Didn't realize "disease 'X' " was new, or that it originated in the Congo - thought for sure it came from South Africa via a professional inheritance inheritor. Either way, seems worth staying away from.
And this quote from Putin's Russia: “To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”
That's an admission of war against the US. And as much as I might hope to avoid the consequences of a global confrontation, I realize if we don't answer this brazen admission with our own actual declaration of war against the Russian Federation - well, Neville Chamberlain's ghost can tell us all about the consequences of avoiding confrontation itself.
Here is how I assess the situation. A Russian American alliance, with America the junior partner, modeled on Russia, which has a 1,000 year history and experience of authoritarian terror. The system will be complete with oligarchs, a system officially refined by Putin
Those nostalgic Marxists who have championed imperialist Putin, should be elated.
Marx did not champion a classless society, only the elimination of the middle class, which he labeled bourgeoisie. Not a word in his writings about the ruling class, and for reason he was financed by the League of Just Men, and a Marxist system does have a ruling class
Rand Paul is a libertarian and it is no surprise that libertarians are infatuated with Russia, after all The platform of the Libertarian Party is modeled on Soviet Russia, including a gold standard and if you don't work, you don't eat (Art 12, 1936 Soviet Constitution)
Russia is as close to the ideal of a libertarian state as one comes in the 21st Century, little or no administrative state, and what exists is ineffectual, and the technocrats, the oligarchs have free reign, so long as they are obeisant to the dear leader.
Expect purges...internal exile....gulags....expropriations...... I lived through several stages of privitization....
Justice Robers, working for Reagan, laid out the unitary executive scenario. Expect a triggering emergency. Trump tried it to bar DACA but at the time SCOTUS resisted. During his first term, the Trump administration tried to end the DACA program. The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that while administration could end DACA, the method it used was illegal. He could follow the APA to determine a factual basis to exact his immigration program. https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/trump-immigration-daca-recipient-immigrants-deportation-anxiety
Repubs have had their eye on the trilions in the trust funds -- not part of the budget -- benefits not paid from general revenues -- to expropriate. These days, with stuff like crypto, they have various ways to "titrate" the value from government assets.
Exactly Daniel, all modeled on Russia Stalinist and Putinist. And that is the world of the libertarian as well.
That which causes me great concern is that everyone, including Robert Reich is treating the situation as if it is just another election, but with insane choices for cabinet. While the kvetch over cabinet picks, they are ignoring the blueprint, Project 2025 and Agenda 47
The architect designs the building, the engineers draw up the specifications and construction crew build it under supervision of the engineers
Be it Bondi, Hegseath, RFK jr, Bessent they are the construction crew.
WTF do we care about the construction crew, if not them, then some one else of their ilk.
The problem is the blueprint and the foundation. And we know what the building will look like when it is finished.
The body politic has been infected with small pox,and it is being treated as if it were a mosquito bite, or at best a case of measles.
To quote Bugs at the end of Looney Tunes "That's all folks"
William and Daniel—I have been saying for years that the Democratic Party needs to have a vision for a better America, not what Bernie calls “tinkering around the edges.” The Dems seem content to engage in tinkering because they benefit from big money donors when they are not trading stocks on insider information. My experience with the local party in a Blue state has also been disheartening. They have adopted the local equivalent of the national fly-over strategy. Perhaps it’s the “drive fast right through red counties” strategy. Bernie is right about needing a revolution but it will not happen in the Democratic Party as it is currently is constituted.
With regrets I agree. I am all for DEI, but the democratic party has overcompensated and gone too far into political correctness, and middle America has reacted.
I believe in social equality, but we are not all the same, each of us have different attributes and deficiencies
Take affirmative action for instance. Racism is a difficulty we have to learn to deal with, not a problem that can be solved. To solve the problem, is to make it worse and create other problems.The reaction has been violent and in part led to Trump.
I wrote a chapter of a book, but just deleted it and will let it lie there. I am willing to discuss the issue, but don't want to take up more bandwidth.
One doesn't need a psychology degree to understand what makes Trump tick. He's a simplistic thinker only concerned with satisfying his selfish desires, surrounding himself with people who will do his bidding, and lashing out at those who frustrate him.
That's it; there's nothing else to the man. He's as transparent as glass — a shallow, immature, paranoid delusionist obsessed with gaining ever more money and power, much like someone addicted to heroin.
