Opening Up Early Could Cause The U.S. Caseload To Spike-- Gigantically In Just One Month

Yesterday, one of the floating death trap companies, Carnival, announced it is planning to start up it's watery killing machines again on August 1. There will be 8 ships sailing out of Florida and Texas. They hope the experiment goes well enough-- I wonder hat the metrics are-- so that they can get the whole fleet sailing by the end of August. Anyone want to take bets on that? I say it won't happen.

Josh Dawsey and a team of 3 other Washington Post reporters wrote about the now infamous draft government report projecting that COVID-19 cases "will surge to about 200,000 per day by June 1, a staggering jump that would be accompanied by more than 3,000 deaths each day." That also amounts to about 3,000 daily deaths (up from 1,324 one day deaths on Monday). If you've been watching Chris Martenson's daily podcasts or even just watching the numbers come in, this shouldn't be a big surprise to anyone except people addicted to Fox News.

The documents is predicting sharp increases cases and deaths beginning in about two weeks-- which sounds like they're taking into account the premature opening up of businesses in Georgia, Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio.

A friend of mine calls nearly every day-- less so than he used to-- and babbles some claptrap about the University of Washington model. I keep telling him that what comes out of a model is only as good as what goes in and that everything about the University of Washington model in wrong and that whatever they say isn't somewhat worthless, it's 100% worthless and that he should stop bothering me with their pointless, absurd conclusions and predictions.

The actual numbers of new cases in the U.S. were 27,348 from Saturday to Sunday. From Sunday to Monday it looks like around the same, maybe a little less. Monday the U.S. crossed the 1.2 million cases line.

If it goes from around 20,000 a day to 200,000 a day-- 10 times as many-- in about a month... well, perhaps some of the insane governors like Bill Lee (R-TN), Greg Abbott (R-TX), Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Kristi Noem (R-SD), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Eric Holcomb (R-IN), Kim Reynolds (R-IA) and Tate Reeves (R-MS) will think twice about rushing to infect their populations. And maybe some of the spineless wonders like Gavin Newsom will tell his business donors and the vigilantes to go screw themselves.

The documents-- which come from the CDC-- seem to indicate that the trajectory after June 1 will continue to steepen, but those numbers weren't released.

The work contained a wide range of possibilities and modeling was not complete, according to Justin Lessler, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who created the model.

...“I had no role in the process by which that was presented and shown. This data was presented as an FYI to CDC... it was not in any way intended to be a forecast,” Lessler said.

Lessler said that while the exact numbers and charts in the CDC document may differ from the final results, they do show accurately how covid-19 cases could spiral out of control. He said 100,000 cases per day by the end of the month is within the realm of possibility. Much depends on political decisions being made today.

“There are reopening scenarios where it could get out of control very quickly,” Lessler said.

One federal official said the data was presented at a recent briefing for the National Response Coordination Center, a part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that coordinates federal support during major incidents and emergencies. The official, who was not authorized to discuss internal government briefings, spoke on condition of anonymity.

It was not immediately clear whether the projections, which also carry logos of the Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, are based on ramped up testing, the attempt to reopen some states, the time lag between a rise in cases and deaths or some combination of those factors.

The White House issued a statement Monday that “this is not a White House document, nor has it been presented to the Coronavirus Task Force or gone through interagency vetting. This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force, or data that the task force has analyzed.

...The forecast is at odds with remarks made Sunday evening by President Trump, who said the United States could eventually suffer as many as 100,000 deaths. At 3,000 deaths per day and rising, the national total would quickly outstrip that number if the new report is correct.

A senior White House official said the document would not change the White House planning on reopening.

White House officials have been relying on other models to make decisions on reopening, including the IHME model and a “cubic model” prepared by Trump adviser and economist Kevin Hassett and the Council of Economic Advisers.

People with knowledge of the “cubic model” say it currently shows deaths dropping precipitously in May-- and essentially going to zero by May 15.

In recent days, experts following the course of the pandemic in the United States have begun to predict that the country would be living with a sizable covid-19 case load for some time.

Researchers at the Center for Infectious Disesease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota issued a report Thursday that suggested the pandemic would last 18 to 24 months, reappearing in waves of varying intensity.

On Sunday, Scott Gottlieb, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said efforts to mitigate spread of the virus had helped but not succeeded in quelling its spread. He said on CBS’s Face the Nation that the United States faces the possibility of “persistent spread” of the virus that could spark a significant outbreak at any time if schools and workplaces “let down their guard.”

“While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected. We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point, and we’re just not seeing that,” Gottlieb said.

The largest number of deaths in the United States in a single day since the pandemic began occurred on April 21, when 2,874 people died. (A total of 6,147 deaths were reported on April 14, but they included New York City adding more than 3,000 probable deaths to the daily total.)

To date, 1.16 million people have been infected by the coronavirus and more than 67,000 have died. Both figures are widely believed to undercount the actual totals.

Slippery Slopes-- Freedom Of Speech And Facebook And Trumpanzee

No jail for the incendiary crap Alex Jones puts on social media. In fact, free speech purists are freaking out that his garbage has been banned by Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, etc. Friday, Roy Gutterman, a professor and free speech advocate wrote that kicking Alex Jones off Facebook "may have opened a new, potentially dangerous door in the digital world where free speech conflicts with good taste, legitimate information and even downright human decency. Jones shot to notoriety through his far-right wing website, InfoWars, which touted outrageous conspiracy theories, misinformation and vitriolic material that many have interpreted as hateful. Though hate speech is neither illegal nor well-defined in the United States, Jones' outrageous and offensive postings have found him removed from Facebook's community of 2.2 billion users."

