Lady Madonna

Lady Viagra

Tonightly Lincoln Chafee one on one.  Also Lindsey Graham’s chances with the panel Vince Staples, Gina Yashere, and Mike Yard.

Continuity

The Grey Lady

Next week’s guests-

• Monday 6/15: Judd Apatow
• Tuesday 6/16: Aziz Ansari
• Wednesday 6/17: Bill Clinton
• Thursday 6/18: TBA

Puny God

That’s my secret.  I’m just this big cuddly green rage monster.  Mark Ruffalo is such a vast improvement that it’s hard to remember Eric Bana.

Actually I’m more a DC Guy and specifically The Dark Night.

How does it feel to be the only member of The Justice League without superpowers?

Don’t.  Need.  Them.

Film has not been kind to DC though I look forward to treatments of Jack Kirby’s The New Gods and Darkseid.  Arrow and Flash are kind of decent however and Felicity Smoak definitely has this Bailey Quarters hotness thing happening (I am not Spock), but I could work with her and be her friend.

In my last session with my therapist she asked me, in all sincerity, if I ever identified as ek hornbeck.  I was put in mind of Batman Beyond, Shriek, where the villian tries to torment Wayne into suicide.  At the end of the episode Terry McGuiness asks how Bruce was able to tell the voice inside his head wasn’t real.

“That’s not what I call myself.”

Seriously, I’m a ticking time bomb and it’s best to be someplace else ‘Tasha or you might remember Budapest quite differently.

The real news below.

We can only hope.

(note- I am quoting only the most inside the Beltway sources, they are impeccably attributed, and I have more than one.- ek)

Could liberals bring down Obama’s big trade agenda?

By Greg Sargent, Washington Post

June 11 at 1:24 PM

The latest: Dem Rep. Sander Levin – the ranking Democrat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and a well-respected lawmaker on trade and labor issues – plans to vote No on a key measure related to trade, a spokesperson for Levin confirms to me. That could prove to be a serious blow.

Levin will vote No on so-called Trade Adjustment Assistance, a measure that would give aid to workers displaced by trade, his spokesman, Caroline Behringer, tells me. “Mr. Levin plans to vote No on TAA,” she emails.

This suggests that the strategy that liberal Democrats and labor unions have employed to kill Fast Track may be working. As I reported the other day, a bloc of liberal House Dems, allied with unions, have been working to turn House Democrats against TAA, as a back-door way to bring down Fast Track, and with it, the whole deal. The administration says it needs Fast Track to seal the final agreement.

…

To pass Fast Track – which has already passed the Senate – House GOP leaders would need around 20, and possibly more, pro-TPP House Dems to vote Yes, depending on how many Republicans vote No. If TAA doesn’t pass first, those Dems might find it too politically difficult to vote for Fast Track, killing it that way. Or, for complex procedural reasons, if TAA fails, House GOP leaders might not end up moving Fast Track at all.

Only arond 50-100 Republicans are expected to vote for TAA – it is assistance for workers – so it would have to pass with overwhelming Democratic support. That’s why liberals opposed to Fast Track and TPP are urging House Dems to oppose it.

And so, liberal Dems had initially argued that TAA – which they would generally support, since it helps workers – must be opposed because it is funded with Medicaid cuts. But Nancy Pelosi – who is trying to salvage TAA – negotiated a new, uncontroversial pay-for for TAA with the GOP leadership.

…

Just today, several labor unions – the AFL-CIO and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters – circulated letters to House Democrats, urging a No vote on TAA, on the grounds that it doesn’t extend assistance to public employees.

Dems threaten to sink Obama trade agenda

By Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Lauren French, Politico

6/11/15 2:29 PM EDT

The uncertainty surrounding the TAA and fast track votes are becoming a serious problem for Obama. If TAA fails, the House will not take up Trade Promotion Authority, the key legislation that would give Obama fast-track authority to negotiate the sweeping Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Under that scenario both sides would have to regroup and figure out a way forward – or else the 12-nation trade deal could fall apart.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), normally a close ally of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), has been a vocal opponent of TAA, while raising other objections about the package. DeLauro and the Congressional Progressive Caucus are using the TAA issue as a wedge to sink fast track. And these progressives, who have been in favor of TAA for years, may end up killing the program, along with the rest of Obama’s trade agenda.

