August 18, 2020

Whitmer caught on hot mic: 'It's shark week mother f******'

Big Gretch



Whitmer caught on hot mic: 'It's shark week mother f******'


(WXYZ) — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was caught on a hot mic before her speech at the virtual Democratic National Convention.

The video was posted on Twitter by The Recount, which describes itself as "a new approach to video about politics that won't waste your time or insult your intelligence."

It shows Whitmer before her speech, which she gave at the UAW Local 652 in Lansing.

"It's not just Shark Week, it's Shark Week mother f******," she said on video while smiling. The comment got laughs from the people who were in the room at the time of the speech. .....(more)

https://www.wxyz.com/news/whitmer-caught-on-hot-mic-its-shark-week-mother-f?

August 18, 2020

Trump's attack on USPS is ratfucking the vote

Trump's attack on USPS is ratfucking the vote
By Jeffrey C. Billman


(Detroit Metro Times) No less than Rutherford B. Hayes or George W. Bush, Donald Trump took office with his legitimacy hanging by a thread.

Having decisively lost the popular vote in 1876, Hayes claimed the White House following a series of dubious and disputed recounts that prompted a constitutional crisis barely a decade after the Civil War; a special congressional committee ultimately voted along party lines to install “Rutherfraud,” apparently as part of a deal to end Reconstruction.

Bush, another popular-vote loser, won the Electoral College in 2000 thanks to a 537-vote squeaker in Florida, where his brother Jeb was governor. This election — a debacle of hanging chads and butterfly ballots and a hackneyed, racist purge of the state’s voter rolls — nearly provoked another constitutional crisis; it ended when the Supreme Court squelched a statewide recount.

These were not shining moments for democracy.

Neither was Trump’s election in 2016. He won 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. His narrow Electoral College victory rested on hitting a royal flush in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He was aided in key swing states by Republican efforts to suppress Black turnout. He had still more help from a politically obtuse FBI director who announced a last-minute re-investigation into Clinton’s email scandals. And, of course, Trump benefited from a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation designed to help him win, which he didn’t exactly discourage — and later tried to cover up. .............(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/trump-is-ratfucking-the-vote/Content?oid=25151020

August 18, 2020

Mortgage Delinquencies Jump by Most Ever. ..... What a Mess.

Mortgage Delinquencies Jump by Most Ever. 60-Day Delinquencies Hit Highest Level Ever. Record 16% of FHA Mortgages Delinquent. What a Mess
by Wolf Richter • Aug 17, 2020 •

Includes mortgages already delinquent before they were swept under the big federal rug of extend-and-pretend forbearance programs.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.


The mortgage delinquency-and-forbearance mess keeps getting messier – in record-setting ways. At the same time, the record-low mortgage rates continue to push certain other segments of the housing industry toward ever greater exuberance. That contradiction became humorously obvious on the Bloomberg News Economics front page, where side-by-side these two headlines appeared:



The overall delinquency rate for mortgages on one-to-four-unit residential properties soared by nearly 4 percentage points (386 basis points) during the second quarter, and by June 30 reached 8.22% (seasonally adjusted), the highest in nine years, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Delinquency Survey.

This nearly 4-percentage point jump in the overall delinquency rate was the largest in the history of MBA’s survey going back to 1979. ................(more)

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/08/17/mortgage-delinquencies-jump-by-most-ever-60-day-delinquencies-hit-highest-level-ever-record-16-of-fha-mortgages-delinquent-what-a-mess/

August 18, 2020

Scientists studied five different types of seafood. 100 percent were contaminated with plastics

(Salon) Anew study that examined five different types of seafood found that traces of plastic contaminants were present in every single sample — suggesting that humans ingest a large amount of plastic pollution from eating seafood both wild and farmed.

The study, which was conducted by a group of scientists led by doctoral candidate Francisca Ribeiro from the University of Queensland's Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences, investigated 10 raw samples of wild sardines, 10 raw samples of farmed tiger prawns, 10 wild squid, 10 oysters and five wild blue crab. The authors' goal was to develop a simple quantitative means to improve plastic contamination detection methods.

The researchers found that every single one of the samples had plastic in them, although the extent varied quite a bit. The researchers measured the amount of plastic pollution per gram of seafood tissue, and found that sardines had the highest percentage: about 0.3 milligrams of plastic per gram of tissue, meaning that one would ingest 30 milligrams of plastic after consuming an average serving of sardines.

Squid, oysters and prawns all had about 0.01 milligrams of plastic per gram of tissue, while crabs has 0.03 milligrams of plastic per gram of tissue weight. An average 100-gram serving of crab would cause one to ingest about 3 milligrams of plastic. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/08/17/scientists-studied-five-different-types-of-seafood-100-percent-were-contaminated-with-plastics/

August 15, 2020

President Obama On David Plouffe Podcast: Kamala Harris And Joe Biden "Will Make A Terrific Team"

Audio link: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/08/14/president_obama_on_david_plouffe_podcast_kamala_harris_and_joe_biden_will_make_a_terrific_team.html


President Obama joined the "David Plouffe Campaign HQ" podcast to give his take Joe Biden's choice of Kamala Harris as his running mate and what it says about his decision making as a potential president. And he talks about the close of the campaign and the role each of us has to play in deciding it’s outcome


“She is somebody who I think will be able to share the stage with Mike Pence, or whoever else, and dissect some of the terrible decisions that have been made over the last four years," Obama said about Harris. "And most importantly, she is somebody who is going to be able to give Joe sound advice and be a terrific sounding board when he has to make tough decisions... I think they will make a terrific team."