It is not easy to defend Jones' brand of vitriol and conspiracy theories. In the ever-evolving debate over "fake news," misinformation and hate speech, Jones contributes to all three. Some argue that this sort of content adds nothing to the discussion of important public issues and should not have a place in the marketplace of ideas. Elements of that argument may be valid, but it also diminishes the role of such material in the marketplace. It fuels debate, forces us to confront varying and sometimes ugly viewpoints and counter them with more speech.

...Even with the Facebook ban, Jones will not be without an audience or devoted followers. He still has his website, app and radio platforms and a legion of fans. But Facebook's ban raises concerns, regardless of how civil society may view Jones. By trying to make Facebook a safe space, devoid of offensive or hateful speech, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is almost single-handedly deciding to silence unpopular speech.

In another era, it might not have been so unusual to freeze out a host of speakers and ignore some hot-button, controversial or political issues by not covering them in the newspaper or on television, or closing down editorial pages sympathetic to their causes. This was a dominant tactic in the South during the fight for civil rights, where speakers were both censored and punished for their political views.

The internet, however, has equalized the media landscape, providing speakers, writers and consumers with innumerable platforms for expression and communication. Social media is an integral part of the equation.

But when a social media behemoth like Facebook decides to ban certain players, no matter how offensive, we are treading precariously close to the slippery slope. Once these platforms start excluding some speakers today, the question is, who will be excluded tomorrow?

He concludes that "If we truly believe in free speech, the marketplace of ideas must be open to even the most offensive speakers." I was awarded a defender of free speech award by the ACLU once. And this week I was happy when I saw that the moron fake president declassified self-serving Nunes memos on the Steele dossier that now make it incumbent on the FBI to declassify to declassify the reality-based memos. Josh Gerstein wrote that "the FBI has lost its authority to rebuff Freedom of Information Act requests about the bureau’s efforts to verify the report’s intelligence linking Trump to Russia during the 2016 campaign, a federal judge ruled on Thursday."

U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta previously blessed the FBI’s decision to refuse such FOIA requests by declining to confirm whether any records exist about aspects of its handling of the hotly contested dossier, prepared by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. The judge ruled in January that Trump’s tweets about the dossier did not require the FBI and other intelligence agencies to be more responsive to public records requests on the issue.

However, Mehta said Trump’s actions in February to greenlight the release of one memo from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and a separate memo from the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, left untenable the FBI’s position of resisting disclosure.

“It remains no longer logical nor plausible for the FBI to maintain that it cannot confirm nor deny the existence of documents” related to attempts to verify information in the dossier, Mehta wrote in a 13-page opinion.

This is the kind of free speech the Founding fathers were talking about when they drafted the constitution's first amendment (which guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely.) I have to admit I don't grok Facebook. I get annoyed when people try to contact me on it and ask them to e-mail me, text me or call me on the phone. I just find Facebook annoying, random and filled with unreliable information-- largely by fools for fools. That said, I was shocked to learn that people go the jail-- real jail, not virtual jail-- for things they write on Facebook.

Business Insider gave 7 examples of young Facebook users who went to prison for stuff they wrote on Facebook. I can even understand a couple of them-- one guy who claimed-- albeit sarcastically-- that he was going to shoot up a kindergarten. Two other guys were sentenced to 4 years each for trying to encourage a riot. "Many people exercise poor judgement on Facebook," wrote Alyson Shontell, "a site where Freedom of Speech may no longer apply. Recently, young Facebook users who have posted controversial status messages have ended up in jail. Sometimes the messages they typed were actually offensive. Other times they were jokes gone terribly wrong. One teen was even arrested for posting violent rap lyrics. Most of the time, the Facebook offenders are impulsive. They type before they think, and lately they've had to pay serious consequences."

This one seems really silly though:

Cameron D'Ambrosio, 18, is a high school student who is also an aspiring rapper. The Massachusettes native posted some of his lyrics on Facebook and was initially arrested without bail. He was told what he posted was a "terroristic threat." The lyrics read: "F--- a boston bombinb [sic] wait til u see the sh-- I do, I'ma be famous for rapping, and beat every murder charge that comes across me."

When the prosector took him before a grand jury for an indictment, they refused and threw out the "case." That really is government trying to interfere with free speech and expression.

Trump Brings Civil Discord And Violence

There' been a lot of news recently about some deranged guy, 63-year old Carlos Bayon, of Grand Island, NY was arrested for leaving menacing voicemails on the office phones of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and House Republican Conference chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). He used his home phone to make the threats so-- not all that hard for Capitol Hill police and FBI to trace him. One message to Scalise: "Hey listen, this message is for you and the people that sent you there. You are taking ours, we are taking yours. Anytime, anywhere. We know where they are. We are not going to feed them sandwiches, we are going to feed them lead. Make no mistake, you will pay."

Police found various kinds of ammunition and instructions on how to build bombs when they searched Bayon's home, although no guns-- just 150 rounds of 7.62-millimeter rifle ammunition, 50 rounds of shotgun ammunition, a 2004 receipt for an SKS assault rifle, and a 1987 receipt for a .38-caliber revolver.

This week, I spoke to the chief of staff of a prominent Democratic House member, who is frequently on television. and social media. He told me that the office gets barraged with calls from right-wing lunatics constantly, including very serious threats-- even threats to the congressman's young children and pictures of the schools they go to.

"Any time the Member is on television,"the chief told me, "the office receives calls from angry conspiracy theorists-- most from outside the congressional district. These callers harass the interns and junior staff who answer the phones. These days for the right it’s all about 'owning the libs'-- so they don’t even feel the need to make sense, as long as they are annoying a Democrat they consider it a successful call."

The really aggressive callers make their way up to the Chief. Most are harmless and he has no problem putting them in their place, but a few are downright scary and include very specific threats. These calls are referred to Capitol Police to investigate.

The office also receives a regular stream of racist and sometimes threatening emails. And social media is even worse. People are truly nasty when they can be completely anonymous. "There is often a palpable racial element to the calls and social media posts," he continued, "which are often vulgar and abusive. Most calls or posts cannot be referred to the Capitol Police if they don’t contain a specific threat... Is there any surprise that we are where we are given how the President behaves on a daily basis?" This is definitely from a crazed Trumpist:



Apple made a smart decision to ban Alex Jones' unhinged podcasts, which are filled with insane conspiracy theories-- like child slaves on Mars and the PizzaGate hoax-- and hate speech galore. An Apple spokesperson:

Apple does not tolerate hate speech, and we have clear guidelines that creators and developers must follow to ensure we provide a safe environment for all of our users. Podcasts that violate these guidelines are removed from our directory making them no longer searchable or available for download or streaming. We believe in representing a wide range of views, so long as people are respectful to those with differing opinions.

Spotify and YouTube have also been removing some of Jones' most inflammatory material. Facebook banned him, but just for a month.

Meanwhile, The Hill reported yesterday that another top source of deranged hatred and baseless, dangerous conspiracy theories on the far right front, Q-Anon, may be in for some... embarrassment, especially if they're working for the GOP, as some people predict-- or as a leftist prank group, making fun of brain-dead Trump supporters. The anarchist hacking collective, Anonymous, has set about working to expose the people behind 'QAnon,' referring to it "as potentially dangerous and driven by a 'brainless political agenda.'... We will not sit idly by while you take advantage of the misinformed and poorly educated." Watch the video they posted Sunday. It's a hoot:

Midnight Meme Of The Day

-by Noah

In case you've ever wondered why Republicans don't like the idea of people smoking weed or taking hallucinogenics, it may be because they are already so "out there" that they don't see anything to be gained. Case in point: One of the biggest reasons that over 60 million head cases voted for Trump is because they believed that his opponent was running a pedophile ring out of a pizza joint just outside of Washington, DC. One Trump terrorist even went there fully armed, intending to "rectify the situation."

Republicans believe all sorts of things. Just last week, Rush Limbaugh was telling his devoted followers that Hurricane Irma was fake news being pushed by crazy libtards that believed storms were getting bigger and more devastating due to climate change.

Then there's one of Trump's favorite news sources. No, I'm not talking about those kooks on FOX "News." I'm talking about Alex Jones, a major go-to news source for Republicans everywhere. Among the stories that he has broken is the news that the New Town Massacre was a "false flag" operation staged by the government with actors, that it was a hoax, never happened. Republicans often point to lack of coverage of this and similar stories as evidence that the "lamestream media" is not on the up and up. Think about how truly sick you have to be to believe this stuff. Supporting Trump is a manifestation of mass hysteria.

Cruelty is often a thread of the stories that Republicans swear to. Just think how cruel you have to be to go around preaching and repeating these things. Many Republicans are too sociopathic to consider the feelings of the parents that lost children at New Town or that a fellow American is just trying to make a go of running a nice pizza place to provide for himself and his family. Then there are those few who do not believe that real but have no problem spreading the stories if it helps get their candidates elected. So much for being pro-family.

This meme tells the story of another Alex Jones favorite that is now part of the Trumpworld of Republican alternate facts. How dare they spread this wicked lie! C'mon! Everyone knows the child sex colony isn't on Mars but on Planet Zontar 2 of the 4th Dimension, aka the home planet and birthplace of Barack Hussein Obama!

Roger Stone And Alex Jones Publicly Float The Widespread DC Rumor That Señor Trumpanzee Is Drugged Up

So Breitbart's crackpot shtik about a coup and Trump being held hostage in the White House by "the generals" seems to have faded away, at least for now. Instead, we have Alex Jones' latest conspiracy theory, a kind of corollary-- the generals or someone has Señor Trumpanzee drugged up. So this goes beyond what we already know about his addiction to snorting chopped by Adderall when he's stressed (something his cosmetic surgeons in West Palm taught him how to do years ago).

Everyone I know-- from my friends, relatives, casual acquaintances to psychologists, psychiatrists and the kid who bags my groceries at Gelson's-- says Trump is crazy or in some significant way mentally impaired. Even Jones, an admirer, admitted Trump seems out of his mind. On his lunatic fringe InfoWars comedy show he claimed "high level" sources confirmed a plot to control Señor T through drugs, He insists Señor is being sedated. (As you know, Trumpanzee and the Ramones, who all died mysteriously and prematurely, were neighbors in Queens.)



Jones wants everyone to be clear that he doesn't blame Trumpanzee for being a basket case. "They drug presidents," he confided in the lunatic who listen to his show, "because the power structure wants a puppet. The president [he meant the Trumpanzee] needs his blood tested by an outside physician he trusts." Travis Gettys at Raw Story on Monday:

The 71-year-old Trump has a family history of Alzheimer’s disease, and analyses have found he showed some symptoms of age-related cognitive impairment-- including observations that he shows symptoms of late-day confusion known as “sundowning.”