It’s not only Democrats who have issues. The conservative House Freedom Caucus, led by Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, is exploring whether they have the votes to block a procedural “rule” vote Thursday afternoon. The conservatives are upset that GOP leaders are “bending over backward to appease 20 Democrats but refusing to work with 40 Republicans,” one Freedom Caucus member said, referring to a list of demands from the right. If the group succeeds – it’s unclear whether it has the votes to stop the rule vote – it would stop the process in its tracks.

Much of the discontent is from the president’s party. The anger stems from an earlier bipartisan decision to use Medicare savings to fund TAA. Boehner abandoned that plan – at Pelosi’s behest – but she then asked for changes to the procedure by which the bill comes to the floor. Boehner agreed to that, as well.

But liberals like DeLauro are still opposed, and the president’s top emissaries have been unable to assuage concerns.

Because they can’t.  TPP is a treasonous (with more than two witnesses) sellout of the basic foundations of United States democracy and must.  be.  stopped.  Contact your so-called “Representatives”.

You realize of course that we could never be friends.

Why not?

What I’m saying is – and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form – is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.

That’s not true. I have a number of men friends and there is no sex involved.

No you don’t.

Yes I do.

No you don’t.

Yes I do.

You only think you do.

You say I’m having sex with these men without my knowledge?

No, what I’m saying is they all WANT to have sex with you.

They do not.

Do too.

They do not.

Do too.

How do you know?

Because no man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her.

So, you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?

No. You pretty much want to nail ’em too.

What if THEY don’t want to have sex with YOU?

Doesn’t matter because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story.

Well, I guess we’re not going to be friends then.

I guess not.

That’s too bad. You were the only person I knew in New York.

Umm… what about this is so hard to understand?  Women are people (said in his best Chuck Heston impersonation)!  I don’t get this delusion of a great divide.  The differences between the sexes are 99% cultural and to all you all who claim that this or that bit of psychological mumbo-jumbo points to any other conclusion I say you have not adequately controlled for bias, which is pervasive from birth to death.

And, just as women are not controlled by their stereotypes, men also.  We’re not all slaves to our sexual desires.  Doesn’t mean we don’t have them, only that it’s perfectly possible to have a professional relationship, even a friendship, with a person with whom you wish you were more intimate.  Indeed the body of anecdotal evidence of men wanting to get out of the “friend zone” is vast.

But what about unattractive people?  Don’t you want to “nail ’em too”?  No.  Doesn’t mean I can’t work with them or develop a friendship (unless, of course, the reason they’re unattractive is that they’re a jerk).

How… Vulcan.  I have my moments.  Every decade or so I get besotted with someone who is completely unsuitable if not borderline psychopathic.  I confide this to protest my normality on the spectrum of fictional humanity.

I met her today in the maze. Her name is Billie. She’s of simple folk, fair and true.

You mean she’s stupid?

Do not mock a love-smitten mouse.

For the most part though I keep my eyes up (actually I rarely look at people directly because my eyesight is so bad) and I don’t care what you are provided you fit into my secret hidden agenda.

Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?

The same thing we do every night, Pinky – try to take over the world!

Nobel Laureate Resigns Post After Derogatory Comments About Female Scientists

By DAN BILEFSKY, The New York Times

JUNE 11, 2015

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” Mr. Hunt told an audience at the World Conference of Science Journalists in South Korea on Monday. “Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry.”

…

“I did mean the part about having trouble with girls,” he told the BBC. “I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.”

He elaborated on his comments that women are prone to cry when confronted with criticism. “It’s terribly important that you can criticize people’s ideas without criticizing them and if they burst into tears, it means that you tend to hold back from getting at the absolute truth,” he said. “Science is about nothing but getting at the truth and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.”

…

Mr. Hunt’s comments reflected the larger debate about the challenges facing women in science, with research suggesting they are forced to grapple with widespread sexism and gender bias. Referring to Mr. Hunt’s remarks, an article in The Independent newspaper in Britain noted: “With lab rats like him, is it any wonder there’s a shortage of women in science?”

