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‘Wuhan, you can do it!’ residents shout across the city in Coronavirus lockdown
The city of 11 million, where the virus emerged late last year, is now under effective lockdown. Footage shared on China’s Twitter-like Weibo social media platform showed residents of apartment compounds in the city chanting “Wuhan Jiayou” which roughly translates as, “Wuhan, you can do it!”
Tuesday’s death toll was up from 81 as of the day before, while the number of total confirmed cases in China surged to 4,515 as of Jan. 27, from 2,835 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said.
‘Wuhan, you can do it!’ residents shout across the city in Coronavirus lockdown – YouTube
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Bernie’s Record in Battleground States
Let’s start with the actual results in the 2016 primary. It was not remotely close. Sanders lost by 3.8 million votes, 57-43%. She won 34 states and territories to his 23.
… Sanders lost to Clinton by more than 200,000 votes in the nine states of the Midwest. In the three onetime Blue Wall battleground states, she topped him by over 45,000 votes, though he beat her in Wisconsin and edged her by a point in Michigan. In Ohio, Clinton won by 14 points and nearly 166,000 votes. The best you can say about this Sanders argument is that he didn’t lose as badly in the Midwest as he did elsewhere.
Indeed, in the Sunbelt, the other area that Democrats hope to make a general election battleground in 2020, Sanders got absolutely crushed. He lost Florida 64-33%, Arizona 58-40%, North Carolina 55-41% and Texas 65-33%. Taken together, Clinton trounced Sanders in those four states by more than 1.2 million votes.
…On the very day in 2017 that The New York Times published an op-ed he wrote entitled, “How Democrats Can Stop Losing Elections,” his favored candidate in the Virginia gubernatorial primary got blown out by moderate Ralph Northam, who went on to trounce the Republican in the general election.
In 2018, Sanders waded into the Michigan governor’s race and backed Abdul El-Sayed, a young, far-left candidate. El-Sayed lost every county in the state to the more mainstream Gretchen Whitmer. She went on to soundly beat the Republican by promising not a “revolution” but rather to “fix the damn roads.”
This pattern repeated itself throughout the country. Sanders and his political organization backed candidates at every level, to little or no avail. Their endorsees did not flip House seats from red to blue in 2018, proving that his ideas work only in safely Democratic places.
…In the past, when Bernie Sanders has declared himself and his ideas to be “winners” in red and purple areas, it has turned out to be demonstrably false.
Donald Trump will brand Bernie Sanders a socialist, and he’ll be right
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Bernie Sanders’s Trump-like campaign is a disaster for Democrats
The New York Times reports on Sanders’s swarm of online supporters, who have waged vicious and personal attacks on his critics, often focusing on feminist women. “Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun traveling with private security after incurring online harassment. Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death threats,” the Times explains. “A state party chairwoman changed her phone number.
…Sanders hired one of social media’s most aggressive trolls, David Sirota.
…His team’s baseless claim (for which he had to apologize) that former vice president Joe Biden is corrupt was positively Trumpian. The out-of-context clip that Sanders distributed on social media falsely suggesting Biden favored Social Security cuts was slapped down by fact-checkers, but Sanders continued to insist that Biden supported cuts.
…A nominee who insists on personally attacking all doubters and the media might be a model for the Republican Party, but Democrats are not going to win with their own Donald Trump, especially one who has burned bridges and stirred resentment in his own party.
Bernie Sanders’s Trump-like campaign is a disaster for Democrats – The Washington Post
Solid points but at best Buttigieg is a propped up, carefully calibrated, Stepford child of the Truman Project. At worst? Divisively lacking in intersectionality.
Throwback: This is what it looks like when a losing candidate does not support other candidates
The fact that many of the names on the list aren’t traditional Democrats ― or self-identified Democrats at all ― makes it all the more valuable.
And yet, since he dropped out of the primary, Sanders has steadfastly refused to hand over his list to the Democratic Party, much to the chagrin of those who say it could be crucial to help build opposition to Donald Trump’s presidency.
