The rich share many self-serving conceits. One is that they are rich because they are more clever and work harder than those who are not. They dismiss any idea that luck had anything to do with it, especially the luck that resulted in them being born into a family that, even if not overly wealthy, yet belong to a race, ethnicity, and nationality that automatically put them into the top brackets of income and wealth in the world.
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Clinton partisans among the Democrats are providing their own overheated rhetoric as they seek revenge for what they see as an election victory that was stolen from them by Russians. Paul Begala is a top Democratic insider and close confidante of the Clinton family who served as counselor to Bill Clinton when he was president. He is now a commentator on CNN. On Anderson Cooper’s show, he actually suggested that Donald Trump should “blow up” Russia’s KGB, GSU, or GRU (the intelligence services of that country) because “we were and are under attack by a hostile foreign power” and “should be retaliating massively”.
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We are truly plumbing the depths of politics these days, with Donald Trump and members of his family and his administration making bizarre statements. We know that Trump rages against anyone who has the temerity to challenge him or his grandiose claims. But in politics, like attracts like. Take this story about how Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, his lawyer mind you, the person who should be practicing restraint in his speech, responded to a critical email he received from a total stranger.
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Thanks to leaks of US State Department cables given to The Intercept, we are now aware of a $10 million settlement agreed upon in 2013 paid to a US citizen Khaled Hassen by the UAE. The UAE had fought to keep secret the fact that people at the highest levels of that country, which is a loyal puppet of the US and Saudi Arabia, including members of their royal family had acknowledged being involved in torture.
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When one uses sites like Netflix or Amazon, they keep recommending things to you based on your past searches and purchases. Most of the time, one can see why they recommended the items. But sometimes, they are real head-scratchers where the recommendation seems wildly off or to make no sense whatsoever, and today I experienced one such case.
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Following my post earlier today about the 10 people rescued from drowning off the coast of Florida, I came across a news report of another dramatic rescue yesterday, this time of a wild elephant. Elephants are good swimmers but one of them seemed to have been caught in a tide and dragged 8 km out to sea off the northeast coast of Sri Lanka. It was spotted desperately trying to keep its trunk above water in order to breathe.
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Many of you would have heard or read about the incredible rescue of people who had been caught in a rip tide off the coast of Florida. Two young boys Noah and Stephen Ursrey were initially caught up by the tide and when other people became aware of their distress and tried to help them, they too got caught in the strong tide so that in the end 10 people were in danger of drowning. There was no lifeguard on duty.
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Coral reefs are sensitive indicators of oceanic temperatures, dying when the water gets too warm. But some reefs in American Samoa seem to be able to tolerate higher temperatures than others and this video clip describes the efforts by scientists to understand the causes of the difference.
I have written before of my puzzlement at the huge advances paid by publishers for books by politicians and celebrities because I could not see how these books could possibly be interesting enough to recoup in sales what the publishers seemed to expect. At least when it comes to politicians, there is a ready-made market of their own political parties and partisan groups that may buy these books in bulk as gifts to be given out to loyalists. And when it comes to celebrities in the arts and sports worlds, there does seem to be a fascination with what they are ‘really’ like, an appeal that completely eludes me.
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In a recent column, David Brooks of the New York Times describes the structural barriers that have been created that separate the rich from the rest of us and prevent the poor from making progress. He starts out reasonably enough.
Upper-middle-class parents have the means to spend two to three times more time with their preschool children than less affluent parents. Since 1996, education expenditures among the affluent have increased by almost 300 percent, while education spending among every other group is basically flat.
…The most important is residential zoning restrictions. Well-educated people tend to live in places like Portland, New York and San Francisco that have housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities.