These remarks by Senator Orrin Hatch were reported in the Guardian yesterday:
“I happen to think Chip has done a terrific job for people who really needed the help. I’ve taken the position here for my whole Senate service: I believe in helping those who cannot help themselves but would if they could.
“I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves – won’t lift a finger – and expect the federal government to do everything.
“Unfortunately the liberal philosophy has created millions of people that way, who believe everything they ever are or hope to be depends upon the federal government rather than the opportunities that this great country grants them. And I’ve got to say, I think it’s pretty hard to argue against these comments.”
Kids who aren’t from rich families should drop out of school and take up shining shoes to help Orrin pay for their health costs… and food/clothing…
The following was published in the New York Times on November 30, 2017, after being sent in the form of a letter to the editor:
To the Editor:
I am the editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” We represent a much larger number of concerned mental health professionals who have come forward to warn against the president’s psychological instability and the dangers it poses. We now number in the thousands.
We are currently witnessing more than his usual state of instability — in fact, a pattern of decompensation: increasing loss of touch with reality, marked signs of volatility and unpredictable behavior, and an attraction to violence as a means of coping. These characteristics place our country and the world at extreme risk of danger.
Ordinarily, we carry out a routine process for treating people who are dangerous: containment, removal from access to weapons and an urgent evaluation. We have been unable to do so because of Mr. Trump’s status as president. But the power of the presidency and the type of arsenal he has access to should raise greater alarm, not less.
We urge the public and the lawmakers of this country to push for an urgent evaluation of the president, for which we are in the process of developing a separate but independent expert panel, capable of meeting and carrying out all medical standards of care.
BANDY X. LEE, NEW HAVEN
<
p class=”story-body-text story-content”>The writer is a forensic psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine.
First Known Extrastellar Asteroid: Oumuamua
In October, a strangely shaped asteroid shot through our solar system and is now leaving at roughly 95,000 km/hr, soon to leave us far behind. Calculations say it is roughly thirty meters in diameter and 140-400 m long; it is rotating around its long axis, producing a 10-1 difference in apparent brightness over a 7.4 hr rotational period. It appears to be made of rock or iron and have the overall density of water, suggesting that it is nearly solid. Its color is a dark red, attesting to a prolonged bombardment by interstellar cosmic rays. It is guessed that the object has been underway from another solar system for the last 40 million years, giving it plenty of time to acquire its reddish sheen from surface alteration by cosmic rays.
The speed of this object is such that no human-built craft could catch up with it, even if it were launched in a timely fashion. Our Voyager spacecraft are currently leaving the solar system at roughly 35,000 km/hr, a third of this object’s speed.
This object (asteroid) is unusual in several ways. First, it entered the solar system from high above the plane of the planets, passed close to the sun and earth, and exited at a very different angle due to the sling-shot effect of passing by the sun. Second, it is quite elongated, shaped somewhat like a cigar. Third, it is quite dense and appears not to be outgassing at all– unlike a comet, which releases quantities of gas as it passes the sun and leaves a coma, or shroud and tail of gas behind. The object is classed as an asteroid, a solid that doesn’t have significant amounts of water or gas.
Speculation as to the origin and nature of this object is intense, but the most likely fact is that it arose in a solar system far away and was naturally created during the formation of that system. It was probably kicked out of its home system by gravitational interactions with planets and other objects that threw it out of a normal, elliptical orbit into an interstellar journey. The reason for its odd shape is completely open to discussion.
The object has been given the name Oumuamua, which is Hawaiian for “messenger from afar arriving first.”
Videos of the object can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6PpbO7vIjU and an article in New Scientist is at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2152851-tracking-the-first-interstellar-asteroid-back-to-its-home-star/
Comment of the Day: 86 and Tired of Trump
Syl
Thousand Oaks 1 day ago
At 86 years old, I’m now required to sit and watch this administration basically dismantle my country. The protections for which so many have given so much….the nattional conscience which I believed came as a Constitutional right….the pride which was instilled in me by my parents and a government of honor.. from my childhood through the Second World War. All being disolved before my very eyes. What a waste. I can’t look at or listen to any of them anymore…..they make me sick to my stomach. The Trump Tribe on down.
Comment of the Day: Poverty is a Sin
This comment was posted in response to a Paul Krugman piece that claims the Republicans are in a hurry to pass their tax cut bill because they know they will be trounced in November 2018:
Ron Cohen
is a trusted commenter Waltham, MA 1 day ago
The rich are tearing our society apart. We surely must ask ourselves, why do they care so much? After all the tax cuts are modest relative to their immense wealth. Is it really about the money? Or is it something deeper and more visceral, a need to dominate and impoverish everyone else?
The great English historian, R.H. Tawney, in his magisterial work, “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” (1926), tells us that by the mid 1600’s, most English Puritans saw in poverty “not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion … but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will.”
This ideal of individual morality, derived from Calvin, has been with us ever since. But it has surfaced with renewed zeal in the 21st Century, with men like the Koch bothers, Robert Mercer, Art Pope, Sheldon Adelson and others determined to spend whatever it takes to replace democracy as we know it—a leveling force—with a fascistic, plutocratic model of government.
For these billionaires, however, religion plays no role. Rather, it’s how they see themselves, their self image, that motivates their lust for power, their need to dominate. They are the “makers,” deserving as such, while the rest of us are undeserving “takers,” living off their efforts. Identity politics isn’t just for Democrats anymore.