Trump is the proverbial king with no clothes who desperately wants people to think he's smarter than he is. His small, egotistical mind creates a fantasy world where he is constantly the center of attention, covering up a deep-seated emptiness resulting from a lack of empathy and compassion for others. His own words continually reveal this little man's sad truth and the twisted hell he has created for himself.
However, Trump's enablers throughout his life, ranging from his father to banks, investors, politicians, the media, and half the voting public, have drawn the rest of us — the nation, the world — into that same hell and to suffer the consequences of his petty actions.
While Trump is simple enough to understand, the question remains: Why do so many ordinary, seemingly rational people willingly cooperate with his undeniable insanity? The answers to that inexplicable mystery could fill a library of psychology books.
He brings out those qualities in people that church and schools have suppressed. Spiritually, we are a bell curve of people ranging from Mother Theresa to Trump. The center can be swayed and in the past was swayed to the good. Religion has taken a hit and our schools are corrupt. See WhiteChalkCrime.com. I suggest good people get on school boards on a save democracy platform if we want to sway society away from evil.
So much can be condensed into “We (Democrats and rational Republicans) KNEW this was the threat”. Let’s pull out the radios and carrier pigeons, we’re in French Resistance territory.
Dear Thom, I deeply appreciate your informed, deep understanding of the political scene. There is, however, one thing you keep getting wrong & it’s very important to correct.
You write “while adding another $7 trillion to the national debt by shifting their taxes onto our children and grandchildren..”
The above is WRONG! The debt is not shifted to the future. The Treasury retires the debt coming due by issuing new TBills.
The debt/deficit position of the U.S. Federal government is NOT an important economic variable or guide to policy.
Economic policy that will build human wellbeing & a decent society for ALL must focus on the REAL economy not bookkeeping.
Real economy: people working at decent jobs with decent wages & decent working conditions. Firms producing. Farms growing. Infrastructure building. Schools educating. Health care treating (not denying). These are the real (not financial not bookkeeping) variables/policy targets that allow a rich nation like ours to deliver widespread prosperity.
Consider. The U.S. is sovereign in its own currency. That means we have a global monopoly on U$D. The U$D is the world’s reserve currency. Every nation, every bank, every Fortune 1000 corporation & every billionaire holds dollar based financial assets … specifically U.S. Treasury bills.
When they have idle cash balances they buy TBills. Why? These are the world’s safest financial assets (may these horrorshow MAGA ItThings not totally wreck this!)
So the instant Treasury sells TBills, they are snatched up … sold out within hours. The world is very happy to hold US debt. In fact, the world is so happy to do this that the inflation adjusted interest rate on the 30/60/90 day TBills often falls into the negative range! And yet the world gobbles it up.
Also … double entry bookkeeping. Every dollar of US government debt is a dollar of US assets! Retiring the national debt would, by definition, mean reducing the assets held by the public. Why would we want to destroy assets?
Last point: Concern over the debt/deficit of the U.S. government is the Trojan Horse of neoliberalism. “We can’t afford that … it adds to the deficit.” That’s why our roads bridges schools are falling down. Bc “oh the deficit” is a handy way to kneecap the aggressive Keynsianism needed to sustain modern economies.
Next last point: Yes, it does matter what you do with the deficits … handing billions to billionaires is a whole different thing than rebuilding the nation.
This is a crude encapsulation of Modern Monetary Theory. We will never escape the neoliberal economic death spiral until everyone who wants broad based prosperity recognizes the purely ideological nature of worrying about the national debt.
1. I've been asking why we cant borrow from our "allies" like Japan, Scandinavian countries Switzerland, etc. that loan money at 1% to retire US bet at 7%?
Arbitrage.
I'd kill to get a chance to ask the incoming sec of treaas., who happens to be a Soros acolyte, regarding such matters.
3. I know I keep repeating this but OPEC has been fixing oill prices to undermine our economy since 1973. Saudis, who have controlled OPEC also control a lot of our domestivc energy companies -- like Exxon.
IMHO they owe the treasury trillions.
Meanwhile 11 states and other entities have sued Big OIl alleging executives deceived the public for decades about how fossil fuels are hurting our health and destroying our planet, protecting their own profits while sticking taxpayers with the bill for the damages.