August 15, 2020

Having to explain "golden shower" in relation to the presidency: I weep for civics teachers....

(Salon) In the 3,700-word foreword from his forthcoming memoir, "Disloyal," Michael Cohen, the former personal lawyer and "fixer" of President Donald Trump, describes his life working for his former client in terms of organized crime, comes clean about "screaming threats" on his client's behalf and admits to being an "active and eager participant" in some of the most notorious and salacious episodes involving the future leader of the free world.

"From golden showers in a sex club in Vegas, to tax fraud, to deals with corrupt officials from the former Soviet Union, to catch and kill conspiracies to silence Trump's clandestine lovers, I wasn't just a witness to the president's rise — I was an active and eager participant," Cohen writes in the foreword, dated March 11, 2020, which he says he began penning on legal pads in the early morning hours at the white-collar Otisville Federal Prison located about an hour and a half drive from his former Manhattan high-rise apartment. .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/08/14/michael-cohen-says-he-was-active-and-eager-participant-in-golden-showers-and-tax-fraud-in-book/

August 15, 2020

Rick Perlstein: 'If you're not writing about the berserk, you're not writing about America'

Rick Perlstein: 'If you're not writing about the berserk, you're not writing about America'
The historian has completed his epic on the rise of the US right – just in time for Donald Trump’s attempt to hold on to his throne

@MartinPengelly
Sat 15 Aug 2020 05.00 EDT


(Guardian UK) Less than three months before the most consequential American election of modern times, Rick Perlstein has completed his epic history of the forces that ultimately put Donald Trump in power. Reaganland, Perlstein’s fourth volume on the rise of US conservatism from 1960 to 1980, is out on 18 August.

Including notes, the book runs to more than a thousand pages. An hour or so before we speak, however, Perlstein puts out a rather shorter statement: a tweet.

“Open letter to press. I’ve given my last interview about the ’68 election’s lessons for 2020. Given Trump’s tweet on postponing, the political media’s determination to bound its discussion within the frame of normal politics is downright dangerous, and I won’t be complicit.”

So I don’t ask Perlstein to compare Richard Nixon – the subject of volume two, Nixonland (2008) – with a president repeating his “law and order” message and who the same day says “universal mail-in voting” will lead to “the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT election in history”, and therefore suggests the US might “Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

Trump can’t delay the election. But he can fight and lie and cheat, as Nixon did, and that seems likely to keep reporters knocking on Perlstein’s door. His tweet, he says, came “from a frustrating interview in which I said over and over again: ‘The real thing you need to be talking about as a reporter … is parallels to what was going on in South America in the 1970s and Europe in the 1930s.’” ..............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/15/rick-perlstein-reaganland-donald-trump-nixon-republicans

August 15, 2020

For Manhattan's retail industry normal may never return

(Guardian UK) On a damp and humid Thursday afternoon Manhattan’s Union Square is looking sorry for itself. There’s 73,000 sq ft of empty retail space up for grabs at 44 Union Square in the now boarded up neo-Georgian landmark that was once Tammany Hall. There’s more space to rent on the opposite corner and the neighbouring thoroughfares, Broadway and Fifth Avenue, some of New York’s retail arteries.

The pandemic has hit Manhattan hard. The island is usually a shopping hub, home to flagship stores for retailers including Prada, Uniqlo, Macy’s and Nike. But the coronavirus is keeping the tourists and office workers that they rely on to justify their sky-high rents home.

Many stores have simply shut up shop. Others are offering “curbside pick-up” for online orders or limiting entrance. A sign outside cupcake shop Baked by Melissa reads: “One Customer At A Time”. No one is queuing.

Some brands and restaurants have already decided the city is just too expensive for them. Others with huge Manhattan stores, including Brooks Brothers, J Crew, JC Penney, have filed for bankruptcy. .............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/15/for-manhattans-retail-industry-normal-may-never-return

August 14, 2020

Geographic distribution of DU

Always fascinated to know where DUers come from. And I apologize in advance for some of the regional groupings -- I know they're not perfect and there will be quibbles. But there are only 10 lines available on s survey.

August 14, 2020

Woman tossed out of her jeans after being charged by bison

A bystander captured the moments a bison charged at a woman in South Dakota.

In the video, a group of motorcycle riders approach a herd of bison scattered in the middle of a road at Custer State Park, but one woman gets too close to a mother and her calf.



The bison charges at her and manages to get its horns into her jeans. The animal then throws the woman around and tosses her out of her pants before she manages to escape.

The person who recorded the encounter wants it to serve as a reminder about what can happen when getting too close to a wild animal. ..........(more)

https://www.today.com/news/bison-drags-woman-out-her-jeans-custer-state-park-t189416