A Yale study published in 2012 showed that science professors at American universities widely regarded female undergraduates as less competent than male students with the same skills and accomplishments.

The result, the report found, was that professors were less prone to mentor female students, or to offer them a job. Presented with two imaginary applicants with identical accomplishments and qualifications, they were more likely to choose the man, and if the woman was chosen, she was offered a salary that, on average, was $4,000 lower than her male counterpart. The study concluded that rather than being the product of willful discrimination, the bias was probably an outgrowth of subconscious cultural influences.

Mr. Hunt is not the first high-profile figure to face criticism over comments about women in science. In 2006, Lawrence H. Summers resigned as president of Harvard University following a difficult tenure and some poorly received remarks, including his suggestion in a speech that “intrinsic aptitude” could explain the relative dearth of women excelling in science and mathematics.

Other Nobel winners have faced a backlash for ill-judged comments about women, including the novelist V.S. Naipaul, who explained in 2011 that he regarded female writers as inferior. “I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not,” he was quoted as saying by the Guardian, adding that he thought the work is “unequal to me.”

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

–Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Science News and Blogs

• Tim Hunt shows why old men should be banned from science, by Dean Burnett, The Guardian
• Are you smarter than a Hong Kong six-year-old?, by Alex Bellos, The Guardian
• New study claims to find genetic link between creativity and mental illness, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• What is Code?, BY PAUL FORD, BusinessWeek
• Can an online quiz spot a psychopath?, by  Molly Crockett and Essi Viding, The Guardian
• Childhood hallucinations are surprisingly common – but why?, by Vaughan Bell, The Guardian
• Eating human brains helped Papua New Guinea tribe resist disease, research shows, Reuters
• Ice age camel DNA discovered in Canada change theories on species, Associated Press
• LightSail spacecraft declared a success after unfurling solar sail in orbit, Reuters
• 75-million-year-old dinosaur blood and collagen discovered in fossil fragments, by Ian Sample, The Guardian
• Black Hole Hunters, by Dennis Overbye, The New York Times
• DNA Deciphers Roots of Modern Europeans, by Carl Zimmer, The New York Times

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

Rumsfeld

Continuity

The Hills Are Alive, With The Sound Of Anschluss

This week’s guests-

• Wednesday 6/10: Colin Quinn
• Thursday 6/11: Mark Ruffalo

I’ve expressed some reprehensible sentiments, offensive opinions, and hurtful statements.

And I meant every last one of them.

I regret nothing.  The good.  The bad.  It’s all the same.

Colin Quinn thinks Jerry Seinfeld is a thin skinned asshole.

Colin Quinn rebukes Jerry Seinfeld’s P.C. police theory – much to the disappointment of “Fox & Friends”

by Scott Eric Kaufman, Salon

Wednesday, Jun 10, 2015 01:35 PM EST

Quinn disputed Seinfeld’s theory that this “creepy PC thing” is a new phenomenon, telling co-host Brian Kilmeade that “it’s been out there since the ’90s.” He added that the same thing happens at comedy clubs, when a comedian says a particular “buzzword” and the audience loudly inhales.

There have always been “a million different [buzzwords] depending on where you are,” he said.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck tried to compel Quinn to admit that the problem of political correctness is getting worse, but he wouldn’t take the bait. “Do you feel that you’re being more and more restricted in your art, your profession, and what you do, and your freedom?”

“No,” he replied. “The whole point of being a comedian is that you’re not supposed to – we don’t listen to the crowd. We need the crowd, but what’s more insulting than someone who panders to the crowd? That’s the worst thing you can be in comedy, somebody who comes out and says, ‘Hey! I want to make everybody happy!’ That’s not our job. Our job is to make people unhappy.”

Steve Doocy continued to press the Fox News narrative of PC ascension, asking Quinn “what has changed? It used to be people could take a joke, but now it’s like people have no sense of humor.”

“Look,” Quinn said, “people still have a sense of humor, but it depends on where you’re coming from. You can’t just [throw your hands in the air] and say, ‘it’s just jokes,’ because it’s not a free pass.”