Bernie Sanders’ Team Explains Why He Won’t Hand Over His Donor List | HuffPost
Also, the tone his team uses is one reason people don’t like them.
Throwback: Clinton Rallies Her Troops to Fight for Obama
Mr. Clinton remains angrier than people realize about the Obama campaign’s portrayal of his wife as deceitful and of his administration as middling and his political tactics as, at times, racially charged.
…“I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?” Mrs. Clinton said. “Or were you in it for that young marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage?”
Mr. Clinton became teary at several points during his wife’s speech, and even Mrs. Clinton, who has been so steady this week, seemed to grow misty a couple of times as she thanked her supporters profusely and recalled some of the Americans she met along the trail. Some parts of the speech devoted to Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain, in turn, had a bit of a workmanlike quality, but on the whole her speech echoed with the emotional lyricism that she showed in June when she dropped out of the race and told supporters, “It would break my heart if, in falling short of my goal, I in any way discouraged any of you from pursuing yours.”
…When Kelly Friendly, a Clinton supporter from Wellesley, Mass., was asked if she would vote for Mr. Obama, she said, referring to Mrs. Clinton: “Absolutely. She just told us to, didn’t she?”
Clinton Rallies Her Troops to Fight for Obama – The New York Times
Two things….
One: Undermining Democrats who came before but were better than what came before them never serves the party well. Obama’s criticisms of the Clintons (and amplifications of others’ criticisms) came back to bite the party on the ass in 2016.
Two: That’s what supporting the nominee looks like.
Avigilon’s appearance search tool isn’t technically facial recognition, but it still invades students’ privacy
Appearance Search can find people based on their age, gender, clothing, and facial characteristics, and it scans through videos like facial recognition tech — though the company that makes it, Avigilon, says it doesn’t technically count as a full-fledged facial recognition tool.
Even so, privacy experts told Recode that, for students, the distinction doesn’t necessarily matter. Appearance Search allows school administrators to review where a person has traveled throughout campus — anywhere there’s a camera — using data the system collects about that person’s clothing, shape, size, and potentially their facial characteristics, among other factors. It also allows security officials to search through camera feeds using certain physical descriptions, like a person’s age, gender, and hair color.
…“People don’t behave the same when they’re being watched,” warns Brenda Leong, the director of AI and ethics at the Future of Privacy Forum. “Do we really want both young students and high schoolers, and anybody else, feeling like they’re operating in that environment all the time?”
Adding to privacy concerns surrounding a tool like Appearance Search is the fact that it’s not exclusively being used to address violence in schools. School administrators are already using the system to try to intercept bullying, to deter code of conduct violations, and to assist in investigations of school employees.
…Avigilon would not share how many schools are using Appearance Search. While Recode identified at least nine public school districts that have acquired or have access to the software, it’s likely many more schools are using the tool.
For instance, the New York Civil Liberties Union says that more than a dozen school districts in New York State have purchased Avigilon equipment. While the NYCLU doesn’t know for certain how many have access to or have used the Appearance Search tool, technology strategist Daniel Schwarz said in an email that “given its inclusion into the main [Avigilon Control Center] software it is likely that a high percentage of schools will have the feature at their fingertips.”
At the schools that have gotten the tool, we already have a sense of how it can be used.
…Appearance Search has been used to locate children lost in schools, to investigate complaints against staff, and to deter violations of codes of conduct. He says the software has also made the school security staff aware of disciplinary infractions they otherwise would not have known about.
…As Kai Koerber, a recent graduate of MSD, told Recode about the technology: “I don’t think [students] should have to — by going to school — volunteer to accept this kind of new social contract where you’re going to be recorded and traced through your every move. I do think people have the right to be able to walk to the next class without being identified.”
…“Yes, it may work in terms of, ‘we can identify people who don’t belong on the campus.’ At the same time, we are invading the privacy of each and every student,” he said.