OPEC was actually modeled on the Texas Railroad Commission. Despite its name, the Texas Railroad Commission regulates the production of oil and natural gas production in the state.
Dear Susan, I agree that "Economic policy that will build human wellbeing & a decent society for ALL must focus on the REAL economy not bookkeeping." However, that does not mean that the national debt is meaningless. If other countries lose confidence in US Treasuries, they could demand higher interest rates to compensate for the perceived risk (such as the risk of the US defaulting on T-Bill interest payments. The value of US dollars would decline against their currencies causing inflation in the dollar price of imported goods harming US consumers.
I agree, however, that the must important of the borrowing is what you are spending it on. The voices on the right used to say, "We need to run our country like you would run your family." I notice that they have stopped saying that. Maybe that's because if we are building or maintaining infrastructure or improving the health and productivity of workers, it would be taking out a loan to buy a house or send your kids to college, whereas borrowing to cut taxes on the wealthy would be like buying a luxury yacht.
This didnt exactly make my morning, Thom. What does Putin have on Trump that Trump can't lie his way out of and the MAGAts believe? All the top secret material that Trump sent Russia last go-round that cost US its operatives, and now this time again appointing Tulsi Gabbard gives the FSB a direct channel. Was she dropped on her head as an infant? He really must be scared spitless.
On your show this last week, a caller referred to the Arrow Impossibility Theorem. He mischaracterized it slightly when claiming that ranked voting was bad and multi-voting was better. The Nobel Prize winning but little known theorem shows that any system of aggregating three or more individual choice functions into a group choice function, if it is rational and responsive to the individual choice functions, and if it applies over any combination of rational individual choice functions, is, in fact, a dictatorship in the sense that their is one in the set of individuals who always gets their way.
My point is that the surprising results of this theorem apply equally to ranked voting and multi_voting. The advantage of these two voting systems over what we have now is that voters can express their preferences without enabling the "worst of the evils." The key difference is that multi-voting does not impose the burden of deciding on the detailed ordering of candidates that the voter will support or reject. This simplification may be more acceptable to voters than ranked voting and maybe easier to hand count and a simpler ballot. On the other hand, ranked voting provides a greater expression of the voters' preferences.
A ranked voting ballot could be used for multi-voting if voters were allowed to rank several options equally.
Thanks Thom, the other thing that is not appreciated about Elon's corruption is the amount of "float" of the market cap of DOGE he owns (estimated at $3B of a 50B market cap, both numbers are simply insane). When he tweets a DOGE meme and DOGE goes up, he can sell into it, earning enough to support a cult of IVF clones.
Thanks also for the Russian reporting and especially about Rand Paul's role and I had not realized the scope of it before.
Finally, I am not a conspiracist but that "pee tape" always seems to have made sense to me...it is so "Russian Classic." And Trump would say no to some Russian hookers peeing on a bed the Obama's slept on?? Seriously? Clearly, the Russians are holding something over him. The question is--if it was divulged, would his supporters care?
How ztupifyingly amazing it is to trace Paul's trek to Putin and see here in everyday print that CIA's sources suddenly "dried up." Six graders could connect those dots. Following that trail, and seeing no trial, who in the whole pantheon of politicians should be held accountable for not holding Paul accountable? Still wondering about the vaporous vacancy of the whole Democrtic Party on these matters . . . you know, treasonous matters.
The super-rich are, to quote Joni Mitchell, "like Icarus ascending, on beautiful, foolish arms." The only difference is that it is we who end up crashing into the sea.
What is not getting enough attention is how crypto could be the crash that sets off the next Republican Depression. The giddy speculation and involvement of everyone at all levels of the incoming administration certainly looks a lot like the stock market speculation of the 1920s when even Silent Cal was treated to a curated speculative portfolio. Congress has been in the act of trading on insider information for quite a while. If you can make a couple of bucks on crypto go for it but be sure to capture your gains quickly.
I have also concluded that Great Depression 2.0 will be started by cryptocurrency speculation. I won’t touch it as I believe it to be a total and utter scam. Despite this, ordinary people like myself will have our lives destroyed as a result.