“Were we better then or now?” Kilmeade finally asked.

“There’s no ‘better,'” Quinn replied. “Now, people are trying to regulate humanity, and there’s good and bad there. It’s not like things were great then, either.”

The real news below.

U.S. Shifts Stance on Drug Pricing in Pacific Trade Pact Talks, Document Reveals

By JONATHAN WEISMAN, Izvestia

JUNE 10, 2015

Facing resistance from its Pacific trading partners, the Obama administration is no longer demanding protection for pharmaceutical prices under the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership, according to a newly leaked “transparency” annex of the proposed trade accord.

Oh.  Really?

Public health professionals say pharmaceutical industry lobbying is meant to diminish the power of government health programs that trim reimbursement rates to the global pharmaceutical giants. The newly leaked annex, dated Dec. 17, 2014, explicitly lists Medicare and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as falling under its strictures.

That may embolden critics.

“The leak is just the latest glaring example of why fast-tracking the T.P.P. would undermine the health of Americans and the other countries and cost our government more, all to the benefit of pharma’s profits,” said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and one of the most prominent voices in the coalition working to scuttle trade promotion authority.

…

By explicitly listing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the annex makes it clear the United States is not immune to Trans-Pacific Partnership rules. Japan, Australia and New Zealand may not have pharmaceutical companies as powerful as the United States’ but under the accord, United States subsidiaries located in Pacific trade partners could use the accord’s dispute resolution process to tackle perceived violations by Medicare officials.

The annex makes clear that disputes over pharmaceutical listing procedures would not be subject to government-to-government dispute resolution, the World Trade Organization and retaliatory tariffs.

Instead, disputes would be resolved through the Investor-State Dispute Settlement process, which involves three-lawyer extrajudicial tribunals organized under rules set by the United Nations or World Bank.

That could be significant, both for current Medicare practices and future efforts to lower cost, said Peter Maybarduk of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines project. Drug makers have limited access to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services policy makers as they decide which drugs to list and how much to reimburse. The Trans-Pacific Partnership could change that.

It could also hinder efforts by many Democrats to change federal law precluding the government from negotiating drug prices directly with pharmaceutical makers. To make that work, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would need a “national formulary” – a government list of accepted medications. But each decision is subject to review and appeal, which would make it far more difficult, Mr. Maybarduk said.

So, no, not at all.  A complete fabrication.  In short- a lie.

Supporting NAFTA Was the Kiss of Death for Democrats –Why Dems Should Think Twice About Voting for TPP

By Sarah Anderson, AlterNet

June 8, 2015                

(L)et’s take a look at what individual members got by helping to ram the pact through Congress. Did their support for the big business lobby’s dream deal ensure a glittering political career?

Starting at the top: Democratic House Speaker Tom Foley sided with the White House and against most of the House Democrats, including Majority Leader Richard Gephardt. In his 30-year political career, that controversial move stood out enough for the New York Times to mention it in Foley’s obituary. A year after the NAFTA vote, the obit noted, “Mr. Foley became the first speaker since the Civil War to be defeated for re-election in his own district.”

…

Foley was not the only Democrat to flame out within a year of casting a vote for NAFTA. In fact, of the 34 Democratic incumbents who were defeated in the Republican sweep of 1994, 16 had voted for NAFTA. Several of these losers had been among the fence-sitters who received goodies from the administration.

Public Citizen has meticulously documented many of these trade vote deals over the past two decades and is planning to release a new report this week on the lessons from all this horse-trading. (Look for the report soon here.) What it found over the years is that most of these promises were never fulfilled. In a detailed 2001 report following up on the NAFTA deals, Public Citizen concluded that “systematically, the White House promises of special safeguards for U.S. farm commodities, bridges and more remained unfulfilled. Exceptions were several meaningless promises, such as photographs with the president, and one campaign fund-raising event.”

…

Rep. Clete Donald Johnson, Jr. was one of the targets of that empty promise. After voting for NAFTA, the Georgia Democrat got demolished in 1994, losing by a margin of more than 30 percent. A few years later, Clinton offered Johnson a consolation prize: a post as chief U.S. trade negotiator for textiles, a sector in rapid decline due to low-wage foreign competition.

