May 19, 2022

On the SAME day Republicans both held a press conference blaming Biden for the baby formula shortage

*AND* voted against a bill that would ensure access to baby formula amid a shortage.

https://twitter.com/Kate9675/status/1527120904349794306

May 19, 2022

John Fetterman Wins on Vibes

The 6-foot-8 goateed Senate candidate prevailed in the Democratic primary less on the strength of detailed policy proposals than on vibes.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/john-fetterman-pennsylvania-election/629893/

https://archive.ph/TegSY



Even if you don’t know a single policy he supports, chances are good that you know what John Fetterman looks like. Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor is larger than life at 6 foot 8, distinctively bald with a salt-and-pepper goatee, and draped in a baggy shirt or hoodie. Oh, and he’s a shorts guy too.

Fetterman easily won today’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, and will run in November in a race that could decide control of the chamber. (He experienced a stroke on Friday but says he is expected to make a full recovery.) Some people consider it distasteful to focus on a candidate’s aesthetics over their message, but in Fetterman’s case, aesthetics is part of the message, and the message has resonated with Keystone State voters.

His success comes in part because many voters are attracted to candidates more by “vibes” than by detailed policy platforms. Looking and sounding like a Yinzer roughneck is handy when many of the voters you need to win do too. Fetterman’s most serious opponent was Conor Lamb, a U.S. House member and well-liked moderate. At the outset, this primary was expected to be a proxy fight between two visions of the Democratic Party’s future. Instead, Fetterman romped, winning by double digits.

The campaign has been a study in the power of vibes. Lamb seems like a candidate created in a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee lab: He’s young, Kennedy-handsome, a Marine and former federal prosecutor who looks born to wear suits. By contrast, Fetterman looks like he was hacked together from spare parts in an oil-streaked Pittsburgh chopper garage.

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May 19, 2022

BIG wraps Prague's Vltava Philharmonic Hall in ascending colonnades

https://www.dezeen.com/2022/05/19/big-vltava-philharmonic-hall-prague-architecture/



Danish architecture studio BIG has unveiled plans for a national concert hall in Prague that features protruding angular colonnades, which double as large balconies. Named the Vltava Philharmonic Hall, the venue will be built on the bank of the Vltava river in central Prague. It will be comprised of angled colonnades that will slope and extend outwards from the concert hall.



The building, which will house the Prague Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Philharmonic and the music department of the Municipal Library of Prague, will be characterised by its four stacked colonnades. The colonnades will protrude in different directions and gradually slope upwards forming elevated walkways around the exterior, which were designed to become extensions of the street and Vltava square.



"From the Vltava square, streets ascend upward connecting interior balconies with exterior colonnades and terraces," said BIG partner in charge Brian Yang. "The Vltava Philharmonic Hall is composed as a meandering journey from riverbank to rooftop," said BIG founder Bjarke Ingels. "Public flows and belvedere plazas unite the city life of Prague to the music within."



Bohemian Forest timber will clad the undersides of the protruding terraces and extend to the interior while expanses of glass will surround the main volume of the concert hall on each of its stacked levels. According to BIG, the interior of the concert hall's foyer will be inspired by Czech glass artists.

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May 19, 2022

The Atlantic's Summer Reading Guide

https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2022/05/summer-reading-2022/608494/























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May 19, 2022

GOP Rep. Pushes Bizarre Bill to 'Expunge' Trump's Jan. 6 Impeachment

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, who is a Senate hopeful in Oklahoma, wants to overturn the House’s vote to impeach Trump for inciting the Jan. 6 riot.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-rep-markwayne-mullin-pushes-bizarre-bill-to-expunge-trumps-jan-6-impeachment



Congressional Republicans have found yet another way to demonstrate their fealty to Donald Trump: attempting to “expunge” his impeachment after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

A stalwart member of the party’s MAGA wing, Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), is expected to introduce legislation on Wednesday to expunge Trump’s second impeachment vote in the House, according to an email his office sent to fellow GOP lawmakers on Tuesday morning.

“The Democrats’ weaponization of impeachment against President Trump cannot go unanswered in the history books,” Mullin’s office declared, in an attempt to garner more cosponsors for the measure.