“I’ve talked to people, multiple ones, and they believe that they are putting a slow sedative that they’re building up that’s also addictive in his Diet Cokes and in his iced tea, and that the president by 6 or 7 at night is basically slurring his words and is drugged,” Jones said. “Now first they had to isolate him to do that. But, yes, ladies and gentleman, I’ve talked to people that talk to the president now at 9 at night, he is slurring his words, and I’m going to leave it at that. I’ve talked to folks that have talked to him directly.”

Jones compared Trump’s behavior to former President Ronald Reagan, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease that likely started during his time in the White House.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I was told this by high level sources and it was evident and especially after [Ronald] Reagan was shot in his first year in office when he was acting like Trump, and doing the right things, that he never really recovered,” Jones said. “They gave him cold blood, and his transfusion that causes brain damage. They slowly gave him small amounts of sedatives. It’s known that most presidents end up getting drugged. Small dosages of sedatives till they build it up, Trump’s such a bull he hasn’t fully understood it yet.”

This isn’t the first time one of Trump’s associates has attempted to explain away rumors about the president’s mental health.

Roger Stone, a Jones associate and longtime Trump ally, previously acknowledged whispers in May about the president’s possible mental decline by claiming the rumors were intended to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove the president from office.

And my pal Roger Stone?

"He is slurring his words on various times, and that’s what's concerning. Let’s be very clear: I have a source at The New York Times, a reporter who expressed to me a concern that in a conversation they had on the phone with the president that he was slurring his words. The president does not drink. The president certainly does not do drugs. The president is sharp as a tack. Now, let’s give some credibility to... Now, in the president’s defense, could he be exhausted? Yeah, he works very hard for the country. He is passionate about his desire for an economic revival, for a boom. He said it to me, “Wait and see. You’ll see. When I get my 15 percent tax rate this economy is going to cook like nothing you’ve ever seen, it will be the greatest advance in job creation this country’s ever seen.” He is deeply committed and passionate about this. But I have now heard not from one, but two different sources, that he seemed disoriented and was slurring his speech in conversations. To me this is a tip off that he may be being medicated. Is General [John] Kelly above this? No."

And this isn't the first scare about Señor Trumpanzee's mental competence from the loony right. In early July, Kali Holloway started the speculation about his sundowning problem. Trumpanzee, she wrote, got off Air Force One after a golfing excursion to Bedminster but instead of getting into the flag-festooned limo waiting for him at the bottom of the staircase, wandered off in a different direction, getting several steps off course until a Secret Service person redirected him to his car. It was a moment in which Trump briefly appeared "befuddled and out of sorts." Watch.

Sundowning, according to the Mayo Clinic, “refers to a state of confusion occurring in the late afternoon and spanning into the night...that may affect people with dementia, such as Alzheimer's disease.” Though numerous commentators have suggested Trump’s behaviors correlate with well-known dementia symptoms, he has not been publicly diagnosed with dementia or any other mental health conditions by a medical expert. Growing concerns about Trump’s mental state are speculative, and based on a pattern of potentially worrisome behavior illustrated by the following incidents.

1. He wandered off in the middle of a foreign press event.

Trump met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a joint press conference in May. In the middle of the event, as Netanyahu stood for photos, Trump got up from his chair and wandered away from the Israeli leader. A few seconds later, staffers ushered him back toward where he should have been standing. 

2. He forgot to sign an executive order at an executive order signing press event.

Back in April, Trump invited media to watch as he signed two orders focused on trade. He gave brief remarks at the event, then left the podium before signing the documents. Then he absentmindedly opened a door and headed for another room. Mike Pence had to tap the president on his way out to remind him about the unsigned orders. After a brief discussion, Trump continued walking, and Pence followed him out the door with the paperwork.

3. He didn't realize Rudy Giuliani was sitting directly in front of him.

At a press event highlighting Trump's executive orders on cyber security, the president was seated directly across from former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. After a brief speech, Trump introduced Giuliani-- who again, was sitting right in front of him-- and began searching confusedly around the room. “Where’s Rudy?” you can hear Trump asking in the footage, as Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly directs his attention in the right direction.

4. He couldn't correctly name the country he’d just bombed.

Trump discussed the moments leading up to the U.S. bombing of Syria in an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo. Describing a dinner with Xi Jinping, Trump informed Bartiromo that he told the Chinese president, "We’ve just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq.” When Bartiromo corrected Trump on the country, he paused for a beat, then seemed to recognize his error.

Trumpanzee is well-known for projecting his own neurosis onto everyone else. Here he was during the campaign accusing Hillary of being on drugs:

Diversity Vs Free Speech At Google

Google had a good idea. They're trying to encourage diversity in hiring and the company suggested employees use an internal electronic bulletin board for a company-wide discussion. Then they fired someone who discussed.

I remember when I would sit through executive meetings at Warner Bros Records at one point and marvel at how few women and young people and people of color there were around the table. It wasn't just that women and young people and people of color were the bulk of our customers, but that it was tedious, stifling and soul-killing to be in a room filled mostly with old white men for hours on end every week. There was resistance to change-- primarily from old white men but there was a commitment at the top of the company to change and eventually-- and slowly-- it did... a bit.

A friend of mine who works in a top tech firm in Silicon Valley told me about the Google mess. He seemed to be enjoying a rival's distress. The distress started when a male engineer shared a long sexist, anti-diversity screed, "Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber," with Google employees. His point, the kind of right-wing perspective anyone who spends time watching FOX News would take as a matter of course is that women are underrepresented in Silicon Valley not because they face bias and discrimination in the technology world but because of "inherent" psychological differences between men and women. The author immediately portrays himself as the victim in "our culture of shaming and misrepresentation [that] is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber." He insists that "alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is require for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company." He lists 6 bullet points that comes straight from mindless libertarian orthodoxy:

• Google’s political bias has equated the freedom from offense with psychological safety, but shaming into silence is the antithesis of psychological safety.
• This silencing has created an ideological echo chamber where some ideas are too sacred to be honestly discussed.
• The lack of discussion fosters the most extreme and authoritarian elements of this ideology.
• Extreme: all disparities in representation are due to oppression
• Authoritarian: we should discriminate to correct for this oppression
• Differences in distributions of traits between men and women may in part explain why we don’t have 50% representation of women in tech and leadership. Discrimination to reach equal representation is unfair, divisive, and bad for business.

"At Google," he wrote, "we talk so much about unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender, but we rarely discuss our moral biases. Political orientation is actually a result of deep moral preferences and thus biases. Considering that the overwhelming majority of the social sciences, media, and Google lean left, we should critically examine these prejudices... At Google, we’re regularly told that implicit (unconscious) and explicit biases are holding women back in tech and leadership. Of course, men and women experience bias, tech, and the workplace differently and we should be cognizant of this, but it’s far from the whole story.

On average, men and women biologically differ in many ways. These differences aren’t just socially constructed because:

• They’re universal across human cultures
• They often have clear biological causes and links to prenatal testosterone
• Biological males that were castrated at birth and raised as females often still identify and act like males
• The underlying traits are highly heritable
• They’re exactly what we would predict from an evolutionary psychology perspective

When I first started reading about this story, I was horrified Google fired this guy. Eventually I realized that he needs to see a psychiatrist STAT and that it would have been a dereliction of duty for Google to keep him around normally functioning employees. This is coming from a very, very sick mind straight out of the Republican Party. His fear and hatred of women is frightening-- and far from atypical. He claims women are more directed towards "feelings and aesthetics rather than ideas" and that partially explains why "women relatively prefer jobs in social or artistic areas. More men may like coding because it requires systemizing and even within SWEs, comparatively more women work on front end, which deals with both people and aesthetics. He claims "Neuroticism (higher anxiety, lower stress tolerance)... may contribute to the higher levels of anxiety women report on Googlegeist and to the lower number of women in high stress jobs" and that "women generally hav[e] a harder time negotiating salary, asking for raises, speaking up, and leading. Note that these are just average differences and there’s overlap between men and women, but this is seen solely as a women’s issue. This leads to exclusory programs like Stretch and swaths of men without support."

This is followed by all the regular Bronze Age patriarchal bullshit brought forward into the Silicon Valley miniverse. "We always ask why we don’t see women in top leadership positions, but we never ask why we see so many men in these jobs. These positions often require long, stressful hours that may not be worth it if you want a balanced and fulfilling life. Status is the primary metric that men are judged on[4], pushing many men into these higher paying, less satisfying jobs for the status that they entail. Note, the same forces that lead men into high pay/high stress jobs in tech and leadership cause men to take undesirable and dangerous jobs like coal mining, garbage collection, and firefighting, and suffer 93% of work-related deaths." it never ends and it's almost painful to read his baseless drivel but Danielle Brown, Google’s VP of Diversity, Integrity & Governance tried responding in an internal memo to employees:

Many of you have read an internal document shared by someone in our engineering organization, expressing views on the natural abilities and characteristics of different genders, as well as whether one can speak freely of these things at Google. And like many of you, I found that it advanced incorrect assumptions about gender. I’m not going to link to it here as it’s not a viewpoint that I or this company endorses, promotes or encourages.

Diversity and inclusion are a fundamental part of our values and the culture we continue to cultivate. We are unequivocal in our belief that diversity and inclusion are critical to our success as a company, and we’ll continue to stand for that and be committed to it for the long haul. As Ari Balogh said in his internal G+ post, "Building an open, inclusive environment is core to who we are, and the right thing to do. ‘Nuff said."

Google has taken a strong stand on this issue, by releasing its demographic data and creating a company wide OKR on diversity and inclusion. Strong stands elicit strong reactions. Changing a culture is hard, and it’s often uncomfortable. But I firmly believe Google is doing the right thing, and that’s why I took this job.

Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions. But that discourse needs to work alongside the principles of equal employment found in our Code of Conduct, policies, and anti-discrimination laws.

We asked Ro Khanna (D-CA), the thoughtful and progressive congressman who represents Silicon Valley, for his perspective on the controversy in his own backyard. Here's what he sent us:

James Damore’s appalling and sexist memo, which claimed that women’s biology explains their lack of leadership opportunities, highlights how far the tech community needs to go to address gender and racial stereotypes. I was moved by Susan Wojcicki’s personal essay in response to that memo and appreciate that so many tech leaders are speaking out against Damore’s ignorant views. I am also pleased to see Google’s recent partnership with Howard University and other historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to take real steps on improving diversity in the tech industry.