Koerber’s concerns are echoed by student privacy advocates, who say the tool could be used to track and surveil students. “It is surveillance technology, and it is tracking technology, and any school implementing any variation of those is potentially creating more harms and risks than they’re solving,” said Leong.
Avigilon’s appearance search tool isn’t facial recognition, but it still has privacy risks. – Vox
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Andrew LaMar Hopkins: A Painter Resurrects Louisiana’s Vanished Creole Culture
In 1830, the moment in time Mr. Hopkins is fond of using for many of his creations, free Creoles of color in New Orleans owned some $15 million of property in the city. Mostly French speaking, these artisans, shopkeepers and artists were in no small part responsible for the look of the French Quarter — its ironwork, decorative plaster, its architecture and fashionable shops. Like white Creoles, some owned slaves, and some later fought for the Confederacy. Despite many laws restricting their rights they played a significant role in civic life.
…Creole is a long-embattled term, perhaps best defined now as a person whose background and identity is traceable to colonial French Louisiana and/or its Franco-African culture.
…The city of New Orleans historically demanded detailed inventories of the possessions of deceased citizens, and he studied these lists to ground his rooms, from their locally made armoires and Campeche chairs to neo-Classical French porcelain and wall clocks. The furniture is as important as the people, whether it appears in the cottage of the powerful voodoo queen Marie Laveau or in the salon of John James Audubon, the white Creole naturalist renowned for his “Birds of America.”
A Painter Resurrects Louisiana’s Vanished Creole Culture – The New York Times
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Judge sets high bar for former Trump adviser Flynn to withdraw guilty plea
Flynn pleaded guilty two years ago, admitting he lied to the FBI about his conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. during the Trump transition. A year ago, the government said he deserved credit for admitting his misconduct and cooperating with prosecutors in investigating Flynn’s former business partner. But prosecutors said recently that he failed to live up to the bargain and no longer deserves leniency.
…Flynn’s lawyers have [file a motion] seeking to withdraw his guilty plea, which has delayed his sentencing.
Judge sets high bar for former Trump adviser Flynn to withdraw guilty plea
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How and why private equity keeps wrecking retail chains like Fairway.
Last year, a group of progressive nonprofits reported that of the 14 largest retail bankruptcies since 2012, 10 had involved companies owned by private equity. The thud of corporate failures has become so constant that it’s essentially become a meme in the financial press.
…Private equity investors have a reputation for being corporate looters that buy and pillage businesses for profit before moving on to raid the next unsuspecting office park. Sometimes, it’s undeserved. But often, it’s entirely earned.
…They’re often criticized for laying off workers and even cutting pay in the name of improving efficiency. But the much bigger problem is that they sometimes cripple previously functioning businesses by loading them up with unsustainable amounts of debt. They do this in a few ways.
First, the industry revolves around deals known as leveraged buyouts, where investors put up a small amount of their own money to purchase a company and borrow the rest. The business being acquired then becomes responsible for paying the debt, which increases its risk of going bust. Private equity shops are also notorious for extracting cash using “dividend recapitalizations,” a charming tactic in which they force companies to borrow even more money and use it to pay investors. Beyond that, they often charge the businesses they own millions in management fees.
Thanks to all of these tactics, private equity can often make money off a company even if its business fails.
… Sometimes, firms just dial up investment in the businesses they acquire and try to expand them. Recent research has shown, for instance, that consumer product companies that get bought out tend to increase their sales by jumping into new product lines and markets.
…Economists debate how often private equity deals actually end with businesses filing for bankruptcy, but one recent paper looking at public companies taken private pegged it at 20 percent, compared with just 2 percent for similar businesses that weren’t targeted for buyouts. Sometimes, even well-intentioned deals devolve into the high-finance version of shoplifting. When Sterling Investment Partners bought out Fairway in 2007, it intended to turn the local, family-owned chain into a national brand. But it badly botched the effort, in part because it picked terrible locations for expansion and loaded it with debt in the process. Eventually, it resorted to taking the unsteady company public and extracting a giant dividend payment in the process. A few years later, Fairway would enter bankruptcy.