Such a resolution faces no chance of passing the Democratic-led House, or even receiving a vote. But Mullin, who was photographed trying to fend off the mob from the House floor on Jan. 6, is running for the U.S. Senate seat in Oklahoma being vacated by GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe.

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May 19, 2022

wow, the ghoul Andrea Mitchell just sunk the old bovver boots HARD into Hunter and President Biden

that wing of MSNBC has the long knives out for them

They played a clip of Joe Biden in a debate with Trump saying Hunter never was paid a dime from Chinese firms, then they (MSNBC) showed 5 million usd in payments to Hunter from a Chinese firm, plus the MSNBC legal analyst Chuck Rosenberg was asked if Hunter paying back the 2 million usd he owed to the IRS cleared him, and he used this analogy: (paraphrasing) 'If you rob a bank, then paying back the bank does not clear you of the crime'.

They also went through a list of things Hunter spent 200K usd a month on, like dental work, a Porsche, etc etc etc etc, and also started pumping the laptop story again.

FFS, what the hell is wrong with these assholes??????

This is just insanity.

May 19, 2022

This Friendly, Lantern-Lit City of Southeast Asia Is Having a Comeback

May the streets overflow with food stalls.

https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/things-to-do-hanoi-vietnam



On the streets of Hanoi, a torrent of motorbikes wind between dragon-throned temples, winged-roof pavilions, colorful colonial buildings with French doors, and modern glass towers. People chatter around wooden tables crammed under balconies strung with glowing lanterns. Roadside stands sell banh mi, banh xeo, mangos, haircuts, knockoff North Face jackets, air for your moto tires, and much, much more everywhere you look. And generous bystanders are more than willing to point you in the right direction (the right direction, if you’re wondering, is always toward delicious food).

The lively capital of Vietnam is an intoxicating mix of wandering travelers and welcoming locals. Beware of locking eyes with any grandma-types taking shots, as it will be exceedingly difficult to get out of joining them. Actually, this goes for pretty much all Vietnamese people. One minute you catch someone’s eye and smile and nod politely, and the next thing you know it’s 3 am and you’ve been drinking rice wine called “ruou” for hours.

Vietnam and its capital city of Hanoi have come a long way from a not-so-distant past. It’s a complicated history that has already been well documented (Ken Burns’ epic, 10-hour documentary The Vietnam War is a good place to start), but suffice to say that it’s gone through plenty of change over the past half-century. Fifty years ago, Hanoi was one of the most geopolitically isolated cities in the world.

Then, like the rest of the world, Vietnam closed for business in 2020, isolating itself more extremely than most other countries. Though I’d been living in Hanoi when the pandemic hit and fled at the last possible minute, now Vietnam is open once again, many like myself are chomping at the bit to get back. Today it’s becoming one of the most popular destinations in Southeast Asia, drawing backpackers, slow travelers, and so-called “digital nomads” from all over the globe. Here’s what to do in Hanoi.



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May 19, 2022

Peace and trade--a new perspective

The Ukraine crisis has shown not only that unlimited trade is impossible but also that it needs to be regulated by values.

https://socialeurope.eu/peace-and-trade-a-new-perspective



Globalisation as we know it is dead. Most recently with the outbreak of war in Ukraine, it has become clear that the idea of globally unlimited trade has failed. Particularly painful is the realisation that trade and peace are not siblings. Autocrats place their potentially belligerent claims to power above the free exchange of goods and commodities. Free trade is only acceptable to them as long as it serves to maintain their own power. What does this mean for the future? The recent blows to world trade have not invalidated its mutually beneficial nature. David Ricardo’s theory of the comparative advantages of trade still applies, even where they are no longer exploited. The mutual advantages of trade with Russia are being lost. This particularly applies to trade involving the European Union, including Germany. As rising inflation shows, these trade restrictions make people poorer.