For a penetrating interpretation, see George Monbiot’s short but defining piece in The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/p5dg6b5
A White House of Lies
According to an op-ed in (what else?) the New York Times, we have become unable to distinguish truth from lies. The Russian disinformation campaign that upset our presidential election was only possible because Americans cannot tell what is true and what is not. Here is a quote from the NYT article:
We have a White House of lies because a huge percentage of the population can’t tell fact from fiction. But a huge percentage is also clueless about the basic laws of the land. In a democracy, we the people are supposed to understand our role in this power-sharing thing. Nearly one in three Americans cannot name a single branch of government. When NPR tweeted out sections of the Declaration of Independence last year, many people were outraged. They mistook Thomas Jefferson’s fighting words for anti-Trump propaganda.
This is the capper, a seriously political question that is a principal cause of most white people’s inability to understand the status of black people:
A related concern is historical ignorance. By a 48 percent to 38 percent margin Americans think states’ rights, rather than slavery, caused the Civil War. So Trump’s chief of staff, John F. Kelly, can say something demonstrably false about the war, because most people are just as clueless as he is.
When not just Don the Con, but his entire executive staff can lie with impunity, there is something seriously wrong with US, the intended audience for this deliberate obfuscation.
Here is a comment attached to the op-ed that describes how complex and deeply rooted the problem is (and it’s not of recent origin either):
William
Manchester, CT 5 hours ago
Good essay, with which I agree. The educational system has collapsed to the point where it is now impossible to produce an educated citizenry.
But there was no golden age either. I went to school in the Midwest in the 1950s when the high school curriculum was laced with civics and history lessons. At least 90% of my classmates, despite that, voted for Trump in 2016. I presumed that they might have remembered and acted on some of what we were all taught. I was wrong.
According to a Snopes.com post, President Don could, on his own authority, could order a nuclear strike using as many missiles as he wished on whatever country he wished. He is supposed to consult with the Secretary of Defense and the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he carries a card that has codes on it that he can use to orally identify himself and order an immediate launch of nuclear missiles without fear of contradiction. Here is what Snopes says:
If the president decided to order a strike, he would identify himself to military officials at the Pentagon with codes unique to him. These codes are recorded on a card known as the biscuit that is carried by the president at all times. He would then transmit the launch order to the Pentagon and Strategic Command.
Blair, the former missile launch officer, said there is no way to reverse the president’s order. And there would be no recalling missiles once launched.
Although fielded and assigned for use by the military, the nuclear bomb is inherently a political weapon, given its almost unimaginable destructive capacity. That explains why the system for controlling the use of U.S. nuclear weapons has been designed to concentrate decision-making power in the ultimate political office: the presidency.
I hope that helps you to sleep better tonight.
This comment was posted about a visit on a jet by Jared Kushner to the Saudi Arabian crown prince, who has just arrested a dozen of his closest relatives:
“Died in the Wool” to “Peter Hug” on November 6 at 9:35:00 AM:
Yes, the weak link here is the premise that Kushner has anything of value to offer. Lately all Kushner seems to be good for is begging for cash and grimacing awkwardly at the camera as he recites some platitude or other.
It seems more likely to me that the purpose of Kushner’s visit was to kiss ass with the new power guy. Surely the Saudis are cognizant of the very shaky position currently occupied by the Trump swamp.
Saudi Arabia has the strategic advantage in our relationship. Geographically, geologically and financially, they are extremely strong. It is interesting that renewable energy is the greatest threat to Saudi power — and thus the key to gaining the strategic advantage over the Saudis – yet Republican “patriots” fight with fanatical intensity to suppress renewable energy.
Of course, the simple explanation is that our own fossil fuel corporations and their pet Republicans are so consumed by greed that national security is just not an issue (let alone the future of the planet). I still wonder, though, what would turn up if Mueller were investigating Saudi collusion with the GOP.
Understand that this is a Democratic web site that promotes left-wing theories about these issues, but also understand that the price of solar-electric power panels has dropped so far that they are now competitive with natural gas and cheaper than coal. Solar-electric power panels are projected to be cheaper than any other form of power within twenty years.
This quote is from an op-ed by Paul Krugman in the New York Times, decrying the Republican tax plan:
And why should tax cuts even be on the table? We have budget deficits, not surpluses, and lots of unmet needs for future spending. U.S. taxes are low, not high, compared with other wealthy countries. Predictions that tax cuts will lead to rapid economic growth have been wrong time and again. And by large margins, voters want taxes on corporations and the wealthy to go up, not down.
The bill currently in the House would raise the deficit significantly and could not pass the Senate under supermajority rules and possibly not even raise a simple majority. It cuts taxes on the wealthy and corporations and eliminates deductions and tax breaks used by middle-income taxpayers.
This from the New York Times today, in an article about the conclusions of a Navy enquiry into two collisions in two months between Navy destroyers and large civilian cargo vessels that killed a total of 17 sailors:
Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Tuesday also pointed to the automatic budget cuts on the Pentagon since 2013, known as sequestration, as one of the primary culprits behind the combined 17 deaths aboard the two destroyers.
“We’ve deprived them of the funds to do it,” Mr. McCain said of the continuous operations in the Pacific. “We’re putting those men and women in harm’s way to be wounded or killed because we refuse to give them the sufficient training and equipment and readiness. It’s a failure of Congress. It’s on us.”
The budget cuts he referred to, known as sequestration, were put in force when bipartisan committees failed to agree on budgets each year and the cuts affected all of government. They were a clause insisted upon by Republicans that was not supposed to happen but did anyway because of Republican intransigence when it came to negotiating a budget that met the restrictions imposed by law.
As it happens, McCain was treated for brain cancer recently, and it is not known generally what his short-term prognosis may be. Fantasists on the left suggest that he will turn on Don the Con and annihilate him with the truth. They can continue to dream…