As a company with an immigrant founder, an immigrant CEO, and prominent women leaders, Google should strive to set the standard for diversity in the workplace.

Workplace diversity is an issue that all of us have to be more aware of and work hard to correct. Most of us have implicit biases or blind spots that we need to recognize and take steps to overcome. Building diversity in the face of historical inequities is not easy. It requires conscious effort and hard work from all of us who have positions of power or responsibility.

My hope is that this incident will inspire thoughtful men and women at Google to redouble their effort in building a Valley where people truly have equal opportunity regardless of race, gender, or faith. Anything less would be unworthy of the Valley’s core values and principles.

James Damore, the fired Google engineer, is already a hero in certain predictable circles. This one is as incredible as it is twisted:

Trump Is A Work Of Fiction But...

The next phase of the Republican Party primary will feature Trump suing individual state parties as they all start ganging up on him-- surely not coordinated by the Paul Ryan Coronation Committee; just a coinkidink-- and stealing his delegates. South Carolina has threatened to take all the state's delegates all from him for saying he no longer considers the loyalty pledge in effect. Louisiana already gave 10 Trump delegates to Cruz and Trump says he's suing the party. Tennessee's delegate contingent has been engineered to be anti-Trump enough for Trump to threaten a suit there as well, especially after the party establishment bosses called the police on Trump protesters Saturday.

While Trump deploys his attorneys to the 50 states, crackpot Trumpist Alex Jones has asked 5 million Trumpists to show up in Cleveland and Trump's chief-advisor-who-they-say-isn't, Roger Stone, says he's takin' it to the streets. Republicans will have to get ready for... wait for it... street theater. Maybe it's just another Roger Stone scam to get Trump-suckers to send him money but when he and Alex Jones aren't talking about Hillary's lesbianism and sex crimes, they're trying to drum up the riots Trump mentioned a few weeks ago-- and in very apocalyptic terms. Listen:



Stone has now announced a Stop The Steal March On Cleveland to keep Paul Ryan from being crowned. He called it DaysOfRage when he was interviewed by Buzzfeed last week. Asked to elaborate, Stone, a notorious dirty trickster and scam artist, said he was talking about "rally-protests -at delegate hotels street theater."

Stone said the campaign was not involved in organizing this, instead saying the protests will be “organized by Trump nation,” but said that “we did inform them.” He said he had “issued the call to action” on Infowars, the Alex Jones-run conspiracy show, on March 30, that they “will stage protests at hotels of state delegates of states supporting the BIG STEAL,” and that he and Jones would be speaking (Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul are both invited).

..[In a GQ interview last week], Stone hinted at unrest at the convention, saying “I think there’d be extreme anger by the Trump supporters. I don’t know that it would boil over into violence. Trump is certainly not advocating violence.”

There have been a spate of violent incidents at Trump rallies, and the campaign appears to condone violence from the top down-- Trump has stood by his campaign manager who has been charged with simple battery after grabbing a reporter, and has promised to pay legal fees for supporters who physically confront protesters. This has led to concerns that a contested convention this year could boil over into violence in Cleveland fueled by disgruntled Trump supporters; Trump himself has predicted “riots” if the convention doesn’t lead to him as the nominee.

It’s unclear how serious Stone is about his protest plans, but he is certainly stoking the flames of the idea that Trump is about to get the nomination stolen out from under him. “The Bush, Cruz, Rubio, Romney, Ryan, McConnell faction has united and is moving into high gear to steal the nomination from Trump,” Stone wrote in a column for Infowars earlier this week.

Speaking of that column Stone wrote, his analysis of bankster lobbyist and former Senator Phil Gramm, now Cruz's economic guru, sounds like he could have come from Bernie's campaign or ahold DWT post. Gramm, he wrote, "virtually crashed the US economy. Gramm is largely responsible for two bills which led to the speculative bubble which popped in September 2008.  First was his  Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill repealed Glass Steagall, which separated investment banking from commercial banking.  Its repeal-- which was signed into law by President Clinton, with the backing of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers-- opened the door for a flood of money, from commercial banks, to flow into mortgage-backed securities and other funny-money schemes, which blew up in 2008. The second bill was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which totally freed derivative trading from any regulatory oversight. This was another Phil Gramm bill, and was central to the bubble creation from 2000 to 2008, and then again today." More Stone:

This is the insiders pulling strings illustration of power politics that will be played in Cleveland. While Mr. Trump leads in winning primary and caucus elections, and has won more delegates, the Establishment will stack the delegations to the convention, where the votes on the rules and seating of delegates could ultimately choose the nominee.

Stacking the convention and its committees with supporters is the last option for Cruz, because a contested convention is his only viable path to the nomination. The Texas Senator must win 85% of the remaining delegates to win outright, a highly unlikely scenario with many states awarding delegates proportionally.

The Kingmakers aren’t wedded to Cruz but the long shot nomination of a Romney or Ryan may be a reach too far. What the Kingmakers must do first is stop Trump.

Don’t underestimate the establishment’s desperation to overthrow the democratically expressed wishes of the people with a rigged convention. This time the conspirators are banking on the fact that the nomination will not be decided on the first ballot, but in a series of procedural votes by the entire convention. This will be the tell.

At the same time the Bosses are furious at Governor John Kasich and his handler John Weaver. He hasn’t a hope of winning anything, but if he dropped out of the race the 66 delegates he picked up for winning Ohio would then go to Trump, who placed second. Kasich is playing for a Vice Presidential slot on somebody’s ticket.

