But inside we don’t mind at all…
A few articles you could be reading now instead of playing Pin The Lie On Donald Trump…
And as for the idea of the GOP establishment ganging up on him and/or uniting behind another candidate like Rubio, that’s at least as likely to backfire as to work. And even if it works, what’s to stop Trump from then running as an independent?
Indeed. You have a party whose domestic policy agenda consists of shouting “death panels!”, whose foreign policy agenda consists of shouting “Benghazi!”, and which now expects its base to realize that Trump isn’t serious. Or to put it a bit differently, the definition of a GOP establishment candidate these days is someone who is in on the con, and knows that his colleagues have been talking nonsense. Primary voters are expected to respect that?
(click here to continue reading Thinking About the Trumpthinkable – The New York Times.)
Stuffed Girls Heads
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump refused to rule out a third party bid for the presidency in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Trump has signed, along with other Republicans, a vow to run for the GOP nomination.
But, Trump didn’t discount a third party bid when he was asked on Sunday about efforts to unravel his candidacy by some in the Republican party.
“I’m going to have to see what happens. I will see what happens. I have to be treated fairly,” Trump said. “When I did this, I said I have to be treated fairly. If I’m treated fairly, I’m fine. All I want to do is (have) a level playing field.”
(click here to continue reading Trump (Again) Refuses To Rule Out Independent Bid For The Presidency.)
These Men Didn’t Take Their Atabrine
None of this is to say that the Mac App Store doesn’t offer some valuable services for users: Automatic updates, easily downloading all your apps to a new Mac, and offering a central clearinghouse for finding apps are just a few of the positives. The latter is a big advantage to those who have come to the Mac from iOS and are used to having a single repository rather than hunting hither and yon for apps. For developers, it provides a single storefront and easy purchasing.
But given that the Mac is doing tremendously well, setting sales records—even if not approaching the sales volume of iOS devices—and given that Apple takes a 30-percent cut of both iOS and Mac app sales, regardless of the disparate support for the two app stores, it might behoove the company to spend a little time bringing the Mac App Store up to snuff.
(click here to continue reading The Mac App Store: Not gone, but certainly forgotten | Macworld.)
Ms. Potato Head
Ever wonder why all those folks in rural, “red” America still vote in droves for the same Republicans who brag about gutting the very social programs keeping them alive? How someone like Matt Bevin can run a winning campaign in Kentucky based on cutting people’s access to affordable health care? How Republican governors can get away with refusing free Medicaid for their own citizens? Every election it seems that Democrats end up shaking their heads in dismay as yet another mean-spirited red-state Republican manages to defeat the Democrat by essentially promising to make his own constituents’ lives more miserable. Afterwards we all intone the familiar refrain which boils down to “these people don’t know any better.” If only the Democrats had a more effective “message” on the issues, we could surely reach those people who by all strands of logic ought to vote blue, and convince them that Republicans don’t have their interests at heart.
In one of the more insightful articles ever written about what motivates the rural poor to vote Republican, Alec MacGillis, who covers politics for ProPublica, took a tour through deep red America, asking the same questions. In an Op-Ed for today’s New York Times, MacGillis explains that it’s not all about guns and abortion that drives people in economically-depressed areas to vote Republican. In fact it’s something very basic to human nature, which the GOP exploits at every turn. And Democrats ignore it at their peril.
(click here to continue reading The Most Important Article You’ll Read Today About The Democratic Party..)
Notice that he’s an admirer of Hitler:
Should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little moustache.
And his avatar, that looks like a modified swastika, is the symbol of the neo-Nazi German Faith Movement.
So there you have it. Donald Trump is posting racist imagery that comes directly from neo-Nazis.
I hope you’re not surprised that a guy like Donald Trump, who continually spouts fascist rhetoric, is attracted to fascist memes posted by neo-Nazis. This is where the right wing has ended up in 2015.
(click here to continue reading We Found Where Donald Trump’s “Black Crimes” Graphic Came From – Little Green Footballs.)