High vulnerability

The Russian aggression and the pandemic have shown the high vulnerability of closely interconnected global economies. If trade security is to be enhanced, the challenge is to redefine trade relations globally. The result should be a new order of preferences for trading partners, which is no longer based solely on the short-term profitability of the exchange. The state and social constitution of the trading partners should play a decisive role. In future, trade policy should be value-based and the underlying values should be those of liberal and social democracies in their quite different forms. Instead of unlimited offshoring, the United States treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, speaks of ‘friend-shoring’—relocation of sourcing to economies with similar values. The goal is ultimately to make trade safer and, measured by shared values, fairer.

Desired linkages

This view of trade relations results in a ranking of desired trade linkages for the EU, which can be roughly divided into three categories. First, there are ‘preferred’ trading partners, which should form a close community of values in geographical proximity. All members of the EU and the wider European Economic Area fall into this category. There should be no trade barriers among them and they should agree a division of labour on how mutually to strengthen their resilience in times of crisis, taking advantage of their proximity. The gas-supply crisis highlights this need, as have the supply-chain problems thrown up by the pandemic. Second come ‘close’ trading partners. With them, too, a set of political values should be shared and trade should encounter as few obstacles as possible. This group could include the US and Japan. These economies would not however be part of a resilience network, at least not systematically. This might be due to objective obstacles, such as lack of proximity, or doubts about the common value base (for example, if Turkey were to be considered).

Greater caution

Third are ‘functional’ trading partners. Trade would take place with these—as before—solely on Ricardian grounds. Given that no commonality of values is presumed, these trade flows should be treated with much greater caution in the future. If the political systems in these countries were to degenerate into nationalistic aggression, trade would eventually risk becoming a weapon against our values. Foresight then becomes essential: there must be no trade relationships which are indispensable. It should be insisted that each of the functional partners could be replaced by another at any time, with as little economic damage as possible. Scenarios would then have to be prepared in advance to make a rapid switch possible, with the companies concerned also readied for such a potential change. This could be done, for example, by means of insurance contracts through which offers by other suppliers could be guaranteed in the event of a crisis. In case of doubt, production would have to be demanded from a preferred or close trading partner in such a situation, even if this were more expensive.

Enormous challenges.................

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May 19, 2022

one pic that sums up the vicious christofascist white nationalist danger already entrenched in power

Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin has routinely allied herself with some of the most extreme right-wing figures in America, including open neo-nazis.

May 19, 2022

What BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street Are Doing to the Economy

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/opinion/vanguard-power-blackrock-state-street.html

https://archive.ph/ZNzvS



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The firms manage funds invested by large institutions like pension funds and university endowments as well as those for companies and, in some cases, individual investors like me and perhaps you, too. Their holdings are colossal. BlackRock manages nearly $10 trillion in investments. Vanguard has $8 trillion, and State Street has $4 trillion. Their combined $22 trillion in managed assets is the equivalent of more than half of the combined value of all shares for companies in the S&P 500 (about $38 trillion). Their power is expected to grow. An analysis published in the Boston University Law Review in 2019 estimated that the Big Three could control as much as 40 percent of shareholder votes in the S&P 500 within two decades.

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The real danger posed by the three is economic, not political. The American economy is lumbering under monopoly and oligopoly. In many industries, from airlines to internet advertising to health care to banks to mobile phone providers, Americans can do business with just a handful of companies. As the journalist David Dayen has argued, this increasing market concentration reduces consumer choice, raises prices and most likely harms workers.

BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street have been extraordinarily good for investors — their passive-investing index funds have lowered costs and improved returns for millions of people. But their rise has come at the cost of intense concentration in corporate ownership, potentially supercharging the oligopolistic effects of already oligopolistic industries.

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Indeed, there is some evidence that their concentrated ownership is associated with lower wages and employment and is already leading to price increases in some industries, including in airlines, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods. The firms dispute this. In a 2019 paper, Vanguard’s researchers said that when they studied lots of industries across a long period, they did not “find conclusive evidence” that common ownership led to higher profits. But if the Big Three keep growing, the effects of their concentrated ownership will get only worse. Einer Elhauge, also of Harvard Law School, has written that concentrated ownership “poses the greatest anticompetitive threat of our time, mainly because it is the one anticompetitive problem we are doing nothing about.”

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David Dayen—Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power