The establishment elite will do anything and everything they can to disregard the democratically expressed wishes of the American people. They will claim they are trying to strengthen the Republican Party for the general election. The truth is that if they succeed it will tear the GOP apart and make the nomination worthless.

All the establishment elite are really interested in is keeping their grip on power within the party and maintaining their influence peddling businesses. I know. I was once one of the highest paid lobbyists in Washington. They really could care less who wins the general election. Most in the GOP lobbyist class derive their livelihood from the Republican majorities in Congress and they see Hillary Clinton as transactional, someone you can rent if not buy.

The establishment have been running the Republican Party for so long, and wring the game for so long, that they haven’t realized things have changed. The rise of Trump is a tidal wave. In their deluded minds their plan to steal the nomination from Donald Trump will work just the same as it did with Ron Paul in 2012. But Trump has a constituency that will not stand for it.

Trump has managed to awaken the silent majority of Americans who previously either did not bother to vote or just shrugged their shoulders and accepted that the system is rigged and the little man cannot have an impact. Today Trump has become a leader for the non-elites. He is an alternative to doing the bidding of Bushs and Clintons and their ilk who have become richer and richer while the ordinary people have become poorer and poorer and America itself turned into a debt-ridden shadow of its once great self.

The other side of the coin comes from a different kind of right-wing crackpot, Stephanie Cegielski, a low-end GOP operative who is trying to claim she was a key player in the early stages of the Trump campaign. She's lying about that but she was involved in the short-lived Make America Great Again SuperPAC that Trump illegally raised money for then denied he even knew about, and then disbanded when things started getting dicey.

Aside from puffing herself up, her point was to paint Trump as a protest candidate who could get into second place while getting some free publicity for his brand. "The Trump camp," she wrote, "would have been satisfied to see him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold 50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy... And I am now taking full responsibility for helping create this monster-- and reaching out directly to those voters who, like me, wanted Trump to be the real deal."

My support for Trump began probably like yours did. Similar to so many other Americans, I was tired of the rhetoric in Washington. Negativity and stubbornness were at an all-time high, and the presidential prospects didn't look promising.

In 2015, I fell in love with the idea of the protest candidate who was not bought by corporations. A man who sat in a Manhattan high-rise he had built, making waves as a straight talker with a business background, full of successes and failures, who wanted America to return to greatness.

I was sold.

...I don't think even Trump thought he would get this far. And I don’t even know that he wanted to, which is perhaps the scariest prospect of all.

He certainly was never prepared or equipped to go all the way to the White House, but his ego has now taken over the driver's seat, and nothing else matters. The Donald does not fail. The Donald does not have any weakness. The Donald is his own biggest enemy.

A devastating terrorist attack in Pakistan targeting Christians occurred on Easter Sunday, and Trump’s response was to tweet, "Another radical Islamic attack, this time in Pakistan, targeting Christian women & children. At least 67 dead, 400 injured. I alone can solve." ... [T]ake a moment to appreciate the ridiculous, cartoonish, almost childish arrogance of saying that he alone can solve. Does Trump think that he is making a cameo on Wrestlemania (yes, one of his actual credits)?

This is not how foreign policy works. For anyone. Ever.

Superhero powers where "I alone can solve" problems are not real. They do not exist for Batman, for Superman, for Wrestlemania and definitely not for Donald Trump.

What was once Trump's desire to rank second place to send a message to America and to increase his power as a businessman has nightmarishly morphed into a charade that is poised to do irreparable damage to this country if we do not stop this campaign in its tracks.

I'll say it again: Trump never intended to be the candidate. But his pride is too out of control to stop him now.

You can give Trump the biggest gift possible if you are a Trump supporter: stop supporting him.

He doesn't want the White House. He just wants to be able to say that he could have run the White House. He’s achieved that already and then some. If there is any question, take it from someone who was recruited to help the candidate succeed, and initially very much wanted him to do so.

The hard truth is: Trump only cares about Trump.

And if you are one of the disaffected voters-- one of the silent majority like me-- who wanted a candidate who could be your voice, I want to speak directly to you as one of his biggest advocates and supporters.

He is not that voice. He is not your voice. He is only Trump's voice.

Trump is about Trump. Not one of his many wives. Not one of his many "pieces of ass." He is, at heart, a self-preservationist.

In fact, many people are not aware of the Trump campaign's internal slogan, but I will tell you. It is stolen from a make-believe television presidency on The West Wing where Martin Sheen portrayed President Bartlet. The slogan on the show amongst the idealistic group of Bartlet's staff was “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet.” Inside the Trump camp, the slogan became "Let Trump Be Trump."

...The man does not know policy, nor does he have the humility to admit what he does not know-- the most frightening position of all.

...I consider myself a part of the silent majority that led to Trump’s rise, which is why I want you to know that I am with you-- I wanted Trump to be real, too.

He is not.

He even says so himself. His misogyny? That's the character.

His presidential candidacy? That's a character, too.

The problem with characters is they are the stuff of soap operas and sitcoms and reality competitions-- not political legacies.

Trump made me believe. Until I woke up.

And he has no problem abusing your support the same way he cheated hard-working men and women out of millions of dollars, for which he is now being sued.

I came into this eager to support a savvy businessman who received little outside funding. I loved Trump's outsider status. But a year has now passed since I was first approached to become part of Team Trump.

