about Friday the 13th, even more since one of my kids was born on one (and has had a pretty fortunate life so far).
Here's the Thelonious Monk Orchestra playing his composition "Friday the Thirteenth," live at Town Hall -- recorded on February 28, 1959:
Inside the frantic response to mysterious 'slow-moving blob' flying over Washington
By Zachary Cohen, CNN
Updated 6:49 AM ET, Thu November 28, 2019
Washington (CNN)The mysterious "slow-moving blob" detected in the skies over Washington Tuesday prompted a frantic response from security officials on the ground as they raced against the clock to assess the potential threat.
From the moment the object was picked up on radar, US officials across several agencies only had about 10 minutes to determine whether American lives were in danger and respond accordingly.
Senior national security officials across the agencies immediately convened to coordinate and monitor the situation, ordering a lockdown at the White House and the Capitol Building to be placed on "restricted access" as a precaution.
A Capitol Police source told CNN the US Capitol went to "Aircon yellow" at 8:27 a.m., ET, when the object was first identified. AIRCON is the alert status triggered when an aircraft enters the restricted airspace in Washington without authorization.
It took 11 minutes before the object was 15 minutes from the Capitol, the range that causes the alert to go to "Aircon orange."
- more at link: https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/28/politics/white-house-lockdown-scramble/index.html
I think we've been in "Aircon Orange" status since January 20, 2017.
How about the "Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Protection Act"?
...Since the rampaging California wildfires threaten the area around Saint Ronnie's presidential library in Simi Valley, maybe some Republicans could be convinced to give a crap about that. The library had to close Wednesday due to the Easy Fire, and visitors who were already there sheltered in place until they were able to leave safely.
Mandatory evacuations for the area have been lifted today, but it seems only a matter of time before Saint Ronnie's memorial library will go up in flames if we don't do something! Think of the children!! No, don't think of the children -- Reagan's policies made life much worse for many of them.
But what if there were some policy, or set of policies, that would save this precious tribute to America's beloved cowboy president? You know, some way to reduce the likelihood of rampant wildfires in California...maybe if we put our minds to it we can think of something.
Before upgrading to OS X Catalina, find out which apps will be disabled
If you're using OS X Mojave or an earlier version, have you been seeing alerts like this one?
Some application developers have created or are working on 64-bit versions of their apps, while others have no plans to go beyond the current 32-bit version -- or plan to charge customers to upgrade to a 64-bit version.
St. Clair Software's free app Go64 will check your system for 32-bit apps, none of which will work with OS X Catalina.
I just ran Go64 on my machine and found that I have 220(!) 32-bit apps installed! Now, many of these are already obsolete or never used, but some are apps I count on daily or weekly, like Adobe Photoshop Elements 16, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5, Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1, and various Canon apps for my old inkjet printer, for example. Others are apps I don't use often, but really like to have, such as some video editing and conversion apps, utilities and productivity tools, etc.
I really really don't want to go to a subscription model (rent-to-never-own) for the Photoshop apps, for example, but I suppose I'll eventually have to. 
In the meantime, I think I'll stick with Mojave until I've had time to do more research.
1. "We didn't do it."
2. “Everybody does it.”
3. “If we did it, it wouldn’t be a crime.”
4. “We did it.”
5. “Clinton / Obama/ Biden did other stuff that was worse.”
Such a deeply ethical, strong man.
I know our democracy is supposed to be bigger than individuals, but it seems to me today that we’ve lost one of the mightiest pillars of this American era.
What a great example Mr. Cummings set for us all. May we each be inspired to carry on a little piece of his work.
I’ve been in a somber mood all day, unable to post anything about his passing until now. I join everyone here in sending a great collective wail skyward from the depths of our souls.
Today we mourn. Tomorrow we get back to work, as he would want us to do.
202-225-3121 -- light an Impeachment fire under your rep!
That's the phone number for the U.S. Congress switchboard. Call and ask for your representative's office, even if you're cursed with Republican representation -- but especially if your rep is a Democrat. They need to all feel the heat and get moving on impeachment!
Apologies if this is redundant information -- I know this number has been posted many times on DU. But we are truly at a crossroads. With the All Hands Dem caucus meeting tomorrow, this is the time to raise hell.
I'll be calling early Tuesday. Please join me.
NYT Steers Dems Away From the Obvious Formula for Defeating Trump
- FAIR, AUGUST 29, 2019
- JIM NAURECKAS
“We Aren’t Seeing White Support for Trump for What It Is,” the headline complains—with the subhead explaining, “A crucial part of his coalition is made up of better-off white people who did not graduate from college.”
Why does this matter? Edsall’s column is largely a write-up of a paper by two political scientists, Herbert Kitschelt and Philipp Rehm, who note that better-off whites without college degrees “tend to endorse authoritarian noneconomic policies and tend to oppose progressive economic policies,” and are therefore “a constituency that is now decisively committed to the Republican Party.” (By “authoritarian policies,” the researchers are mainly talking about racism and xenophobia.) Low-income, low-education whites, by contrast, “tend to support progressive economic policies and tend to endorse authoritarian policies on the noneconomic dimension,” and are therefore “conflicted in their partisan allegiance.”
What’s at stake in presenting one of these constituencies as “crucial” is how you approach the task of defeating Trump: If he’s turning out his key supporters through race-baiting and immigrant-bashing, the argument goes, then Democrats need to take care not to be too outspoken on issues of race and immigration. And so Edsall confidently concludes:
The 2020 election will be fought over the current loss of certainty—the absolute lack of consensus—on the issue of “race.”… Democrats are convinced of the justness of the liberal, humanistic, enlightenment tradition of expanding rights for racial and ethnic minorities. Republicans, less so…. If Democrats want to give themselves the best shot of getting Trump out of the White House…they must make concerted efforts at pragmatic diplomacy and persuasion—and show a new level of empathy.
(This is an argument Edsall has made before—see “What’s a Non-Racist Way to Appeal to Working-Class Whites? NYT’s Edsall Can’t Think of Any,” FAIR.org, 3/30/18.)
As Naureckas goes on to point out:
- more at link
Sometimes it takes longer to manifest as a recession.
For example, after the yield curve inverted in Feb. 2006, it was Dec. 2007 before the recession began. So this could end up being a flaming bag of dog poop on the incoming Democratic president's White House doorstep some time in early 2021.
Forbes published a handy chart in March 2019 showing different recessions and their yield curve antecedents. Note that several other times, it was about a year between yield curve inversion and the onset of a recession, so it's an inexact science, that's for sure.
One thing I read today is that the government has been buying a lot of Treasury bonds, artificially tightening supply and thereby decreasing the long-term interest rates they pay out. So it's hard to tell if this is really the usual indicator of investor confidence.
However, as this DU thread notes, more and more investors are dumping stocks. So that's another signal that rough times could be ahead.
I confess, I have mixed feelings about it. A stock market downturn will cause a lot of suffering, when that translates to layoffs, retirement fund shrinkage, and other economic problems. However, it could be what it takes to get rid of the Mar-a-Lago Menace, so it may be worth the suffering.
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