…Take Toys R Us, which ended up shouldering billions of dollars in new debt after it was poached by a group including KKR. The company was stuck paying hundreds of millions every year toward interest, which insiders say made it impossible to invest properly in the business and compete as Jeff Bezos’ kraken devoured the toy business.
… for the most part, mixing private equity and troubled industries like retail seems to be a recipe for trouble. (For another sad example of what happens when private equity shops invade a sector with a fundamentally dying business model, see metro journalism.)
…Private equity has boomed over the past couple of decades in large part because borrowing has been incredibly inexpensive. More deals are inevitably going to lead to more disasters. But free-flowing credit may also be encouraging the industry’s worst habits.
Why private equity keeps wrecking retail chains like Fairway.
hmm
BSU students protest after professor calls police to remove student from class
The professor shouldn’t have called and university police shouldn’t have come.
NPR Seeks ‘Clarification’ From State Department About Reporter Dropped From Trip
NPR is asking the State Department to explain its decision to deny an NPR reporter press credentials to travel with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on an upcoming trip to Europe, NPR President and CEO John Lansing announced Tuesday.
…Saying the State Department has not responded to NPR’s initial attempts to communicate, Lansing added, “Our SVP of News Nancy Barnes and I are now sending the attached letter to the State Department demanding answers.”
NPR will continue to pursue the issue, Lansing said, adding that access to people in power is fundamental to “the role of journalism in America.”
…On Saturday, Pompeo issued a statement accusing Kelly of violating “the basic rules of journalism and decency.”
NPR’s senior vice president for news, Nancy Barnes, responded to Pompeo’s statement by stating, “Mary Louise Kelly has always conducted herself with the utmost integrity, and we stand behind this report.”
…Pompeo has said Kelly had agreed to discuss only Iran – a claim he has not offered any evidence to support. Kelly says she confirmed with Pompeo’s press secretary that she intended to ask Pompeo about both Iran and Ukraine, a country that is key to Trump’s impeachment trial. Kelly has produced emails that reflect those conversations.
…”The State Department press corps has a long tradition of accompanying secretaries of state on their travels and we find it unacceptable to punish an individual member of our association,” [State Department Correspondents’ Association president Shaun] Tandon added.
Noting that in the past, the State Department has “courageously defended journalists around the world through statements under its seal,” Tandon said, “We are committed to do our part to preserve a respectful, professional relationship with the institution we cover.”
NPR Seeks ‘Clarification’ From State Department About Reporter Dropped From Trip : NPR
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Biden calls out Iowa GOP senator’s impeachment comments: ‘She spilled the beans’
Joe Biden on Tuesday called out Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst(R) for suggesting that the former vice president would be hurt politically at next week’s caucuses due to …the Senate impeachment trial.
“She spilled the beans,” Biden said at a campaign event in Muscatine, Iowa, a day after Ernst made her remarks about the Democratic presidential candidate while speaking to reporters at the Capitol.
“She just came out and flat said it. You know, the whole impeachment trial for Trump is just a political hit job to try to smear me, because he is scared to death to run against me, and he has good reason to be concerned,” Biden added.
Biden calls out Iowa GOP senator’s impeachment comments: ‘She spilled the beans’ | TheHill
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Trump’s Israel-Palestine “peace plan” is a con
Donald Trump’s “peace plan” isn’t a plan for advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. It’s a plan for scuttling them.
…More insidiously, it is a plan to legitimize Israel’s ongoing effort to seize additional Palestinian land.
…It was put together primarily by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, in consultation with the Israeli government.
…It divides up the Palestinian territories and surrounds them by Israel, and gives Israel total control over Palestinian security — allowing a future Palestinian government to exercise full control over its own land only when Israel deems it acceptable. It’s a kind of state-minus: a Palestine without much of its land and subservient to Israel for basic functions.