I, know this is all so scary and we are living this now. Russian Spies on the other side, yes. Pandemic bird-flu scary. Thom when does somebody bring the common sense now. What is happening with our Party Thom, crickets on this. Thom the nuclear codes too. Scary, stuff. I didn’t vote for this, they did. I don’t think we will ever be happy in TrumpASTAN Land, this is what they voted for, not me. Bernie heck yeah if it meant us having our democracy. Shouldn’t it have been about winning. Bernie would have had some great points to make that well, frankly white people would have gotten. Too, late. About winning to save our democracy. Now we may have a King and his Subjects of billionaires. Thank you very much! I didn’t vote for this! Enjoy your time in TrumpASTAN Land. We are here.
With regard to the attachment, “ADHD and the Language of Connection\How understanding sensory preferences can unlock better communication and relationships...”, this all makes good sense. As ever the skeptic, however, I would recommend that schools, parents, and experts should probably encourage students and those with ADHD, to work on developing all three modes through conscious effort. while recognizing that we typically all do have a style which emphasizes one over the others.
I have commented on this before, so it is pointless to keep reiterating the same thing. But I believe it is undeniable that someone with an IQ over 140 is most likely to find it quite difficult or impossible to identify with classmates or other students who are in the “normal” range. From innumerable comments made over several years, it is clear to me that Thom so frequently minimizes and totally overlooks the immense discomfort and even the extreme anguish or intense anxiety felt by ordinary students in schools, which for him were a piece of cake and a walk in the park. I hate to say it, but I sincerely feel that it is shameful to allow one’s personal delusions carried over from childhood about our dysfunctional and destructive schools to cause one to neglect to get serious about changing traditional schooling, especially in view of the direct effects on democracy.
Didn't realize "disease 'X' " was new, or that it originated in the Congo - thought for sure it came from South Africa via a professional inheritance inheritor. Either way, seems worth staying away from.
And this quote from Putin's Russia: “To achieve success in the election, Donald Trump relied on certain forces to which he has corresponding obligations. As a responsible person, he will be obliged to fulfill them.”
That's an admission of war against the US. And as much as I might hope to avoid the consequences of a global confrontation, I realize if we don't answer this brazen admission with our own actual declaration of war against the Russian Federation - well, Neville Chamberlain's ghost can tell us all about the consequences of avoiding confrontation itself.
Here is how I assess the situation. A Russian American alliance, with America the junior partner, modeled on Russia, which has a 1,000 year history and experience of authoritarian terror. The system will be complete with oligarchs, a system officially refined by Putin
Those nostalgic Marxists who have championed imperialist Putin, should be elated.
Marx did not champion a classless society, only the elimination of the middle class, which he labeled bourgeoisie. Not a word in his writings about the ruling class, and for reason he was financed by the League of Just Men, and a Marxist system does have a ruling class
https://www.amazon.com/New-Class-Analysis-Communist-Harvest/dp/015665489X
Rand Paul is a libertarian and it is no surprise that libertarians are infatuated with Russia, after all The platform of the Libertarian Party is modeled on Soviet Russia, including a gold standard and if you don't work, you don't eat (Art 12, 1936 Soviet Constitution)
Russia is as close to the ideal of a libertarian state as one comes in the 21st Century, little or no administrative state, and what exists is ineffectual, and the technocrats, the oligarchs have free reign, so long as they are obeisant to the dear leader.
Expect purges...internal exile....gulags....expropriations...... I lived through several stages of privitization....
Justice Robers, working for Reagan, laid out the unitary executive scenario. Expect a triggering emergency. Trump tried it to bar DACA but at the time SCOTUS resisted. During his first term, the Trump administration tried to end the DACA program. The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that while administration could end DACA, the method it used was illegal. He could follow the APA to determine a factual basis to exact his immigration program. https://www.axios.com/2024/11/15/trump-immigration-daca-recipient-immigrants-deportation-anxiety
Repubs have had their eye on the trilions in the trust funds -- not part of the budget -- benefits not paid from general revenues -- to expropriate. These days, with stuff like crypto, they have various ways to "titrate" the value from government assets.
Exactly Daniel, all modeled on Russia Stalinist and Putinist. And that is the world of the libertarian as well.
That which causes me great concern is that everyone, including Robert Reich is treating the situation as if it is just another election, but with insane choices for cabinet. While the kvetch over cabinet picks, they are ignoring the blueprint, Project 2025 and Agenda 47
The architect designs the building, the engineers draw up the specifications and construction crew build it under supervision of the engineers
Be it Bondi, Hegseath, RFK jr, Bessent they are the construction crew.