Rep. Bill Sarpalius, of Texas, was another NAFTA sellout whose political career was cut short. According to Public Citizen, he pocketed a bevy of promises, including a new federally funded nuclear research lab that was to be located in his district. After Sarpalius lost his seat in 1994, the lab deal fell through.

Rep. David Price also lost his re-election bid after casting his NAFTA vote. According to Multinational Monitor, the North Carolina Democrat came out in support of the deal after the Clinton administration conceded to his long-sought demands to award American Airlines two lucrative international air routes that would benefit his district. Price later regained a seat in Congress and is now once again sitting on the fence in the fast track debate.

Don’t be afraid, Carlo.  Come on, you think I’d make my sister a widow?  I’m Godfather to your son.

You stop being racist and I’ll stop talking about it.

He always wanted a pool

Well, in the end, he got himself a pool.

Tonightly we’ll be talking about Prison Breaks.  Our panel will be Jeff Ross, Mike Yard, and Lola Ogunnaike.

Continuity

[assault swim]

This week’s guests-

• Tuesday 6/9: Nick Offerman
• Wednesday 6/10: Colin Quinn
• Thursday 6/11: Mark Ruffalo

Nick Offerman will be on to talk about Me & Earl & the Dying Girl which is apparently just as depressing as the title would suggest.

The first ten million years were the worst.  And the second ten million years, they were the worst too.  The third ten million years I didn’t enjoy at all.  After that I went into a bit of a decline.

The best conversation I had was over forty million years ago and that was with a coffee machine.

Marvin is the clearest thinker I know.

Nicola Sturgeon’s 2 part web exclusive extended interview and the real news below.

Security Theater

Tonightly the topic is Theodore Giselle’s 1929 racist cartoon.  The panel is Seaton Smith, Frank Luntz, and Bonnie McFarlane.

Continuity

John Hodgeman

This week’s guests-

• Monday 6/8: Nicola Sturgeon
• Tuesday 6/9: Nick Offerman
• Wednesday 6/10: Colin Quinn
• Thursday 6/11: Mark Ruffalo

Nicola Sturgeon is the Scots First Minister and the leader of the Scottish National Party.  Though they lost in Independence referendum in 2014, the SNP under Ms. Sturgeon’s direction scored a landmark 56 of 59 total seats in the English Parliament in 2015.  Ms. Sturgeon has announced she’ll direct her Party to hamper further Conservative attacks on Social Safety Net program and to hold David Cameron’s feet to the fire to deliver on his promises of Scots autonomy.

In an interesting controversy, it was alleged during the 2015 campaign in a leaked memo that Ms. Sturgeon had, in conversation with the French Ambassador, said that she preferred a Cameron victory.  This memo was proven to be entirely fabricated by Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael who was forced to resign.

Ms. Sturgeon is a member of the Scots Parliament only and is not seated in The House of Commons.

The real news below.

Due to popular demand (which I cannot understand for the life of me), today’s piece will discuss chapters 4 and 5 in Karl Marx’s Capital, volume I. On the surface, these two chapters appear simple and in many senses unimportant.  

However, that would be erroneous to conclude. These two chapters clarify two important circuits that are essential to understand the capitalist economic system and to distinguish it from earlier modes of production. Trade and money existed before capitalism itself, so what distinguishes capitalism from ancient slave societies, feudalism, and pre-capitalist mercantile economies?

Karl Marx

In addition, Marx describes the different functions of money differentiating money as a unit of account or medium of circulation (circuit of commodities) from money in its role as capital (circuit of capital). Additionally, these chapters introduce the notion of surplus value, the self-expansion of capital, and the notion of a transfer of revenue between capitalists as distinct from the creation of surplus value and end on a cliff-hanger before Marx’s explanation of the creation of surplus value which links his discussion in chapter 1 on the value of commodities to the labour process itself.

All references come from Karl, Marx (1867) Capital Volume I,  Penguin Classics, 1990.

At last, our long national nightmare is over (almost).