Yavin4
Yavin4's JournalJimmy Carter caught absolute hell for 52 hostages in Iran.
Absolute hell. They were all eventually released.
Wonder what dystopian nightmare will the next Republican president bring?
Bush II brought us war and financial collapse. Trump has brought us a global pandemic.
My guess is alien invasion and occupation. President Rubio will fire off missles into space triggering an invasion.
So, I'm binge watching, "The Man in the High Castle". NO SPOILERS.
I find the show fascinating for some odd reason. However, not all of the storylines are compelling. Some of the things that some of the characters do is just plain stupid.
All in all, it's a very interesting show.
What are your thoughts?
--NO SPOILERS--
Are you self-conscious about the backdrop of your home while working from home?
Are you taking steps to ensure that your webcam does not pick up how untidy your home is in the background while you're on a conference call with your co-workers?
Or, that you have some really weird art hanging on the walls?
Or, those dead bodies that you have hanging around because you couldn't get out to dispose of them because of that whole social distancing thing? Am I right?
Poisson regression
There was a thread earlier on DU about the fact that the covid-19 virus is following a Poisson distribution. I am taking a course on Data Mining and Analysis, and this week, we are studying Poisson regression.
Thought that I'd share the video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLpl-gQkQivXjqHAJd2t-J_One_fYE55tC&time_continue=60&v=YtotMuVmOUM&feature=emb_logo
Some how, and in some way, we have to fix the Republican party.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room, and in this case, the elephant keeps taking giant dumps in the corner that Dems have to clean up.
The last two Republican presidents have given us the following events: 9/11, the Afghanistan war (still going), Iraq, torture, Katrina, the financial collapse, the Great Recession, Russian interference in our elections, bribing another foreign government to interfere with our elections, a sham impeachment trial, and now a global pandemic that threatens life on the planet.
Given its recent past and the current state of the Republican party, we cannot allow them to have access to power until we can somehow fix them. A party that does not believe in governing or government should not be allowed to run it. There's more to governing than passing gigantic tax cuts for rich people and de-regulating businesses. Like President Obama said, the presidency is a job. A real, hard job. It's not something to take lightly.
Given that our political system consists of binary choices between the two parties, the Republicans will always have a 50% chance or so of "winning" the presidency. Not to mention that the electoral college increases their chances as witnessed by the last two Republican presidents losing the popular vote.
So, odds are that we are going to get another Republican president at some point in the near future, and we will need to do something to ensure that whoever it is can actually run the government. The old bromides of: "hey, s/he will have competent people around him/her to guide them" or "the country pretty much runs itself, the presidency does not matter" have proven disastriously false. We cannot rely on them.
I am open to all ideas as to how to fix the Republicans. I think that a good place to start is to get the national mainstream media to stop being overly-sensitive to claims of bias and do their jobs by challenging candidates for the presidency. Ask the tough questions. Follow up with harder ones.
No more free air time for candidates unless it's in a forum where questions can be asked. IOW, no more airing of campaign rallies. There are other online platforms for that. If a candidate wants to be on CNN or MSNBC or CBS, there must be a reporter(s) there to ask questions with intense follow up.
Call Fox News what it is, a propaganda network, not real news. Stop hiring people from there. Send out a message that anyone who has worked for Fox News in the past is no longer qualified to work at a real news network. Isolate them journalistically.
I am open to any other ideas if you have them.
Prepare yourselves for the economic fallout from this disaster
The future economic fallout may be worse for most of than the virus itself. Companies looking to get their stock prices back up will go on a cost cutting crusade.
Look for:
1. An accelerated pace of adoption of machine learning and AI tools to replace human workers.
2. More outsourcing both inside and outside of the U.S.
3. More cuts to benefits. We may see the end to employer provided health insurance which is ironic given the recent debate in the Democratic primaries.
4. An accelerated pace of more people forced into early retirement.
5. More mega mergers and acquisitions. Think merger between Apple and Disney.
What you can do:
1. Limit your expenses as much as possible.
2. Be prepared to move to a lower cost of living city, if possible.
3. Be willing to take cuts in pay so long as you can aquire new skills.
4. Look for additional sources of income. Think Gig economy.
5. Volunteer in order to keep your skills sharp and make new connections.
I know that this is harsh, but it's better to be prepared than not. The last two Republican presidents have each brought us these kinds of economic collapses. Unfortunately, they keep getting "elected" so we all must prepare.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the next Sec. of Homeland Security under President Biden
No one is better.
Chris Hayes's podcast interview with Michael Lewis on May 1, 2019
From Chris Hayes' podcast, "Why is this Happening?" recorded on May 1, 2019
...
But my mind was floating. It was in this space of what's the risks of having this person {Trump} run this thing? Then when I started interviewing people in the government it became clear this was a perfectly legitimate way to view the government. At its very basic level the government's job is to keep us safe. It does lots of other things. You can view the government in lots of other ways. You can view it as a service provider. You can view it as an employer, but at its very basic level its job is to keep us safe.
When you wander around it you start to appreciate how many things there are to keep us safe from. The things that pop to mind when you're thinking of that are very vivid things, vivid risks, nuclear terrorist attacks or pandemics or natural disasters, all of which the government is responsible for defending us from.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-break-federal-government-michael-lewis-podcast-transcript-ncna1000586
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