WTF do we care about the construction crew, if not them, then some one else of their ilk.
The problem is the blueprint and the foundation. And we know what the building will look like when it is finished.
The body politic has been infected with small pox,and it is being treated as if it were a mosquito bite, or at best a case of measles.
To quote Bugs at the end of Looney Tunes "That's all folks"
or Roy Orbison: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=it%27s+over+roy+orbison
Instead of this gossip over Hegseth, RFK, Bondi we should be preparing ourselves for how to survive that freight train rushing down on us.
William and Daniel—I have been saying for years that the Democratic Party needs to have a vision for a better America, not what Bernie calls “tinkering around the edges.” The Dems seem content to engage in tinkering because they benefit from big money donors when they are not trading stocks on insider information. My experience with the local party in a Blue state has also been disheartening. They have adopted the local equivalent of the national fly-over strategy. Perhaps it’s the “drive fast right through red counties” strategy. Bernie is right about needing a revolution but it will not happen in the Democratic Party as it is currently is constituted.
With regrets I agree. I am all for DEI, but the democratic party has overcompensated and gone too far into political correctness, and middle America has reacted.
I believe in social equality, but we are not all the same, each of us have different attributes and deficiencies
Take affirmative action for instance. Racism is a difficulty we have to learn to deal with, not a problem that can be solved. To solve the problem, is to make it worse and create other problems.The reaction has been violent and in part led to Trump.
I wrote a chapter of a book, but just deleted it and will let it lie there. I am willing to discuss the issue, but don't want to take up more bandwidth.
One doesn't need a psychology degree to understand what makes Trump tick. He's a simplistic thinker only concerned with satisfying his selfish desires, surrounding himself with people who will do his bidding, and lashing out at those who frustrate him.
That's it; there's nothing else to the man. He's as transparent as glass — a shallow, immature, paranoid delusionist obsessed with gaining ever more money and power, much like someone addicted to heroin.
Trump is the proverbial king with no clothes who desperately wants people to think he's smarter than he is. His small, egotistical mind creates a fantasy world where he is constantly the center of attention, covering up a deep-seated emptiness resulting from a lack of empathy and compassion for others. His own words continually reveal this little man's sad truth and the twisted hell he has created for himself.
However, Trump's enablers throughout his life, ranging from his father to banks, investors, politicians, the media, and half the voting public, have drawn the rest of us — the nation, the world — into that same hell and to suffer the consequences of his petty actions.
While Trump is simple enough to understand, the question remains: Why do so many ordinary, seemingly rational people willingly cooperate with his undeniable insanity? The answers to that inexplicable mystery could fill a library of psychology books.
He brings out those qualities in people that church and schools have suppressed. Spiritually, we are a bell curve of people ranging from Mother Theresa to Trump. The center can be swayed and in the past was swayed to the good. Religion has taken a hit and our schools are corrupt. See WhiteChalkCrime.com. I suggest good people get on school boards on a save democracy platform if we want to sway society away from evil.
"And you of tender years (Can you hear and do you care?)
Can't know the fears (And can you see?)
That your elders grew by (We must be free)
And so please help (To teach your children)
Them with your youth (What you believe in)
They seek the truth (Make a world)
Before they can die (That we can live in)"
— Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Adults can learn some of life's most important lessons from children. A child's innocence is a gift of nature.
So much can be condensed into “We (Democrats and rational Republicans) KNEW this was the threat”. Let’s pull out the radios and carrier pigeons, we’re in French Resistance territory.
Beware of Vichy!
Dear Thom, I deeply appreciate your informed, deep understanding of the political scene. There is, however, one thing you keep getting wrong & it’s very important to correct.
You write “while adding another $7 trillion to the national debt by shifting their taxes onto our children and grandchildren..”
The above is WRONG! The debt is not shifted to the future. The Treasury retires the debt coming due by issuing new TBills.
The debt/deficit position of the U.S. Federal government is NOT an important economic variable or guide to policy.
Economic policy that will build human wellbeing & a decent society for ALL must focus on the REAL economy not bookkeeping.
Real economy: people working at decent jobs with decent wages & decent working conditions. Firms producing. Farms growing. Infrastructure building. Schools educating. Health care treating (not denying). These are the real (not financial not bookkeeping) variables/policy targets that allow a rich nation like ours to deliver widespread prosperity.