...Unfortunately, the more vitriolic Trump has become, the more the people responded to him. That drove him to push the boundaries further and further.

I also started seeing a trend of incompetence and deniability.

When there was a tweet that contained an error, he would blame it on an intern; when there was a photo containing a World War II Nazi Germany background, he would blame it on an intern; when he answered questions in an overtly controversial fashion, he would claim that he did not properly hear the question. He refused to take responsibility for his actions while frequently demanding apologies from others.

Imagine Trump wronged you, even in the smallest possible way. He would go to the grave denying he had ever done anything wrong to you-- ever.

Trump acts as if he's a fictional character. But like Hercules, Donald Trump is a work of fiction.

No matter how many times he repeats it, Trump would not be the "best" at being a president, being in shape, fighting terrorism, selling steaks, and whatever other "best" claim he has made in the last 15 minutes.

He would be the best at something, though. He is the best at looking out for Donald Trump-- at all costs.

Don’t let our country pay that price.

Vote for Bernie. He's actually offering to work with the American people to solve the problems Trump is exploiting for his own very dangerous-- dangerous for us and our families-- ego trip.

Jade Helm 15. Republican World 2015 In Review-Chapter One

-by Noah

What better example of the 2015 Republican state of mind could I use to begin my 2015 review of Republican World than the classic, all too typical, paranoid Republican fantasy of Jade Helm 15?

It wasn’t enough when the denizens of Republican World convinced themselves that they better vote against Obama, not just because he’s one of "those people" but because he was going to "take away our guns." Well, two elections came and went, and no guns were confiscated. No tanks pulled up to suburban homes and pried away any iron from any cold, dead, hands.

Perhaps the Republican World explanation for Obama not "taking away our guns" was that the dreaded Obama had even more elaborate plans! What better means than to use the military at his disposal to take not just guns but homes, towns, whole states, even a whole region of the country; all part of his dastardly marxo-socialist Muslim plan! "How can you not see it," they said. "I read it on the internet," they said. "It was on the radio!"

In the real world, Jade Helm 15 was a two month long military exercise that began on July 15th. Military participants included regular military troops as well as special forces troops such as the Navy Seals and the Green Berets. It was planned to rehearse strategies for the protection of Americans. But, in Republican World, it was about the subjugation of Americans and so much more!

Republicans saw Jade Helm 15 as an attempt to install Obama Martial Law over a massive seven state region (Some even said 9, but perhaps they couldn’t count so well). youtube was flooded with clips, viewed by hundreds of thousands, from "citizen 'journalists'" who demonstrated a pathetic ability to make something nefarious out of any helicopter in the sky and any footage of military vehicles seen on roads anywhere.

For Republicans, "Thank you for your service" became "They’re coming! They’re coming!" It’s sad how people can say "We need a strong military," but, when they see it, they start buying as much ammo as they can afford; forming three man teams that they think could hold off a team of Navy Seals should they come knocking on the door.

FEMA, as usual, is a player in the minds of the paranoid--



Lest you think that such republicans are just some sort of delusional fringe wackos, keep in mind that even the governor of one of the seven states, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, got in on the action. Writing to Major General Gerald Betty of the Texas State Guard, Abbott said,

"It is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights,
private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed."

Gov. Abbott then ordered the Texas State Guard to be prepared to defend his state from the so-called great Obama takeover of 2015.

Sure, that state was Texas, so one would expect a crazy governor, but, keep in mind that Abbott was put in his office by a majority vote as was Senator "Ted" Cruz who, while speaking at the South Carolina Republican Convention on May 2nd, assured the audience that he had "reached out to the Pentagon to inquire about this exercise." Just three days later, another pride of Texas, Rep. Louis Gohmert issued a statement that tossed around phrases like “modern day Marshall Law’ and said,

"…the tone of the exercise needs to be completely revamped so the
federal government is not intentionally practicing war against its own
states."

Appearing on the 700 Club, Gohmert also talked about citizen concerns that President Obama was targeting conservatives and said, referencing the fact that, for the exercise, Texas was labeled as "hostile territory."

"When my own Commander-in-Chief through his subordinates is just
fine with, for games purposes, declaring an enemy of two or more of
your states, I got a problem with that."

No, this Jade Helm 15 conspiracy thing is not fringe republican. It is mainstream republican. These are the people Republican voters put in office. Majority rules.

Republican radio favorite, Alex Jones may be the loon who put this all in motion when, on March 19th, in reference to Jade Helm 15, he stated that the federal government was preparing to invade Texas.

"Now this is just a cover for deploying the military on the streets…
This is an invasion… in preparation for the financial collapse and
maybe even Obama not leaving office."

On March 27th, the Alex Jones website featured a post that referenced Jade Helm 15 with the headline "Beyond Denial: Preparations For Martial Law." Jones also informed his followers that HELM stands for "Homeland Eradication of Local Militants."Nice to know. Be afraid. Be very afraid!

"Actor" Chuck Norris, most known for his Delta Force movies and, more recently backing Sen. John McCain for President while standing like a grinning idiot on campaign stages with him, fanned the flames with his column in WorldNetDaily, the folks who first broke the story that President Obama is gay and is secretly married to a man.

September 15th came and went. Jade Helm 15 ended. No martial law. No takeover. The people who buried their guns are probably now wandering around looking for their guns like a bunch of squirrels wondering where they buried all those nice acorns. Whoops! Don’t say 'acorn' in front of a Republican? That’s a whole different Obama plot!