Big Dick
The riveting new documentary The Sunshine Makers chronicles two hippies’ quest to bring LSD to every person in America in order to change the world. Drugs have yet to save the world, but that didn’t stop Nick Sand and Tim Scully from once believing they might. The former a New York-bred prophet of psychedelics who preached their ability to radically improve humanity, and the latter a Bay Area chemist driven to create global “oneness” through mind-altering substances, they were an odd-couple pair who, in the late ’60s, became notorious for manufacturing and distributing enormous amounts of LSD—including “Orange Sunshine,” the hard-hitting tabs that became so synonymous with the counterculture they were even spoofed on Saturday Night Live. Theirs is a story about the marriage of idealism and criminality, and it’s recounted in amusing and thrilling detail by The Sunshine Makers, Cosmo Feilding-Mellen’s astute documentary (which premiered as part of this year’s DOC NYC festival) about the drugged-out duo.
(click here to continue reading Inside the Plot to Get Every American High on Acid – The Daily Beast.)
Ten anonymous Planned Parenthood patients, along with three Planned Parenthood affiliates, have filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Texas over the state’s attempt to boot the provider out of the joint federal-state Medicaid program.
In court documents, Planned Parenthood argues that Texas’ actions violate the federal Social Security Act, which allows Medicaid patients to choose their own health care provider. According to plaintiffs, Texas’ efforts to block Planned Parenthood from receiving public funds “will cause significant and irreparable harm” to Medicaid patients who “will lose their provider of choice, will find their family planning services interrupted, and in many cases will be left with reduced access to care.”
The lawsuit comes after the Texas health commission’s Office of Inspector General sent a series of letters to Texas Planned Parenthood affiliates informing the provider of their ouster from Medicaid in October.
(click here to continue reading Planned Parenthood Patients Take Texas Back to Court.)
Here’s an interesting factoid about contemporary policing: In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. …
Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime — yes, really! — through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture. Last year, according to the Institute for Justice, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion.
(click here to continue reading Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year – The Washington Post.)
Those resolute voices in American public life that continue to deny the existence of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy argue that “someone would have talked.” This line of reasoning is often used by journalists who have made no effort themselves to closely inspect the growing body of evidence and have not undertaken any of their own investigative reporting. The argument betrays a touchingly naïve media bias—a belief that the American press establishment itself, that great slumbering watchdog, could be counted on to solve such a monumental crime, one that sprung from the very system of governance of which corporate media is an essential part. The official version of the Kennedy assassination—despite its myriad improbabilities, which have only grown more inconceivable with time—remains firmly embedded in the media consciousness, as unquestioned as the law of gravity.
In fact, many people have talked during the past half of a century—including some directly connected to the plot against Kennedy. But the media simply refused to listen. One of the most intriguing examples of someone talking occurred in 2003, when an old and ailing Howard Hunt began unburdening himself to his eldest son, Saint John.
(click here to continue reading Inside the plot to kill JFK: The secret story of the CIA and what really happened in Dallas – Salon.com.)
Inflammation occurs when the body rallies to defend itself against invading microbes or to heal damaged tissue. The walls of the capillaries dilate and grow more porous, enabling white blood cells to flood the damaged site. As blood flows in and fluid leaks out, the region swells, which can put pressure on surrounding nerves, causing pain; inflammatory molecules may also activate pain fibres. The heat most likely results from the increase in blood flow.
The key white blood cell in inflammation is called a macrophage, and for decades it has been a subject of study in my hematology laboratory and in many others. Macrophages were once cast as humble handmaidens of the immune system, responsible for recognizing microbes or debris and gobbling them up. But in recent years researchers have come to understand that macrophages are able to assemble, within themselves, specialized platforms that pump out the dozens of molecules that promote inflammation. These platforms, called inflammasomes, are like pop-up factories—quickly assembled when needed and quickly dismantled when the crisis has passed.
For centuries, scientists have debated whether inflammation is good or bad for us. Now we believe that it’s both: too little, and microbes fester and spread in the body, or wounds fail to heal; too much, and nearby healthy tissue can be degraded or destroyed. The fire of inflammation must be tightly controlled—turned on at the right moment and, just as critically, turned off. Lately, however, several lines of research have revealed that low-level inflammation can simmer quietly in the body, in the absence of overt trauma or infection, with profound implications for our health. Using advanced technologies, scientists have discovered that heart attacks, diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease may be linked to smoldering inflammation, and some researchers have even speculated about its role in psychiatric conditions.
(click here to continue reading Medicine’s Burning Question – The New Yorker.)