Consider. The U.S. is sovereign in its own currency. That means we have a global monopoly on U$D. The U$D is the world’s reserve currency. Every nation, every bank, every Fortune 1000 corporation & every billionaire holds dollar based financial assets … specifically U.S. Treasury bills.
When they have idle cash balances they buy TBills. Why? These are the world’s safest financial assets (may these horrorshow MAGA ItThings not totally wreck this!)
So the instant Treasury sells TBills, they are snatched up … sold out within hours. The world is very happy to hold US debt. In fact, the world is so happy to do this that the inflation adjusted interest rate on the 30/60/90 day TBills often falls into the negative range! And yet the world gobbles it up.
Also … double entry bookkeeping. Every dollar of US government debt is a dollar of US assets! Retiring the national debt would, by definition, mean reducing the assets held by the public. Why would we want to destroy assets?
Last point: Concern over the debt/deficit of the U.S. government is the Trojan Horse of neoliberalism. “We can’t afford that … it adds to the deficit.” That’s why our roads bridges schools are falling down. Bc “oh the deficit” is a handy way to kneecap the aggressive Keynsianism needed to sustain modern economies.
Next last point: Yes, it does matter what you do with the deficits … handing billions to billionaires is a whole different thing than rebuilding the nation.
This is a crude encapsulation of Modern Monetary Theory. We will never escape the neoliberal economic death spiral until everyone who wants broad based prosperity recognizes the purely ideological nature of worrying about the national debt.
Susan
1. I've been asking why we cant borrow from our "allies" like Japan, Scandinavian countries Switzerland, etc. that loan money at 1% to retire US bet at 7%?
Arbitrage.
I'd kill to get a chance to ask the incoming sec of treaas., who happens to be a Soros acolyte, regarding such matters.
2. IMHO the quickest way to square the deficit is through collection. Thousands of the top 1% do not even file tax returns. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/05/irs-crackdown-on-wealthy-americans-faces-roadblocks-.html
3. I know I keep repeating this but OPEC has been fixing oill prices to undermine our economy since 1973. Saudis, who have controlled OPEC also control a lot of our domestivc energy companies -- like Exxon.
IMHO they owe the treasury trillions.
Meanwhile 11 states and other entities have sued Big OIl alleging executives deceived the public for decades about how fossil fuels are hurting our health and destroying our planet, protecting their own profits while sticking taxpayers with the bill for the damages.
The deficit/debt Do Not Matter.
OPEC was actually modeled on the Texas Railroad Commission. Despite its name, the Texas Railroad Commission regulates the production of oil and natural gas production in the state.
Dear Susan, I agree that "Economic policy that will build human wellbeing & a decent society for ALL must focus on the REAL economy not bookkeeping." However, that does not mean that the national debt is meaningless. If other countries lose confidence in US Treasuries, they could demand higher interest rates to compensate for the perceived risk (such as the risk of the US defaulting on T-Bill interest payments. The value of US dollars would decline against their currencies causing inflation in the dollar price of imported goods harming US consumers.
I agree, however, that the must important of the borrowing is what you are spending it on. The voices on the right used to say, "We need to run our country like you would run your family." I notice that they have stopped saying that. Maybe that's because if we are building or maintaining infrastructure or improving the health and productivity of workers, it would be taking out a loan to buy a house or send your kids to college, whereas borrowing to cut taxes on the wealthy would be like buying a luxury yacht.
Daniel, to date nobody’s losing confidence in the U.S. dollar. Under the ItThing & his evil acolytes that may well change.
This didnt exactly make my morning, Thom. What does Putin have on Trump that Trump can't lie his way out of and the MAGAts believe? All the top secret material that Trump sent Russia last go-round that cost US its operatives, and now this time again appointing Tulsi Gabbard gives the FSB a direct channel. Was she dropped on her head as an infant? He really must be scared spitless.
I think it’s more likely he’s chosen this route to gain power over all of us having fallen for Putin’s flattery.
Hi Thom,
On your show this last week, a caller referred to the Arrow Impossibility Theorem. He mischaracterized it slightly when claiming that ranked voting was bad and multi-voting was better. The Nobel Prize winning but little known theorem shows that any system of aggregating three or more individual choice functions into a group choice function, if it is rational and responsive to the individual choice functions, and if it applies over any combination of rational individual choice functions, is, in fact, a dictatorship in the sense that their is one in the set of individuals who always gets their way.
