11 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/us/politics/maine-elections.html

   It's now safe for Maine voters who want to vote for Ralph Nader or Jill Stein to do so, as long as they make a rational selection for their second choice.

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2. Trumpism Is Bad for Business

   The big complaint business has about Trump’s trade war isn’t just that tariffs raise costs and prices, while foreign retaliation is cutting off access to important markets. It is that businesses can’t make plans when policy zigzags in response to the president’s whims. They don’t want to invest in anything that relies on a global supply chain, because that supply chain might unravel with Trump’s next tweet. But they can’t invest on the assumption that Trump’s tariffs will be permanent, either; you never know when or whether he’ll declare victory and surrender.

   Environmental policy, it turns out, is similar. Business leaders aren’t do-gooders, but they are realists. Most of them understand that climate change is happening, that it’s dangerous, and that we’ll eventually have to transition to a low-emissions economy. They want to spend now to secure their place in that future economy; they know that investments that worsen climate change are bound to be long-run losers. But they’ll hold off on investing in our energy future as long as conspiracy theorists who consider global warming a gigantic hoax — and/or vindictive politicians determined to erase Obama’s achievements — keep rewriting the rules.

   To be fair, however, some kinds of business do thrive under Trumpism — namely, businesses that aren’t in it for the long run, operations whose strategy is to take the money and run. These are good times for mining companies that rush in to extract whatever they can, leaving a poisoned landscape behind; for real estate speculators sponsoring dubious ventures that take advantage of newly created tax loopholes; for for-profit colleges that leave their students with worthless degrees and crippling debt.

   In other words, under Trump it’s springtime for grifters.

   Trump is such a fantastic businessman that he stiffs the little guys and declares bankruptcy to stick it to the banks that lent him big money.

   Last week he declared that businesses claiming to have been hurt by his tariffs should blame themselves, because they’re “badly run and weak.”

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   1. “Badly run and weak companies are smartly blaming these small Tariffs instead of themselves for bad management…and who can really blame them for doing that?” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Excuses!”

      “. . . Badly run and weak companies are smartly blaming these small (. . . so, whatever happened to: greatest ever, tremendous, massive, yuge?) Tariffs” ??????????

      . . . and, I wonder why my head hurts so much these days?????

      (PS — given all that we know about the only thing that is really important to, and motivates, Weatherman Cheetolini, it might help me to make sense a little if someone could please explain how Ttump is, or, more importantly, imagines that he is, personally making bank off these “small tariffs”???)

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      1. https://youtu.be/ye5BuYf8q4o

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3. Sometimes I sit back and wonder what it would be like if we had the Democratic Party that Republicans are constantly warning us about.

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   1. Your daughter would be forcably taken to Mexico and given to a violent gang of Satan-worshipping Latina Muslim lesbians to be converted, then released once she learned the true ways of Nazi-socialist Communism and the secrets of being a man-hating Stacy.

      Or do you mean the clean energy, low gun violence, multi-cultural vibrant country part?

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      1. tbh, I could do both.

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4. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a feminist icon (just ask her), is flummoxed by the fact that some women don't revere her. 

   Ah well, King Crimson is playing at the Paramount tonight. Two gods (Robert Fripp, Gavin Harrison), two legends (Tony Levin, Mel Collins), and four other first-rate musicians on the same stage at the same time! Any opportunity to take a break from the relentless beclowning of a formerly great nation is welcome, and this is  far better opportunity than most. 

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5. Cheerful thought for the day.  About 9.4 million tons of Roundup has been applied to farmland since the herbicide was introduced in 1974.  Nature, wily foe that it is, responded with Roundup resistant weeds that now increasingly beset farme rs.

   Don't throw away those old Rod-weeders yet, folks!

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   1. …or figure out a way to monetize Round-Up resistant pigweed!!

      Cheer up, it could be worse? 

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6. .

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