…The plan states that “Jerusalem will remain the sovereign capital of the State of Israel, and it should remain an undivided city.” The Palestinians will be granted only a tiny fraction of the heavily Palestinian-populated part of the city known as East Jerusalem that excludes the religious holy sites.
…Not only would the future state of Palestine not be permitted to develop its own “military or paramilitary” forces — ever — but Israel would also maintain full security control over Palestinian territory until it decides not to. And if at any time Israel changes its mind, it is within its rights under the deal to retake military control.
…A peace plan is supposed to end Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank. By giving Israel full control, the Trump plan makes such a withdrawal nearly impossible to envision.
“If you put it in Israel’s hands it will never happen,” writes Ilan Goldenberg, the Middle East security director at the Center for a New American Security. “It’s a recipe for permanent occupation.”
…As soon as the Palestinians have rejected the plan — and it took only minutes for them to do so — the Israelis can say, “Well, we tried, but they wouldn’t deal.” And they can proceed with settlement expansion and land grabs, moving Israel toward “not peace, but apartheid,” as B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, put it in a press release on the proposal.
The Trump vision is, in short, a truly Orwellian creation: a “peace plan” that actually is a plan to destroy the prospects for peace.
…It doesn’t seem like an accident that the plan was released on the same day that Israel’s attorney general formally indicted Netanyahu on bribery and corruption charges.
Trump’s Israel-Palestine “peace plan” is a con – Vox
Orwell would be proud.
Alan Dershowitz called Trump corrupt in 2016 and said he could be corrupt as President
Law professor Alan Dershowitz, who is a member of President Donald Trump’s impeachment defense team, said in 2016 that he believed Trump was more corrupt than Hillary Clinton and more likely to continue being corrupt as president.
…”When you compare that to what Trump has done with Trump University, with so many other things, I think there’s no comparison between who has engaged in more corruption and who is more likely to continue that if elected President of the United States,” Dershowitz said.
…In a 2016 book, the law professor called [Trump] a “destabilizing and unpredictable candidate” who “openly embraces fringe conspiracy theories peddled by extremists.”
…”There is a kind of fascist mentality in the world today. I don’t worry that Donald Trump will try to govern that way. I do worry that he will embolden and strengthen some of the fascist elements in our society,” added Dershowitz.
Alan Dershowitz called Trump corrupt in 2016 and said he could be corrupt as President – CNNPolitics
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Throwback: This is What It Looks Like When Something is Rigged
It all suggests a guy who is still very much using the Democratic Party when it’s convenient for him.
…That’s right: Sanders is going to run in the Democratic primary for no reason except to preclude anybody else from winning it — despite having no intention of running as a Democrat in the general election. Sanders basically wants to ensure he will face no Democratic opponent in November. A cynic might say the guy who complained about the rigging of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary is kinda, sorta rigging the 2018 Vermont Senate race for himself.
To be clear, Sanders has done this before. He ran unopposed in the 2012 Democratic primary, and in 2006, he took 94.3 percent of the vote against three unknown opponents. Each time, he passed on actually running as a Democrat.
…Sanders will still be running for and winning those Democratic primary votes fair and square, mind you, but he’ll be doing so for the purposes of manipulating the general election matchup.
Bernie Sanders is still borrowing the Democratic Party – The Washington Post
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2015 Lebanese child bride social experiment won 8 international awards
Lebanese child bride social experiment wins 8 international awards
…and inspired the more recent version set in NYC.
Kudos.
In echo of 2016, Bernie Sanders refuses to commit to conceding early if he won’t be the nominee
The presidential hopeful declined to promise that he will concede ahead of the Democrats’ convention if it becomes apparent that he won’t be the party’s nominee.
…Tur then noted that some analysts said Sanders contributed to Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Donald Trump in the 2106 general election, because he refused to drop out of the Democratic primary despite Clinton’s clinching the required number of delegates for the nomination.
Rigged against him… the more you compare the two, the more Sanders sounds like Trump.