My point is that the surprising results of this theorem apply equally to ranked voting and multi_voting. The advantage of these two voting systems over what we have now is that voters can express their preferences without enabling the "worst of the evils." The key difference is that multi-voting does not impose the burden of deciding on the detailed ordering of candidates that the voter will support or reject. This simplification may be more acceptable to voters than ranked voting and maybe easier to hand count and a simpler ballot. On the other hand, ranked voting provides a greater expression of the voters' preferences.
A ranked voting ballot could be used for multi-voting if voters were allowed to rank several options equally.
Just wondering if that "disease X" is actually of Congolese origin, or did it begin here, under the name "Twitter"?
Thanks Thom, the other thing that is not appreciated about Elon's corruption is the amount of "float" of the market cap of DOGE he owns (estimated at $3B of a 50B market cap, both numbers are simply insane). When he tweets a DOGE meme and DOGE goes up, he can sell into it, earning enough to support a cult of IVF clones.
Thanks also for the Russian reporting and especially about Rand Paul's role and I had not realized the scope of it before.
Finally, I am not a conspiracist but that "pee tape" always seems to have made sense to me...it is so "Russian Classic." And Trump would say no to some Russian hookers peeing on a bed the Obama's slept on?? Seriously? Clearly, the Russians are holding something over him. The question is--if it was divulged, would his supporters care?
How ztupifyingly amazing it is to trace Paul's trek to Putin and see here in everyday print that CIA's sources suddenly "dried up." Six graders could connect those dots. Following that trail, and seeing no trial, who in the whole pantheon of politicians should be held accountable for not holding Paul accountable? Still wondering about the vaporous vacancy of the whole Democrtic Party on these matters . . . you know, treasonous matters.
The super-rich are, to quote Joni Mitchell, "like Icarus ascending, on beautiful, foolish arms." The only difference is that it is we who end up crashing into the sea.
IMHO Putin can hurt them, too. Willing idiots.
What is not getting enough attention is how crypto could be the crash that sets off the next Republican Depression. The giddy speculation and involvement of everyone at all levels of the incoming administration certainly looks a lot like the stock market speculation of the 1920s when even Silent Cal was treated to a curated speculative portfolio. Congress has been in the act of trading on insider information for quite a while. If you can make a couple of bucks on crypto go for it but be sure to capture your gains quickly.
I have also concluded that Great Depression 2.0 will be started by cryptocurrency speculation. I won’t touch it as I believe it to be a total and utter scam. Despite this, ordinary people like myself will have our lives destroyed as a result.
I, know this is all so scary and we are living this now. Russian Spies on the other side, yes. Pandemic bird-flu scary. Thom when does somebody bring the common sense now. What is happening with our Party Thom, crickets on this. Thom the nuclear codes too. Scary, stuff. I didn’t vote for this, they did. I don’t think we will ever be happy in TrumpASTAN Land, this is what they voted for, not me. Bernie heck yeah if it meant us having our democracy. Shouldn’t it have been about winning. Bernie would have had some great points to make that well, frankly white people would have gotten. Too, late. About winning to save our democracy. Now we may have a King and his Subjects of billionaires. Thank you very much! I didn’t vote for this! Enjoy your time in TrumpASTAN Land. We are here.
Thom, we need total absolution!
With regard to the attachment, “ADHD and the Language of Connection\How understanding sensory preferences can unlock better communication and relationships...”, this all makes good sense. As ever the skeptic, however, I would recommend that schools, parents, and experts should probably encourage students and those with ADHD, to work on developing all three modes through conscious effort. while recognizing that we typically all do have a style which emphasizes one over the others.
I have commented on this before, so it is pointless to keep reiterating the same thing. But I believe it is undeniable that someone with an IQ over 140 is most likely to find it quite difficult or impossible to identify with classmates or other students who are in the “normal” range. From innumerable comments made over several years, it is clear to me that Thom so frequently minimizes and totally overlooks the immense discomfort and even the extreme anguish or intense anxiety felt by ordinary students in schools, which for him were a piece of cake and a walk in the park. I hate to say it, but I sincerely feel that it is shameful to allow one’s personal delusions carried over from childhood about our dysfunctional and destructive schools to cause one to neglect to get serious about changing traditional schooling, especially in view of the direct effects on democracy.