New emails show the Justice Department is helping Big Oil fight climate lawsuits
At every turn, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Shell fought tooth and nail against the wave of lawsuits, arguing that the plaintiffs should look to the federal government, not the private sector, for financial assistance related to climate change. Now, a new investigation from InsideClimate News has revealed that the federal government has been working with some of those oil companies to oppose the wave of lawsuits.
Some 178 pages of emails between U.S. Department of Justice attorneys and industry lawyers — obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council — show the government has been planning to come to the aid of these lawsuit-afflicted companies since early 2018. Not only did the DOJ work on an amicus — “friend of the court” — brief in support of major oil companies shortly after the San Francisco and Oakland lawsuits were filed, but the department was also working with Republican attorneys generals from 15 states to come up with a plan to help those companies. Department of Justice attorneys had several phone calls with lawyers defending BP, Chevron, Exxon, and other oil companies, and even met some of them in person.
Curiously, the Department of Justice did not reach out to the plaintiffs in the cases, like the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, to collaborate. The department’s environmental division, which bills itself as “the nation’s environmental lawyer,” opted to covertly work with industry groups rather than the communities it’s supposed to represent.
…“It’s very unusual for the federal government to be so aligned with industry on a damages case,” he said, particularly when the government isn’t implicated in the case. If the lawsuits were successful, oil companies, not the federal government, would be compelled to pay the damages.
New emails show the Justice Department is helping Big Oil fight climate lawsuits | Grist
CBO: U.S. budget deficit to eclipse $1 trillion in 2020 as fiscal imbalance continues to widen
The deficit in 2016, President Barack Obama’s last full year in office, was $585 billion. CBO now projects that the deficit will be at least $1 trillion each year in perpetuity unless policymakers make changes.
…The U.S. government’s budget deficit is projected to reach $1.02 trillion in 2020, according to a report released Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, as the federal government continues to spend much more than it collects in tax revenue.
A combination of the 2017 tax cuts and a surge in new spending has pushed the deficit wider. This year would mark the first time since 2012 that the deficit breached $1 trillion, a threshold that has alarmed some budget experts because deficits typically contract — not expand — during periods of sustained economic growth.
…Trump, asked about the rising deficit following the tax cuts, told CNBC last year: “We’ve taken in more revenue substantially than we did when the taxes were high. Nobody can even believe it,” [because it’s not true.]
…The CBO report shows that tax collections are weaker than they would be without the 2017 Republican tax law, which permanently locked in lower rates for many corporations while creating temporary reductions for households. Tax revenue remained roughly flat the first year the law was in effect, despite economic growth of nearly 3 percent. It rose slightly in 2019 but not enough to compensate for flatlining the year before.
…In January 2017, before the tax law, the CBO projected corporate tax revenue would represent 1.8 percent of gross domestic product. Now, they are expected to represent only 1.1 percent of GDP.
…Combined with an increase in spending, the deficit has ballooned, forcing the Treasury Department to borrow more money to cover the balance.
…With rising annual deficits, the total debt held by the government is also projected to grow dramatically, from about $18 trillion in 2020 to $31 trillion in 2030, according to the CBO’s projections. The U.S. government must pay interest on this debt to keep borrowing money.
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Trump says to supporters, ‘Who the hell cares about the budget?’
Trump campaigned in 2016 on eliminating the federal debt in eight years and reining in the deficit, a key concern of Republicans throughout President Obama’s two terms in office. They often accused Democrats of being excessive spenders, which racked up the deficit.
…The freewheeling comments offer remarkable insights into the president’s approach on federal spending and the debt, which barreled past $23 trillion late last year.
…The 2017 tax cuts blew up the federal deficit, which neared $1 trillion in fiscal year 2019 – a 26% jump from the year before as it steadily increased every year in office.
…The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will cost $1.9 trillion over the next decade.
…The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan budget watchdog, estimated earlier this month that Trump’s spending priorities will pile an additional $4.7 trillion onto the debt through 2029.
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Comments From The Peanut Gallery 